The Real Lives of TBI Wives

Ep. 60 | TBI wives are the last ones on their own list. The appointments, the medications, the kids, the house, the paperwork, all of it comes first. And by the time everything else is handled, the idea of figuring out what workout to do, whether you have time, what equipment you need, and where to even start feels like one decision too many. Mason Mattes built Cynical Fitness for a completely dif...

Ep. 59 | Missi was not someone who slowed down. Women's group leader, youth leader, dance team coach, committee member, fulltime employee - on the go from morning until night, not knowing any other way. She flipped an ATV after a family wedding in Texas while protecting her four year old nephew on her lap, neither of them wearing a helmet. A helicopter came and took her to Memorial Hermann in Hous...

Ep. 58 | When Erika Brouillette pulled up to Hope Heals Camp in Nauvoo, Alabama, she expected to unload the truck herself. That is what she always does. Instead, people swooped in before she could figure out where to start and she just stood there, not quite knowing what to do with herself. That moment at the truck was the first sign that this place was completely different from anything her famil...

Ep. 57 | If you have ever talked yourself out of a trip because the logistics felt too heavy, too complicated, too much to coordinate on top of everything else you are already carrying this episode is for you. When the Brouillette family was chosen to attend Hope Heals Camp in Nauvoo, Alabama, Erika's first instinct was to drive. Seventeen hours later, Layne getting home from a mission trip to Mex...

In October 2024, Danielle Damrell was driving home in her neighborhood when a Ford F350 hit her head-on. Three weeks later, on the drive home from a family vacation in Tennessee, a woman flew through an intersection at 55 miles per hour and T-boned the rental car, throwing it 20 feet off the road. Two accidents, only three weeks apart resulting in a  traumatic brain injury diagnosis four months la...

Years of quietly filling in his sentences, moving things into his path before he could lose them, learning to read the overstimulation before it became a storm. She was setting him up for success without him knowing and giving him his dignity while absorbing everything he couldn't carry until she couldn't sustain it anymore. Then came the brain scan and the moment Robert laughed because he finally...

Ep. 54 | This episode has been in the making since the moment Erika hit record on this podcast. Jeff Faldalen has been her coach for the last year and a half. He is the person on the other end of the phone calls when the ruts got hard. The one who told her to keep going when she couldn't see past today. The one who asked her the questions she didn't want to answer and waited while she found the an...

Ep. 53 | Nine days before Christmas, Meg Payne got a call from the police while she was at work. Her husband Alan had been T-boned by a truck on his bike. She was 34 weeks pregnant. What followed was two months in the ICU and rehab, an insurance company that tried to deny his placement, a baby born without her husband in the room, and a newborn brought to Craig Hospital two days later to meet his...

Ep. 52 | You have done everything the doctors told you to do. You have been to the appointments, followed the protocols, managed the medications, and sat across from specialists who looked at your husband and said some version of "this is just how it is now." What if there were treatments they simply didn't know about yet? Simone Fortier has had over 50 concussions as a child and six as an adult....

Ep. 51 | Before his brain injury, Rob Baugh's life revolved around two things: playing piano at church and making elaborate cakes inspired by Cake Boss — a hobby that started as a dare from his wife Sheila and turned into a thriving side business. Then, six years ago, a bee flew past his head while he was coming in from feeding the fish. He ducked and hit a metal screen door and in less than a min...

Fifty episodes. In this solo episode, Erika takes you back to where it all started — the woman who had never shared her story publicly, who hit record scared and unpolished because she knew someone needed to hear it. She walks through what fifty episodes has taught her about TBI wives, identity loss, and what it really means to disappear inside the role of caregiver. And then she shares the wall s...

Ep. 49 | You have been performing strength in public while quietly disappearing in private. And if you are honest with yourself, the exhaustion you are carrying as a TBI wife goes deeper than the caregiving itself. It goes all the way back. In this episode, Erika Brouillette gets honest about the worthiness wound, the deep, quiet belief that your needs come last, that your worth lives in your usef...

Ep. 48 | In this episode of Real Lives of TBI Wives, Erika sits down with Greg Hayward, a traumatic brain injury survivor who shares his honest and often humorous perspective on life after TBI. Greg spent 35 years in the oil and gas industry, a career built on hard work, the outdoors, and mechanical skill, until one unexpected night changed everything. What started as a normal evening with a frien...

