Both/And

One year ago, Jill lost both her cats and the connection with the man she loved started falling apart. Now, the morning after Christmas (a holiday she hasn't celebrated in years), she's sitting with mounting losses: him, her cats, her therapist (on maternity leave), and still no SSDI decision. She talks about the freeze response - when there are too many losses at once to cope with - and what it means to survive everything simultaneously without knowing how or why. It’s dark, and it’s honest - that’s what survival often is.

Jill re-introduces what Both/And means for survival - not just surviving trauma - surviving life after trauma, pain that won't go away, and accepting that maybe this is as good as it gets. She talks about the man she's never met and fell in love with anyway, why her nervous system won't let go even though her brain knows better, and what it means when accepting breadcrumbs is the only way to keep from starving. For trauma survivors with no support system, survival doesn't always look healthy and that's okay.

Jill hasn't recorded in weeks - ADHD and C-PTSD make sticking with things nearly impossible. In this episode, she shares what rock bottom looked like 18 years ago when she was dying from an eating disorder, the survival instincts that saved her life, and why she's hoping those instincts return when she needs them again. She's facing her SSDI disability hearing results, potential homelessness, and complete isolation. This is what survival looks like when you're not trying to thrive - you're just trying not to hit bottom.

This week, Jill explores the both/and of loving and hating simultaneously - for the Green Bay Packers and for someone she's never met but fell in love with anyway. She talks about emotion dysregulation, why she can't just 'stop watching' or 'walk away,' and what it means to hold two impossible feelings at once while hoping 'what if they come back?' Love is foundational. Hate is valid. Both are present. That's survival.

This week, Jill shares what happened when she bravely told someone about the podcast - and got crickets. The rejection and isolation brought up a blog post she wrote years ago about being Autistic and neurodivergent in a neurotypical world, feeling misunderstood, and masking through 'cute weird' vs 'scary weird.' She explores the both/and of understanding your brain works differently while social rejection still hurts the same.

In this episode, Jill talks about confidence in failure, her lifelong struggle to write her story, and how a late-in-life ADHD diagnosis helped her understand why.

Now, she's finally making progress with an unlikely assistant: AI. She reflects on what it means to do something imperfectly and keep going anyway - the both/and of survival.

In this pilot episode, Jill introduces herself and the Both/And podcast. She shares her story - living with autism, ADHD, C-PTSD, and chronic emotional pain - and explains why she's creating a survival podcast for people who are tired of toxic positivity and recovery culture.

You'll learn about the both/and framework from dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), why choosing both/and over either/or is a daily battle for Jill, and what to expect from future episodes: weekly reflections on surviving when maybe this is as good as it gets.

Topics covered: mental health, neurodivergence, autism, ADHD, complex trauma, chronic pain, survival (not recovery), DBT skills, and accepting life as it is.

This podcast is for anyone who feels like they've tried everything, who's exhausted by being told to just try harder, and who needs to know someone else is still here too.