I sat down with Nick and Will from Recovery: Unfiltered to talk about a part of my story I don’t always lead with , my recovery.

We talked about what life looked like before alcohol, what happened while I was drinking, the things I used alcohol to survive, and what rebuilding looked like after I got sober. We touched on grief and losing Rylee, because those things are part of my story, but this conversation is really about the before, the during, and the after of addiction and recovery.

No polished version. No pretending I had it all figured out. Just the truth about how I got here.

Recovery: Unfiltered with Nick and Will is exactly what the name suggests , honest conversations about addiction, recovery, mental health, and what it actually takes to rebuild a life.

What happens after you survive something that was supposed to kill you?

In this episode of 13 Days of Silence: Living in the After, Teri Busse sits down with author, patient advocate, speaker, and septic shock survivor Christina A. Cole.

After a medical crisis led to sepsis and septic shock, Christina’s life changed dramatically. She survived cardiac arrest, multiple organ failure, months of hospitalization, numerous surgeries, amputations, and an exhausting road through rehabilitation and recovery.

But surviving the emergency was only the beginning.

Christina talks candidly about the part of survival people don’t always see: grief for the body and life you had before, medical trauma, disability, rehabilitation, motherhood, learning to navigate a complicated healthcare system, and rebuilding an identity after everything changes.

Her experience became the foundation for her memoir, Through the Ashes, a story of catastrophic illness, resilience, family, grief, healing, and finding purpose after survival.

This conversation goes beyond the medical crisis and into what comes afterward: recovery, advocacy, rebuilding, and learning how to live inside a life you never expected to have.

Connect with Christina A. Cole

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/christinacole-author
Instagram: @chris_ck17
Facebook: facebook.com/ChristinaAColeAuthor
Website: Christinaacole.com

13 Days of Silence: Living in the After explores what happens after the moment that divides your life into before and after — and how people learn to live inside everything that comes next.

In this episode of 13 Days of Silence: Living in the After, Teri Lyn sits down with Katrina Burns, Chair and Program Director of the Dear Casi Foundation, to talk about Casi Ann Pogue, the woman whose disappearance changed an entire family and ultimately became the catalyst for something much larger.

Casi has been missing since July 5, 2020. For the people who love her, living in the after has meant living without answers—continuing to search, advocate, hope, and somehow continue living while someone they love is still missing.

Katrina shares Casi's story, what it is like for a family to navigate the world of missing persons, and how that experience exposed enormous gaps in resources and support for families searching for someone they love.

Those gaps helped give rise to the Dear Casi Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to helping families of missing people with practical guidance, awareness campaigns, search resources, personalized webpages, fundraising support, community mobilization, and connections to organizations and technology that can assist in searches. Katrina now leads the foundation's family-support efforts and is often one of the first people families encounter when they don't know where to turn.

This conversation is about Casi, but it's also about ambiguous loss—what happens when there is no ending, no answer, and no clear path forward—and what can happen when one family's search becomes a mission to make sure other families don't have to navigate that uncertainty alone.

Connect with & support the Dear Casi Foundation

Dear Casi Foundation website
Email: team@dearcasi.org
Phone: 833-981-CASI (2274)
Katrina: katrina@dearcasi.org
Request help / Contact Dear Casi
Support the Dear Casi Foundation

13 Days of Silence: Living in the After
Hosted by Teri Lyn