What happens when you're the strong one everyone depends on, but you're quietly falling apart yourself?

On this episode of STORYTIME with Lori, I'm pulling up a chair with Nicole O’Brien for a conversation that goes well beyond personal branding, LinkedIn, or the highlight reels we put out into the world.

Nicole is a mother, leader, marketer, and woman who has navigated devastating family loss while continuing to show up for the people who needed her. She opens up about losing her brother, carrying grief into the workplace, stepping away from healthcare, and discovering that healing doesn't necessarily mean becoming the person you used to be.

But don't worry. We're not spending 30 minutes crying into our coffee.

We're also talking about '90s hip-hop, Biggie, Tupac, Taylor Swift, raising brutally honest children, the unexpected joy of finding your people on LinkedIn, and why getting older can bring a beautiful freedom from other people's opinions.

In this conversation:

• Why authenticity feels harder than it should
• How grief affects leadership, work, and emotional capacity
• What grieving employees actually need from their employers
• Finding confidence in your forties and embracing change
• Building a personal brand without losing your personality
• Using music, humor, and storytelling to connect with people
• Why you don't have to return to your old self to heal

This isn't a five-step guide to becoming your authentic self. Thank goodness.

It's an honest conversation about being a whole human being while life keeps happening.

🎙️ STORYTIME with Lori — Real people. Real stories. No polished perfection required.

There's always room for one more.

Explore the show: https://storytimewithlori.com/

Healing While Working: The Shit We Carry That Nobody Sees ❤️‍🩹

Nobody really prepares us for healing while life keeps moving. There’s no convenient pause button for grief, disappointment, anxiety, heartbreak, family struggles, or those seasons when you simply don’t feel like yourself. The meeting is still at 9:00. Your team still needs you. The kids need dinner. The mortgage is due. Life basically says, “That sounds rough. Anyway… keep going.” 😂 And somehow, we do.

Over the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of time working on myself. Therapy. Journaling. Breath work. Boundaries. Learning my triggers. Unlearning things I carried for far too long. And somewhere in all of that work, one lesson got really loud: being strong enough to carry something doesn’t mean it was ever yours to carry.

That lesson shows up at work, too. High performers see a gap and fill it. Something falls, we catch it. Nobody owns it, we step in. Something catches fire? 🔥 Fine, hand me the hose. There’s pride in being that person, and sometimes it absolutely is leadership. But I’ve also learned there’s a difference between stepping up and overfunctioning, between being committed and carrying everything, and between leadership and martyrdom.

Strong organizations shouldn’t depend on a handful of talented people quietly holding up the ceiling. Great leadership creates clarity, accountability and trust. It puts good people in the right places, gives them room to be great, and recognizes that being the person who can solve every problem isn’t nearly as powerful as building a team where one person doesn’t have to.

And somewhere in all our conversations about performance, growth and results, we can’t forget that every person walking into work is bringing an entire life with them. Someone can be crushing their number while grieving. Leading a team while rebuilding their confidence. Sitting across from you looking completely composed while carrying something you know absolutely nothing about.

That doesn’t mean lowering the bar. I believe deeply in accountability and high standards. But accountability and humanity can sit at the same table. We can expect excellence and still ask someone how they’re really doing. We can give grace without abandoning accountability. We can be ambitious and still be healing.

And if you’re the one doing some healing right now, remember this: you don’t have to become some perfectly healed version of yourself before you’re allowed to succeed. You can be healing and ambitious, vulnerable and powerful, still figuring some things out and still be damn good at what you do. ❤️

So maybe the question isn’t always, “How much more can I carry?” Maybe it’s “Is all of this actually mine to carry?”

That answer might change a few things. ❤️🦁

#healingwhileworking #mentalhealthatwork #leadership #workplaceculture #emotionalintelligence #executiveleadership #womeninleadership #authenticleadership #selfleadership #highperformers #workplacewellbeing #careergrowth #storytimewithlori

I met Tara Akins before I knew most of her story and I am glad I did. We'd crossed paths before, but it was sitting in a box at a San Diego Wave game with our mutual friend Enzo where we actually got to know each other. And somewhere between soccer, laughing, talking about life and discovering we're both Leos—which honestly explained a few things 😂🦁—I remember thinking, I really like this woman.

