What happens after service ends? For many veterans, coming home is not the relief people imagine. It can mean losing structure, identity, purpose, and the sense of belonging that military life once provided.

Marine veteran and Angels Alive founder Oscar La Madrid shares how immigrating from Peru, growing up in poverty in Georgia, and serving in the Marines shaped his mission to help veterans rebuild their lives after deployment. 

We examine PTSD, homelessness, masculinity, reintegration, and why so many veterans struggle in silence long after they return home.

At 370 pounds, Dustin Rochester knew his health was headed in the wrong direction. What he didn't realize was that food wasn't the real problem.

Like many people, he had learned to use food for comfort, stress relief, and escape. The temporary relief was followed by frustration, guilt, and a cycle that felt impossible to break. A frightening doctor's appointment eventually forced him to confront the reality of where those habits were leading.

Dustin shares how creating a healthy relationship with food became the foundation for losing 130 pounds and transforming his life. We get into emotional eating, self-worth, accountability, habit formation, and the mindset shifts that made lasting change possible.

The future is easy to ignore when you assume you'll stay healthy. Nathan Peck doesn't have that option.

Diagnosed with VCP disease, a rare inherited condition that can cause progressive muscle weakness, bone disease, dementia, and ALS-like symptoms, Nathan lives with the knowledge that his independence will likely diminish over time. 

But instead of retreating, he has spent the last several years building an organization dedicated to advancing research, supporting patients, and accelerating the search for treatments.

Nathan shares what it actually feels like to live with a progressive genetic disease and why he believes action matters more than fear.

A doctor sat across from Mark Dant and told him his young son likely wouldn't live past age 12. In an instant, the future he and his wife imagined disappeared.

What followed wasn't a story about medicine alone. It was a story about grief, fear, hope, persistence, and the ordinary decisions that eventually create extraordinary outcomes.

Mark shares how a police officer with no scientific background learned enough about genetics to help drive a treatment forward, why he believes hope is an action rather than an emotion, and what it means to keep moving when the future you've imagined disappears overnight.

Trigger warning: We do talk for a few minutes about abuse, trauma, being in the throes of addiction, and strong, graphic impulses that arose from suppressing strong negative emotions. This could be disturbing to some listeners.

***

This week, we’re featuring guest Kevin Clark. He’s author of the book The New Prophet and is a Certified Substance Abuse Counselor and trauma specialist.

On the surface, this episode is about addiction and recovery. Underneath, It’s about how suppressing emotions leads to poor health, self destructive behaviors, and how spiritual awakening was a turning point. Kevin explains that at one point in his own active addiction, it felt like he was losing his soul and needed to get back to it. He then walks us through the tangible steps he took while being incarcerated to heal and change his path in life. To summarize, the three major points in Kevin’s recovery are letting go, having a safe support system, and having a desire to change.

We also talk about the social conditioning that led to emotional suppression in the first place for Kevin - trying to avoid feeling weak as a sensitive person - and how he grappled with strong emotions through his childhood, into his addiction, and into his recovery. In recovery, he started learning how to sit with his negative emotions and just be - be present as a human being, not a human doing, as he says - a sentiment other Human Amplified guests have expressed difficulty with too.

Kevin gets real about the gamut of emotions he’s felt and can deal with now, including sadness, fear, shame, numbing pain, denial, and vulnerability. But also, he talks about empathy, letting go of control, overwhelming gratitude, and the importance of being open and flexible to new possibilities.

Kevin has hope that we’ll be a more emotionally evolved humanity in the future and wants to see that.

Ultimately, Kevin is an amazing example of embracing emotions he used to fear, so he could have a different, healthier life path helping others, being with his family, and skateboarding. What’s really impressive is that when Kevin was at his most lost, he dared to think maybe everything he knew was wrong, and accepted help.

That’s bravery, strength, and an emotional evolution if I’ve ever seen one.

Today, guest Mike Hutchinson (Hutch) passionately explores the topic of masculinity and emotions, such as rage, as a follow up to telling his adoption story in the previous episode 70, where we explored how certain familial relationships have impacted his identity and life path.  

After listening, head over to humanamplified.com/episodes/071 and let us know what your experience of masculinity is in the comments.

HIGHLIGHTS

-Being sensitive and crying easily as a child

-Being raised in southern masculinity

-Emotional maturity can look different in different people

-The differences in men and women’s tear ducts

-The role of abandonment

-Fighting in middle school

-Accessing rage quickly in a self protection situation

-The safety of intellectualism 

-Ability to identify emotions

-Healthy masculinity and normal male behavior versus toxic masculinity

-The church’s role in shaping masculinity

-Being in a masculinity crisis in society

-How to create healthy masculinity 

-Men’s rights

I really think learning from adoptees about how they form connections with nonbiological parents is a good way to learn about human connection in general - the impacts of having it, not having it, and how to form it, even in possible trying circumstances while navigating trauma and strong, negative emotions.

That’s why we’re talking to adoptee Mike Hutchinson today. He’s a preacher, husband, son, avid reader, podcast host, and returning guest to Human Amplified.

On the surface of this episode, Hutch takes us through his closed adoption story and what it was like meeting his biological family.

Underneath, we really explore the interconnectedness of relationships, the impact of relationships on identity and emotions, and how they influence other relationships and life path choices.

