The Hall Closet Podcast

In This Episode: what happens when two people from different walks of life realize they’ve been carrying many of the same invisible wounds? In Part 1 of my conversation with Righteous, we explore the lasting ripple effects of childhood trauma, the masks we wear to survive, and the ways our past quietly shapes our relationships, identity, and sense of self. Through honest conversation and shared re...

S3E6 The Power Of Connection with Danielle Brody, Part 2 Some conversations have a way of taking on a life of their own... and this is one of them. In Part 2 of my conversation with Danielle Brody, we continue exploring what it means to take ownership of our health, our healing and the stories we tell ourselves about what’s possible. We dive deeper into the role of mindset, community, stress manag...

S3E5 The Power Of Connection with Danielle Brody, Part 1 What if some of the biggest changes in our lives begin with the smallest ones? In Part 1 of my conversation with Danielle Brody, we explore the powerful connection between mind, body, and healing. Danielle shares her journey of living with lupus, the lifestyle changes that helped transform her health, and the lessons she learned about stress...

S3E4 Sisters, Part 4 My donor sibling Amy was the the first donor sibling I ever connected with after I got my DNA results back and suddenly this entire hidden world cracked open. Amy and I share a lot of the same emotional wiring, the same sensitivities. But we’re also wildly different. But what means the most to me isn’t just the DNA connection, it’s the relationship we built afterward. Amy...

S3E3 No More Late Night Calls My friend Joe Devlin is a super talented country music artist with a family. But alcohol threatened everything. Including his future. When Joe made the decision to change his life, his life changed. These days, he's present and sober; he's a partner, a father and an artist with a clarity of vision he didn't have before. In this episode, Joe will tell the story of his...

S3E2 Conversations Have A Mind Of Their Own Podcaster Christopher Scott was one of my very first interviews back when I was still finding my voice. Over time, he became some I trusted behind the scenes. In this conversation, we talk about the podcast industry and what being in it does to you. How it changes you and pushes you. And, no matter how much you plan, conversations just seem to go where t...

S3E1 Long After The Headlines In season 3, Donna will revisit her past from the perspective of the various ripple effects her past had on her present and future. Hard as it was growing up in a lower tier crime family, that was almost nothing compared to the challenges Donna has faced from the emotional and psychological ripple efects of growing up a Hall. Donna and podcast producer Alan Katz trace...

THE BLURB: In the final episode of Season Two, Donna reflects on the conversations, guests, and stories that shaped this chapter of The Hall Closet. From wrongful convictions and addiction to trauma, resilience, and survival, this season became less about headlines and more about the people living in the aftermath of them. But somewhere in the middle of holding space for everyone else’s stories, D...

THE BLURB: If it always seems like my friend Dana always has it together, that's because she absolutely does. The owner of a successful hair salon, Dana is genuine, strong and beautiful. What makes that truly remarkable is that she became all those things in spite of living through a profound trauma. As Dana learned the hard way, Loving an addict isn't just one story. It's a thousand quiet moments...

THE BLURB: This is a very personal episoide. My friend Johnna is a school psychologist - an excellent one. She's the kind of person who shows up in moments most people don't know how to handle and helps them navigate it. She helped pull me through a domestic violence related emotional hole simply by being there and listening without passing judgment. This conversation might just articulate things...

THE BLURB: The traumas that shape our psyches can suddenly impose themselves on our lives at the worst possible times. In 2003, after Jayson Blair became a journalist at the New York Times, a dream job, his mental health collapsed. Desperate to keep his struggles a secret, Jayson ended up committing serial plagiarism that rocked the Times and the entire world of journalism. Bi-polarity threat...

THE BLURB: For Donna, growing up in a True Crime Family created a host of ripple effects including deep psychic and psychological wounds that have profoundly impacted her mental health. Tony Ortiz has been dealing with and combatting the ripple effects of mental health issues since his childhood, too. Mental health issues regularly pit people against the criminal justice system - which doesn't hel...

THE BLURB: Growing up the way I did in a lower tier crime family, it made maintaining long term healthy relationships challenging. Not only am I drawn to men who can't be there for me emotionally, but I developed various attachment issues to boot. Sometimes this ripple effect can feel like a tsunami as it washes over my life. In this episode, I sit down with my producer, Alan Katz, to talk about r...

