In This Family

Content Warning: This episode discusses Bipolar Disorder.

Long before his distinguished career as a Harvard professor of psychiatry and as Chief Medical Officer for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Ken Duckworth was a kid in Michigan wondering why his beloved dad was being taken away by the police again. He wanted to know why he was going to the hospital for an extended stay again. And once his dad was home and feeling better, Ken wanted to know when the whole cycle would start over. What Ken didn’t know is that his father had bipolar disorder, then known as manic depression. The desire to understand his dad’s condition and Ken’s inability to really help him, led Ken to a career in psychiatry, driven by a strong drive to help as many people as possible. Ken believes that lived experience with mental illness or seeing someone close to you deal with it provides both insight and sympathy and can be incredibly useful in healing. Dr. Ken Duckworth walks us through the sometimes intimidating topic of bipolar disorder in very human terms so we can all help more people down the road.

Content Warning: This episode discusses autism spectrum disorder.

Tera Girardin began to notice that Alex, her youngest son, seemed to be interacting with the world differently than his two older brothers did. This was when Alex was about a year old. By the time Alex was three, the family had a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder for Alex and set about getting him the best help they could for his development, his education, and to live his best life. Part of that was accepting that autism was not a problem to be solved or a disease to be cured but simply that Alex’s brain operated differently than the brains of typical children. Tera serves as Senior Director of Marketing and Strategy for Nexus Family Healing but she’s also an accomplished photographer and her skills behind the camera led to the creation of Faces of Autism: Inspiration. Admiration. Celebration. It’s a book of portraits of children on the spectrum from all over Minnesota. Tera joins Dr. Michelle K. Murray, President and CEO of Nexus, to talk about understanding kids along with understanding autism.

Content Warning: This episode discusses suicide, schizophrenia, grief, and depression. 

James Longman is a veteran television news reporter who has reported from war zones like Ukraine and the Middle East for many years. You may have seen him on ABC World News Tonight, Good Morning America, or Nightline. But it took a special, much more personal investigation to get some answers for his father’s suicide and the schizophrenia and depression that preceded it. Given his own experiences with depression, James also wanted to know how much of mental health is environmental and how much is the genetic code handed from family. That effort led to James Longman’s book, The Inherited Mind: A Story of Family, Hope, and the Genetics of Mental Illness. James offers the insight he’s gained on his own family as well as what he’s learned about what science says about the human brain’s role in mental health. It’s a moving conversation with a great deal of hope if you’re trying to figure out yourself or your family.

Content Warning: This episode discusses obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and conversion therapy.

Kelly and Devin had a great "meet cute" story. They were counselors at a Christian summer camp, fell in love, spent all their time together, then kept it going long distance and finally got married. Kelly knew that Devin had undergone "conversion therapy" to try to rid himself of his attraction to men but everyone, including Devin, had chalked up those thoughts to an obsessive-compulsive disorder. And besides, their church taught them that homosexuality isn't real so being gay wasn't possible. Four and a half years into their marriage, however, the truth about Devin's sexuality, made itself known to him and then to Kelly. Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage is Kelly's 2026 Minnesota Book Award winning story of a marriage that was undertaken under mutually held beliefs that ultimately finds its way to an inconvenient truth. Kelly, who is remarried now and has a 12-year-old daughter, tells us about how her first marriage was full of love and, in fact, sexually active but ultimately ended with a parting involving a chance bar encounter and smoking a whole pack of cigarettes in flip-flops during a Chicago winter. 

Content Warning: This episode discusses child abuse, substance abuse, sexual abuse, and eating disorders.

Every child assumes their family life is normal because they have nothing to compare it to. Still, high school English teacher and author Bridey Thelen-Heidel started to piece together that life with her mom was pretty unusual. Maybe it was the endless succession of dangerous boyfriends her mom had or the rampant drug use or the 22 moves before graduating high school or the time her mom left her home alone at age 9 for several days. Maybe it was the abuse. Certainly, being told that Bridey, age 11, was to be the “father” for a new half-sister was pretty different. Bridey, the author of the memoir Bright Eyes, shares how she survived this environment and early parentification to make her own way in the world, draw close to some family members, and draw hard boundaries with others. She also tells of the stable life she built, including 25 years as a caring teacher and the mother of a daughter who has always known stability. 

