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.

This episode is part 2 of a 2-part series where we explore Aly and Ed Rosenberger’s, what I think is, a coparenting anomaly, because they do it so well. So, if you haven’t listened to part 1 yet, check out episode 65.

Today in part 2, Ed explains from his perspective how he and his ex wife and her significant other work together as a team to coparent and why it’s so important that they do.

Much like Aly’s side of the story, Ed says communication is one of the main ingredients for success. Respect and consistency across homes is also a priority for this coparenting trio.

We really dive deep into how Ed supports their son as a father and how he nurtures and protects their son’s ability to grow, whether in sports, school, or with his relationship with his soon to be step father. We talk about everything from the initial transition of the divorce to setting ground rules for discipline and how Ed’s friendship with Ryan, Aly’s fiance, has grown.

Ed gets really personal and talks about what he expects from a future partner of his own and what he envisions for the future of this group’s peaceful coparenting relationship.

Note: When we recorded part 1, Ed was deployed. Several months passed between Aly’s and Ed’s interviews - we waited for Ed to be home before we recorded. So if you notice any discrepancies in details, such as their living arrangements, for example, it’s due to the passage of time.

Also, near the end of the interview, our internet connection got spotty, so the sound goes in and out for a few seconds. This discussion is too good not to share though, so please hang in there with us.

February is here and romance is in the air with Valentine’s Day around the corner - a fun day for some, a dreaded day for others. But, what happens if the romance dissolves and kids are involved?

First, you probably question everything you thought about marriage or long-term partnerships and second, you have to navigate working together with someone who you just can’t work with. Or can you?

Our guest today finds herself in this very real and not uncommon scenario where divorce was the last thing she and her ex-husband expected, but they ended up needing to work out what decoupling would look like and how to best support their son in the process.

This episode is part 1 of a 2 part series where we explore Aly and Ed Rosenberger’s, what I think is, a coparenting anomaly, because they do it so well.

Today, in part 1, Aly explains from her perspective how she, her ex husband, and her now significant other work together to put the kids first in a peaceful coparenting arrangement that hinges on prioritizing the kids, trust, and communication. Aly doesn’t deny the difficulties they’ve encountered, but the way she’s fought to keep a cohesive unit is admirable and may we all aspire to this level of commitment and maturity if the time comes or if it has already come.

Aly gives us details - she tells us how she navigates relationship areas such as setting priorities, trust, follow through, communication, respect, jealousy, compromise, disagreements, boundary setting, bonding, and all while ensuring her son’s needs are at the front and center.

Since a big part of coparenting can involve divorce as the catalyst, we also dive into how Aly dealt with that relationship change and helped her son transition through it. She also opens up about including her significant other in the picture and what that looks like for coparenting.

Next week, we’ll hear from Ed, Aly’s ex husband and their son’s biological father, who commits to and follows through with this same arrangement.

An important note about today’s story is, if you find yourself navigating coparenting, it may not look exactly like Aly and Ed, but it is possible to coparent peacefully in a way that works for you and your family.

If a large part of being human involves an importance on relationships because we so deeply need connection to thrive, what happens when one of the most important relationships in a human life is purposefully absent?

In this episode, Mal shows us the answer to this question by so eloquently and clearly connecting the dots in his own life and journey with abandonment - he shows us how the initial trauma event evolves and plays out in negative cycles as well as how to turn those patterns around and love yourself.

On the surface, this episode is about dealing with complex parental relationships and the far reaching impact they have. But, underneath, we really dig deep into what it looks like to choose self destruction when your self worth is tied to the love or lack of love you receive from a parent, especially when you equate love and caring with presence. Then, we explore the turning point when Mal realized he could keep going down the path of self destruction, or he could choose to start healing, mentally and physically.

So many times in our society, we consider things that come up, such as health issues or events that happen to us, for example, to all be disparate entities, ignoring how one stepping stone leads to another - cause and effect - because the bigger picture isn’t always immediately clear as life unfolds in front of us. When we look back with hindsight, we can then see how intertwined each event was and how each culminates into your present moment.

Mal so generously presents this hindsight view to us, so we can see a holistic experience, or in other words, the bigger picture of how cause and effect played out in his life. And not only does it become clear how Mal’s life events fit together, but he even expresses how necessary each stepping stone was. He says, “For better or worse, the path I’ve ended up going down, the ups the downs, the dips, the valleys, have been necessary in some way.”

On the surface, this episode is about mental health and how childhood abuse can lead to destructive and unhealthy anger, anxiety, depression, and even attempted suicide. While it sounds heavy, and this is your trigger warning just in case visiting these subjects is too difficult for you, I want to emphasize that this episode is uplifting - Robin Land, host of the View from the Carnival podcast, doesn’t shy away from talking about who he once was and how he got to his happy life today.

