Anchor Moments

Everything went fine. It's what a doctor says when the procedure worked - no complications, nothing they didn't expect. It's meant kindly, and almost every time it's said in a hospital it's the best news in the building.

For some people there's a second half.

Sabrina Fletcher was almost thirteen weeks pregnant with a baby she and her husband had lit a candle for the night she was conceived. A scan found something the doctor spent an hour explaining, turning the screen around so she could see it herself. She had seven days to decide, in a state that wouldn't let her.

She's a TFMR doula now - termination for medical reasons. If you've never heard the term, that's most of the problem, and we get into it.

I tell you about my first loss in this one, and near the end, about my sixth pregnancy. That story in full is the solo episode later this month.

A heads up: this episode is about losing a baby, and about ending a pregnancy that was wanted, after a diagnosis. There's a lot of medical trauma in it, including how she was treated during and after the procedure. There's postpartum with no baby. There's a death in the family. And near the end I talk about nearly dying in my sixth pregnancy. Take what you need, including skipping this one.

Find Sabrina: she's on Instagram at @thetfmrdoula. Her podcast is Our TFMR Stories. Her grief circle, her decision-support calls and her membership are on her site at thetfmrdoula.com.

Also mentioned: ARC - Antenatal Results and Choices (arc-uk.org), the UK organization Sabrina points people to. And Megan Devine's book, It's OK That You're Not OK.

If you're struggling, you're not alone: 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988). Postpartum Support International, 1-800-944-4773.

If you're struggling, you're not alone: 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988). Postpartum Support International, 1-800-944-4773.

This week's question: When have you known something before you could explain it -and did you listen? Come tell me on Instagram @AnchorMomentsPod.

Listen: pod.link/1884460039

Yes, I have a favorite type of road. Doesn't everyone?

A few years ago I was at a dinner with my closest friends, talking about something I genuinely love, and one of my best friends threw her head back and made a snoring noise at me. Everybody laughed. I laughed too.

And then I stopped talking about anything that mattered to me, for years.

This episode is my life in this body - what it actually costs to live in one that doesn't cooperate, and what it costs more than that to live with everybody's reactions to it.

In this one:

- Chronic Illness; AuDHD, Tourette's, OCD, dysautonomia, MDD, chronic fatigue, Ehlers-Danlos, GAD, visual processing disorder, body dysmorphia, moral scrupulosity, sensory processing...

If you have ever been called lazy by somebody who could not see what you were carrying, this one is for you. And if you have ever been the one doing the assuming, that's alright - I'd just like you to hold the conclusion a little longer next time.

The stories and views shared on Anchor Moments belong to the people telling them. They aren't always mine, and that's the point. I'm not here to agree, correct, diagnose, or decide who's right. Take what helps, and leave the rest.

Anchor Moments is a show about the moments that split a life into a before and an after, and who we became on the other side. New episodes every Wednesday.

Got a story? anchormomentspod.com

Instagram + TikTok: @anchormomentspod

Take what helps, and leave the rest.

Mik was seventeen when a doctor finally explained why he could never keep up. A congenital heart defect. He was fit, he was trying, and he got tired faster than everyone around him, and now there was a reason.

What he did with that reason is the story. He started asking what health actually is, and then followed the question for twenty years - out of New York City, onto a farm, into the soil, and eventually into the work he does now, where he argues that metabolic health and mental health are not two subjects.

Somewhere in the middle of that, in his early twenties, he cut out gluten and then dairy and met a person he had never met before. Calmer. Easier to be around. The moody, cranky, hard-to-like kid he had always assumed he simply was turned out to be, in large part, a food allergy.

And then, right after a burnout he did not see coming, he found out he needed open heart surgery. It was supposed to be open and shut. It was not.

In this one:

- The line that started this whole episode for me: "I wonder how many years I lost"

- Why his cardiologist told a scared seventeen-year-old he was completely fine - and the very deliberate reason he said it that way

- What magnesium has to do with fungus, rocks, and the way we farm

- The 3am wake-up he tried to fix with chamomile, lavender, tart cherry, hot showers, cold showers, more exercise, less exercise - and what actually turned out to be causing it

- The moment control stopped being available to him, and what he found underneath it

A heads up: open heart surgery and a recovery that went badly wrong, burnout, my own mental health crisis and hospitalization, and chronic illness on both sides of the mic. There is also a brief mention of recreational drug use. Take what you need, including skipping this one.

