Hang In There

"I didn't choose to lose our friendship. I didn't choose to let you go. I just didn't know I was disappearing." This one is for the friendships that quietly disappeared. For the survivors who lost people they never meant to lose. And for the friends who spent years wondering what happened, and whether they did something wrong. Sometimes people don't pull away because...

"I see clearly now. And I still love her." Two voices share this episode. One is inside the story, young, hopeful, learning what love is supposed to feel like. The other is watching her. Quietly. From a place of hard-won clarity. Not to warn her. Not to intervene. Just to witness her with the tenderness she always deserved. What follows is an intimate journey through survival, from the e...

"You weren't silent because you approved. You were silent because you loved me." Walking into a small entryway. Physically and emotionally exhausted. Carrying bags, holding onto dogs, trying to hold onto the kids. Trying to hold onto myself. And you just… made room for us. In this episode I write a letter to my parents. To the people who loved me through something they couldn't...

"It can disrupt what you have. It can damage it. It doesn't erase what was real." There's a photograph I think about sometimes. All of us at the end of the driveway. Shorts and smiles. Not a care in the world. I didn't know then how much would change. How quietly it would happen. How one day I would look back at that photograph and try to remember what easy felt like. In t...

"Something in me began again. And this time, I wasn't imagining it. I was living it." For years, she dreamed of a different life while lying on a basement floor. Someone kind. Someone steady. Someone she could trust. Someone who would love her children. She could see it. She could feel it. And then reality pulled her back- up the stairs, mask on, keep going. She had no idea that lif...

"You felt 30 years old when you were only 10. And I am so sorry." In this episode, a mother writes a letter to her children. To the ones who grew up inside something they didn't have words for, but felt in their bodies every single day. The hospital room where everything went quiet. The birthdays, the snickerdoodles, the car rides that felt safer than being home. The holidays that f...

"If it could happen to me, it can happen to anyone." - Dr. Christine Cocchiola In this episode, your host sits down with Dr. Christine Cocchiola, one of the most trusted voices in the field of coercive control, for a conversation about something so many survivors know deeply but struggle to explain. The words were never lost. They were taken. The house where the rules keep changing. The...

A message to the survivors who are still living inside abuse- You are not forgotten. This episode of Hang In There is dedicated to the survivors who are still living inside abuse. To those who cannot safely leave yet. To those who cannot speak yet. To those who are doing everything they can just to make it through another day. If you are listening quietly, please know this: you are not alone, and...

"From the outside, it can look like someone simply went to work. They showed up. They did their job. They made it through the day." In this episode, you are walked through one ordinary day as a trauma survivor, hour by hour, from the moment your eyes open at 5 am to the moment you pull into the driveway. The scanning before getting out of bed. The checking inside the car before getting i...

"I'm nearly 50 years old and only recently allowed to work on myself." This episode explores one of the most profound questions a survivor can ask: "Who am I now?" Not who I had to be. Not who I learned to become in order to survive. But who I actually am. It reflects on the person who existed before, carefree, fearless, fully alive, and traces how that person didn't...

"I'm so tired of him slipping into moments that should be mine." This episode explores what it can feel like when a buried memory surfaces without warning, pulling a survivor straight back into a moment the brain had hidden just to make functioning possible. It explores what freezing looks like in those moments. The urge to cross the room and comfort someone. The silence that follow...

"Are you listening?" This episode is different. It is not a story. It is not a clinical explanation. It is a direct appeal, spoken on behalf of survivors everywhere, to the judges, lawmakers, attorneys, and every person whose decisions determine the safety and futures of abuse survivors and their children. It explores the cost to survivors when the system doesn't listen. What PTSD a...

"I'm looking at pictures of you for the first time in years and my heart is racing. My chest is tight. I'm shaking. I've spent less than 10 seconds looking." This episode explores how a specific voice and a specific band became one of the most powerful PTSD triggers a survivor can carry, not because of who the artist is, but because of the environment their music once fill...

"Have you ever wished there were no holidays at all? No long weekends? No extra time at home? Because extra time at home means extra time with the person hurting you?" This episode explores the hidden reality of the holidays for abuse survivors, why domestic violence incidents rise by as much as 20% this time of year, why extra togetherness brings dread instead of joy, and why leaving du...

"You're never backsliding. You're always higher in elevation than when you started." In this episode, your host welcomes Tara Floersch, a licensed clinical social worker and trauma specialist at Conscious Healing Counseling in Minnesota, and the therapist who built a unique collaboration that brings therapy directly to the Alexandra House shelter. Tara breaks down the neuroscie...

"You do not know what loneliness is until you have encountered a narcissistic relationship in your life." This episode explores why narcissistic abuse is a universal problem that crosses every culture, country, and community, and why the patterns are always the same regardless of where you live. Shweta Nema, corporate professional, survivor of narcissistic abuse, author of Unmasking the...

"18 children were murdered in 20 months in one state. 15 of them were already in the system." This episode explores one of the most urgent and least understood realities facing abuse survivors: what happens when family court becomes another tool of control. Christine, owner and coach of Leto Advisors and Advocates, shares her journey navigating an international custody battle across two...

"I didn't even know I was in an abusive relationship until I found a shelter. Nobody was telling me. I couldn't explain it myself." This episode explores what domestic violence shelters actually do, and why emergency housing is a band-aid, not a cure. Jenny Green, Housing and Supportive Services Director of Alexandra House, walks through what transitional housing, case manageme...

He told her she would never leave that house unless it was in a pine box. In this episode, your host welcomes her very first guest- award-winning performer, comedian, singer, songwriter, and playwright Maryann Maisano. Known for turning life's heaviest truths into something relatable, honest, and even funny, Maryann brings both heart and humor to one of the podcast's most powerful conver...

"I have makeup on. I know what's coming." This episode opens with one of the most powerful moments in the podcast, putting on mascara as a quiet act of defiance, and the stare that followed. No words needed. No rule was ever spoken out loud. And yet the consequences were immediate. It explores exactly what coercive control is, the isolation, the monitoring, the micromanagement, the...

"I found myself parroting beliefs I didn't hold, just to stay safe enough to finish a phone call." This episode explores a question that abuse makes almost impossible to answer: What does it mean to be a woman? And what happens to a woman's identity when conditioning has been quietly shaping her thoughts, beliefs, and sense of self for years? It explores implicit memory, how th...

"I laid on the bathroom floor for over two hours. My cats found me first." This episode explores what PTSD can look like years after leaving an abusive relationship, the triggers that strike without warning, the panic attacks, and the guilt of watching trauma affect the healthy relationships that were supposed to feel safe. It breaks down what PTSD actually looks like in abuse survivors...

"I drove to the courthouse alone with 12 years of documentation hidden in diapers, camera cases, and folded inside clothes." This episode explores what it can take to finally file for an order of protection, the fear, the shame, the hope, and what can happen when the system fails to hold. It walks through the quiet acts of resistance that can keep survivors going, daily exercise, positiv...

"I would watch myself floating above, just detached from my body. I didn't know it had a name." This episode explores what dissociation actually feels like from the inside: the weightlessness, the numbness, the experience of watching your own life unfold from somewhere outside your body. It explains what dissociation is, why it happens, and why over 50% of women experiencing domesti...

"My children did not steal my time. They made my time priceless." This episode explores what it can feel like to grieve the years stolen by abuse, the endless days, the suffocating tension, the dreams that had to wait, and what it means to finally take that time back. It speaks directly to children of abuse, and to every parent who stayed to protect them, offering a release from the guil...