The Teaching Journeys Podcast

Host Dave Roberts introduces the Teaching Journeys podcast and interviews grief coach Sylvia Wolfer, who works at the intersection of neuroscience, mindfulness, and movement, including Pilates. Wolfer shares a lifelong history of sudden losses—her father when she was seven, a younger brother at 17, an older brother in 2019, and later her mother—and describes carrying “unattended grief,” marked by...

Host Dave Roberts introduces Teaching Journeys and interviews Sarah Barnes-Humphrey, bestselling author, entrepreneur, and founder of the top 1% podcast Let’s Talk Supply Chain. Sarah discusses key obstacles that shaped her, including a 15-year struggle to diagnose lipedema and the loss of her dream when her family business closed 10 days before her 37th birthday, forcing her to rebuild through si...

Host Dave Roberts welcomes Mark Ruegg, a healing advocate and creator of the “Healing Recipe,” who shares his journey from a stage four pancreatic neuroendocrine carcinoma diagnosis (with metastasis to lymph nodes and liver and a prognosis of four to six months) to living with no evidence of disease. Influenced by the documentary “Heal” and Dr. Joe Dispenza’s “Blessings of the Energy Centers” medi...

Host Dave Roberts welcomes return guest Sheila B. Tillich, a recovery meta physician and spiritual practitioner, for an organic conversation focused on the Spring 2026 equinox and a shift from old “duality” programming and fear into unity, community, and co-creation. Tillich says current changes are prophesized and also tied to scientific and astrological factors such as Earth’s electromagnetic fi...

Host Dave Roberts welcomes Dr. Cornelia Kawann, an executive at the Swiss electricity regulator, founder of Energy on, and author of "Change Your Energy, Change Your Life," to discuss how her early fascination with electricity led to electrical engineering and later a shift from Newtonian science to personal energy work after illness and burnout in the male-dominated energy industry. Kawann explai...

Host Dave Roberts interviews Marilyn Raichle, author of “Don’t Walk Away: A Care Partner’s Journey,” who grew up in a family that viewed Alzheimer’s as worse than death and was taught to “walk away.” After earning an MPA from Harvard, she became caregiver for parents developing dementia, initially reluctant but later finding joy and meaning by focusing on her mother Jean’s enduring personhood and...

Host Dave Roberts interviews somatic performance coach April Wyett, founder of Living With Intention. April describes a traumatic car accident at age nine that led to parentification, hypervigilance, people-pleasing, and later relationship patterns, and explains how meditation, reiki, and biodynamic breathwork helped her recognize and release embodied trauma. She outlines biodynamic breathwork and...

Host Dave Roberts introduces the Teaching Journeys podcast and interviews rehabilitation consultant and author Val Walker about her book “Healing Through Wonder: How Awe Restores Us After Trauma and Loss.” Walker describes a lifelong sense of wonder and how neuroscience and positive psychology research validate awe as a healing, resilience-building trait. She outlines the Awe Experience Scale crit...

Host Dave Roberts introduces the Teaching Journeys podcast and interviews Becca Pearce, a former Maryland state exchange CEO appointed in 2011 to implement the Affordable Care Act. Becca describes building the agency from nothing, enrolling 300,000 previously uninsured people, then losing her job publicly after an IT system failure, which shattered her identity. Fourteen months later she learned s...

Host Dave Roberts interviews Steve Moore, an award-winning author and licensed clinical professional counselor with 25+ years of experience and 35 years of continuous sobriety. Moore shares his early life in a German orphanage, adoption, abandonment into foster care and a psychiatric hospital, and an abusive childhood followed by life with an alcoholic, PTSD-affected adoptive father. He describes...

Host Dave Roberts interviews Jeff Johnston, founder and CEO of Brighton, a mental wellness app combining health, wealth, and purpose with evidence-based AI support. Johnston recounts losing his 23-year-old son Seth to fentanyl poisoning on Oct. 4, 2016, and later his wife Prudence to alcoholism in 2021, describing ensuing alcoholism, grief, suicidal ideation, and a shift from status- and money-dri...

Host Dave Roberts interviews Cindy Barg, a motivational speaker, retreat leader, licensed psychotherapist, and author whose life was shaped by multiple losses. Cindy recounts a car crash at age 12 that killed her father, injured her family, and led to a near-death/shared-death experience in which she felt taken out of her body, encountered a loving “other side,” and was told to return. Years later...

