Who We Become - Life Beyond Change

There is a space in human experience that almost never gets named. Not the crisis. Not the breaking point. Not the moment everything is visibly falling apart. It’s the space after — the one where life has technically moved on, but internally something hasn’t. The space where you’re functioning, where you look fine, where you’re doing everything you’re supposed to do… but you’re exhausted in a way...

The therapy, the mindset work, the journaling, the reading — all of it useful, and still the body stays braced and the same dynamic keeps showing up in different clothes. Brittany Schembra works underneath that: in the nervous system and the subconscious, where the body stores what the conscious mind hasn't been able to process. She calls it "spirituality without the woo" — and she c...

Today's conversation explores what it means to become a mother without the one person you always expected to guide you through it. My guest, Laura Todd - licensed clinical counselor, perinatal mental health specialist, and founder of Early Bond Therapy - shares her powerful story of losing her mother to breast cancer in 2015 and then becoming a mother herself six years later, during COVID, in...

A mother and a daughter — and a story that began long before either of them ever heard the word "diagnosis." It started with a loss: Linda Zoldak lost her only child. Then, an ocean away, a beginning — a 22-month-old named Tamara, adopted from Bulgaria into Linda's arms. Decades later, Linda was diagnosed with primary progressive multiple sclerosis, and Tamara — a paramedic living wi...

For years, the labs kept coming back "normal" — while Ashley lived in a body that felt anything but. 35 pounds of unexplained weight gain, joint pain, brain fog, crippling fatigue, and a changing voice. Doctor after doctor sent her home. Then she stopped waiting for someone else to figure it out. In this episode of Who We Become — Life Beyond Change, Amanda Lentz sits down with Ashley Cr...

They Said He'd Hire a Man. She Told Him He'd Hire Her Instead. Dr. Kasi Lacey moved out on her own at 16. School was her safe place, so she chased stability the only way she knew how — through her grades, her degrees, and fifteen years climbing higher education all the way to a president's cabinet. She had the title, the influence, the seat at the table. And then she named the environm...

Today’s conversation explores love in its hardest and most human form — the kind that asks everything of you. My guest, Cindy Mich, shares the story of loving her partner Michael through stage‑4 lymphoma, becoming his caregiver, advocate, and constant presence, and then navigating the grief and identity shift that followed his passing. Cindy opens up about the beginning of their relationship, the...

Most of us understand grief as something that arrives after a loss. But there is another kind — quieter, lonelier, harder to name — the grief that lives in the waiting. The grief that comes from loving someone whose life is at risk, from waking up every day afraid of the phone ringing, from holding your breath through ordinary moments because you don’t know what’s coming. “ Grief that has no name...

Thisconversation is about what happens when the life that looks perfect on paper quietly stops feeling like your own — and what it takes to finally tell the truth. Jen Rulon spent years being “the woman who had it all together”: fifteen Ironman triathlons, a master’s degree, published books, a thriving coaching business, a marriage that looked solid from the outside. But underneath the achievement...

Some stories begin long before the breaking point. For Brent LeGrave , the story starts in Malone, New York — a small town where fentanyl doesn’t make national headlines, but it quietly dismantles families one at a time. He was born deaf, pigeon‑toed, and “ always the last one picked ” . He grew up believing he wasn’t enough, until bowling gave him his first glimpse of confidence — “ you can only...

Some women build their lives around stability — the job, the relationship, the predictable path — believing that if everything is safe, everything will be okay. For Emily McDonald , stability was the compass she followed from childhood into adulthood. She became a teacher because it was “ a safe bet… a good, what we’re supposed to do career ” . She married her partner of 14 years, became a mom of...

Today’s conversation explores what happens when the life you were told to live no longer fits — and the courage it takes to walk away from an identity built inside a high‑control system. My guest, Audra Phelps, shares her powerful story of growing up in the LDS church, becoming a wife and mother inside a belief structure that dictated every part of her life, and the moment she realized she could n...

Today’s conversation explores a concept that quietly shapes how we move through the world: the indirect sphere — all the noise, narratives, and external events that demand our attention but don’t actually touch our real lives. My guest, Garret Biss , speaker, coach, and former U.S. Marine Corps pilot, shares how this framework helped him reclaim his time, energy, and emotional bandwidth after a pr...