Not because I knew what she'd survived. I didn't.

I liked her.

And that's important, because Tara has one hell of a story, but I didn't want to sit down with her and spend 45 minutes talking about cancer.

So we didn't.

We talked about growing up in a family that showed up physically but didn't always give her the emotional safety she needed. We talked about learning to read a room, keeping everybody happy and becoming a people-pleaser before you even realize that's what you're doing. And Tara said something that I think a lot of us learn way too fucking late: you shouldn't have to perform to earn love. Pasted text

We talked about her wife. Her kids. Chosen family. Being queer. Being a mom. Working in healthcare for more than two decades and genuinely loving taking care of people.

And then, yes, we talked about cancer.

Tara went into the ER thinking she might have a herniated disc. She left with a completely different life. Kidney failure. Lesions throughout her bones. Multiple myeloma. Two weeks in the hospital. Treatment. Eventually a bone marrow transplant. Pasted text

But here's the part that got me.

She didn't really fall apart when everything was happening. She fell apart afterward.

When she wasn't working. Wasn't taking care of patients. Wasn't taking care of everybody else. Wasn't being the version of Tara she'd spent years knowing how to be.

She had to figure out who the hell she was when she wasn't useful. Eventually she realized:

“Me being Tara is enough.” Pasted text

Yeah.

Sit with that one for a minute.

And because Tara refuses to bullshit about any of this, there's no magical post-cancer montage here either. 😂 She went to therapy. She took medication when she needed it. She struggled with her changing body. She watched the Food Network while she was nauseous and dreamed about what she could eat when she felt better. She admits she didn't suddenly start exercising like crazy or become someone who loves drinking water.

Thank God. A real person. 😂 Pasted text

This is #cancer, #multiplemyeloma and #cancersurvivorship, yes. But it's also marriage, #chosenfamily, motherhood, being #lgbtq, #mentalhealth, #therapy, healthcare, #peoplepleasing, boundaries, identity and trying to figure out who the fuck you are when life changes the rules without asking permission.

Somewhere near the end, two Leos started talking about roaring.

Turns out a roar isn't always loud. Sometimes it's letting someone take care of you. Sometimes it's saying no. Sometimes it's admitting you're not okay. And sometimes it's finally realizing you don't have to do a damn thing to earn your place here.

Tara, thank you for giving me you. ❤️

🎙️ Storytime with Lori — The Story Underneath the Story

#storytimewithlori #tarakins #multiplemyeloma #cancersurvivor #lgbtq #chosenfamily #mentalhealth #womenshealth #patientadvocacy #womeninhealthcare #selfworth #boundaries #healing #podcast

Can working dads really have it all? What happens to career ambition, marriage, work-life balance and success when you become a father? 🎙️🔥

In this episode of Storytime with Lori, Brad DeLee gets brutally real about fatherhood, adoption, working dads, career and family, work-life balance, marriage, leadership and what choosing family first actually looks like when you're still ambitious as hell.

Brad and his wife spent two years trying to build their family through adoption. They experienced two heartbreaking adoption attempts before the call finally came about their son, Brooks. Brad describes what kept them moving through the grief as “ruthless optimism” — the willingness to open your heart again even when opening it was exactly what allowed it to get broken. ❤️ His story takes us through adoption loss, private grief, the NICU, becoming an adoptive father and finally bringing their son home.

But bringing Brooks home is where this conversation really starts.

What happens when you're a working dad and suddenly that conference, flight, promotion or 5 a.m. meeting has to compete with bottles, diapers, your marriage and a tiny human who couldn't care less about your calendar? 😂 Brad talks about how fatherhood changed the way he thinks about business travel, career growth and the companies he's willing to work for. He hasn't become less ambitious. He's become much more intentional about what he's ambitious for and what he's willing to sacrifice to get there.

