This Is Healing

What does it actually mean to keep your heart open after the worst thing? Not as a platitude. As a survival strategy. This episode goes there. I just got back from a writer's retreat in the mountains of Colorado. I went to write. I came back with something I didn't expect — a realization I could no longer avoid. This episode covers what I learned about grief, wavelengths, the nervous system, why y...

I finally felt something good again—and then it hit me. In this episode, I talk about the emotional backlash that follows moments of feeling alive, how my relationships are changing, and what Patrick’s birthday actually felt like. This is an honest look at grief, the body, and continuing to live after everything changes.

How do you cope with a timeline you want no part of? It's the question everyone asks and nobody answers with any honesty. In this episode of This Is Healing, I go deep into what grief actually is — not a problem to be solved, not a stage to move through, but an ocean you learn to live beside. I talk about the difference between coping and building capacity, why the five stages of grief fail the mo...

I went to turn on music before hitting record and it logged into Patrick's account. Not mine. His. And I just sat there — because that is exactly how grief works. Not in the dramatic moments. In the quiet ones that slip in without warning and take everything for a second. This episode is called Liminal Timeline because that is where I am. The in-between. Not who I was and not yet whoever comes nex...

What grief does to the body and how we build the capacity to stay alive inside a life we never chose. Have you ever wondered what grief actually does to the body? Nine months ago my husband was murdered in our home. This morning I finished the CrossFit Open ranked in the top ninety four percent in the world. Which raises a strange question. How do you keep living after everything changes? In this...

Most of our culture talks about grief as if it lives on a calendar. People say things like “it’s been a year” or “time heals.” But when I heard a line in the film Hamnet, something in me recognized a deeper truth. Grief does not live in years. It lives in seconds. It lives in minutes. It lives in heartbeats. In this episode I talk about what it means to survive grief, and why surviving can sometim...

This episode might sound like it’s about sex, drugs, and rock and roll. In some ways, it is. But not in the way people expect. This is a ten-day window into what grief actually looks like inside a body. The watching. The wanting. The ego. The collapse. The seventy dollars of DoorDash. The prison sentence feeling. The nervous system spiral. The choice to interrupt it. I talk about being watched by...

It’s been eight months since my husband, Patrick, died. In this episode, I talk about what grief actually asks of me. Not emotionally. Socially. Physically. Relationally. Grief doesn’t just live in my heart. It lives in my body. It lives in my relationships. And it lives in how I move through the world with other people. I share what has helped, what hasn’t, how masking my grief shows up in my ner...

I’m back for the first time since January 9th. This episode comes from my new home in Colorado and tells the full story of what these past weeks have actually been like. I talk about settling into a new house, building safety, finding unexpected joy, and what grief looks like when it no longer consumes every second but never fully leaves. I share what it was like to be pulled back into early grief...

This episode was recorded from my new family room in Colorado, sitting in front of an enormous stone fireplace, looking out at snow I can’t even quantify. Eight inches. Ten. Maybe three feet. Who’s to say. What matters is that it’s here. And that I am here. This is a fireside reflection on why I left Cincinnati when I did, and why it was never just about the cold. It was the gray. Grief already co...

This episode was recorded on New Year’s Eve. Not as a celebration. Not as a resolution. Just a pause. I recorded this at seven o’clock, sitting among half-packed boxes, the year ending without ceremony. A threshold moment. Quiet. Undecorated. Honest. This episode is a fireside reflection on presence, grief, and identity. On what it means to live after an ending that doesn’t resolve. On the loss of...

This episode was recorded on a Friday afternoon when the wind cancelled my walk. A small disruption that opened a much larger conversation. About capacity. About loss. About what happens when the version of you who could always muscle through no longer exists. I talk about the kind of grief that takes more than a person. The grief that dismantles identity. The loss of high functioning. The loss of...

This episode was recorded after lunch with Jessica, another widow living inside the same weather. We talk about something grief teaches you fast: insight is not what settles it. Connection is. From there, the conversation widens into two things that quietly determine how grief shapes a person over time: your worldview and your capacity. If you believe this world is all there is, grief can become e...