THE BLURB: Please enjoy (if you haven't already) this unintentional drop of S2E19 where I celebrated hitting 50! No one ever said learning curves were easy. That goes for life and for podcasting. SHOW NOTES The Hall Closet is written by Donna Hall. Costard & Touchstone Productions produced it. Donna Hall and A L Katz are the executive producers. CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS: The Hall Closet is&nbs...

THE BLURB: As someone who's lived a pretty wild life, I appreciate the wild life Nick Mechanic has lived. As a high powered Hollywood talent agent, he made huge movie deals. But, Nick also made huge drug deals, too. Those were the ones that caught up with him, destroying his Hollywood career. Though Nick landed hard and nearly succumbed to his addictions, he overcame them. Sober now for four years...

THE BLURB: While Donna has told the story of learning - at age 40 - that she was donor conceived and had a whole family of donor conceived siblings - before, and while her half sister Heather has visited before - never has Donna gone into so much detail about the experience of 1) learning that she was donor conceived, 2) meeting some of her donor conceived siblings, and 3) describing the remarkabl...

THE BLURB: Part of the problem of growing up in strange, hostile or abusive environments is that they imprint upon you in a variety of ways that ripple throughout your life. One of the ripples causes you to seek out the abusive environment. In this episode, my friend Carly and I discuss how to avoid those ripples - or swim away from them. SHOW NOTES To reach Carly - The Hall Closet is written by D...

The Blurb: In this episode, meet Kara Rubinstein-Deyerin founder of Right To Know, an organization dedicated to helping people who, like her, encounter a life-altering encounter with the Truth about who they are - versus who they thought they were. Kara grew up believing she was half white, half Black. A DNA test - taken to investigate her African roots - informed her she wasn't half Black, she wa...

THE BLURB: In a few days, as of this writing, I, Donna, will turn 50 - halfway to 100. In this episode, my producer Alan sits in and we talk about how we got here - how our paths crossed and resulted in this podcast. We'll also talk about how doing this podcast has changed both our lives - entirely for the better - and what to expect from this podcast going forward. It's a heartfelt look in the ba...

THE BLURB: On this podcast, we adore people who care deeply about other people. That's the kind of person Morris Derry is. While a convict in 1996, Morris had an epiphany about himself and the inmates around him. That led to Morris creating No More Pain, an organization that mentors individuals who suffer from substance abuse, domestic violence, homelessness, cancer, ex-cons and youth development....

THE BLURB: My friend Victoria - Tori - survived a childhood as harrowing in its way as mine was in mine. Lots of our mutual friends compare Tori's childhood to the TV show "Shameless". It was that kind of family. Tori's mom was a caregiver on the one hand (a nurse) but an addict on the other. The addict always won. But Tori's story is oe of survival, complexity and the long but necessary road to u...

THE BLURB: Though Donna has known her friend Katie O'Donnell for twenty years, it wasn't until Katie sat for this conversation that Donna learned the whole truth about Katie's childhood. Katie's independent spirit clashed with her parents' more middle class values. She was a runaway from 14, doing what she had to to survive on the streets. Plenty of drugs and bad men. Then her parents committed Ka...

THE BLURB: As Donna herself admits, when it comes to terrible, challeging childhoods, hers can't hold a candle to episode guest Eric Ruth's childhood. Eric, as you'll hear, grew up with a mother who couldn't overcome her own addictions and circumstances. Despite that, Eric found his way out of that cycle and into law school where he truly excelled. Eric believes down to his mitochondria that good...

THE BLURB: Sit in on a sisterly conversation between Donna and her half-sister Beth. Beth is one of Donna’s other donor-conceived siblings. Like Donna, Beth is a massage therapist and bartender. That's where the similarities justbegin. Theirs is an unusual – and unusually deep relationship and, in this episode, you’ll get to eavesdrop on a truly heartfelt family chat. Only true sisters can talk to...

THE BLURB: A big part of Donna's story was her discovery - at age 40 - that she was donor conceived. As unsettling a revelation as that was, it explained a lot. Like why she always felt "other than" or "different from" the siblings and family in which she grew up. In this episode, you'll meet Donna's half sister Diana - and hear the story of how learning this secret about her opened an amazing doo...