Labeled & Loved Podcast

Major Dodson is an award-winning actor with autism who is best known for his role of Sam Anderson on “The Walking Dead.” In his current feature film, Tyson’s Run, Major plays Tyson, a fifteen-year-old with autism who seeks approval and connection from his father. Tyson’s Run shows the power and determination of family and is currently in theaters nationwide. In this episode, Major discusses the representation of disability in film and the unique role his parents played in fostering his talent, success, and acceptance of autism.

Heal your trauma and your child’s trauma will heal. Those are the wise words from returning guest, Dr. Sandy Gluckman. Dr. Sandy is an author, educator and international speaker who has coached thousands of parents and teachers on how to reverse and heal learning, behavior and mood challenges based on her unique blend of studies in functional medicine, neuroscience and psychology. In today’s episode, Dr. Sandy helps us redefine what trauma really is, identify the signs within our lives and neuro systems, as well as tangible steps to lead toward healing ourselves and our children.

Hannah Bott is a mental health advocate, To Be Like Me leader, and 2021 IJM International Ms. Texas. As a former high school teacher, Hannah has made youth mental health education a priority for her advocacy and community work and uses her platform "Speak Up. Speak Out." to encourage others to share their journey about mental health. In this episode, Hannah discusses her journey through debilitating anxiety, what it was like to grow up being marginalized and bullied, and she also debunks some misinformed myths surrounding mental health and pageantry. 

Emily McDowell is a writer, illustrator, speaker, teacher, and entrepreneur who is fiercely committed to not doing all of those things at the same time. She is the founder and creative director of the brand Em & Friends, originally known as Emily McDowell Studio, and the co-host of Quitted, a podcast about quitting the big things in our lives, and what comes after.
Emily’s work has been featured by hundreds of major media outlets. Her book, There Is No Good Card For This: What To Say and Do When Life Gets Scary, Awful, and Unfair To People You Love, co-authored with Dr. Kelsey Crowe, was released in January 2017.
In today’s episode we discuss expressions of empathy, navigating trauma, mental health, and how quitting the familiar can bring a new level of hope and peace.

Born in 1929, Alexandra Goode was a young girl when WWII entered Yugoslavia. Her father brought her to school one morning, her home was bombed, and she never saw her family again. On today’s episode, Alexandra chronicles her time in some of the most severe German concentration camps, the horrors of losing every person she loved, and the hope that allowed for her incredible and unprecedented escape, and her future work founding International Guardian Angels Outreach, where she facilitated hundreds of adoptions for Russian orphans.

Dr. Alisha “Ali” Griffith is a best-selling author, international transformational speaker, startup business coach for women, and mentor for moms of autistic children. Her methods help business owners go from new and inexperienced to profitable, purposeful and wealthy. An audiologist and speech pathologist by profession, Dr. Ali guides her clients towards the things they are passionate about and introduces superior systems to maximize their resources and talents so that they can build a life of joy and a lasting legacy. In this episode, we discuss how to follow (or identify) your dreams when resources are scarce, the power of having an identity outside of motherhood, and Dr. Ali shares the personal story of how she became the brave leader she is today. Dr. Ali can be found at draligriffith.com

“Our son was cognitively disabled; I was now spiritually crippled. Both of us needed urgent and intensive intervention. But therapists only came for him.” Diane is a disability ministry advocate, national speaker, and author of Unbroken Faith: Spiritual Recovery for the Special-Needs Parent. As a mother to children with multiple disabilities including autism and ADHD, her passions include encouraging struggling parents and equipping churches into becoming inclusive faith communities. Connect with her at dianedokkokim.com where she shares on being “Wrecked, redeemed and repurposed.”

Born without legs and left abandoned at the hospital, Jen Bricker-Bauer seemed destined for hardships. But after her adopted family eliminated the word “can't” from her vocabulary, Jen proceeded to have a life filled with hope, becoming a state champion power tumbler, aerialist and acrobat who has traveled with Britney Spears’ World Tour and headlined in Vegas and Dubai. In a twist of fate, Jen also learned that her childhood idol, gymnastics gold medalist Dominique Moceanu, was actually her biological sister. Jen is a speaker, author of the NY Times bestselling novel, “Everything is Possible,” and our guest who will leave you eliminating impossibilities from your life too.

Dr. Sandy Gluckman is an author, educator and international speaker who has coached thousands of parents and teachers on how to reverse and heal learning, behavior and mood challenges based on her unique blend of studies in functional medicine, neuroscience and psychology. In this episode, we dive into how to raise resilient, confident children, by doing the work required to reach our highest potential as a parent so that our own underlying anxieties and issues do not impact future generations. Also we learn about the integrated approach Dr. Sandy calls ‘spirit, body, brain medicine.’ 

You may know her as the NYT best-selling author of "For the Love" and "Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire", but on this episode, Jen Hatmaker gives us a glimpse of some of her lesser-known labels like single parent, divorcee, and a beautifully grieving woman learning to live again. Jen is the host of the award-winning For the Love podcast, the delighted curator of the Jen Hatmaker Book Club, and co-founder of Legacy Collective, a giving community that grants millions of dollars toward sustainable projects around the world. You can find her at jenhatmaker.com or with her five kids in a 1908 farmhouse with questionable plumbing.