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  • Forty Seizures in Six Weeks: Learning to Stop Hiding

    Forty Seizures in Six Weeks: Learning to Stop Hiding
    2026/10/18
    Content note: this episode includes discussion of suicidal thoughts and a crisis hotline call. Travis White was twenty-three, newly engaged, and by his own description living the dream when his body started sending signals nobody had taught him to read. One ordinary night, studying for a web development class, he felt off. Hours later, he woke up surrounded by paramedics and police, unable to remember any of it, and the first question they asked him was what drugs he'd taken. He hadn't taken any. He'd had a seizure, and over the next six weeks he had forty or fifty more. What came after was almost harder than the seizures themselves. Medication that made him hallucinate. Neurologists who ran out of answers and handed him off. Jobs he walked out of mid-shift and never returned to because he was too ashamed to explain what had happened. Dissociative episodes that once had him driving an hour and a half home without remembering the trip. For fifteen years, Travis mostly kept all of it hidden, even as the seizures came and went, even as he built a career, got married, and became a father. Then in late 2024, months after his third child was born, the seizures returned in a brutal cluster. This time doctors gave the condition a name: psychogenic non-epileptic seizures, stress firing through the body in a pattern that looks like epilepsy but isn't. The diagnosis didn't come with a clear treatment plan, and Travis spiraled into a depression severe enough that he became suicidal. A call to the 988 hotline and a brother-in-law who reached out and meant it were the turning point. From there, Travis went all in on therapy, functional medicine, and a handful of simple tools that finally let him stop just managing his life and start rebuilding it. Today Travis hosts Overcome, a podcast built around the same honesty he fought to find for himself. What You'll Hear: The night in April 2009 that started it all, and waking up surrounded by paramedics Getting asked what drugs he'd taken when he'd never touched them Forty to fifty seizures in six weeks and a week hooked up to 24-hour monitoring Medication that caused hallucinations, and tapering himself off against medical advice Losing jobs by walking out and never going back, too embarrassed to explain What dissociation actually felt like, including driving home without remembering it Rebuilding a career, buying a house, and becoming a father while still hiding the struggle The 2024 seizure cluster and the diagnosis of PNES Becoming suicidal, calling the 988 hotline, and the phone call from his brother-in-law Therapy, functional medicine, diet changes, and the tools that actually helped Why starting Overcome became part of his own healing Guest Bio: Travis White is a speaker and the host of Overcome with Travis White, a mental-health podcast featuring honest conversations about trauma, grief, addiction, identity, and resilience. After seizures disrupted his independence and sense of self, Travis spent years trying to reclaim his old life before learning to grieve who he had been and build a meaningful new one. Through Overcome, he has hosted more than 80 conversations designed to help people feel less alone and recognize that difficult seasons do not have to define the rest of their lives. Website: https://overcomepod.com Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/follow Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ You Might Also Like: Lemon-Sized Brain Tumor: The Life That Grew After Surgery The Cost of Quiet: Learning to Speak Up After Years of Silence seizures, PNES, psychogenic non-epileptic seizures, mental health stigma, dissociation, depression, 988 hotline, therapy, fatherhood, project manager, Overcome podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    51 分
  • Stranded at Sea When the World Shut Down

    Stranded at Sea When the World Shut Down
    2026/10/14
    Content note: this episode includes discussion of sexual assault and an abusive relationship. Sometimes the yes that changes everything looks, at the time, like an escape. Angela Harger Thompson has been a storyteller since she was four, waving a feather duster in her sister's home movie. At 30, she packed her Honda Civic and drove to Los Angeles with no connections and a very big dream. Two months later, a producer who had promised to keep her safe drugged and assaulted her. Angela reported it. She went to the hospital, then sat with police for six hours, then waited nine months for a district attorney to tell her the case wouldn't be prosecuted. And she made a very intentional choice. She would heal right there in LA, through therapy, yoga, and a lot of anxiety attacks behind a bar, because he had already taken enough. A few years later, burned out and waiting for her big break, she said yes to crewing a sailboat from Panama to the Marquesas. She had never sailed. One week out, the world shut down. Borders closed, plans changed daily, and what was supposed to be six weeks turned into 49 days at sea, including sixteen days with just two people on board and a storm straight out of Castaway. She kept