Debbie Harrell grew up learning that the safest way to move through life was to stay quiet, responsible and unnoticed. In a home marked by emotional abuse and instability, she found refuge in school, work, friendships and the private space of her bedroom.

Those early lessons followed her into adulthood. Debbie began recognising familiar dynamics in her relationships, while continuing to rely on hard work, independence and being useful to others. A spontaneous move to Catalina Island eventually gave her something different: a close-knit community, a place to raise her children and a stronger sense of belonging.

However, a succession of events placed enormous pressure on that stability - loss, health and surviving the Route 91 mass shooting in Las Vegas.

At first, she continued doing what she had always done: working, caring for others and carrying on. It was only later, after meeting with a PTSD specialist and eventually taking medical leave, that she began to recognise how much trauma she had accumulated long before the shooting.

In this candid and often humorous conversation, Debbie discusses:

• Growing up with emotional abuse and learning to stay small
• Finding belonging and raising her children on Catalina Island
• Repeated relationship dynamics and the effects of earlier experiences
• Losing her mother and grieving what their relationship had never been
• Serious health complications during what she calls her “year of suck”
• Surviving the Route 91 mass shooting and its lasting effects
• Losing her cousin to alcohol addiction
• Recognising accumulated trauma and finally taking medical leave
• Rethinking work, productivity and identity during the pandemic
• Moving into coaching, podcasting and peer support
• Questioning accepted ideas of what is “normal”
• Using practical grounding tools for anxiety and negative self-talk

Debbie’s story is not defined by one traumatic event. It is about accumulation: how childhood experiences, relationships, grief, health, work and sudden crisis can build upon one another, and how their impact may only become clear years later.

It is also about community, humour and learning that continuing to function is not always the same as being well.

About Debbie Harrell: Debbie Harrell is a resilience and intentional living expert. As founder of New World Normal, she helps values-driven women break free from self-doubt and “shoulds” to design aligned lives that inspire change in the world around them.

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Returning guest Michelle Nermerich joins me for a special episode focused on Kundalini Reiki — how she came to it, how it differs from Usui Reiki, and why preparation matters when working with kundalini energy.

Michelle, a certified holistic practitioner, shares her experience with Kundalini Reiki attunements, chakra balancing, crystalline Reiki, past-life Reiki, and the different ways she uses energy work in her practice.

In this episode, we talk about:

• Michelle’s path into Kundalini Reiki
• the difference between Kundalini Reiki and Usui Reiki
• what can happen during a kundalini awakening
• why preparation, grounding, and guidance matter
• crystalline Reiki, chakra balancing, and hands-on energy work
• distance attunements and learning Reiki online
• how energy work can affect the body, emotions, and intuition
• simple ways to begin noticing energy in your own hands

This conversation is for listeners who are curious about Reiki, energy healing, or the different forms of spiritual practice available today. It offers a grounded look at Kundalini Reiki, including both the possibilities and the need for care and discernment when exploring it.

About: After a major accident and an abusive relationship, Michelle Nermerich turned her personal healing journey into a mission to empower others. As a certified holistic practitioner, she combines sound healing, Kundalini Reiki, mindset practices, and mindful movement to help clients overcome their own obstacles. Today, she is dedicated to guiding people toward deep personal growth, inner peace, and lasting transformation.

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Certified Holistic Practitioner, Michelle Nermerich joins me from Canada to talk about identity, chronic pain, domestic abuse, and the healing practices that eventually became part of her work with others.

Michelle’s story moves through several major turning points:

• growing up in a Catholic family with German heritage and being bullied because of that background
• living with undiagnosed dyslexia until the end of high school
• experiencing childhood sexual assault and later having that experience validated
• training in graphic design before a serious car accident changed what her body could manage
• moving into work as an aesthetician, then having to change direction again because of severe chemical allergies
• spending 22 years in a relationship that began with love bombing and became controlling and abusive
• living with fibromyalgia, chronic pain, medication, brain fog and PTSD
• rebuilding through movement, strength training, breathwork, meditation, sound healing, tuning forks, Reiki and neurohealth practices

Michelle also talks about how she began exploring different tools first for herself, and how those practices now inform her work with clients through sound healing, breathwork, meditation, Reiki, chakra balancing massage, and holistic aesthetics.

This conversation includes references to childhood sexual assault, domestic abuse, physical violence, suicidal thoughts, chronic pain, and alternative healing practices. Please listen with care and take what feels useful for you.

This episode is not medical advice. It is a personal story about self-trust, rebuilding, and exploring different forms of support when life, health, and relationships force everything to change.