Not medical advice. Mik is not a clinician and neither am I, and this conversation gets specific about food, supplements and diets. Nothing here is a recommendation for your body. Talk to your own person before you change anything.

FIND MIK

- feelsila.com - the company he is building, for people navigating burnout or going on mental health leave. Currently early access, so there may be a wait list.

- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mpozin - where he writes about metabolic psychiatry and burnout

IF YOU NEED SUPPORT

- 988 - Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, call or text, US, 24/7

- findahelpline.com - free, confidential support in over 100 countries

- Job Accommodation Network - askjan.org - free, confidential guidance on workplace accommodations and medical leave in the US

- US Department of Labor - FMLA - dol.gov/agencies/whd/fmla - what job-protected medical leave actually covers

- NAMI HelpLine - 1-800-950-6264 - free peer support and navigation for mental health

The stories and views shared on Anchor Moments belong to the people telling them. They aren't always mine, and that's the point. I'm not here to agree, correct, diagnose, or decide who's right. Take what helps, and leave the rest.

Anchor Moments is a show about the moments that split a life into a before and an after, and who we became on the other side. New episodes every Wednesday.

Got a story? anchormomentspod.com

Instagram + TikTok: @anchormomentspod

Amy grew up in a house that ran on fear. Hellfire, rapture-any-minute, and a God who was mostly a punishment schedule. Being good meant being invisible. Wanting things was a sin - she circled the Sears catalog in her head, because circling with a pen got you in trouble.

So she got good. Good at reading every room, good at being whoever the person in front of her needed her to be. Good enough to build a whole adult life on it: a marriage, a career as a therapist, a flawless performance of a woman who was fine.

Then it came apart - the marriage, the family, and finally the performance itself. What's left is who you'll meet here: a trauma therapist who calls herself God's favorite problem, and the author of a book that leaves nothing out.

In this one:

• Why a little girl crawled down the hallway at night to check that her parents were still in their beds
• The difference between estrangement and parental alienation - and why Amy is careful about which word she uses
• What setting a boundary feels like in your body when you've never set one (she has a very specific answer)
• Longing versus love, and how she finally learned to tell them apart
• Why she says she even healed as a good girl
• The sunset skydive, and what jumping out of a plane had to do with posting her first video
• Amy is a licensed professional counselor and trauma therapist in Philadelphia. A hundred thousand people follow her at gods.favorite.problem. Her book, Performing Normal, is out now - and she didn't leave anything out.

Warning - it's a heavy one: childhood sexual abuse (talked about honestly, not graphically), high-control religion, an affair, and estrangement and parental alienation - on both sides of the mic. Take what you need, including skipping this one. It'll be here when you're ready.

FIND AMY

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gods.favorite.problem/
• Performing Normal, her book - out now: https://www.amywatkinsstudio.com/book
• Everything else: https://linktr.ee/gods.favorite.problem

IF YOU NEED SUPPORT

• RAINN - National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-4673, or chat at online.rainn.org. Free, confidential, 24/7
• Recovering from Religion - recoveringfromreligion.org - free peer support for people questioning or leaving high-control religion
• National Domestic Violence Hotline - thehotline.org, 1-800-799-7233 - includes coercive control, not just physical abuse
• 988 - Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, call or text, US, 24/7
• findahelpline.com - free, confidential support in over 100 countries

The stories and views shared on Anchor Moments belong to the people telling them. They aren't always mine, and that's the point. I'm not here to agree, correct, diagnose, or decide who's right. Take what helps, and leave the rest.

Got a story? anchormomentspod.com

Instagram + TikTok: @anchormomentspod

Austin Bridges treats anxiety, OCD, and trauma for a living. He spent the first twenty-seven years of his own life being told by doctors that he had it backwards - that he wasn't sick and anxious, he was anxious and therefore sick.

Reacting to formula at three months old. Celiac at twenty-seven. Four more years for the nausea, and then a two-hour appointment with a doctor his mother found, who listened to all of it and said he knew what it was and could fix it. Austin cried. Not because he was finally being helped - because for once, he wasn't interesting.

In this episode:

- The two diagnoses he calls the turning points of his life, and the twenty-seven years in between

- The gastroenterologist who answered him with "which one of us went to medical school," and the practice that wouldn't let him switch

- The one thing every doctor who actually helped him had in common, and it isn't credentials

- The man in the yellow hat, and why getting used to the hat never works

- What anxiety is actually made of - he says it's only ever two things

- The pill in his hand, and the sentence his OCD used to keep him from swallowing it

- Why he thinks people with OCD are the most courageous clients he works with

- The rug in my therapist's office, and what he told me to do about it

A heads up: chronic illness, medical dismissal, panic attacks, compulsions described in detail, a significant weight change on a medication, and one brief mention from me of a time I was suicidal. Austin also names several clinical OCD subtypes in passing. Nothing here is medical advice.

