Payton was twenty years old, a college student in Hattiesburg, when a relationship that started casually turned dangerous. He was charismatic and magnetic, the center of every room, and slowly, systematically, he isolated her from her friends and family and convinced her she was nothing without him, long before he ever raised a hand. In this episode, Payton tells the full story: the red flags she talked herself out of seeing, the night the abuse turned physical, the split-second decision that got her to a hospital, and the prosecution that followed. She's candid about going back more than once, about the friends who finally pulled her out for good, and about what it took to rebuild trust in herself and in love. Today Payton is a chiropractor, a wife, and a mother, and she's sharing her story so someone else might recognize the pattern sooner than she did.

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence: National Domestic Violence Hotline, 1-800-799-7233, text START to 88788, thehotline.org. Mississippi Coalition Against Domestic Violence statewide hotline, 1-800-898-3234, mcadv.org. Domestic Abuse Family Shelter, serving the Pine Belt and Hattiesburg area, 24-hour crisis line, 1-800-649-1092, dafs.ms.

What's actually inside your kid's phone, and why the old 'stranger danger' warnings don't cover it anymore.

Lauren Street works in child advocacy, and for the past year she's led the tech safety program at Kids Hub Child Advocacy Center in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. In this conversation, she breaks down what's changed: the danger isn't outside anymore, it's inside the device already in your child's pocket.

We talk through Discord and why it worries her, the 11-to-13 age window she recommends for a first smartphone, the 20-20-20 rule for balancing screen time, and the warning signs — sleep disruption, secrecy, sudden emotional shutdowns — that something online may have crossed a line. Lauren also gets specific about how early kids are encountering pornography now, and why she believes this is as much a parenting crisis as a tech one.

She leaves parents with one real action step: have the conversation tonight, in the car if it's easier, and build a family tech agreement everyone actually helped write.

If you're raising a kid with a phone, a tablet, or a gaming console, or you will be soon, this episode is required listening.

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To find the resources mentioned in this episode, please visit kidshubms.com/resource-library and https://culturereframed.org/.

Alexis walked into her divorce carrying two decades of unhealed childhood trauma — the kind that teaches a person to survive rather than feel. As a Licensed Master Social Worker, she had the clinical language for what was happening to her clients every day. She didn't have it, yet, for herself.

In this conversation, Alexis traces the slow unraveling of a life built on management instead of healing: the friend who saw straight through her defenses, the prayer that cracked open old faith, the night she looked at the sky and asked God, simply, to help. Less than 24 hours later, she was calling an attorney.

What follows isn't really about the legal process, though the process is in here too. It's about learning the difference between holding on out of fear and holding on out of love, about finding the people worth trusting with the highest stakes of your life, and about the strange grace of coming undone in front of someone who won't look away. Alexis and her attorney talk honestly about fear, faith, protection, and what it finally felt like to feel whole.