And Then Everything Changed

Diana Kupershmit and her husband had no warning that their first baby Emma would be born with a rare genetic disorder that would leave her profoundly physically and intellectually disabled. A young couple who had been high school sweethearts, they tried to grapple with the  devastating news. When a social worker familiar with their case suggested they give Emma up for adoption, they decided she  would be better off.

But soon, pregnant with her second child and wracked by regret and concern over news of Emma’s declining health, Diana realized she needed to get her daughter back. 

In this episode Diana shares the story of emigrating to the US from Soviet Ukraine in 1979 along with millions of other Jews escaping systemic discrimination, meeting her true love, and how first their profound sorrow about Emma and then their profound love for her shaped their life. 

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Sabrina Osso describes her childhood as stolen. Her father was abusive to her mother and she witnessed violence and endured trauma for 15 years. She was an extremely quiet child, was bullied in school, and her fear of both home and school created almost incapacitating difficulty for her. By high school she was suicidal but wouldn’t get help until college when a friend urged her to seek therapy. 

Through years of hard emotional work she began to heal, finally realized her dream of becoming a dancer, and founded a company whose mission it is to certify homes and establish procedures to facilitate eviction in the event of domestic abuse. Violence stole so many years from her when she was too young to escape, but Sabrina has created a passionate life of advocacy, courage, and the confidence that she is worthy of love, contentment, and peace. 

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Kelly McMenamin and Katie McMenamin are sisters and organizational specialists dedicated to helping others organize according to personality. After years of disagreeing with one another on how to declutter and whether to file or pile, they co-founders PixiesDidIt! After 10+ years of field research, they discovered that how you organize is hardwired in your brain and organization isn’t about making it perfect. It's about finding stuff when you need it. They created an assessment that calculates personality and harnesses individual strengths and preferences to transform living spaces into ideal places. On this episode Kelly and Katie help usher in spring and share some of their best tips for smoothing out the edges in pandemic-weary people and homes. 

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Andrea Wilson Woods was barely an adult herself when she got legal guardianship over her 8-year old sister Adrienne after their mother called to say she no longer wanted to be a mother. An actress trying to make it in LA, Andrea worked hard to make ends meet while they navigated their new relationship in which Andrea became Adrienne’s mother first, her sister second, and her friend third. 

Then, when Adrienne was 15 and experiencing profound pain she was diagnosed with stage IV liver cancer. Andrea focused on giving her sister who was now her daughter the best 147 days she could in the time she had left. From meeting Jay Leno to spending the day with Dave Navarro of Jane’s Addiction, Adrienne made every moment count. As she lay dying, Adrienne taught Andrea how to live and Andrea found the strength to change her own life. This episode of And Then Everything Changed is a story of motherhood, adulthood, sisterhood, and discovering who you are meant to be.

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For years, even as Laila Tarraf continued to feel disconnected from others, her belief that any vulnerability would make her soft dictated her personal life and her work as an HR leader. The firstborn child of Lebanese parents, she was encouraged to step up and take care of the family from a young age. She sometimes resented that role but then she met and married her husband and became a mother and began a new life. A year into their marriage he had a serious motorcycle accident, was prescribed pain pills, and never stopped taking them. Over the next six years they never discussed the topic of his drug and alcohol abuse; his dependence and their marital disconnect went unsaid. Their marriage began to collapse and soon after he overdosed on opioids. It wasn't until her mother was dying that Laila was able to better understand her history with co-dependent relationships, deal with the death of her husband, and be at her mom's bedside as her life ended. Her experience informed her leadership, her mothering, and her approach to the unexpected. Her new book Strong Like Water is out now.

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Kenneth Scott’s mother had lupus while he was growing up and though they were living off of food stamps and SSI in section 8 and she was facing great hardship as a single parent she never let the rest of the family see her struggle. When she remarried, Kenneth gained siblings but his stepdad and he went head-to-head and he witnessed his new father emotionally and physically abuse his mom throughout their relationship. Sports became Kenneth’s escape, a way to cope with the trouble he saw at home and he soon excelled at football. He became #34 in the nation and had a plan to do 3 years of college football and then go to the NFL. But when he got to college the abuse he’d witnessed and the frustration he’d felt as a child surfaced and threatened the life he was building. With the support of his football program and coach he went to therapy to work on his anger issues and live the life he wanted for himself. 

He gave back to the community, fell in love, and was so close to making his NFL dream come true. But after suffering two serious injuries he realized he would need to make a tough decision; he would need to set a new course for his life.

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Even from an early age Dr. Lynette Louise knew she would grow up and have heaps of children. The victim of domestic abuse she understood all too well that what she experienced growing up was not okay and that she would protect her own children at all costs. But as a young mother she faced unreliable and unsafe partners and the challenge of navigating the foster care system and securing adequate schooling for her autistic and neuro-atypical brood. And even more painfully still, she had to confront her own shortcomings and bad relationship patterns. In her desire to keep her promise to her kids she did the hard emotional work she needed to, went back to school and got her doctorate in psychophysiology, and developed a powerful system to help retrain the brain to help the most neuro-atypical children reach breakthroughs.

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For Kacee Hoffer, finding a new identity was not easy. After stepping away from almost 12 years of diving she found it hard to find other passions, fill her time, and treat her body with compassion.

She started diving at nine years old and had been a high performing division 1 athlete at Boise State, and that's all she knew. Everything she did was connected to diving and her social life outside of the sport was almost non-existent. But during her sophomore year of college she was assigned a new coach who had no compassion for the athletes and pushed them to perform while injured and past what they could take.She began feeling depressed, anxious, and even experiencing black outs. She knew her career as a diver needed to end. 

She now coaches children and encourages their parents to enjoy the sport for what it should be: fun. Her book, “From Athlete to Human Being” tells the story of athletes that transitioned out of sports. She also coaches transitioning athletes on how to close that chapter of their life. 

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Katherine was in second grade when her mother called attention to her weight, a moment that impacted the rest of her life. From that day on her insecurities about her size and an endless cycle of shame about her body took over. She learned that a thin body was ideal and began to believe that the smaller you could get, the more valuable you would become. She chased down diet after diet and felt that she had to apologize for being ‘fat’, doing everything she could to get skinny. But when she did lose the most weight she ever had before she found she was the unhappiest that she had ever been in her life. It was this pivotal moment that she realized that body weight and her happiness did not depend on each other. 

Her journey of self-acceptance began in 2020, after she was laid off and had time to reflect on her deep-rooted beliefs and find clarity on her path. She decided that she did not want to hate herself forever and needed to break away from the behavior that was now second nature. She became active in the Body Positivity movement, launched the podcast “It’s Okay to Love Yourself”, and is now a leadership development coach who encourages women of all sizes to love themselves. 

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