the camera rolling the whole time. That footage became her documentary Quarantine at Sea, and the rest of the story became her memoir, Worst Tits Ever. This conversation is about survival, faith, and the moment Angela realized she could stop waiting for someone to hand her the role and start creating it herself. What You'll Hear: Moving to LA at 30 and why knowing her values early mattered so much The producer who groomed her by promising to keep her safe What reporting an assault actually looked like, and why she understands why so many women don't Choosing to heal in the same city where it happened Pushing through anxiety attacks while bartending and auditioning The dream that helped her say yes to crossing the Pacific Being stranded at sea as COVID closed every border Learning to sail in a 15-minute tutorial and riding out a storm near the equator Recognizing an abusive relationship and fighting to keep her documentary Why she stopped waiting to be chosen Guest Bio: Angela Harger Thompson is an actress, filmmaker, and storyteller whose work spans film, commercial, voiceover, and now the written word. Her screen credits have included Sense of Urgency, Something in the Woods, the web series Austin Wannabes, and the video game DC Universe Online, where she voiced the iconic DC Comics character The Question. Her transformative experience began in January 2020, when she wrote a single goal in her journal at a church Dream Day: let God tell a great story through me. She had no idea that would soon unfold in the most unexpected way. A few weeks later, she boarded a sailboat in Panama and set out on a three-to-four-week passage across the Pacific. One week in, a satellite email changed everything. COVID-19 had become a global pandemic. With island borders closed and nowhere to land, Angela found herself stranded at sea, navigating squalls, relational conflict, and her own spiritual awakening. She kept the camera rolling the entire time. That footage became Quarantine at Sea (2022), a feature-length documentary she directed, produced, and starred in, now streaming on Amazon, Apple TV, and Google Play. But the story was bigger than what the documentary could hold. Her memoir Worst Tits Ever tells the rest: a raw, laugh-out-loud funny, heartbreakingly honest story of faith and the hard work of rebuilding. Foreword writer and actress Jen Lilley describes it as "a love story, a survival story, and a coming-of-age-in-your-thirties story." Believing every person carries a story worth telling, Angela founded The Storytell Initiative to help others find and share theirs. She lives in Southern California with her husband, Dustin. She is grateful to catch the sunsets over the Pacific, though now safely from a beach. Website: https://angelahargerproductions.com Quarantine at Sea on Prime Video: https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0LZUYBIYA02UYEYORJXKNF3D33 Worst Tits Ever on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Worst-Tits-Angela-Harger-Thompson/dp/B0G8R4BLXF Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/follow Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ You Might Also Like: Reclamation: Coming Back To The Girl Who Got Shut Down Starting Over: You Can Lose Everything and Still Be Okay Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 1 分
  • Just Call Him: Estrangement, Grief, and the Father I'll Never Fully Know

    Just Call Him: Estrangement, Grief, and the Father I'll Never Fully Know
    2026/10/11
    Some goodbyes don't come with a conversation. They come with a phone you keep picking up and putting back down. Brittany Perham grew up in a house full of friends and happy memories, with a mom who protected her and her brother, and a father whose drinking nobody named out loud. In college, when things got scary, she made one of the hardest grown-up decisions of her life. She stopped answering his calls. The silence stretched to almost fifteen years. When her brother reconnected with him before his wedding, Brittany found herself back in a little bit of contact, just in time for her father's final year. There was one good phone call, a recipe, a "good to talk to you." And then there was a hospital room at Mass General, where she and her brother had to decide to let him go. Then came the surprise. Weeks before he died, her father had changed his will and named her the executor of an estate that turned out to be buried in debt. It took almost seven years to close. This is a tender, honest conversation about estrangement, about guilt and sadness living side by side, and about how a story keeps changing each time we tell it. Brittany is a poet and a teacher, and she talks about her father with so much care and so much honesty. I loved every minute of this one. What You'll Hear: Growing up in what looked like the perfect childhood while living with a father's quiet addiction The decision at 21 to get a therapist and step away from her dad Why estrangement never really feels like freedom Walking around the house holding the phone, unable to make the call The one good phone call, and a recipe she'll never forget Taking her father off life support and the strange intimacy of that moment Being named executrix of an indebted estate she never saw coming Why the story of her father