About: After a major accident and an abusive relationship, Michelle Nermerich turned her personal healing journey into a mission to empower others. As a certified holistic practitioner, she combines sound healing, Kundalini Reiki, mindset practices, and mindful movement to help clients overcome their own obstacles. Today, she is dedicated to guiding people toward deep personal growth, inner peace, and lasting transformation.

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Ashley Holmes, a holistic fertility coach whose work grew out of her own experience with grief, unexplained infertility, motherhood, yoga, Ayurveda, and nervous system healing, joins me this week.

Ashley grew up on a farm in a small Canadian town. After the sudden death of her older brother, her family life changed dramatically, and she later left Canada for New Zealand in search of a fresh start. That time abroad deepened her love of children and eventually led her to meet her husband.

Years later, Ashley and her husband faced unexplained infertility. She shares what it was like to go through fertility testing, medication, emotional stress, and eventually become pregnant with twins.

Ashley also talks about the practices that changed how she understood her body, thoughts, stress, and fertility. Through yoga, Ayurveda, meditation, Reiki, and trauma-informed work, she began to approach pregnancy in a more conscious and supported way. She later conceived her third child naturally, and those experiences now shape the way she supports women and couples navigating fertility challenges.

This episode also looks at the loneliness many people feel while trying to conceive, why support is not always the same as advice, and how simply being listened to can make a real difference.

We discuss:

• Ashley’s childhood in rural Canada
• Losing her brother and carrying grief for years
• Moving to New Zealand and beginning again
• Unexplained infertility and fertility treatment
• Becoming pregnant with twins
• Yoga, Ayurveda, Reiki, and trauma-informed support
• Conceiving her third child naturally
• Conscious pregnancy and nervous system support
• The loneliness of fertility struggles
• How friends and family can offer better support
• Yoga Nidra as a simple reset practice

About: Ashley Holmes is a Holistic Fertility Coach and spiritual guide who helps women reconnect with their inner wisdom to naturally conceive and heal. Drawing from Ayurveda, yoga philosophy, and energy medicine, she empowers clients to release limiting beliefs and embody wholeness. Her work is rooted in the understanding that true transformation begins from within - without needing to seek outside validation or authority.

Connect at: FB, IG, FB Group, Website

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Yoga therapist Mandy Mona speaks about family, faith, motherhood, body image, relationship strain, yoga therapy, pregnancy loss, and learning how to support yourself and others through difficult seasons of life.

Mandy shares how early losses in her family left her with questions about faith, God, and grief that she did not yet have the language to understand. She also reflects on growing up in a large, busy family, becoming a young mother, navigating a complicated relationship that later became her marriage, and learning how childhood experiences can follow people into adult relationships.

Yoga first entered Mandy’s life as a physical outlet, but over time, it became something much deeper. Through teacher training, work in treatment centres, and yoga therapy, she began to understand the connection between the body, emotions, breath, mental health, and lived experience.

Mandy also speaks about the loss of her son, Tyson, during pregnancy, after first learning she had been carrying twins. She shares how her family has continued to honour him, and what she has learned about supporting someone who is grieving in practical, grounded ways.

This is a gentle conversation about family, healing, faith, the body, and the many ways people learn to keep living alongside what they have carried.

Topics include:

• Growing up in a large, creative family with sports, siblings, and different personalities
• Questioning faith after early family losses and not having a clear language for grief
• Becoming a young mother while navigating relationship strain, family pressure, and uncertainty
• Body image, pregnancy, and the impact of comments that stay with us longer than people realise
• Discovering yoga first as a physical outlet, then as a deeper therapeutic practice
• Working in treatment centres and seeing people beyond addiction, diagnosis, or circumstance
• The difference between commercial yoga and yoga therapy as an integrative practice
• Pregnancy loss, stillbirth, family grief, and finding ways to honour Mandy’s son Tyson
• How to support someone who is grieving without asking them to explain everything they need

About: Mandy Mona is a passionate, experienced yoga therapist dedicated to helping people reconnect with their bodies and trust their intuition through movement, breath and mindful awareness.

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Wellness coach Amanda Bearce joins me to talk about growing up with fear, instability, and a nervous system that never fully learned how to rest.

Amanda shares how her father’s severe mental health struggles shaped her childhood, including years of stalking, disrupted sleep, and a constant sense of uncertainty. She reflects on how those early experiences followed her into adolescence and adulthood — through school, relationships, anxiety, self-blame, and an abusive relationship that mirrored some of the instability she had known before.

