Do you find yourself stressed and anxious when it comes to giving holiday gifts? Have you lost the joy of the experience?

We sit down with financial wellness expert Crystal Flores to learn ways to stop the anxiety and disconnection of gift giving. Cyrstal explains how she gives gifts based on her values: thrift, creativity, connection, and environmental stewardship. When your values lead, the pressure fades and gifts start to feel like gestures of care rather than tests you can fail.
We start where stress often spikes: the workplace. Crystal shares how leaders can normalize no-gift policies. Crystal also offers a clear script for holiday bonuses or tips when money is tight, separating appreciation from price and protecting your financial health with honest, kind language. When giving obligatory hostess gifts, she offers respectful, low-friction choices like homemade granola and ethical treats, including fair-labor chocolate that tastes amazing (Tony's Chocolonely).
Crystal gets specific and suggests that for single parents and families, acts of service beat stuff: car detailing swaps, dinner drop-offs, laundry runs, and babysitting hours. For kids and tweens, she emphasizes how kids love volume when it comes to gifts.We also tackle the emotional side—anxiety, perfectionism, and rejection-sensitive dysphoria. If someone expects expensive items, Crystal shows you how to set boundaries early with a loving family note.
Leave the pressure, keep the joy, and make gift giving personal again. Discover your own core values and keep this process fun!

Gift of Granola

The original recipe came from Mark Bittman's cookbook "How to Cook Everything," but I've been making this for so long I've made it my own, and I don't remember his original instructions.

You'll need 2 big baking dishes. I use a Pyrex glass baking dishes. If you want to do one smaller batch, then halve everything.

Fill the dishes with:

4 cups rolled oats (not instant...too small)

2 handfuls shredded coconut (optional, but we love it)

2 handfuls of 3 kinds of chopped nuts (whatever you have on hand..so 6 handfuls total)

lots of cinnamon

a little salt

drizzle the whole thing lightly with honey or agave syrup (optional)

Stir everything together

Preheat oven to 350

Bake for 17 minutes (you could 15 or 20...whatever works for your particular oven...17 works just right in mine with two baking trays of this stuff), pull it out, stir it around, and put it back for another 17 minutes. You just want to get everything toasted to get a crunchy texture.

Pull it out, let it cool. Add raisins or other dried fruit if you want.

Works well by itself, as a homemade cereal with milk, as a topping for yogurt or ice cream... whatever

Homemade Dog Cookies (20 minutes)

1 15oz can pumpkin puree not pumpkin pie filling

2 eggs

3 tablespoons (or more, if you like) natural peanut butter, make sure peanuts and salt are only ingredients

1 cup whole wheat flour (you could use regular flour). I just only have whole wheat in my pantry, so that's what I used.

Preheat oven to 350

Mix ingredients. It should have the consistency of cupcake icing. If it needs to be thicker, add more flour. If you need to thin it, add some water.

Form 1-inch rounds on parchment paper and put them into preheated oven for 12-15 minutes.

Allow to cool thoroughly before giving these.

Finished cookie rounds should have the consistency of a thick cake.

Music composed and performed by guitarist, JD Cullum

Edited by Brandon Moran

Sponsored by Soar With Tapping

Join me for a behind the scenes look at my private bedtime medication routine, in which I fight through intrusive thoughts and fears before falling asleep. For me it's a battle with Seroquel and the strange paradox where it stirs up my mind before putting me to sleep.

I talk through what insomnia means for mania risk, why psychosis feels closer in the dark, and how intrusive, even spiritual, panic can crash in before sedation takes hold. We get practical about my 9:15 wind-down, how to read early signs that a backup will be needed, and what the morning after costs in focus, mood, and energy. You’ll hear the honest math of “best available” choices: antihistamines that fog the next day, benzodiazepines that demand caution, and Seroquel, an antipsychotic that delivers sleep but can open the door to racing, violent thoughts on the way there.

If you’ve ever faced the 3 AM question of how long you can keep doing this, you’ll find language and tools for that hour, and a reminder that morning usually brings a different view.

