MARY KEATING is a lawyer, disability advocate, and three-time Pushcart Prize nominated poet. After a car accident at fifteen changed the trajectory of her life, she went on to Yale Law School, worked as an attorney at IBM, founded her own law practice twice and was appointed by Governors Jodi Rell and Daniel Malloy to serve on, and later chair, the Connecticut State Rehabilitation Council. Keating lives and works in Connecticut where her firm, Mary Keating Esquire, LLC, guides clients through estate planning, trusts, and planning for long-term care and disability.

Today on our show, we sit down with Mary to talk about her new book, Recalibrating Gravity, a courageous and lyrical journey that challenges how we see the body, resilience, and what it truly means to rise when the world tries to hold you down. You See, Recalibrating Gravity is a moving reminder that even when life shifts our balance, we have the power to redefine strength, dignity, and hope.

Farmer Wayne Swanson Jr. is the owner and operator of Swanson Family Farm, LLC and began the agricultural business in 2008. His interest in farming began as a young child witnessing his grandparent’s work on their farm in New Jersey. He would later gain the experience to run and operate a successful farm. Mr. Swanson graduated from Morris Brown College with a bachelor’s degree in Mass Media Arts in 1995. He is a proud member of the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. In addition, Farmer Wayne is a co-founder of the Georgia Black-Owned Farms Tour – a tour of Black-owned Georgia-based farms and farm-to-table bistros.The Georgia Black-Owned Farms Tour celebrates ownership, and selling, preparing, and eating organic animal and vegetable produce from the land.

The land tells a different story when it’s passed down instead of taken away. For Wayne Swanson Jr., farming is not a trend, it is memory, inheritance, and resistance. From watching his grandparents work the soil in New Jersey to building Swanson Family Farm, LLC from the ground up in 2008, his journey is stitched together with sacrifice, mistakes, hard-earned wisdom, and an unshakable belief that Black farmers deserve not just survival, but ownership, healing, and prosperity. This is a story about mental health under pressure, investing when the odds are stacked against you, its conversations for the future generations that cannot afford to be disconnected from the soil again.

Deni Elliott spent much of her life proving she could do everything on her own, until losing her sight forced her to rethink what independence really means.

In her new book, Catching Sight: How a Guide Dog Helped Me See Myself (co-authored with veteran guide dog instructor Graham Buck), Elliott tells the deeply personal story of learning to trust again, this time with a yellow Labrador named Alberta. What begins as guide dog training becomes a life-changing partnership that reshapes her identity, her confidence, and her understanding of strength.

Catching Sight reveals the extraordinary communication, shared leadership, and emotional courage behind every successful guide-dog team. At its heart, this is a story about love, loss, resilience, and discovering that needing help is not weakness, but wisdom.

Deni Elliott is Project Co-Director of the National Ethics Project, a professor emeritus at the University of South Florida, and a nationally recognized expert in media ethics and disability. But in Catching Sight, her most powerful credential is this: she learned how to let herself be guided and, in doing so, finally learned how to see herself.

Dr. Edmund H. Moore is a Dayton, Ohio based engineer for the federal government, author, and community advocate. A devoted single father, he centers his life around faith, family, and service, remaining actively involved through his church and Parity Inc. In both his professional and personal life, Moore is guided by balance, intention, and impact.

In his book, Financial Freedom: Doing Nothing Is An Option, Dr. Moore challenges the hustle-driven narrative of wealth by showing how financial freedom can be achieved by letting money work for you, not the other way around. Through practical insight and lived experience, he emphasizes passive income, wise investing, and intentional living, proving that building wealth does not have to come at the expense of joy, presence, or quality of life. It comes from doing nothing.

ROBYNN SMITH, Professor Emeritus at California’s Monterey Peninsula College, where she founded Print Day in May in 2007. She holds a BFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design and two degrees from San Jose State University: an MFA in Sculpture/Ceramics and an MA in Painting. A printmaker and mixed media painter , she has had solo exhibitions in galleries and museums from Australia to Iceland Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. Her work can be found in public collections in Belgium, Canada, and the United States. Robynn travels extensively for residencies and teaching opportunities, and leads workshops at her own Blue Mouse Studios in Aptos, California.

Robynn Smith is an artist who believes that creativity is not a luxury, it is a human need, a language of belonging, and a quiet form of healing.

Robynn’s greatest legacy may be the one that can’t be hung on a wall. Through decades of teaching, residencies, and workshops, she has helped people rediscover their hands, their courage, and their sense of permanency.

Print Day in May is free, open to all, May 2nd is coming. The presses are waiting, what will you do for Print Day In May?

The week of (April 11–17), is Black Maternal Health Week. In the United States, Black women are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy related complications than white women. These are not just statistics. They are mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends whose lives matter.

Meet Dr. Donna Adams-Pickett, board- certified OB/GYN with a deep commitment to women’s health. Her expertise spans a range of topics, including gynecologic cancer awareness, menopause management, and reproductive health. Through her compassionate approach and dedication to education, Dr. Adams- Pickett is making a lasting impact on women’s wellness nationwide. She empowers women with knowledge so they can advocate for themselves with confidence at every stage of life.

This is a call to stand with Black mothers, to listen to trusted voices, and to support women of color not just with words, but with platforms, policies, and purpose. Let’s use this moment to amplify life-saving information, center equity in maternal care, and remind every woman: you deserve to be seen, heard, and protected.

Val Whiting, two-time NCAA Champion and former elite WNBA athlete. Val starred all four years at Stanford, she ranks 6th all-time in scoring (2,077 points) and 6th in rebounds (1,134). Val holds a Master’s degree in Sport and Performance Psychology and is currently a certified Mental Health Coach.

On paper, her career was a success. Mentally, it was a different story. Despite her championships and her accolades, Val struggled with pressure, self-doubt, and emotional overload, challenges no one had trained her to manage. That experience led her to found MentallyStrongHer, an organization dedicated to helping female athletes build mental resilience, emotional stability, and confidence beyond the scoreboard.

Through Mentally StrongHer, Val has coached and supported athletes navigating anxiety, identity loss, burnout, and the pressure to perform, issues that don’t end when the game does. Her work bridges the gap between performance and mental health, helping current athletes compete with clarity, former players rediscover purpose after sport, and individuals beyond athletics apply the same mental skills to leadership, career transitions, and everyday life.

We walk with Val Whiting as she teaches us what it truly means to champion the game beyond the court, because being emotionally prepared matters just as much as being physically ready for the game called life.

Since retiring from a life spent in the operating room, Dr. Allen Saxon, has returned to two enduring callings: storytelling and teaching the next generation of physicians. A graduate of Tulane Medical School, he learned medicine where it is most human, inside safety net hospitals, where care is given not for profit, but for dignity, survival, and hope.

Those early years shaped Dr Saxon. Before screens, algorithms, and electronic charts softened the edges of training, medicine was learned hand to hand and heart to heart. Skill came from doing. Compassion came from standing at the bedside when there was nothing left to offer but presence.

Today, Dr. Saxon teaches at Northwestern University and Rosalind Franklin University, carrying forward the lessons he first learned among the most vulnerable patients. On the season 11 finale we will discuss his latest book, “Training in Charity”, which is a tribute to that era of 1970s New Orleans. Training in Charity is a reminder that while medicine may evolve, its soul is still forged in service, humility, and human connection.