Motivation N'at

Natasha R. Minier-Robinson wrote two books while going through a miscarriage, the unexpected death of her younger sister, and a chronic illness that kept her hospitalized for most of a month. When I asked what she tells someone who's praying and hearing nothing back, she didn't reach for a verse. She said sometimes you won't have the words, and it's okay to sit in the silence. She...

Suicide loss survivors get handed a pamphlet and a phone number. That's the postvention. Kelleigh Boland's brother Patrick died in June of 2020. Her family sat outside for four hours while the investigation ran, and what they got afterward was a flyer for biohazard cleanup. She and her mom started Our Black Rose because of it, and they've made nearly 500 care packages by hand since. Ni...

Megan Pritts has been doing search engine optimization since 2012. She got into it because a former boss sold SEO to a client before anyone at the company knew how to deliver it, then handed her the project and told her to figure it out. We start with what SEO actually covers, since most people are nodding along to a word they can't define. Megan explains the difference between the technical s...

Preston Zeller's brother died of a fentanyl overdose. A week later he was back at work, still broken, and the people around him didn't know what to say. So he wrote one sentence in a journal: paint every day for a year, make a documentary about it. He had no idea how he'd do either. He did both. When I asked how we're supposed to support each other through this, he didn't softe...

Twin sisters Chloe Drew and Jennica Giroux run Mother Earth Farm in Indiana County, Pennsylvania. Neither of them set out to farm. Jennica has a degree in math and economics and spent about a decade in financial services before leaving for good in 2023. Chloe trained as an elementary educator at IUP, never took the classroom job, and founded the Indiana Outdoor School instead. We get into why the...

Dr. Kelly Monahan has spent twenty years researching the future of work, first as the lead future of work researcher at Deloitte, then at Meta, then running the Upwork Research Institute. When I admitted that my AI usually tells me I did a great job, she stopped me: AI is not your bestie. It's a mirror. And if you're already flattering yourself, it will help you do it. We get into where AI...

Complex PTSD isn't a recognized DSM diagnosis. That doesn't mean it isn't shaping your marriage, your parenting, or your health. This week Natalie talks with Kayla Licari, a former physician assistant who left a six-figure career after fifteen years once she realized what it was costing her body, her marriage, and her kids. They get into what complex PTSD actually looks like day to day, why it sho...

Stef Vachon spent decades performing a version of himself just to survive. A former international figure skater who came up through relentless homophobic abuse, he walked away from the sport as a teenager, and it took him years, and a total breakdown, before he found his way back to who he actually was. In this conversation, Stef and Natalie talk about what it costs to hide who you are, what it ta...

Peter Young spent almost twenty years surviving a cult inside his own family, and he didn't know it was happening until it was almost too late. Peter Young is the author of Stop the Tall Man, Save the Tiger , and he joins the pod to talk about the man his family called Uncle Robert, and how one person slowly took control of a marriage, a family, and twenty years of his life. We get into: 🔹 Ho...

Grief after losing a parent doesn't follow a timeline, and it definitely doesn't come with a manual. Caroline Degnan is a licensed professional counselor in the Pittsburgh area specializing in grief and bereavement, and she lost her own father at eighteen, the exact same age I lost mine. This conversation is a reflection on what that loss taught us both, and how Caroline turned hers into t...

This episode contains an open conversation about suicide and self-harm. If you're currently navigating this, it's okay to pause, skip, or come back when you're ready. If you need support, call or text 988. Free, confidential support is available 24/7. Surviving a suicide attempt is isolating. Add a stigma that keeps people silent and a system too overwhelmed to support them, and you&#3...

During his time as CFO, Charles Tapp II spun up the Enterprise Risk Management program at Veterans Benefits Administration which paved the way for me to do the same in Veterans Health Administration a year or two later. The dual effort was making its way to major impact when Charles and I both decided to step away, leaving the programs in the hands of our amazingly talented staff. Now we can talk...