This week's question: what's your version of the rug? The small thing you can't leave alone that you already know isn't about the thing. Come tell me on Instagram.

FIND AUSTIN

AustinBridgesTherapy.com - [email protected] - Instagram @austinbridgestherapy

MENTIONED

IOCDF - iocdf.org - directory of OCD therapists

EMDRIA - emdria.org - directory of EMDR therapists

Stopping the Noise in Your Head by Reid Wilson

Gut Feelings by Douglas Drossman, MD - the doctor who diagnosed him

Celiac Disease Foundation - celiac.org

IF YOU NEED SUPPORT

988 - Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, call or text, US, 24/7

findahelpline.com - free, confidential support in over 100 countries

The stories and views shared on Anchor Moments belong to the people telling them. They aren't always mine, and that's the point. I'm not here to agree, correct, diagnose, or decide who's right. Take what helps, and leave the rest. This show is not medical advice.

Anchor Moments is a show about the moments that split a life into a before and an after, and who we became on the other side. New episodes every Wednesday.

If this one moved something in you, send it to the person you thought about while listening. And follow so the next one finds you.

Got a story? anchormomentspod.com

Instagram + TikTok: @anchormomentspod

Mike Dyson will tell you the year that changed his life was 1993, and that everything before it was him trying to get through on his own.

He was bullied for years as a kid, some of it for being adopted, and learned early to smile while holding fear underneath. In the Marine Corps, an officer humiliated him on the parade deck when he was twenty-two. His answer wasn't to fight back - it was to become the best in every room, every time, so no one could touch him again. It worked, on the outside. Marine of the Year finalist. A business owner. An HOA president. None of it healed what was underneath.

In 1993, at the end of himself, he asked God to take his life and do whatever needed doing with the mess of it. The first thing he says he heard back: stop blaming.

In 2023, doctors found significant coronary artery disease, and he had a double bypass. Three decades after the night that changed the direction of everything, another valley he never would have picked.

In this episode:

• The night in 1993 that started everything, and the four words that began it
• The pastor who didn't know what to do with him, and the thirteen years it cost
• What the 2023 diagnosis asked of a man who thought he'd already done the hard part
• The dashboard-light reframe that changed how he holds his own anger
• Why he calls "everything happens for a reason" bad theology
• What his book, The Shadow, is actually about, and who he wrote it for
• What "God meets us in weakness, not just strength" means to him on an ordinary Tuesday

A heads up: bullying, his mother's difficult decision the week she found out she was pregnant with him in 1960, heart surgery described in detail, and a season of past domestic abuse mentioned briefly. Nothing here is medical advice.

This week's question: the first thing he says God told him was stop blaming. Who would you have to stop blaming? Come tell me on Instagram.

FIND MIKE
mikedysonauthor.com - The Shadow, available on Amazon

Facebook: Mike Dyson

IF YOU NEED SUPPORT
988 - Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, call or text, US, 24/7
findahelpline.com - free, confidential support in over 100 countries
thehotline.org - National Domestic Violence Hotline

The stories and views shared on Anchor Moments belong to the people telling them. They aren't always mine, and that's the point. I'm not here to agree, correct, diagnose, or decide who's right. Take what helps, and leave the rest. This show is not medical advice.

Anchor Moments is a show about the moments that split a life into a before and an after, and who we're still becoming because of them. New episodes every Wednesday.

If this one moved something in you, send it to the person you thought about while listening. And follow so the next one finds you.

Got a story? anchormomentspod.com
Instagram + TikTok: @anchormomentspod

My dad drove my car out to Utah, dropped me off at college, and was dead by September. I was barely eighteen.

This is what happened after, and what a man in authority said to me when I finally worked up the nerve to tell him about it.

I have never said all of this out loud. I was raised that these experiences are sacred, which is a word that does a lot of work when what it's actually doing is keeping you quiet.