is ultimately a story of not knowing Guest Bio:Brittany Perham's new memoir, Executrix (University of Georgia Press), won the 2025 AWP Sue William Silverman Prize for Creative Nonfiction. She is also the author of Double Portrait (W.W. Norton), which won the Barnard Women Poets Prize and was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award; The Curiosities (Free Verse Editions); and, with Kim Addonizio, the collaborative word/art project The Night Could Go in Either Direction (SHP). Her writing has received support from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Hemingway House, the James Merrill House Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, the Wallace Stegner Fellowship Program, and Yaddo. She taught for fifteen years at Stanford University before joining the English faculty at Endicott College, where she is an associate professor. She lives in San Francisco and Massachusetts. Website: www.brittanyperham.comExecutrix (University of Georgia Press): https://ugapress.orgListen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/followSubscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ Keywords: estrangement, grieving an estranged parent, alcoholic father, children of alcoholics, executor of an estate, grief, memoir, memory, family stories, complicated grief You Might Also Like: Grief and Fatherhood: The Song That Changed Everything Part of Me Died That Day: Learning to Live After the Worst Day of Your Life Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    58 分
  • Coming Out as a Trans Woman at 45: The Filter That Changed Everything

    Coming Out as a Trans Woman at 45: The Filter That Changed Everything
    2026/10/07
    Some of us carry a weight for so long that we forget it isn't supposed to be there. Chloe Kelly spent 35 years being very good at being someone she wasn't. She learned the rules early. Play sports. Earn man points. Don't stand out. Never let anyone see. She got so good at the performance that even she couldn't see through it for decades. There was a soulmate. A house. A good job. Everything that was supposed to add up to happiness. And underneath all of it, a quiet leak. A dripping tap that just wouldn't stop. Then, at 45, on her lunch break, she downloaded a face filter app. She pressed a button. And she couldn't look away from what she saw. This is a conversation about what it feels like to live inside the wrong story for 35 years, and what it feels like when the real one finally starts. Chloe is warm, funny, honest about the hard parts, and sickeningly happy in the best possible way. She's calling in from Buenos Aires, because of course she is. What You'll Hear How Chloe spent decades earning "man points" and what that kind of performance actually costs The FaceApp moment on a lunch break that cracked everything open Why telling her wife was the point of no return, and how that conversation went What it felt like to discover joy after a lifetime of quiet sadness Solo travel across 18 countries as a trans woman in her forties, the beautiful parts and the hard ones Why she now wants to give the person she used to be a hug instead of a shake Guest BioChloe Kelly is a British writer who transitioned at the age of 45 after decades of suppressing her true identity. After leaving a 25 year corporate career, she is rebuilding her life through writing, travel and sharing her experiences to help others navigating major life changes. She has written for PinkNews, is currently writing a guide for people transitioning later in life, and is also working on a travel memoir about travelling solo around the world as a trans woman in her forties, exploring identity, courage and reinvention. She documents her travel adventures through her Girl:Avanting YouTube series. YouTube | Instagram | Substack Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/followSubscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ gender identity, late transition, transgender story, transitioning later in life, self acceptance, authenticity, performing for others, telling your wife you are trans, solo travel as a trans woman, finding joy You Might Also Like: Trystan Reese: A Journey Through Love, Identity, and Family Cancer: The Diagnosis That Stopped the Reinventing Reclamation: Coming Back To The Girl Who Got Shut Down Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 3 分
  • First Responder Mental Health: What a Helicopter Crash Opened Up

    First Responder Mental Health: What a Helicopter Crash Opened Up
    2026/10/04