Then we flip the damn script. 😏

Women have been asked these questions forever: How are you going to balance motherhood and your career? Who stays home when the baby is sick? What happens when your partner has the more important meeting? Can you really give 100% to your career AND your family?

So I asked a dad.

And Brad's answer took us into a much bigger conversation about working mothers and fathers, gender bias in the workplace, modern fatherhood, men in leadership and why we continue asking women questions we rarely ask men. His answer wasn't that we should start interrogating fathers too. Maybe we should finally stop asking working parents these ridiculous questions altogether. 🔥

We also go straight at the word provider. Brad challenges something we hear constantly from successful professionals: “I'm working this hard for my family.” His response? How much of that is really about providing...and how much is ego? 👀

This episode is for working dads, working moms, adoptive parents, new parents, ambitious professionals, business leaders and anyone trying to figure out how the hell career success and family are supposed to live under the same roof.

Because maybe having it all isn't actually the goal.

Maybe it's knowing what deserves the most of you — and having the guts to give it that. ❤️

🎙️ Storytime with Lori
Real people. Bigger conversations.

👇 YOUR TURN: Has becoming a parent changed what success means to you, or has it changed what you're willing to sacrifice to achieve it? Drop it in the comments. I want to hear the real answer.

#WorkingDads #Fatherhood #Adoption #WorkLifeBalance #WorkingParents #StorytimeWithLori #FamilyFirst #CareerAndFamily #AdoptiveParents #Leadership #Parenthood #WorkingMoms #ModernFatherhood #CareerGrowth #Marriage

What did success cost you?

I asked Dan Albaum that question about 12 minutes into our conversation, and that's pretty much when this stopped being an interview about leadership. ❤️

Dan is the author of The Giving Edge and The Impact Makers and the host of Market Impact Insights, so yes, we talk leadership. But we also talk about the stuff that doesn't usually make the leadership bio: ego, self-doubt, toxic people, the year Dan spent constantly traveling while his kids were young, and his wife Nikolett being the “jet fuel” that has carried him through some of the harder seasons.

I also challenge Dan on the premise of his newest book. Giving sounds beautiful, but what happens when we give so much that we disappear? We talk boundaries, putting your own oxygen mask on first, and why asking for help might actually be one of the greatest gifts we can give someone else.

Then we get into AI 🤖 and something Dan calls the “sea of sameness.” If AI can help all of us become more polished, productive and seemingly perfect, maybe polish isn't the advantage anymore. Maybe our weird, messy, emotional humanity is.

And then there's the empty chair.

I asked Dan who he'd put beside him if he could choose one person.

He chose his late father, a professor, mentor and author whose books Dan grew up seeing on the shelf. His father passed away before Dan published his first book. Today, Dan's books sit beside his dad's.

Yeah… we went there. ❤️

This isn't 40 minutes about how to become a better executive. It's a conversation about ambition, family, generosity, AI, confidence, regret, grace, legacy and figuring out what actually matters while we're all still here to do something about it.

This is Storytime with Lori.

The story underneath the story.

#storytimewithlori #danalbaum #thegivingedge #servantleadership #leadership #humanleadership #ai #futureofwork #authenticleadership #storytelling

I came into this episode fucking roaring. 🦁🔥 I’m pissed off, I’m hurt, I’m disappointed, and I’m exhausted by something I’m calling human fraud: that gap between who people tell us they are and who we actually experience them to be.

Tell me you’re family? Show me when it’s inconvenient. Tell me your kid comes first? Show me when parenting screws up your plans. Tell me you believe in accountability? Show me when you’re the one who fucked up. Tell me you’re a leader? Great. I don’t need another LinkedIn post or PowerPoint with somebody climbing a fucking mountain. Show me who you are when someone challenges you, knows more than you, or tells you something your ego really doesn’t want to hear. Because here’s what I’ve realized: character gets expensive. Integrity can cost you time, money, convenience, comfort, ego and sometimes the satisfaction of being right. That’s when we find out who the fuck we really are.