In this episode:

• What I was taught to believe about experiences like this, and why "sacred, not secret" landed differently on a kid who needed to get everything exactly right
• The fork I was standing at in that dorm room, and the two-hour prayer where I asked for nothing
• The phone ringing in a room that didn't have a phone
• The woman on the window bench who sang me a song in a language she didn't understand, and what the temple told me years later when I went back to find her
• The seven words from my church leader that sent me into a faith transition I'm still in, and why I now think I needed them
• Heavy or light - the one question I taught my kids to use when nobody can tell them what's true
• Where I've actually landed, which is not where you'd expect and is not tidy

A heads up: this one is about the death of a parent and there is a lot of grief in it. It also covers being disbelieved by a religious authority, a past struggle with alcohol, and mental health. I name my religion in this episode. I'm not making a case for or against it, and this isn't the episode where I tell that whole story.

This week's question, and I mean it: has something happened to you that you couldn't explain, and you either never told anyone, or you did and they gave you their version of "that's not how it works"? And what's the thing you've never said out loud because of how you were raised? Come tell me on Instagram.

MENTIONED "Say It Anyway" by Rosi Golan, Mosiah 2:17-19

IF YOU NEED SUPPORT 988

- Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, call or text, US, 24/7 findahelpline.com - free, confidential support in over 100 countries dougy.org - The Dougy Center. Free peer grief support, and a worldwide directory of grief programs you can search by where you live reclamationcollective.com - religious-trauma-informed therapist directory and peer support groups, for people leaving a faith and for people staying in one

The stories and views shared on Anchor Moments belong to the people telling them. This week they're mine. I'm not asking anybody to take them on. Take what helps, and leave the rest.

Anchor Moments is a show about the moments that split a life into a before and an after, and who we became on the other side. New episodes every Wednesday.

If this one moved something in you, send it to the person you thought about while you were listening. And follow so the next one finds you.

Got a story? anchormomentspod.com Instagram + TikTok: @anchormomentspod

Talia Smith was raised by her grandmother, called her every day on the drive home from work, and was holding her hand when she died. She spent ten years as her husband's full-time caregiver after he broke his neck. In April 2021 she got a urinary tract infection, asked good questions, took the antibiotic exactly as prescribed, and the next morning she put her foot on the floor and fell.

Five months later she was admitted to hospice.

This is the story of what it costs to be the person who did everything right.

In this episode:

• The grandmother she was glued to from birth, and the grief she says she has never recovered from
• The regret question she asked her grandmother, and then years later asked her grandfather, and the identical answer they both gave
• The voicemail meant to reassure her about her husband, and what she heard underneath it
• Ten years of caregiving, and the closeness she says she'd never had in any other relationship
• The UTI her doctor said she would never normally have treated, and the prescription she got anyway
• The question she asked before she swallowed the first pill, and the answer she was given
• The ER doctor who named the drug before she could finish her sentence, told her he sees it often, and sent her home with ibuprofen
• The word a doctor finally handed her, and the single story she found when she searched it
• The friend who turned out to live 45 minutes down the road

A heads up on this one: medical trauma, medical dismissal, disability, hospice, and the death of a grandparent. Talia describes a rapid physical decline in real detail. Take care of yourself while you listen.

One more thing. Talia's microphone stopped recording partway through and neither of us knew. There is no backup. What you'll hear is the first part of a much longer conversation, and the part that's missing is the part she came to give. I explain it properly at the end, and I'd rather tell you than have you think she trailed off.

This week's question: Has there been a time you knew something about your own body, and you were told you were wrong? What did that cost you, and what would you do differently now? Come tell me on Instagram at Anchor Moments Pod.

FIND TALIA

• All her links: https://linktr.ee/finding.vulneraries
• Her site, This Is Floxed, and the support group she runs - both are on the linktree above

IF YOU NEED SUPPORT

• FDA MedWatch - report a reaction to a medication yourself: fda.gov/medwatch or 1-800-FDA-1088. You don't need anyone's permission.
• 988 - Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, call or text, US, 24/7
• findahelpline.com - free, confidential support in over 100 countries
• Caregiver Action Network - caregiveraction.org - support for family caregivers

The stories and views shared on Anchor Moments belong to the people telling them. They aren't always mine, and that's the point. I'm not here to agree, correct, diagnose, or decide who's right. Take what helps, and leave the rest. This show is not medical advice.

Anchor Moments is a show about the moments that split a life into a before and an after, and who we became on the other side. New episodes every Wednesday.

If this one moved something in you, send it to the person you thought about while you were listening. And if you're not following yet, follow so the next one finds you.