A year ago, I left a job that had shaped seven years of who I was, and I thought the hardest part was already behind me. It wasn't. This is what a year of hosting more than 50 conversations with over 40 guests on the Motivation N'at Podcast has taught me about myself. Josh, my husband, was the very first guest on Motivation N'at when this show launched. A year later, he's back to i...

If one more person tells you the answer is a new system, a new tool, or a new platform, you might lose your mind. Because you've watched the stack grow and the problems stay, and nobody seems to want to talk about what's actually broken underneath it. Dr. Shannon Gregg is the president of Cloud Adoption Solutions and holds a PhD in CRM user adoption. She has spent her career inside the gap...

Motherhood didn't break Samantha's career, but instead, it taught her everything the rulebook missed. It's something all of us, parents or not, should take some time to think about. This week I sat down with Samantha Swan, a senior manager in healthcare strategic planning and a mom of two, who has lived the tension between ambition and motherhood in real time and brought her insights a...

"I hear chains rattling above me when I sleep." That's how Sean Martin described the psych ward he ended up in after his Humvee exploded overseas. Survival can look like a lot of different things. So can the road back. Sean's road back was a journey back into his love of music and combining it with renewed intent. The Quarantined is his grunge/punk/metal project, and it tackles a...

Guest: Alana Cheeks-Lomax | Co-Founder & CEO, Untold Impact What Does It Really Mean to Lead Through Chaos? The chaos leaders are feeling right now often isn't accidental. The workforce is shifting, the table is changing, and most leaders are navigating the noise without ever really having been prepared for what this looks like. On this episode of Motivation N'at, Natalie Bulger sits down with Ala...

Your career has been telling you something for a while now. The question is whether you're listening. Lis Doggett, career coach and founder of Hanai Career Solutions, joined me for this honest discussion which handed out some tough pills to swallow. We get into: 🔷 Why burnout isn't about how many hours you're working 🔷 The difference between running from a job and moving toward somet...

Gabbi Myers built Bella Day Spa around three words on her mission statement, come as you are, and spent ten years making sure every person who walked through the door actually believed it. Gabbi and I had a rapid fire chat where we pulled apart all of the layers of spa ownership and about the services offered as spas and salons. We cover🔹 The stigma around trade school and why her staff out-earns...

What actually separates a confident leader from a cocky one? Dr. Sara Ann Todd says it comes down to one, main thing: clarity. Sara Ann, founder is the CEO of Leadership Investments and a certified coach with over 22 years across the military, federal government, and private sector. We connected after both leaving the federal government and our discussion allowed us to look back and what we say du...

Healing isn't one therapist, one yoga class, one breakthrough moment. It's messy, it's layered, and it is absolutely not meant to be done alone. I sat down with Kristy Joy Weidner, licensed clinical social worker, trauma specialist, mindfulness teacher, and founder of two Pittsburgh spaces built around exactly that idea to talk about what community really looks like as a part of our he...

Acceptance doesn't mean something is okay. It means it's real. I sat down with Sarah Ludwig, LPC — a therapist specializing in sexual and intimate partner violence — and we finished what we started in part one. We get into: The difference between domestic violence and intimate partner violence, and why it matters What power and control actually look like in healthy vs. harmful relationship...

Intimate partner violence is is far more prolific than we probably realize, and that's because of the shame, stigma and shadows it involves.   I sat down with Sarah Ludwig, LPC, a certified EMDR therapist and trauma-focused counselor with over a decade ofexperience working with survivors of sexual violence and intimate partner violence to educate myself and to bring the discussion to listeners of...

Jessica and Elizabeth of the Grieving Sisters Podcast are back. If you caught Episode 38, you know we barely scratched the surface. This is where we finish what we started.  We get into: --- The shame of moving on and why grief makes you feel guilty for living your life --- Survivor's remorse and how it shows up long after the lossitself --- How identity shifts when the world starts to define...

At 26, Trajan Jones is running for a Pennsylvania House seat in the 62nd district — and he didn't wait for someone to hand him the opportunity. Nobody else was stepping up. So he did.   I sat down with Trajan, a local urban planning specialist and candidate for Pennsylvania's 62nd House district, and we touched why now, what was important in the community, how to have a voice for change, and more....