We touch on Amanda’s healing process, including therapy, EMDR, an ADHD diagnosis, and her move from IT into wellness coaching. She explains how therapy helped her understand trauma and triggers, while coaching helped her begin to look forward, rebuild self-trust, and discover what calm could actually feel like.

We cover:

• Growing up with fear, uncertainty, and a parent with severe mental health issues
• Childhood stalking, disrupted sleep, and not feeling safe at home
• How trauma can show up as reactivity, anxiety, stomach aches, and overwhelm
• Leaving high school, getting a GED, and finding another route forward
• Recognizing patterns in an abusive relationship
• Therapy, EMDR, ADHD diagnosis, and understanding nervous system responses
• The difference between therapy and coaching in Amanda’s healing process
• Moving from IT into wellness coaching
• Protecting your energy without turning self-care into another obligation
• Practical self-care tools for people who feel overloaded or constantly “on”

This episode is for anyone who has lived in survival mode, struggled to understand their own reactions, or wondered whether calm can be learned later in life.

About: Amanda Bearce is a board-certified health and wellness coach and the founder of Simply Wellness with Amanda. She helps women who are exhausted from doing it all slow down, tune in, and nurture their well-being through sustainable self-care, so that they can feel more present, energised, and well in both their personal and professional lives.

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In this special episode, I welcome back Angela Jamieson to talk about her unusually titled book, Using No. 2 to Get to No. 1: The Shockingly Insightful, Full-of-Crap Self-Help Book.

Yes, the book really does connect poop and personal development — and, as Angela explains, that is exactly the point. Through humour, digestive metaphors, personal stories, and very relatable observations, Angela explores how letting go is not only something the body does but also something we often need to do, emotionally, mentally, and in the way we approach life.

Angela shares how the idea for the book first appeared many years ago, why it took time to become what it is now, and how her own experiences with family, work, parenting, loss, self-help, and everyday human awkwardness shaped the final version. The conversation touches on everything from toilet paper rationing and international toilets to comparison, people-pleasing, conscious choices, and why no one else’s personal development formula can be copied exactly.

We also discuss the link between the book and Angela’s work around relaxed productivity — especially the idea that life does not always need to be approached with more pressure, more achievement, or more seriousness. Sometimes, the most useful insights come through laughter, honest reflection, and remembering that we are all human.

This episode is a funny, grounded, and surprisingly thoughtful conversation about self-help, connection, letting go, and learning to trust your own internal diagnostics.

Angela’s book is available through major book retailers, including ebook formats, and the audiobook is expected to be available through Audible.

About: Angela Jamieson is a former engineer turned Relaxed Productivity Advocate, speaker, publisher, and bestselling author. She helps busy professionals get more done by doing less—but smarter. She's recently published Using No. 2 to Get to No. 1, the cheekiest self-help book you didn’t know you needed.

Connect at: LinkedIn, IG, Website, Aimee Bronson

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Author and creator of Relaxed Productivity, Angela Jamieson, joins me to speak about identity, culture, ambition, family history, grief, creativity, and what it means to redefine success.

Born in Canada to Chinese immigrant parents, Angela grew up between cultures, with family roots connected to the building of the Canadian railroad and prairie life in Saskatchewan. Her early love of maths, music, writing, and travel eventually led her into engineering — a career that took her from Canada to the Netherlands and Brunei, while raising children abroad and building a life across continents.

We explore:

• growing up Chinese Canadian while feeling culturally shaped by more than one world
• how travel, family history, and education influenced Angela’s career path
• building an international engineering career while raising children abroad
• the loss of Angela’s father and how it changed her view of success
• the idea of relaxed productivity and why doing less can sometimes create more
• creativity, romance writing, spirituality, and the different parts of a life that do not always fit neatly together

After years of professional ambition and leadership, her father’s cancer diagnosis and death made her question what she was working so hard for. That turning point led her into personal development, a more spiritual yet still practical way of thinking, and into creating her work around “relaxed productivity.”

This is a wide-ranging conversation about belonging, achievement, family, creativity, and learning to build a life that makes room for more than one version of who you are.

About: Angela Jamieson is a former engineer turned Relaxed Productivity Advocate, speaker, publisher, and bestselling author. She helps busy professionals get more done by doing less—but smarter. She's recently published Using No. 2 to Get to No. 1, the cheekiest self-help book you didn’t know you needed.

Connect at: LinkedIn, IG, Website, Aimee Bronson

We'd love to hear from you 🥰.

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