Got a story? anchormomentspod.com
Instagram + TikTok: @anchormomentspod

Ellen was nineteen years old and six weeks married when a Marine came to her door to tell her that her husband had been killed in Vietnam.

She told him he was a murderer and that he didn't dare come inside.

What happened after that is the part nobody prepared her for. Her family was embarrassed by her. Her friends wanted to go get a beer and she wanted to know what happens to us when we die. She turned to her husband's best friend, which made everything worse, and then she spent months being what she calls wild, because she had decided she was not going to be a widow and she was not going to mourn. And underneath all of it, the night before he died, she had started seeing things. A being. A message about an eagle's wing. She was certain she was losing her mind.

She was not losing her mind. She was becoming a mystic, and it would take her years to accept that.

A heads up on this one: we talk about the death of a spouse in war, grief, an affair, the death of a partner during surgery, cancer, divorce, and there's one brief moment where Ellen says that in the months after her husband died she didn't want to be alive.

Something to chew on this week: Was there ever a moment when you were told "that's not how it works," and some part of you knew better? Did you listen to them, or to yourself?

FIND ELLEN

• Website: https://ellenmlaura.com/
• Her podcast, Enter the Mystic's Garden (free): https://ellenmlaura.com/enter-the-mystics-garden-podcast/
• Blossom Joyfully: https://blossomjoyfully.com/
• Her Substack: Velvet Realms
• Her books, including The Shaman's Bulldog and her memoir Love in the Shadow of Saigon, are on Amazon

IF YOU NEED SUPPORT

• 988 - Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, call or text, US, 24/7
• findahelpline.com - free, confidential support in over 100 countries
• What's Your Grief - whatsyourgrief.com - grief resources for all kinds of loss
• The Dougy Center - dougy.org - grief support, including for young people
• Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS) - taps.org - 800-959-TAPS - support for families grieving a military death

The stories and views shared on Anchor Moments belong to the people telling them. I'm not here to agree, correct, diagnose, or decide who's right. Take what helps, and leave the rest.

Anchor Moments is a show about the moments that split a life into a before and an after, and who we became on the other side. New episodes every Wednesday.

Got a story? anchormomentspod.com
Instagram + TikTok: @anchormomentspod

Dr. Emily Hill has been asking the same question since her twenties: why am I here?

On paper, she already had the answer. A PhD in computer science, a professorship built perfectly around a growing family, work she was genuinely good at and genuinely loved. And still, a quiet pull kept telling her to leave it - with no plan, no safety net, and five kids counting on her.

This is the story of what happened when she followed that pull. Emily walks us through the reinvention that came next: leaving the career she loved, building a business from nothing, watching a lot of it come apart, and finding out what actually carried her through when the plan didn't. Her answer, again and again, was faith and a stubborn inner guidance she learned to trust - the belief that everything in life is happening for us, not to us, if we're willing to look at it from the light instead of the shadow.

She is, by her own description, an agent of change: a seven-figure founder, a former professor, a funeral singer, a mom of five. By the end of our conversation, Krista crowns her the Queen of Reframe. We get into how she found her faith, the identity work of shedding a lifetime of people-pleasing, why she believes a business can't grow past the capacity of its owner, and what it looks like to keep going when the numbers say stop.

If you've ever built the "right" life and felt like a stranger inside it, this one is for you.

This week's question: Emily's whole practice comes down to one reframe - that everything is happening for you, not to you. Think of the hardest thing you're carrying right now. What might shift if you looked at it as happening for you? Come tell us on Instagram.

Find Dr. Emily: Dr. Emily Hill holds a PhD in computer science and works at the intersection of business, tech, AI, and identity.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/emhill07
emhill.com
https://elev8tek.com/

A little disclaimer: The stories and views you hear on this show belong to the people telling them. They aren't always mine, and that's kind of the point. I'm not here to agree, correct, diagnose, or decide who's right. My job is to listen, to hold space, and to let each person's experience stand as theirs. Take what helps you, and leave the rest.

Content warning: This episode includes honest discussion of business hardship and financial pressure - a business coming apart, debt, and hard decisions - alongside faith and matters of spirituality. Please take what helps and leave the rest.

If you're struggling, you're not alone:

US and Canada: Call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, available 24/7.

International: Find a helpline in 200+ countries at findahelpline.com.

Love the show? The best way to help Anchor Moments grow is to share this episode with the one person who came to mind while you listened, and to follow or subscribe so the next story finds you too. If you have a minute, a rating or review helps more than you'd think.

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