Today’s conversation explores what happens when hustle stops being ambition and starts becoming survival. My guest, Cliff Beach — award‑winning musician, radio host, tech executive, and published author — shares the wake‑up call that forced him to confront burnout, addiction, and the quiet collapse happening beneath a high‑achieving life. Cliff opens up about his health crisis, the moment he chose...

Some people survived the pandemic by slowing down. Jillian Minter survived it by holding everything together — her Pilates and yoga studio, her clients, her community, her sense of responsibility. From the outside, it looked like resilience. On the inside, she was exhausted, miserable, and operating from a scarcity mindset she didn’t yet have a name for. In this episode of Who We Become — Life Bey...

Some stories look perfect from the outside — the salary, the title, the upward trajectory. For Karin Freeland , that story carried her all the way to a six‑figure corporate career and the role of chief of staff. But one morning, she woke up and realized something she had been avoiding for years: it wasn’t enough. Not for her identity. Not for her purpose. Not for the life she wanted to live. In th...

Some diagnoses arrive like a full stop — a moment that feels like the end of the story you thought you were living. For Jim Logan , that moment came at 59½, when he was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic colorectal cancer that had already spread to his liver. The prognosis was blunt: six months to two years. But Jim didn’t accept the ending he was handed. Twenty‑five months later, he has reached no...

Some moments in life don’t just challenge you — they reorder everything you thought you knew about strength, identity, and purpose. For Troy Frostad , that moment came five years ago when he heard the words stage four colon cancer . A U.S. Air Force veteran, certified executive and performance coach, and founder of Pinnacle Leadership, Troy had spent his life mastering discipline, endurance, and p...

Some women wait to be invited into the room. Rachael Paskvan never did. She spent years as one of the only women in executive protection — protecting public figures around the globe, then leading executive travel security and large‑scale event logistics at one of the world’s largest tech companies. Her career unfolded in spaces built without women in mind, and instead of asking whether she belonge...

Change has a way of looking clean from the outside — a career pivot, a new chapter, a fresh start. But inside? Change often carries a kind of grief most people never name. In this episode of Who We Become — Life Beyond Change , Amanda sits down with Jenny Blake to explore the emotional cost of reinvention, the hidden grief that comes with letting go of a life you worked hard to build, and the deep...

Some healing happens in conversation. Some happens in time. But the deepest healing — the kind that reshapes identity, rewires the nervous system, and slowly brings you back to yourself — happens in the body. That’s the work Loren Galese knows intimately. Loren is a trauma therapist, M.Ed LPC, and author of Unfolding Origami — a memoir about the slow, stubborn, sacred work of coming back to yourse...

There’s a story you’ve been telling yourself. It usually shows up quietly — in the middle of the night, or right before something big. The one that says: This is just who I am. This is just how things go for me. But what if that story isn’t the truth? What if it’s just the version you inherited… or the one you built to survive? In this episode of Who We Become — Life Beyond Change , Amanda sits do...

Shannon Miller is one of the most decorated gymnasts in history — seven Olympic medals, nine world championship medals, fourteen halls of fame, and a legacy that shaped an entire generation of athletes. Her name is synonymous with excellence, discipline, and the kind of focus that becomes legend. But in 2011, everything changed. Shannon was diagnosed with a rare form of ovarian cancer. The medals...

Some seasons of life don’t just challenge you — they dismantle the version of yourself you thought you were supposed to be. In this episode of Who We Become — Life Beyond Change , Amanda sits down with writer and storyteller Betsy Vereckey to explore reinvention, courage, and what it looks like to rebuild your life when nothing is working the way you planned. Betsy’s story begins in a place many p...

Some conversations change the way we understand ourselves. Others change the way we speak to the people we love. In this episode of Who We Become — Life Beyond Change , Amanda sits down with Kendall Concini‑Moore — author, mother, and creator of Cloudy Day Chronicles — to explore mental health, motherhood, identity, and the courage it takes to tell the truth in real time. Kendall’s story begins wi...