This episode is not a lesson from the other side of grief. It’s a transmission from inside the season of it — winter, holidays, six months since Patrick’s murder, and the disorientation of living in a world that refuses to pause even when your life has split in two. I talk about the physical reality of grief, the shock of naming what happened, the first winter without him, and the moment I woke up...

This episode is not a lesson from the other side of healing. It’s a transmission from the middle of it. I talk about losing Patrick, the physical reality of grief, the instinct to escape, and the question that sits beneath every decision I make now: is this presence or is this running? I talk about the desert, the condo I almost bought, Phoenix, survival, spirit visitations, and what it means to c...

Five months in. I check in from the middle of it—no polish, no silver linings. This episode is a real-time download on grief, the pressure to “settle,” why healing isn’t a before/after story, and how I’m learning to trust myself in the dark. I talk about community, seasonal shifts, vision boards as an action practice, and the question that keeps circling: What is good? I close with a spoken piece...

I open This Is Healing on a trial-update day with that wired, manic energy grief can carry. I share why I skipped the last two hearings (on my therapist’s advice), where the criminal case actually is (still pre-trial), and why systems like healthcare, the justice machine, and corporate capitalism feel like constructs that don’t hold a soul like mine. I name what happened the night Patrick died, th...

There’s a point after someone dies when the mind begins to adapt but the body refuses. It keeps reaching for what it knew—his weight, his breath, the pattern of safety that lived in his skin. It’s not metaphor. It’s biology. The absence has chemistry. Since Patrick was killed, my nervous system has been running old code: the body hunting for touch, for regulation, for proof of existence. I wake up...

One time at shaman camp, my teacher made it very clear: I am not a shaman. And I’m not supposed to do shaman things to other people. Everything I learned was for me—to practice, to embody, to remember how to heal myself first. This episode is a ritual. We start with a prayer—an invitation, not a command—then get honest about what shamanic work actually is: humility, reciprocity, perception. I’ll t...

There’s a shamanic belief I hold close: when someone dies, their wisdom returns to the mountains. Bone becomes stone, blood becomes river, breath becomes wind. The body goes back to the land, but the deep knowing — the essence of who they were — waits there, woven into the ridgelines. That’s where I feel Patrick most. In this episode, I talk about taking his ashes back to Colorado, the place where...

There’s a moment between exhaustion and clarity when you realize the self you’ve been living inside doesn’t fit anymore. In this episode, I talk about leaving Cincinnati, what my nervous system taught me about safety, the difference between returning and coming home, and why I’m rebuilding as an act of devotion—not performance. Colorado gives me space to soften, grieve, and remember who I was befo...

October 1, 2025—my ninth wedding anniversary, and the first without Patrick in the room. I recorded this from Colorado Springs, in the house my friends bought so Patrick and I could live with them. I read a short story I published today and let you into the ritual I made for this morning: two cups of coffee, a Folgers can on the table, and the vow to keep my heart open. This episode isn’t about ne...

I open with a meditation on grief as a remapping of the inner landscape—how it splits life into before/after and becomes a strange, faithful teacher. I share why I took last week off (rage, exhaustion, honesty over performance), what I’m learning about ritual vs. routine, and why “living in the questions” is my work right now. I talk about EMDR in plain language, how sound became a trigger, and wh...

This is not a self-help podcast. It is a documentary of grief — field notes from inside the aftermath. Ninety-nine days after my husband Patrick was murdered in our home, and nearly two weeks after a psilocybin journey, I speak about what it feels like to survive and still try to make language for it. I talk about sleep returning for the first time in ninety-nine nights, and why grief hijacks rest...

For those of you new here, this is my story. Since June 4th, when my husband Patrick was murdered, everything I say carries that date inside of it. This podcast is about grief — not as an idea, but as a body-experience, a descent, a work. In this episode, I take you inside a psilocybin journey at the three-month mark of loss. What unfolded wasn’t abstract “tripping.” It was a ritual. A witnessing....