If this resonates, share the episode with someone who needs it, subscribe for more real talk on living with bipolar disorder, and leave a review with your own sleep strategies so others can learn from you.

Music composed and performed by guitarist, JD Cullum

Edited by Brandon Moran

Sponsored by Soar With Tapping

What if you stopped measuring your worth by output and started honoring your reality? Today I sit down with Dr. Portia Preston, public health scholar and professor on the front lines of inclusive wellness, and the author of Hustle, Flow, or Let It Go—to explore a humane, shame-free approach to mental health and daily life. After a sudden kidney disease diagnosis and late ADHD/autism diagnoses, Portia rebuilt her framework for thriving. She learned to look at her energy as fluctuating capacity, centering a simple truth: you are worthy because you exist.

What are the costs of tying identity to productivity, especially for those navigating invisible illness and disability? How does race and gender shape mental health experiences for Black women? From masking and misread depression to stigma that delays diagnosis.

Portia breaks down her three-part model: Hustle when survival or your season demands it, Flow to restore joy and resilience, and Let It Go to revise plans, change environments, or release expectations that no longer serve--all why confronting shame.

Portia shares practical tools: five to ten-minute mini-retreats that fit real schedules, and a weekly blueprint that checks in on mind, body, and spirit while setting clear yes's and protective no's. If wellness has felt like another chore, this conversation offers a gentler way to build support, create margins, and live with intention.

If this resonates, share the episode, subscribe for more, and leave a review to help others find the show. Tell us: which lever do you need today—Hustle, Flow, or Let It Go?

How to reach Dr. Portia Jackson Preston: portiapreston.com @drportiapreston
Empowered to Exhale: www.empoweredtoexhale.com portia@empoweredtoexhale.com

Purchase Hustle, Flow, or Let it Go : A Guide to Shame-Free Wellness That Honors Your Reality and Gives You Life

Music composed and performed by guitarist, JD Cullum

Edited by Brandon Moran

Sponsored by Soar With Tapping

Music composed and performed by guitarist, JD Cullum

Edited by Brandon Moran

Sponsored by Soar With Tapping

Today I sit down with Crystal Flores to trace the line from her father's suicide to her early marriage that led to depression and codependency. Crystal broke free from her picture-perfect, yet miserable marriage, to carve out a new life built on values, clarity, and fiercely practical money care. The reset wasn’t flashy. She moved to a quaint country home, complete with a flock of chickens, and chased non-negotiables like connection, thrift, resourcefulness, creativity, and environmental stewardship,

Crystal defines wealth as more than dollars—emotional, physical, and financial systems working together so you can live your best life. She shares why “enough” must be personal before culture sells you “more,” and how a simple three-wheel model—earn, spend, save—reveals where your ride is wobbling. We keep it tangible: tracking spending as an act of self-compassion, quarterly balance sheets to reduce fear, and friction tactics for impulse buying--particularly important for the bipolar brain.

You’ll walk away from this episode with tools that put money back in its place: a resource that serves your life. Subscribe for more real, raw mental health conversations, share this episode with someone who needs it, and leave a review to help others find these stories and skills.

Music composed and performed by guitarist, JD Cullum

Edited by Brandon Moran

Sponsored by Soar With Tapping

For Bianca, the catalyst of her Borderline Personality Disorder was the cultural pressure of living in a Middle Eastern family that provided the basics in life, but no emotional connection or support. With eldest-daughter expectations, and the heavy silence that comes when a family outsources its pain to one child, Bianca became the out-of-control truth bearer in her family system.
After her tumultuous upbringing that included self-harm, suicidal thinking, and an abusive relationship, Bianca finally found mentors in her life that taught her how to break free from her trauma through intensive therapy. As a therapist, Bianca now brings practitioner-level clarity to the therapies that helped her, including dialectical behavior therapy and a move towards dignity, respect, and choice.
Is BPD destiny or environment? How do cultural narratives around “keeping up appearances” entrench shame? Why do personality disorders draw harsher judgment than mood disorders, and what happens when we reframe symptoms as human experiences with the dial turned up? For Bianca, identity instability isn’t a life sentence; it’s a signal that can be understood, soothed, and redesigned.
If this conversation helps you rethink stigma, see yourself with more softness, or pick up one new skill to use when the storm hits, pass it on. Subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with someone who needs proof that intensity can become intention. Your story might be the mirror someone else is missing.