Here's a TEDx talk she gave called ROB The Trauma, Steal Back Your Life. 

Content Warning: This episode discusses loss, depression, substance abuse, and eating disorders.

Long before she was a Saturday Night Live cast member, star of television sitcoms, author, and co-host of the podcast Bitch Sesh, Casey Wilson was performing plays in her backyard on a stage built by her dad. As a teenager, Casey and her mom bonded over the film Terms of Endearment, which was moving, often hilarious, and pretty resonant in its portrayal of mother-daughter complexity. When her mom died suddenly in her fifties, Casey was, of course, devastated but she also began to connect some unusual tendencies her mom had exhibited. Eventually, when Casey hit a rough spot in her health, her dad opened up about some chemical and mental health issues that her mom had been dealing with for many years. Now, as a mom of three, Casey has learned to accept her late mother and understand her struggles as she gives careful consideration to who she wants to be for her kids. It’s a very candid and funny conversation about what we learn, how we evolve, and what we pass along.

Content Warning: This episode discusses death, cancer, anorexia, hospitalization, and grief.

University of Texas professor and author Mallary Tenore Tarpley’s mom died of breast cancer when Mallary was just eleven years old. Mallary’s health class taught her that our bodies are affected by what we eat so Mallary decided to simply stop eating. That way, went her reasoning, she would stay small, preserved the way she was before her mom died. Her anorexia resulted in years of treatments and hospitalizations, and while there was recovery there were also slips and setbacks. Eventually, through the work she had done in the journalism field, Mallary came to believe that our society needs to see these moments as part of healing and not as signs of failure. Also, that we need to pay attention not just to an illness’s onset or some elusive notion of a completed recovery but to the middle section of getting better. If we understand that messy middle, we can forgive ourselves and others and have better health. This is a moving and heartfelt talk about Mallary’s life and an episode full of good, practical advice on helping yourself and others.

Content Warning: This episode discusses postpartum depression.

Canadian graphic memoirist Teresa Wong has had experiences with parenting that didn’t really match the way things usually go. Her parents were city kids in China sent to work on rural communes during Mao’s cultural revolution. They escaped, swam to Hong Kong where they met, and ended up in Calgary, where Teresa and her brother were born. But a language barrier and their own experiences without fathers present meant that little to no nurturing took place. Teresa's father never attended her high school or college graduations, never thought to go to the launch parties for her acclaimed graphic memoirs, Dear Scarlet and All Our Ordinary Stories. When Teresa had her first baby, Scarlet, she experienced postpartum depression, which she was unprepared for. In both cases, the subjects of her two books, Teresa was left to figure out how to parent herself and others. Now she’s ready to share how she handled that and the lessons she learned.

Content Warning: This episode discusses obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

It might be unexpected for someone to be both an atheist and a professor of religion but that seeming contradiction makes perfect sense for Chris Stedman, best selling author and professor at Augsburg University in Minneapolis. Chris is the author of the book Faithiest, which, like so much of the work he’s done over the years, is about connecting communities of faith with atheists. That work, along with Chris’s story of joining and leaving fundamentalist Christianity amid his parents’ separation, is indicative of the search for order that Chris has been on his whole life. Chris deals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and has from an early age, which he says is very much connected to trying to understand and manage an overwhelming world. Chris joins us to talk about his mom’s kindness in finding him a therapist and a church that was accepting of his queer identity. He also tells us how the OCD never really went away, just transformed, and there’s a lot to manage now that he just got married. 

Content Warning: This episode discusses Bipolar Disorder (BPD), Manic Depressive Disorder, and hospitalization.

Eighteen-year-old skateboarding star Billy Rohan had been pulled over and decided the best way to demonstrate that he was sober and under control was to do a backflip off a car. The cop on the scene did not see this as a good sign and Billy ended up in a hospital for psychiatric treatment. His erratic behavior of manic highs and depressive lows ultimately resulted in a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. The episodes weren’t constant but they dogged him throughout his storied skateboarding career, derailing him into out of control periods. With the help of a tight-knit skateboard community, careful reading of his medication labels, and patient support from his sisters, Billy ultimately steered himself toward a more balanced life. Now he can spot the bipolar symptoms (his fiancee compares it to turning into the Hulk) and take steps to avoid danger.