The Just A Mom Podcast

In this powerful and deeply honest conversation, Lisa Katona-Smith shares her journey as a mother navigating her son’s mental health challenges and substance use disorder. Through moments of fear, resilience, and hard-earned clarity, Lisa transformed her personal experience into a meaningful framework to support other families facing similar struggles—captured in her book, Parallel Recovery: A Gui...

In this powerful and deeply personal episode, Dr. Jenn Rapkin shares her remarkable journey living with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) while also parenting a child navigating the same condition. As a naturopathic physician specializing in mental health and mind-body medicine, Dr. Jenn brings both clinical expertise and lived experience to a conversation that is honest, hopeful, and incredibly...

This episode of the Just A Mom Podcast features Meri Viano, an adoptive mother and mental health advocate. Meri shares her journey of adopting a sibling set of boys and a girl with Down Syndrome, highlighting the challenges she faced in navigating the mental health system and the stigma surrounding mental illness. She discusses the importance of community support, advocacy for parents, and underst...

In this episode of the Just A Mom podcast, Dr. Karen Sheffield-Abdullah discusses the critical topic of postpartum depression and maternal mental health, as about one in seven women experiences postpartum depression. She explains the differences between postpartum depression and anxiety, the importance of prenatal screening, and the role of medication management during pregnancy. Dr. Karen emphasi...

In this powerful and deeply personal episode, Lisa Sabey and Alison Paine, two courageous mothers, share how they are using documentary filmmaking as a catalyst to revolutionize mental health education and care in the United States. What began as personal journeys navigating their own families’ mental health challenges has evolved into a mission to transform how mental health is understood, taught...

In this conversation, Marcia Earhart explores the intricate relationship between grief and joy, emphasizing how they coexist and how one can find solace in memories while living in the present. Marcia knows incredible grief herself as she has lost two sons. She shares her personal journey of incorporating the memories of her loved ones into her current life, highlighting the importance of emotiona...

On this episode of the Just a Mom podcast, Dr. Hector Rodriguez, an integrative psychiatrist, discusses the complexities of mental health, particularly in teens and young adults. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the brain's function through tools like SPECT scans ( https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diagnostics/spect-scan ) and the impact of societal changes, such as the pandemic,...

On this episode of The Just Mom Podcast, Ryan Bevins and JP Claxton dive into their organization called Fight Club ( https://fightclub-us.com/ ), a movement created to give teens—especially young men—a safe place to talk about what they’re really feeling. Fight Club was born from a simple but urgent realization: kids are struggling, and many don’t know how to talk about it. What started as a respo...

On this episode of the Just A Mom podcast, Jeanette Yoffe, a psychotherapist and advocate for children in foster care and adoption, shares her personal journey of spending six and a half years in foster care. Jeanette details the challenges she faced, including trauma, mental health struggles, and the impact of these experiences. She emphasizes the importance of understanding trauma, the healing p...

Dr. Michelle Sherman is a licensed psychologist with over 30 years of experience, providing individual and couples psychotherapy to adults in a VA medical center, urban primary care clinic, community clinic, inpatient psychiatric unit, and private practice. Additionally, she served as a Full Professor at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and the University of Minnesota Medical Scho...

In this episode of the Just a Mom podcast, licensed marriage and family therapist and mental health expert Kati Morton discusses the complexities of parenting in the digital age. We explore the impact of social media on both children and parents, the importance of community support, and strategies for fostering emotional regulation in kids. Kati emphasizes the need for open conversations about men...

Kicking off the spring season is an amazing conversation with Matteo Esposito, who very vulnerably shares his story of addiction, bipolar disorder, and loss. Matteo chronicles his journey as a high-level hockey player who played junior hockey post-high school and college hockey. Matteo shares his experience with mania, a serious health diagnosis, inpatient hospitalization, and ultimately inpatient...

The last episode of this season, and just in time for the holidays, is an episode just for all parents! Holly Swenson, author of Stop, Drop, Grow and Glow ( https://www.amazon.com/Stop-Drop-Grow-Glow-Connections/dp/1950476723 ), is on a mission to raise the bar for parents and infuse more joy, intention, balance, and wellness into parenting and beyond. She believes learning how to tend to you befo...

https://laurenhenrybrehm.com/ This is a fascinating episode about Lauren’s journey of researching her mother’s family and their mental illnesses through three generations.  Lauren has captured her research, as well as her own opinions and experiences growing up in a family with untreated mental illness, in a book entitled The French Court; Essays from One Family’s Legacy of Mental Illness ( https:...

Don’t miss this inspirational episode with Dr. E, a family practice physician with a specialty in pediatric anxiety and depression.  Dr. E has four children. Her second child, Sophie, has Selective Mutism, a mental health condition where a person can’t talk in certain situations because of fear and anxiety. Dr. E says she knew something was off when Sophie was about 3 1/2 years old.  Sophie was su...

This episode is difficult but a must-listen for everyone. Libby Davis says they were just living the “average” life in 2021 when they received the call that every parent fears. The local police called to tell Libby and her husband that their 16-year-old son, Cooper, was having a medical emergency. Libby chronicles the unimaginable pain of that day and how their son, Cooper, and his friends bought...

Don’t miss this important episode featuring Michael Mackniak, attorney and founder of Care Coalition ( https://carecoalition.org/ ). Mike shares his journey as an attorney with 30 years of experience, much of it in probate courts. Mike emphasizes how it was through this work that he saw so many people in need of help, particularly in the realm of families supporting a loved one with a mental illne...

*Trigger warning—this episode contains explicit talk about suicide and specific methodology Jason is an incredible dad who lost his 11-year-old son, Carson, to suicide in 2017. Jason shares openly and candidly about losing his son, and how his closest friends, or “bus family,” came in and helped Jason and his family navigate the days following Carson’s death. Shortly after Carson’s funeral, Jason...

Jacqueline ( https://jacquelinejanssen.com/ ) has turned all she has learned about mental illness from her son’s mental health journey into incredible advocacy. Her latest book, Every Homeless Person Has a Mother , chronicles Jacqueline’s experience as a parent of an adult child with schizoaffective disorder. Jacqueline’s son’s battle with mental illness started when he was 19 years old. Jacquelin...

In this honest and vulnerable conversation, Adriane shares her extremely difficult journey as a wife who lost her husband to suicide in her late 20s. Adriane talks about her son, Braden, who was only 7 when his dad died by suicide. She also discusses how Braden struggled tremendously with his own suicidal ideation and how he lost his best friend to suicide at the age of 16.  Adriane laments the di...

TRIGGER WARNING—this episode contains explicit talk about suicide and methodology This episode is the continuation and conclusion of my conversation with Joanne. Joanne discusses the myriad of therapies and therapeutic modalities she has incorporated into her own healing work. She talks about her work on her master’s degree in counseling ( https://www.agoodlifeworks.com/ ). Joanne emphasizes how i...

TRIGGER WARNING— this episode contains explicit talk about suicide and methodology. Listen as Joanne shares her heart-wrenching story of losing her oldest son, Jacob, to suicide in September 2022.  Joanne shares that Jacob was a happy, easy child, and that she started noticing changes in his junior year in high school during Covid. Jacob stopped playing baseball, which he had always loved, and bec...

Dr. Curt Thompson ( https://curtthompsonmd.com/ ) is a widely known expert in interpersonal neurobiology, and I could not be more excited for you to hear this episode. Dr. Thompson’s genuine love and care for people shines brightly in this conversation where he highlights his unique insights about how the brain affects and processes relationships. Dr. Thompson focuses on what we all as humans want...