Her Story Unscripted

“Why would you want to skip the in-between chapters? Then the book isn’t interesting, and then your life isn’t interesting.” — Romi Menegoni Romi Menegoni has worn a lot of hats, and a crown is only one of them. She came to the U.S. from Sarajevo at eight years old, booked her first modeling job in third grade, and has spent fourteen years caring for patients as a dental hygienist. This year, she...

"It's a moment in time. It's not your whole life." — Liz Benditt The first time, it was a mole her mom wouldn't stop nagging her about. Liz Benditt finally went to the dermatologist just to get some peace, and a few days later she got the call: melanoma. Over the next fourteen years, she would hear the words "you have cancer" five more times. In this episode of H...

"The tectonic plates of my life started to shift." — Becca Francis Some shifts happen with a big announcement. Others happen quietly, over weeks you don't even notice at first — a laptop closed in frustration, then reopened out of curiosity, then a whole life rebuilt from the ground up. That's the kind of shift Becca Francis walked through. In this episode, Becca — a psychic me...

"Do you know what it's like to wake up and not have any secrets? I'm so free." — Kimberly Menzies For years, Kimberly Menzies kept one part of her life locked away. She built a whole story around it, a marriage that wasn't quite what she said, a picket fence meant to keep people from looking too closely. Then her son found her, and she realized she was done carrying it alo...

“I can't remember a day I didn't think about my weight.” — Kassidy Coulter There's a kind of honesty that takes an entire year to work up the courage to say out loud. This week on Her Story Unscripted, singer/songwriter Kassidy Coulter shares the story behind the song she almost didn't release — and what it took to finally let it go. Kassidy grew up in Sonoma County and now liv...

"I just felt like I had to choose one. But by choosing one, I knew I was betraying my cultural identity, and I was betraying myself." — Urmi Hossain There's a version of belonging that means folding yourself in half to fit somewhere — keeping one culture on for school and another for home, and never letting the two sit in the same room. For a long time, that's the only version...

"The best in people always shines through, even during the darkest times." — Annette Mullin There's the version of a crisis you see on the news, and then there's the version lived by the people who show up for it — the officers, the first responders, the moms trying to keep their own kids steady while everything around them feels unsteady. Annette Mullin lived both. Annette spe...

You think you have stability. You think you have your health. You think you have all these things. But in reality, they can be taken from you at any moment without warning — Jennifer Peterson There's a version of strength that looks like showing up for everyone else while quietly falling apart underneath it. Jennifer Peterson spent 25 years in critical care and trauma medicine — and then foun...

"Our brains are wired for survival. They are not wired for success." — Gina Mundy There's a specific kind of courage it takes to walk out of your own life with nothing but a suitcase and $50 in your pocket. For Gina Mundy, that night came the day after Christmas, after 24 years of marriage, after she'd quietly stopped caring about the version of her life that looked perfect fro...

"Fun is an energy that people are magnetized to." —  Jillian Murphy There's a version of starting over that doesn't look like a five-year plan. For Jillian Murphy, it looked like losing her corporate job on a Tuesday, giving herself one day to feel bad about it, and hiring a business coach 48 hours later because she didn't have time to figure it out alone. In this episode,...

"Behind every craving for alcohol is some unmet need. Alcohol is like a sticking plaster." — Kate Bee There's a kind of struggling with alcohol that never makes it into the movies. No crash, no rock bottom — just years of feeling like something's a little off every time you reach for a glass of wine. Kate Bee knows that feeling well. She spent her twenties and most of her adult...

"I was just really in a dark place, and that's when I started Organized 365." — Lisa Woodruff There's a stack of papers somewhere in your house you've been meaning to deal with. Maybe it's in a drawer, maybe it's a basket by the door. For Lisa Woodruff, that stack of overwhelm became the thing that changed the whole direction of her life. In this episode, Lisa Wo...