    Maybe you know what it is to be the steady one. The person who shows up, holds it together, and makes sure everyone else is okay before anyone thinks to ask about you. Jeff Abbott has been that person for more than 25 years in emergency medicine, most recently as a Critical Care Flight Paramedic and base manager. On April 26th, 2022, his friend and pilot Jim died in a helicopter crash. Jeff responded to the scene in another aircraft, kept his people together all day, and then went home and broke down in his wife's arms. What followed was eighteen months of anger he couldn't name, nightmares he couldn't shake, and a slow realization that being built for this work didn't make him immune to what it carries. This is a conversation about what happens inside the people who show up when everyone else needs help. We talk about EMS culture, dark humor, and the quiet cost of never asking for anything in return. We talk about Boulder Crest, EMDR, breathwork, and watching chickens until his nervous system remembered what calm felt like. And we talk about a book Jeff started 25 years ago, found in an old email, and finally finished because it was time. He tells it plainly, the way someone does once they've set some of the weight down. What You'll Hear Growing up in blue collar Buffalo, a military dream cut short by a knee injury, and 25 years in EMS The April 2022 helicopter crash that killed his friend and pilot Jim Eighteen months of anger as the mask that fear and shame wear Boulder Crest, EMDR therapy, breathwork, and watching chickens Why self acceptance is the wall that has to come down The book he started 25 years ago and finally finished Guest BioJeff Abbott is a Critical Care Flight Paramedic, author, and speaker with more than 25 years in emergency medicine. His career has taken him from ground EMS to critical care and flight medicine, where functioning calmly in chaos became both a skill and part of his identity. He is the author of Built For This: A Paramedic's Reckoning, a candid memoir about EMS culture, dark humor, camaraderie, loss, and what happens when being able to keep functioning is mistaken for being unaffected by the work. paramedicabbott.comBook: Built For This: A Paramedic's Reckoning Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/followSubscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ first responder mental health, paramedic PTSD, grief and anger, asking for help, EMS culture, flight paramedic, trauma recovery, Boulder Crest retreat, EMDR therapy, losing a friend You Might Also Like: Anger: The Drink I Never Stopped Drinking Part of Me Died That Day: Learning to Live After the Worst Day of Your Life Identity: More Than the Thing You're Known For Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    57 分
  • Grief: The Year I Edited My Best Friend Back to Life

    Grief: The Year I Edited My Best Friend Back to Life
    2026/09/30
    Maybe you know what it is to lose someone in the middle of building something together. To be left holding a piece of unfinished work and a hole where a person used to be, with no idea how to carry either one. Jan Becker is a filmmaker who set out with his close friend Christian to make a documentary about a vision quest in the high desert. They finished shooting, went their separate ways for the holidays, and then, on the fourth of January, Jan got a text. Christian had died in a plane crash, along with his two young daughters. What follows is the story of the year Jan spent alone in an editing room with his friend's face on the screen, turning grief into something he could hold. He talks about the strange sense that the desert had been preparing him, about losing his father two years earlier, and about how finishing the film became the way he learned to mourn. This is a conversation about what we do with the things left unfinished, and about how the work of our hands can carry us through the parts of grief that words cannot reach. What You'll Hear The phone call on the fourth of January that changed everything Why finishing the film became Jan's way through grief What it feels like to edit footage of someone you have lost The vision quest, and the sense that it had been preparing him Grieving a best friend and a father as one long process Choosing meaning and connection over recognition Guest Bio Jan Becker is a German-born, Los Angeles-based filmmaker, director, producer, and editor. He has worked in media production for more than 15 years, with credits across documentary, television, and commercial storytelling. His work often explores transformation, healing, trauma, spirituality, and the deeper psychological forces that shape human lives. Jan is the director, producer, and editor of Vision Quest, a feature documentary about a 10-day wilderness retreat in the California high desert and the healing power of nature. The film became deeply personal after the tragic death of his friend, co-director, and producing partner Christian Oliver, who appears in the film. Through his production company, Exalted, Jan is developing documentary and narrative projects that make inner transformation visible through cinematic storytelling. exalted.la | visionquestfilm.com | Vision Quest Trailer | Instagram Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/follow Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ sudden loss, losing a best friend, grief and creativity, finishing what someone started, film as healing, plane crash grief, processing a father's death, vision quest, meaning after loss, storytelling as healing You Might Also Like: Grief: Making Something Beautiful From What Broke Part of Me Died That Day: Learning to Live After the Worst Day of Your Life 147 Days: Raising and Losing My Sister Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間
  • Not That Weird: When the Thing You Hid Becomes the Thing You Give

    Not That Weird: When the Thing You Hid Becomes the Thing You Give
    2026/09/27
