Committed

Today we have a very special episode of the podcast Love Letters in our feed. Ever since Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey was a kid, music has played a major role in her life. “Eye of the Tiger” got her pumped for basketball games. She caught sets from Joan Baez and Melissa Etheridge working as a cocktail waitress. When she came out in her early 20s, she found solace in the Indigo Girls. These days, the governor uses music to center herself, especially at hard moments. She and her partner, Joanna Lydgate, sit down with Meredith to talk about how music helps them in their lives and in their relationship.

Get more Love Letters here.

This episode is brought to you by Better Help. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/COMMITTED, and get on your way to being your best self.

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Jessica found out her husband Steve was gay a year and a half into her marriage. They broke up, got back together and tried to make it work because they were living in a very conservative Christian community. And in the midst of it all she met Matt and fell hard for him. Eventually Jessica and Matt got together and today they work with Jessica's ex-husband Steve on a podcast.

They share stories of love, marriage, coming out, divorce, remarriage, and co-parenting to help others know they are not alone. They are trying to break down stereo-types about what divorce and co-parenting look like every single day. It isn't always easy and it definitely isn't always perfect but they are constantly trying to find new ways to support one another.

Listen and subscribe to the Husband in Law Podcast here.

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For the past five years, Alex and Christina had been running a bookstore that is both their primary income as a couple and their passion.  They opened A Novel Idea, bookshop in Philly, a year before the pandemic hit. And when the city closed all of its stores, they had to completely rethink everything about their small business.  They had no one to lean on, but one another. For better. Or worse. This is a story about perseverance and pivoting, about love and about following your dreams.  It's about how the things that should break us often bring us closer together. 

Learn more about A Novel Idea here.

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Molly and Ash met when Molly was in her late thirties, newly separated from her husband and the mother of a four year old. She was just started to explore her sexuality and wasn’t looking for anything serious. But you know what they say…make plans and the universe laughs. Molly and Ash fell in love and quickly knew they wanted to be together, but that meant navigating how to blend a family and reconciling the fact that Ash wanted their own biological child and Molly did not want any more kids. The two of them are here today (and spoiler, they have a new baby) because they put in the work. Their story is a gorgeous narrative of the ways we need to change, adapt and grow for love and family.

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Manny struggled with porn addiction for years. He told himself that when he met the right woman he would be done. Then he met Becca and knew she was the one. But the night before his wedding he was still watching porn and he was so far gone in his addiction that he couldn't perform sexually on his wedding night. Manny and Becca struggled with Manny's porn addiction for years until both of them finally reached a breaking point. This is the story about how they made it out the other side.

Learn more about Manny and Becca's porn addiction courses at their Team Vulnerable website here.

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The FBI came to Carl and Amy Nelson's house in the middle of the pandemic. That's when Carl found out that he was under investigation for a federal crime.  Over the next two years, the couple had most of their money and assets seized by the government.  What wasn't taken, they had to sell to pay for lawyers.

They lived in constant fear of the FBI returning one morning and arresting Carl in front of their four daughters.  And to this day, both Amy and Carl insist that Carl has done nothing wrong,  and he has yet to actually be charged with a crime.  But still the two of them have had their lives ripped apart in ways that could have completely destroyed their marriage.

People ask Amy all the time. Why are you still with him? People can't believe she stuck by his side. She can't imagine not doing it. 

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We're closing out the Committed podcast with an intimate look back at our favorite episodes. Join host Jo Piazza and producer Ramsey Yount as we recount the shows that made us laugh, the ones that made us cry and the one that has helped save Jo's own relationship. This has been an incredible journey with all of you. Thanks for listening.

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In 2006 Lee Woodruff got the phone call that no wife ever wants to get. Her husband Bob, then the co-anchor of ABC World News Tonight, had been hit by a roadside bomb in Iraq. In the explosion of rocks and metal, Bob was critically injured, sustaining shrapnel wounds to the head.

He was evacuated to Bethesda Maryland where he was put into a medically induced coma for five weeks to allow his brain to heal. Bob and Lee had already been together for a long time, they had four young kids and Lee had no idea what their life would look like moving forward. Lee recounts her love story and their family's journey beautifully in her New York Times bestseller In an Instant, but I have to say that there was nothing like hearing both Bob and Lee tell their story together in this interview. This is a story about the unexpected, both the unexpected tragedies that upend our lives, but also the unexpected joy that we find in the aftermath of those tragedies. 

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In April of 2020 the writer Amy Bloom traveled to Switzerland to help her husband Brian die with dignity before he was plunged into the long term suffering of living with a dementing disease. She writes about their late in life romance and how she helped Brian to end his life in her gorgeous memoir In Love. This story hits close to home for any of us who have ever watched a loved one suffer and felt helpless to try to alleviate their pain. My own dad was bed ridden with muscular dystrophy for eight years before he finally passed in 2016 and I know that if I could have, I would have done anything to help him do what he wanted to do to have a more dignified death. That is exactly what Amy managed to do. Her story isn't always easy to hear, but I promise it will stick with you for a long, long time.

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Last fall Renee moved from Singapore to Los Angeles to be with her partner April. April calls it a grand gesture and it certainly is. But it was confusing to a lot of people because Renee and April aren't in a romantic relationship. At all. And yet they do consider themselves life partners. The two women have been best friends since they were teenagers and they now consider themselves platonic life partners. But our society doesn't really recognize that as a thing. Committed is a podcast about love stories, and here's the thing. This IS a love story. We talk so much about romantic love in our culture. We see romantic love in movies and books and songs...so many songs. And yet we rarely talk about the lifelong friendships that are the backbones of our lives. The ones that often last much longer than a marriage. Today we do.

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