Ep. 47 | In this powerful episode of Real Lives of TBI Wives, Erika sits down with Carrie Pullaro, coach and creator of The Whole Woman Method, to talk about the hidden emotional weight women carry long before tragedy ever touches their lives. Carrie shares her deeply personal story of body shame, addiction, secrecy, abortion, herpes diagnosis, destructive coping patterns, and the exhausting cycle...

Ep. 46 | Host Erika Brouillette shares her experience of facing a life-or-death decision, then becoming an overnight caretaker, provider, and single parent to three boys while managing specialists, therapies, insurance, and daily care tasks like feeding tubes, medications, and hygiene. Overwhelmed, isolated, and unsure of next steps, she held onto a belief she could help others and began learning...

Ep. 45 | In this refreshing and much-needed episode of Real Lives of TBI Wives, Erika sits down with her friend and podcast mentor, Teri Holland, to talk about something so many caregivers desperately need but rarely allow themselves: rest. While the conversation may feel a little “off topic” from brain injury at first, it quickly becomes clear that intentional rest is one of the most important su...

Ep. 44 | In this powerful episode of Real Lives of TBI Wives, Erika sits down with Luke Bohnenberger, a traumatic brain injury survivor, speaker, coach, and bright light in the brain injury community, to talk about the accident that changed his life forever and the purpose he found on the other side of it. At just 18 years old, a simple decision to remove his seatbelt before getting off an exit le...

Ep. 43 | In this deeply moving episode of Real Lives of TBI Wives, Erika Brouillette sits down with Tina to share the heartbreaking and hope-filled story of her husband Dave’s traumatic brain injury. What began as an ordinary workday on the farm in October 2021 turned into a life-altering accident that left Dave with a severe diffuse axonal brain injury, and left Tina navigating ICU stays, long-te...

Ep. 42 | In this episode of Real Lives of TBI Wives, Erika Brouillette sits down with Jamie Arbor, Executive Director of The Supported Living Group in Connecticut, to talk about the realities of navigating longterm support for traumatic brain injury survivors and their families. Jamie shares how his organization has become the largest provider of brain injury support services in the state, offerin...

In this solo episode of Real Lives of TBI Wives, Erika dives into the surprising science behind what researchers are calling the “hope hormone.” While lifting weights may seem like just another task in an already overwhelming life, Erika shares how muscle movement releases powerful molecules called myokines that help regulate stress, reduce inflammation, support brain function, and build emotional...

In this episode of Real Lives of TBI Wives, Erika Brouillette sits down with natural health practitioner Kate McDowell of Aligned Natural Health to explore a question many caregivers silently ask themselves: “Is it perimenopause, or is it my husband?” For women caring for husbands with traumatic brain injuries, life often means living in constant survival mode. The chronic stress, emotional load,...

Season 3 Episode 39: In this episode of Real Lives of TBI Wives, Erika sits down with Peg Clark who opens up about what it really looks like to love, grieve, and care for the same man, after a traumatic brain injury changes everything. Peg and Cliff’s story begins like a movie, high school sweethearts in a snowy Michigan December, but their “forever” took a hard turn almost 21 years ago when Cliff...

Season 3 | Ep. 38 In this powerful episode of Real Lives of TBI Wives, Erika Brouillette sits down with Dr. Kay Reyna, a first responder wife/accountant turned researcher whose family’s life changed in an instant when her husband, a North Carolina Highway Patrol Master Trooper, was catastrophically injured on duty. What followed wasn’t just the trauma of a severe traumatic brain injury, but a long...

In this final episode of the year, Erika Brouillette opens her heart and shares the truth of what the last twelve months have looked like—messy, stretching, humbling, beautiful, and nothing short of transformative. From reaching out to an old family friend who unexpectedly became a life-changing guide, to launching the Real Lives of TBI Wives podcast in April, to watching a community rise up aroun...

In Episode 36, Erika sits down with Sheila Baugh—a fiercely devoted wife and caregiver navigating life after her husband Rob’s traumatic brain injury in July 2020. From their sweet beginning on a blind date in the ’90s to the life-altering accident that changed everything, Sheila opens up about the realities of loving someone through TBI: the medical maze, the career disruptions, the emotional tol...