Law and Porter

Courtney was four and a half when she was removed from a house with no running water and a roof open to the rain. What was supposed to be rescue became years of abuse in a placement that should never have passed an inspection — and every time she tried to tell, she was punished for it.   This is the story of what she did next. Now sixteen, Courtney is interning in courtrooms, running a mentorship...

Ashlie spent years as a trauma therapist before she became a foster parent — and she will tell you clearly that knowing the clinical language for something is not the same as living inside it. This conversation covers a lot of ground: the sibling group she and her husband took in days after being licensed, the daughter whose reactive attachment disorder meant cycling between calling Ashlie mommy a...

Haylie walked into a family law office at seventeen, a self-described divorce court ordered and mentally disordered child of the system she would spend the next few years watching up close. Now twenty, she sits down with her boss — a family law attorney — to look back at what it actually felt like to be a kid shuttled between households, living out of a duffel bag, bounced around like a pinball be...

Jenny didn't set out to become someone who testifies before legislators or writes articles that strangers message her about at midnight. She set out to survive.   Her story begins with a childhood defined by a cousin's long illness and a quiet sense of not fitting the mold — too physical, too emotional, too outside the lines of what a Southern girl was supposed to be. It moves through a high schoo...

Ashlea was adopted at birth into a loving family — and spent the next two decades not processing a single emotion about it. In this episode, she opens up about what happened when she finally did: the counselor who called her Pollyanna, the rock bottom in her late twenties, and the treatment center where she learned that nearly half the room was adopted. We talk about disenfranchised grief — the gr...

What does it look like when someone loses themselves completely — and then finds their way back? In this inaugural episode of Law & Porter, Elizabeth Porter sits down with her friend Lizz, whose life story is as raw and honest as it gets. Ten years ago, Elizabeth nearly ended up with Liz's baby — a mix-up that launched a decade-long friendship. Today, Liz sits across from her as a sober, thriving,...

What happens when life hands you a diagnosis that rewrites everything you thought you knew about strength, identity, and survival? In this episode of Law and Porter , host Elizabeth Porter sits down with Amber — a wife, mother, and teacher who has faced triple negative breast cancer not once, not twice, but three times, including a Stage IV diagnosis. Over nine years, Amber has navigated four roun...

What does resilience actually look like — not the Instagram version, but the real, unglamorous, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other kind? In this deeply personal episode, host Elizabeth Porter turns the mic on her mother, Mary Porter: a woman with a history in television, a lifetime of quiet wisdom, and a story that most people could never imagine navigating with such grace. Mary was 39 years old with...

What does it look like to deconstruct the life you built — and decide what to carry forward? In this debut episode of Law and Porter , host Elizabeth Porter turns the tables and becomes the guest, interviewed by her mother, former television personality Mary Porter. Together, they trace Elizabeth's journey from a childhood marked by the sudden loss of her father — an attorney killed in a plane cra...