I go there in this one. Family. Co-parenting. Corporate America. Leadership. AI. Ego. The invisible load so many parents carry while somebody else occasionally shows up for the ribbon cutting. 😏 And yes, apparently some of us have fucking QuickBooks for all the emotional receipts we’ve collected along the way.

But then this episode did something I wasn’t necessarily planning for: it turned the mirror back on me. Because I’m hurt right now, and when I’m hurt, I see things through hurt. That doesn’t erase what somebody else did. It doesn’t make shitty behavior okay. But if I’m demanding accountability from everybody else, then Lori has to own her fucking shit too.

That brought me to the line that matters most: I don’t want somebody else’s lack of integrity to cost me mine. Fuck. Maybe that’s the whole lesson.

I don’t need perfect people. I fucking love imperfect people. Give me messy. Give me “I don’t know.” Give me “I was wrong.” Give me “I got scared.” Give me “I handled that like an asshole.” What I’m done with is the performance. I want your words and your behavior to fucking recognize each other.

🎙️ So here’s my challenge: listen before you decide who you think this episode is about. And before you send it to the ex, boss, parent, sibling, friend or whoever immediately popped into your head, ask yourself the harder fucking question: Where did I hear myself? Then do something about it. And if this conversation hits you somewhere uncomfortable, share it with someone brave enough to look in the mirror with you.

#StorytimeWithLori #HumanFraud #Authenticity #Accountability #Integrity #Leadership #RealTalk #OwnYourShit #PersonalGrowth #Podcasting

Reagan and Riley Cullivan are 19 years old, sisters, athletes and headed to UC Davis to play Division I softball together. They've spent most of their lives doing many of the same things, surrounded by many of the same people and hearing themselves referred to simply as “the twins.” And while that's part of their story, I wanted to know who Reagan and Riley are when you pull those labels apart.

We talked about something women of every age understand: comparison. What happens when someone you love gets the thing you wanted too? Reagan and Riley were surprisingly candid about being happy for one another while sometimes feeling frustrated with themselves, especially on the softball field. We talked about learning to recognize their different strengths, finding their own identities and understanding that loving another woman doesn't require making yourself smaller.

Then we went beyond softball. We talked about recruiting pressure and the point when something you love starts feeling like a job. We talked about the enormous sacrifice parents make behind the scenes, their dreams of careers in medicine, the lives they want outside of work and sports, and why these two are determined to actually live a little along the way.

What I loved most, though, was getting to talk to them now. I interview plenty of people who can look back over decades and explain exactly how they became who they are. Reagan and Riley can't do that yet, because they're still becoming. So instead of giving them another lecture from an older woman who thinks she knows some shit, I asked them what we could learn from them.

Turns out, quite a bit.

This one is about sisters, but it's also about women. Her success isn't evidence of your failure, and her lane doesn't have to look anything like yours. Cheer for her. Make room for her. And when it's her turn to cross home plate, run toward her.

🎙️ Storytime with Lori

Apparently I can’t even go bowling anymore without finding a podcast guest. 😂🎳

But that’s kind of the point.

STORYTIME with Lori is growing and I’m making the room bigger. 🎙️❤️

CEOs? Absolutely.

But also the 19-year-old athletes.

The single mom building her own version of wealth.

The immigrant starting another chapter.

The person building chosen family.

The entrepreneur nobody knows…yet.

Because I’m not interested in collecting impressive résumés.

I’m interested in the story underneath them.

And sometimes the person who changes the way you see the world isn’t sitting in a boardroom. Sometimes they are sitting next to you at the bowling alley. 😂

More women. More young voices. More cultures. More unconventional paths. More people we should have been listening to all along.

We’re not changing STORYTIME, we are making the room bigger. ❤️

And if you’re watching this thinking, “Lori, you NEED to meet someone…”

👀 Send them my way.

Hell…maybe it’s you.