Host Dave Roberts interviews Sydney Curtin—author, songwriter, entrepreneur, consultant, and nonprofit board member—about experiences shaping her life and work. Curtin describes childhood instability, her mother’s fatal addiction, being raised by a single father, and entering an abusive relationship at 20 that led to pregnancy. Facing custody fears, she chose an open infant adoption in 2019, namin...

Host Dave Roberts introduces the Teaching Journeys podcast and interviews retired nurse and grief advocate Linda Henderson, who describes how her 37-year nursing career and the deaths of her mother and 27-year-old pregnant daughter Andrea shaped her path. Andrea and a coworker were killed instantly in a crash caused by a transport truck driver texting, and Henderson recounts her early, debilitatin...

Host Dave Roberts welcomes Rania, host of The Healing Trained Podcast and founder of R2R Coaching, who supports women reclaiming power from toxic dynamics using talk therapy and energy modalities such as EFT and Reiki. They discuss how immigration, early curiosity about human behavior, and exposure to past-life concepts (including Brian Weiss’s work) shaped Rania’s path. Rania outlines signs of to...

Host Dave Roberts interviews Tina Amoroso, former employee of Real Options, a nonprofit supporting people facing unplanned pregnancies and reproductive loss. Tina recounts growing up in a strict Catholic Filipino household, becoming pregnant at 15, hiding it, facing bullying, and attempting to obtain an abortion but being turned away due to gestational age and medical complications. Sent to relati...

Host Dave Roberts introduces the Teaching Journeys podcast and interviews author, speaker, truth coach, and trauma-informed NLP solution-focused counselor Nattolie Chilton, a survivor of abuse, domestic violence, addiction, and deep trauma who describes a supernatural encounter with God that transformed her identity and helped lead to nearly 15 years of sobriety. Chilton shares how childhood negle...

Host Dave Roberts welcomes Janelle Miller Moravek, a nonprofit leader and mental health advocate who has served as executive director of Youth and Family Counseling (YFC) since 2009. Janelle describes coming from a culture that didn’t discuss feelings, recognizing her own anxiety later, and becoming committed to expanding access to care. She and Dave discuss barriers for emerging young adults incl...

Host Dave Roberts interviews TJ, executive program director of the Safer Schools Foundation, about a program that evolved from a self-spotting exercise platform originally built to train military and law enforcement under extreme duress. After seeing strong youth engagement, the team developed a seven-tier, 15-week school program combining 30 minutes of group exercise to counter isolation and obes...

Host Dave Roberts welcomes equine professional and coach Michelle Holling-Brooks to the Teaching Journeys podcast. Michelle describes a life-threatening illness at 13 (equine eastern encephalitis and viral spinal meningitis) that left her in a coma, then deaf, light-blind, partially paralyzed, and without memory or sense of self, leading to functional freeze and disconnection from family. She reco...

Host Dave Roberts welcomes USA Today bestselling author Cara Lockwood, who has written more than 35 books and whose romcom I Do, But I Don’t became a Lifetime movie starring Denise Richards. Lockwood discusses her 2023 breast cancer diagnosis, the shock of receiving the news by phone, and her treatment journey including a double mastectomy, chemotherapy, reconstruction, and remission in 2024. She...

Host Dave Roberts interviews Jim Boad on the Teaching Journeys podcast about starting, launching, and scaling sober living and group homes. Jim shares how growing up with alcoholic, drug-addicted parents shaped his passion, his Army service, 25 years in real estate investing, and his shift over the past four years to sober living homes and the past year to coaching others. He explains sober living...

Host Dave Roberts introduces the Teaching Journeys podcast and interviews Beth Lynch, a spiritual medium teacher, bestselling author, and founder of Inner Light Teachings, who has spent 30 years helping families heal grief and teaching heart-mind-body-spirit education. Lynch describes childhood sensitivity and the pivotal impact of her parents’ deaths, including hearing her mother’s reassuring voi...

In this episode of Teaching Journeys, host Dave Roberts speaks with author and journalist Ashley Jordan about her transformative journey through grief and self-discovery. The Story : Ashley lost her childhood sweetheart Daniel at age 13—literally on her 13th birthday. Growing up in the Midwest with a culture of "nice on the outside," she buried her grief for 24 years. At 37, while living what appe...

Host Dave Roberts welcomes Martha Glory Kartaoui—author, speaker, mentor, Let Glory Shine TV host, and trauma-informed event facilitator and coach—to The Teaching Journeys Podcast. Martha shares that she was born into a religious cult in Shawano, Wisconsin, experienced years of isolation from extended family, and endured physical, mental, sexual, emotional, and spiritual abuse. At 26, motivated by...