Music composed and performed by guitarist, JD Cullum

Edited by Brandon Moran

Sponsored by Soar With Tapping

Picking up from Part 1, Gregg is now stuck in what he calls “two years of bipolar hell.” But when he is finally prescribed lithium, within a week his depression lifts. Coming out of depression, he still had work to do—repairing familial and professional relationships.

Greg had also been angry with God for abandoning him and forcing him to live in misery. Lithium not only put Gregg’s depression at bay, but it also allowed him to repair his relationship with God. As treatment begins working, his faith gradually returned, becoming instrumental to his recovery strategy.

Most inspiring is how Gregg transformed his diagnosis into purpose. After losing his military identity, he discovered a new mission in mental health advocacy – work he now considers more important than his distinguished military career. His recovery philosophy centers on medication management, therapy, healthy lifestyle choices, and maintaining an "attitude of gratitude" even during difficult periods. And Gregg makes a stunning admission: if given the choice between never having bipolar disorder or his current life as an advocate, he would choose the latter.

Share an episode of Bipolar She during Suicide Prevention Month to help normalize these crucial conversations about mental health. Together, we can reduce stigma and potentially save lives.

Music composed and performed by guitarist, JD Cullum

Edited by Brandon Moran

Sponsored by Soar With Tapping

Major General Gregg F. Martin had, for the most part of his life, lived with hyperthymia, a continuous low-level mania that ultimately helped his military performance because he was energetic, creative, and driven. But after commanding a 10,000-soldier combat brigade in Iraq, Gregg’s descent into mania and depression would span a decade.

With a late diagnosis at age 58, Gregg challenges our understanding of bipolar disorder, revealing his belief that mental illness can progress along a spectrum rather than appearing suddenly. For Gregg, the Iraq War became the tipping point, transforming his beneficial hyperthymic traits into dangerous mania, and ultimately life-threatening depression. As his condition worsened, colleagues reported his erratic behavior, leading to forced retirement and removal as president of the National Defense University.

The most haunting aspects of Gregg's story involve his descent into psychosis and passive suicidal ideation – such as experiencing fear from an "invisible force" that could take hold of him and thrust him into oncoming traffic. His journey from battlefield commander to psychiatric patient illuminates the complex relationship between trauma, high-stress environments, and mental health. Now an author and advocate, Gregg's experiences offer profound insights for anyone struggling with mental illness or supporting someone who is.

This episode contains detailed discussions of suicide and suicidal ideation.

Gregg's book:

Music composed and performed by guitarist, JD Cullum

Edited by Brandon Moran

Sponsored by Soar With Tapping

The first time I lost my mind was at Dartmouth College. By my junior year I was walking through campus with psychosis. A movie camera followed me wherever I went. I imagined myself dying in beautiful and surreal ways. And ultimately I wanted my life to end.

In this episode with fellow writer, JD, I share my first experiences with bipolar disorder. When I welcome guests on the show, I want them to know I've had hard times as well.

Memory is imperfect. Old delusions and imagination swirl together. You may notice a swift change in seasons, when my memory of a summer hospitalization is told as if it were a freezing winter day. Because that’s what memory can do...combine feelings and images in a way that captures an experience, even if imprecise.

Join me and write your difficult memories down. Let stories emerge. Contact me to tell your stories. We need fearless voices to fight stigma and shame. Is it too much to demand new treatments and cures? Let's get there one story at a time.

Music composed and performed by guitarist, JD Cullum

Edited by Brandon Moran

Sponsored by Soar With Tapping