Through this, we specifically discuss fear, struggling with rejection, bullying, finding ways to connect when differences are aplenty and in the absence of a biological connection, healing from abandonment, fork in the road moments where snap judgements have to be made, and the importance of your support system.

Through all this, several interesting points jump out at me:

Issues around fear and rejection seem to have rippled out from one defining moment Hutch had when he was 5 years old which sparked the realization that he was given away by someone. This pivotal moment demonstrates the power of our words in relationships.

One theme that arises throughout is how masculinity and femininity plays a role in those connections - at least the connections in Hutch’s life and his experience of adoption and maintaining relationships.

A subtle yet important take away from this episode is the importance of timing. Timing is everything. See if you can catch how timing helped Hutch’s success in reuniting with his biological family AND how he met his wife.

I alway enjoy hearing Hutch’s personality come through in his storytelling. He laughs a lot while we talk and is generous with immersive details. So, I know you’ll enjoy it too.

Each week here, you get personal glimpses into the personalities of each guest on the Human Amplified podcast, but this week’s conversation with Heather Burwell is particularly intimate.

In this episode, we go with the flow of Heather’s creative mind to discover where grief meets authenticity for her.

In other words, we explore the ins and outs of her journey through grief, which she’s realized is really her journey through life in general. We also unearth how authenticity fits in, especially for Heather, who’s religious upbringing taught her to hide who she is.

Together, we really get into how inauthenticity in human life, caused by a fear of being seen and heard, can keep you from recognizing grief for what it is, which in turn causes damage and more heartache. But we also talk about the peace and calm that comes with fully embracing what’s going on in your life and around you.

That’s where Heather finds herself in the present - embracing what’s real and fulfilling to her.

Heather’s not only a Nashville-based author, singer, and actress, but she’s a chaplain having graduated from Vanderbilt’s Divinity school in 2020. Her outreach focuses on being a positive vessel without judgement. In her chaplaincy work, Heather contemplates where God is or isn’t with people. You’re definitely in for a treat because we have a clip of an original song Heather beautifully sings on the same topic.

Plus, based on Heather’s personal experience of being widowed with a 4-year-old about 7 or 8 years ago, she’s written a book called Grief Doesn’t Do Math - it’ll be hitting shelves this spring. She reads an excerpt of what she was feeling in active grief and we talk about what prompted her to address certain areas about grief that she does in the book.

We dive deeper as Heather describes how to recognize grief and gives examples of how she’s processed through it while also supporting her son through his grief journey.

Then, we take a fun and unexpected turn into her love story and how that’s going today.

You’ll definitely walk away from this episode empowered to be yourself, empowered to embrace reality, no matter how scary it is, and you’ll have food for thought about how to recognize and process loss in your life, whether big or small.

On the surface, this episode is all about parent-child relationships that grow and blossom into mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationships. However, that discussion is the vehicle to get at what’s underneath nurturing your important relationships through the emotional baggage that accumulates through the change of life and then surfaces in those relationships.

By natural design, life is full of change, and that means our relationships are also full of change because relationships are a focal point of human existence. Change can cause bliss and pain and a number of emotions in between. As humans, our ability or inability to process emotions about change in our lives causes emotional baggage and we take that with us into our present moment. We all do it.

This episode is important because it comes at a time when we’ve been in constant transition for a year and there might be more accumulation of baggage there than you’re used to.

That’s why Meg Smidt, a certified life and business coach who’s been at it for a decade is on the show this week.

This episode is a gold mine of advice not only based on over a decade of her coaching experience but is also based on her personal life experience. She really digs deep into her own story with transitioning from a successful retail career into being a mom to five nearly overnight and blending into a life and family she loves. As we go through Meg’s wisdom, she and I span the spectrum of emotions as we crack up laughing and quietly nearly cry.

That’s because we talked about everything from recognizing baggage and nurturing our loved ones through their own, but also how you know when it’s time to let go.

Meg’s tangible tips that she sprinkles like confetti throughout are just as wide-ranging - she gives advice on how to accept your loved ones for who they truly are, letting go of control, leading with honor in complex interactions, having fun in commonality, having consistency, setting boundaries, navigating change, and the importance of reflecting, feeling grief, and growing through what you’re going through.

In fact, Meg gives away so many gems that you can start applying to your life, we decided to give you this free Nurturing Relationships through Emotional Baggage Tip Sheet to download and take with you well after this episode is over. Go ahead and grab it from the show notes. You’ll be glad you did.

On the surface, this episode is about getting clean and sober. Underneath, it’s about the impacts of addiction on relationships, romantic, platonic, familial. More importantly, even, it’s about how your relationship with yourself and your ability to deal with a toxic past can lead you to addiction and codependency and how healing yourself can lead to a different, better life.

Guest Katrina Lelli takes us through her downward spiral into alcoholism, being arrested twice, and testing relationships. Then, she got to her turning point - her mother in law got her to an AA meeting under the promise of going out for a hamburger. She gained hope, and started her journey to recovery.

Now, Katrina has been sober for 10 years and counting. That is such an amazing accomplishment.

Not only do we talk about before recovery, getting help, and what Katrina does in recovery now, but we explore how her relationships have improved with her kids, husband, and even her step daughter’s bio mom.

Katrina tells us why her path evolved the way it did and how she climbed out of what seemed like a never ending cycle she didn’t when she didn’t even know where or how to start. Her self awareness and willingness to go back to the past to feel and heal wounds has been part of her success and now she helps other moms in sobriety do the same.