Erica and Spencer met in an online widow support group. They’d both recently lost their spouses. Within months they were married and working to blend their eleven kids together into one family. Today’s episode is about blending families, learning to parent someone else’s children and finding ways to honor the spouse that came before you. It’s never going to be easy or perfect. It’s a journey and a beautiful one.

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After Alexei Brovarnik received a K-1 visa he had 90 days to marry his American fiance Loren. The entire engagement and lead up to their wedding was captured by the reality television show 90 Day Fiance on TLC. For better or worse they lived the beginning of their marriage under a media microscope, enduring constant criticism and judgement and watching their most intimate moments, good and bad, played back to them on the small screen and the Internet. It’s so easy to judge someone else’s marriage, especially a marriage that we’re watching unfold on television, like a soap opera. But Loren and Alex have no regrets about putting it all out there for everyone to see.

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In 2017 a doctor told Brian Wallach he might only have six months left to live. He was only 37, but he’d started having trouble grasping a pen. His hands would shake. His wife Sandra was the one who told him he had to see a doctor. That’s when he learned he had ALS. Instead of turning inwards Sandra and Brian, both former Obama staffers, are using their unique skills from working on campaigns, as lawyers and with nonprofits to try to raise $100 million for ALS research in the hopes of finding a cure to save Brian’s life.  

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Only 1% of the people who jump off of the Golden Gate Bridge survive. Kevin Hines was that 1%. From the moment his feet left the bridge he knew he didn’t want to die. Surviving that leap sent him into a psychiatric ward. That’s where he met his wife Margaret. She loved him for his honesty and his bravery and how he wasn’t afraid to show the parts of him that were still broken. Kevin still lives with mental illness. He still lives with suicidal inclinations. But every time those thoughts even begin to creep into his brain he turns to Margaret and says—“I need help now.”

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Committed is back for season 3! On October 9th host Jo Piazza will once again peel back the curtain on a marriage to bring you the intimate and raw stories of couples trying to make it work.

This season, Jo talks with a couple reeling from a fatal diagnosis of ALS, two husbands who sold their home for a nomadic life on the open road living in an RV, a husband and wife who decided to invite another woman into their marriage, a couple who broadcast their engagement to the world on the show 90 Day Fiance, and many more. So join us for season 3. We’re all still figuring this out… together.

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 On this bonus episode, Jo shares an excerpt from her novel, How to Be Married, that inspired this podcast.

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We followed Sarah and her fiancé Spider for nine months, through their wedding planning, trying to have a baby, a miscarriage and through Spider’s detention with ICE just a few months before their wedding.

Sarah depends on Spider for more than love and emotional support. She’s legally blind and she relies on Spider to help her get through her day. She can’t drive. There aren’t many jobs she can do.

Sarah and Spider have always been nervous about Spider’s immigration status but it took on a new weight and meaning once they got engaged and started to plan to have a family. They decided they wouldn’t let Spider’s status stop them from having a family. This is their journey to try to figure out how to live in a constant state of limbo.

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Ashley DiBella is so proud of her husband Juan and his work. She wishes she could sing it from the rooftops, but she can’t because a lot of people have very strong opinions about what Juan does. Now Ashley wants to set the record straight about what it’s really like to be married to a border patrol agent, the dangers her husband faces, the things she’s scared of and the good things he does that aren’t usually mentioned by the media. This is the first episode in our two part season finale. The first part is what it’s like to be married to a border patrol agent. The second is what it’s like to be in love with and want to marry someone who crosses the border illegally.

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Shannon is a survivor. As a child she was repeatedly abused and raped. She became pregnant by her rapist at age 12. She wanted to commit suicide as a teenager. All of the trauma made her believe she wasn't capable of love. She constantly felt like she had to earn love, affection and protection. And then she met Lee in college. Lee had never experienced abuse or trauma, but he knew he wanted to make Shannon feel safe and loved. Today Shannon and Lee are married with six children. This is their story of strength and bravery, of what it takes to rebuild your life and embrace love, marriage and parenthood after a childhood of abuse and assault. This is a story about what it takes to be a partner who learns how to make that survivor feel safe and how to build a family that looks nothing like the family you grew up with. 

For a long time Shannon wasn’t sure if she even wanted kids. Growing up the way she had was enough to make her think she might not be able to be the kind of parent she wanted to be. But meeting Lee and falling in love with him changed that. 

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What’s it like to be married to a famous professional athlete. Samantha Didn’t know much about professional race car driving when she met the bad boy NASCAR star Kyle Busch. But after they fell in love she was thrust into the wild traveling circus of NASCAR. It wasn’t part of her plan. But real life isn’t about plans. Kyle and Samatha were about to embark on an incredible journey of love, marriage, infertility and hope.

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