"If you're the caretaker of someone in any way, it will also take a toll on you. And it's okay to then say, I need someone else to help me while I help this person."— Amelia Castillo There's a version of self-care we've all been sold — bubble baths, candles, a glass of wine we didn't even want. And then there's the real thing, the kind that shows up quietly...

"It's totally her minerals, it's not her."— Dori Martin There's a particular kind of tired that doesn't go away with sleep — the brain fog, the inflammation, the mood swings that make you feel like a stranger in your own body. For years, Dori Martin thought that was just what happens to women in midlife. It wasn't, and what she discovered instead is the heart of...

“You are responsible for your own actions, your own behaviors, your own reactions. You cannot control the actions, reactions of others.” — Donna Johnsen Twenty-three years. That's how long Donna Johnsen was with her husband when an unplanned divorce rewrote everything she thought she knew about her own life. This week on Her Story Unscripted, she shares what happened when the identity she&apo...

"The opposite is always the medicine. You people-please to others — so how do you people-please to you?" — Kari Brunson Wright There's a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from bending yourself into whatever shape a room needs you to be. Kari Brunson Wright knows it well — from a ballet stage, to a restaurant line, to running her own businesses. It took three full reinventions...

"Growth happens when you're uncomfortable, because you push yourself into things you wouldn't normally do." — Dr. Shola Sulaimon There's a kind of tiredness that comes from being everything to everyone — and never quite getting around to asking what fills your own cup. For Dr. Shola Sulaimon, that question sat quietly for almost 20 years before she finally let herself answ...

"You get back up and build better — it is going to be 10x more than you can believe." — Darcey Elizabeth  Four years ago, Darcey sat in what she now calls one of the darkest seasons of her life — a newly single mom who had just moved four hours from home, left corporate, and was trying to build something from scratch. She had no guarantee any of it would work. She just kept going. In thi...

"I woke up one day and I started to feel. And what I felt, it wasn't pretty. I was like, I'm not happy. And that was the very first time I put myself first." — Mercedes Hernandez Mercedes Hernandez built The SoCo Markets from scratch — 11 vendors on a closed-off side street, a vision, and no guarantee it would work. Six years later, it's one of Sonoma County's most be...

"We only get one life, and we don't know when that invisible clock is gonna run out. So you have to make time for people and for things that are important to you." — Christina Alonzo It started as a normal weekend. By Tuesday, Christina Alonzo was sitting in an ER telling the doctor everything she had been quietly noticing for days. By Wednesday, the diagnosis was in: glioblastoma —...

"We all have a story to tell. We all have journeys, we've all been through things — and some of us are worse than others. But we all have a story to tell." — Heather Nelson There's something that happens when a woman decides to stop performing and just say it the way it actually is. No script. No polish. No waiting for permission. For Heather Nelson, that decision didn't a...

“I really think sitting down and understanding where you want to go, and the things that make you happy and bring you joy, those are the things that you need to put more energy into. The things that are not benefiting you, you have the power to control that, to take that narrative and change it.” —Heather Nelson We reach a point where pushing harder stops working. The weight builds quietly through...

“Our scalp, hair, all these are meant to protect our most vital organ, which is our brain. The reason you get itchy, you can feel when you get oily, is because it's that sensitive to protect it. So we need to learn not to ignore those signs.” —Anne Marie We know that “successful” careers can quietly drain our bodies and energy. Many of us push through pain, burnout, and misalignment because i...

“That's the thing that's maybe getting lost in some of the fear mongering around it is that, it's not the easy way out. It doesn't mean that you don't have to do the work. It means that when you do the work, the work actually makes the difference.” —Aja Beckett Food noise can sit in the back of the mind all day, from planning the next meal at breakfast to carrying quiet sh...

"It gives people from grief to relief. It gives them a little bit of a lightened load when it comes to their emotional state, and they can not move on, but utilize it better." —Jenessa Wyatt This episode explores how grief, fear, and uncertainty can be faced without losing grounding in real life. Psychic medium Jenessa Wyatt shares how her work blends evidence, intuition, and spiritual c...