    Some of us have known something about ourselves for a very long time. And we have spent just as long trying to pretend we didn't. Kate Saint Clair grew up seeing and hearing things no one around her could explain. She was the curious kid who asked too many questions and got lies as answers. The sensitive one who felt everyone else's feelings as if they were her own. For years, she tried to be the tough kid. The normal one. The person who didn't see anything. But the knowing didn't go away. It never does. This episode is about the long, quiet war between who you are and who you think you're allowed to be. Kate's shift didn't come from one single moment. It came in pieces: a voice in a park that moved her and her toddler away from danger. A skin cancer diagnosis that stripped her of every way she'd been performing. A six-year-old girl making a deal with her dead grandfather in a dark bathroom and then spending two decades honoring it. What she eventually found wasn't just peace with her gift. It was herself. What You'll Hear: How growing up feeling "too sensitive" became the foundation of a career helping others The moment Kate heard a voice in a park that may have saved her daughter's life, and what it finally pushed her to do Why a skin cancer diagnosis became the unexpected turning point that made her stop deferring and start leading What it looks like to fight the thing you were born for, and what finally makes you stop How Kate shifted her career from reading for others to teaching everyone that the ability is already theirs The story of a six-year-old girl, a closed bathroom door, and a grandfather she refused to talk to for nearly twenty years Guest Bio: Kate Saint Clair is a Human Intuition Expert, psychic medium, and intuitive advocate who has been teaching intuition as a practical, embodied skill since 2007. Her work is devoted to normalizing intuition and helping people trust their inner guidance with clarity and confidence. Through her books, live programs, and communities like The Clair Club, she supports people in understanding how intuition communicates through the Clairs: clear knowing, feeling, seeing, hearing, and sensing. Known for her grounded, direct approach, Kate empowers people to move from self-doubt to self-trust and live guided from the inside out. ‘Find out which Clair you use the most to access your personal Intuition’: https://www.katesaintclair.com/quiz A chapter of her book Be Guided and Be Great and some free resources including energy meditations, an intuition tracker, and more: https://www.katesaintclair.com/resources Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/follow Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ -- intuition development, psychic medium story, trusting yourself, childhood shame, sensitive people, spiritual awakening, self-acceptance, life shift, finding your purpose, embracing your gift Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 4 分
  • Grief: The Last Kiss on an Ordinary Tuesday

    Grief: The Last Kiss on an Ordinary Tuesday
    2026/09/23
    Maybe you know what it is to finally exhale. To reach a season where the noise quiets down, the plan starts to work, and for the first time you let yourself believe things might actually be okay. Ryan was 24 and living in Denver when he reached that place. He had married young, moved more times than he could count, and spent his whole life feeling unsettled. And then, quietly, life started to come together. One ordinary Tuesday he went to work, and at lunch he got a call that his wife had not shown up for hers. She had been killed that morning by their next door neighbor. What followed was almost twenty years Ryan spent trying to outrun that day, through grief he could not name and an addiction that nearly took his life. This is the story of how he finally stopped running, and found his way back. Ryan does not tell this story to shock anyone. He tells it because he spent two decades believing he had to carry it alone, and he wants you to know that you do not. What You'll Hear What it feels like to finally feel settled after a lifetime of moving The ordinary morning that split his life into before and after How grief and addiction can quietly braid together Losing years of memory, and hiding it from everyone The lowest night that finally turned him toward help Why telling the story out loud began to set him free Guest Bio Ryan Roberts is a father of four between 3 and 16 years old and a full-time network engineer. He is the author of the memoir Fragmented: The Crossroads of Trauma, Addiction and Recovery. He has been sober since February 16, 2018, and his mission is to help people find recovery, hopefully sooner than he did, and to meet them wherever they are on their journey. Digital Diatribe | Substack Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/follow Subscribe to the newsletter: thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ sudden loss, losing a spouse young, grief and addiction, recovery from alcoholism, feeling settled, complicated grief, finding purpose again, sobriety, memory loss and grief, telling your story You Might Also Like: Part of Me Died That Day: Learning to Live After the Worst Day of Your Life Anger: The Drink I Never Stopped Drinking Grief: Making Something Beautiful From What Broke Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    59 分