Below the surface, this episode is all about the journey and embracing the good and bad that got you to where you are today. It’s about dealing with the tough circumstances and emotions to learn and grow and paying attention to those relationships and seeds of encouragement that help along your path. It’s about self awareness, reflection, and finding healthy coping mechanisms. It’s about gratitude, healing, and recovery.

Robin takes us through engaging details about how anger used to manifest in his life versus how it manifests now, a year-long psychiatric hospital stay that hurt more than helped back in the 90s, and the ah-ha moment that was the ground-zero point for recovery.

And even though Robin thinks it’s important to talk about who you are and acknowledge how you got to where you are today, he thinks listening is a gift you can give others while they tell their stories. He gives his best advice for planting the seed that may help someone turn their life around, like the gift that was given to him.

Not only is Robin a great example of harnessing difficult life circumstances to choose a positive path going forward, but his personality shines through - listening to him is a blast. You feel like you’re right there in the memories with him.

This episode is Erica Hines’ firsthand account of what happened when the FBI, DEA, and one other unidentified law enforcement agency erroneously descended on her apartment around 7:15 am on September 10, 2020. 

She tells us every detail she can remember from the time she was awakened by officers yelling and banging on her door, to thinking she was going to die, to them miraculously leaving. She describes one thing she did to ensure people would believe her story after the fact. And her quick thinking did come in handy.  

Now that we’re several months out from the incident, Erica is still experiencing mental health impacts. It affects her every day while she has to work toward staying calm and trying to remain untriggered while working and living in a space that makes the event replay in her head. 

She says, “to this day, I hear these men yelling at me.”

So, it wasn’t easy for Erica to tell this story. But, her story is her quest for justice. 

Erica found an attorney to take on the case, but explains there are so many cases like this, many go unheard and people drop them.

This begs the question - how can we stop this from happening? 

Before we jump into Erica’s traumatic experience, at the beginning of the episode, we spend some time getting to know her as a human - a fellow human who brings invaluable joy and beauty into the world. We wrap up with defining justice and Erica’s hopes for the future and our society - one that right now is marred. 

I implore you to listen closely, think about what Erica is saying and what it all means, and think about what happened as if it happened to you. The defeat. Helplessness. Anxiety.

Erica is a graphic designer and crafter known for her creativity, layout, environmental design, and ability to curate beautiful custom gifts. She’s smart, driven, and puts her heart and soul into everything she does. She loves to play video games in her spare time, is a self-described blerd, and is inspired by childhood memories of the holidays. 

She grew up in Memphis, Tenn. in a single-parent home with support from both parents and an artistic ability that runs in her family. She credits her mom for her strong work ethic.  

Erica currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia and is trying to heal and move on from the lasting impacts of the erroneous raid.

On the surface, this episode is all about realizing your strengths and using them to their fullest potential. Underneath, it’s all about a foundational self awareness so you can have relationships, connect, and interact with the world in a productive, fulfilling way.

You get expert insight into using positive psychology to minimize the effects of negativity and keep a realistic perspective of your life and the grand scheme of things. Not only does Corey explain concepts like cognitive dissonance and negativity bias, but he tells us how to discover our top strengths and then gives examples of how to identify when you’re using a strength for good or bad so you can make changes. He gives personal examples from his own life, candidly opening up about about going through anxiety, panic attacks, and depersonalization, and how he recognized what was happening and got help.

Corey also explains the concepts of bottom strengths, shadow strengths, strength blindness, and hot button strengths.

Then, Corey takes us through his journey of working at an inner city school after growing up in rural Kentucky. Using self awareness, an interesting confession and brave admission is that because the culture and atmosphere was different, it made him nervous. As humans, when we’re outside of our normal element, we do get nervous, and that’s okay. The part that’s so important to realize is that opening your mind to new experiences enables you to grow. Your worldview can then expand.

So, Corey’s worldview expanded and is expanding.

Not only is he a great example, but he gives you tangible advice you can apply to your life and you’ll recognize how some of these strengths are playing out in your own life.

Susan Ruth is an accomplished singer/songwriter, writer, artist, podcaster, and film writer with presence in Nashville and Los Angeles.

From her story, you get inspiration to be yourself, know yourself, and to have necessary difficult conversations with others. You also get storytelling medicine from Susan as she recounts a time when discouragement with humanity was interrupted by what she calls a “kiss from God.” You’ll not only hear about her reminder that there’s more beauty in the world than darkness, but you’ll learn about Susan’s courageous, creative life where taking leaps rather than shrinking in fear is the norm. Some of Susan’s leaps involve being a singer/songwriter in Nashville and Los Angeles, but also being seen and heard in poetry, art, film writing, podcasting, and more.

Susan say’s she started her podcast because she needed a way she could somehow show humanity that we’re all connected. But, I think she does that in everything she does through self awareness and her innate understanding of human nature. She got there through lifetimes of growth.