Lay Low Pod

What happens when you spend your whole life being strong for everyone else, only to realize you've never truly felt safe yourself?

This week on Lay Low Pod, Erin sits down with longtime friend Harmonie Strickland for an honest, emotional, and sometimes hilarious conversation about childhood trauma, divorce, motherhood, and finding yourself after years of living in survival mode.

Harmonie opens up about growing up in a home filled with domestic violence, how those early experiences shaped her relationships, and what it felt like to spend years trying to be chosen, loved, and accepted.

After two divorces, raising four children, and starting over more than once, she's learning that healing isn't about changing the past. It's about recognizing the patterns, breaking the cycles, and choosing a different future.

In this episode, we talk about:

• Growing up around abuse and recognizing generational trauma
• How childhood experiences shape the relationships we choose
• Divorce, abandonment, and learning you can't make someone choose you
• Raising four children while navigating life's hardest chapters
• The complicated relationships between mothers and adult children
• Breaking generational cycles without blaming previous generations
• Learning to communicate, set boundaries, and know your worth
• Finding confidence, self-love, and a new passion for Pilates
• Getting your spark back and embracing a new chapter of life

Because sometimes the greatest thing we can do for the next generation is heal what was passed down to us.

Real stories. Hard lessons. A little laughter. And a whole lot of growth.

This episode is sponsored by Kyden Supply!

We're excited to partner with Kyden Supply, offering peptides and wellness products including NAD+, GLOW, KLOW, and Retatrutide.

• Use code LAYLOW10 for 10% off your order.
• Kyden Supply offers third-party testing.
• Have questions? Their support chat is available to help you learn more about their products.

Shop www.kydensupply.com and use code LAYLOW10 at checkout!

Great prices on third-party tested peptides! Visit www.kydensupply.com and use code LAYLOW10 for 10% off.

Life has been moving FAST for Erin—and apparently she wasn't getting the hint to slow down. First she flushed her car keys down the toilet…and when that didn't work, she got sick and ended up in bed for three days. 😂 Turns out, sometimes life will slow you down when you refuse to do it yourself.

In this solo episode, Erin talks about:

• Flushing her keys down the toilet and the $600 lesson that followed
• Why changing her environment completely shifted her energy
• Getting sick and finally being forced to lay low
• What watching East of Eden made her think about family, good vs. evil and the things we inherit
• Processing her conversation with her son Colt and hearing his side of some really hard years
• Giving kids space to have their own version of the story
• Her Grandpa John, his business failures and the success that eventually came because he kept going
• Why failure can look completely different when you see the whole story
• Taking a minute to ask: Am I actually where I want to be?
• The power of a “pause and pivot”—and realizing sometimes you don't need to pivot at all
• Trusting yourself when things are moving really, really fast
• Getting ready for the next level without rushing through the life you're living right now

Sometimes slowing down isn't about changing direction. Sometimes it's the pause you need to realize you're already exactly where you need to be.

Submit listener questions or share your story as a possible pod guest at www.laylowpod.com

Thanks for laying low with me. ❤️

✨ LAY LOW POD'S FIRST SPONSOR — KYDEN SUPPLY

I've personally been using peptides for about two years, and I'm excited to welcome Kyden Supply as Lay Low Pod's first sponsor.

Kyden Supply offers third-party tested peptides, including NAD+ and GLOW, with support available if you're not sure where to start.

Visit www.kydensupply.com and use code LAYLOW10 for 10% off.

Great prices on third-party tested peptides! Visit www.kydensupply.com and use code LAYLOW10 for 10% off.

Episode 24: The Best Worst Option — with Colt Madsen

Erin sits down with her youngest son, Colt Madsen, less than 24 hours after he returns home from five and a half months away in Texas. What starts as a catch-up about summer sales, rejection, consistency, and growing up quickly turns into one of the most honest and vulnerable conversations they’ve ever had.

For the first time, Erin gets to hear parts of their family story completely through Colt’s eyes. Sometimes life doesn’t give you a good option and a bad option. Sometimes it gives you a best worst option—and you figure out how to grow from it.

In this episode, Erin and Colt talk about:

• What Colt thinks Erin got right—and wrong—as a mom
• Divorce through the eyes of a child and the memories that stayed with him
• Losing the feeling of having a true “home base”
• A difficult period in high school that Colt never fully shared with his parents
• Why living with his best friend’s family became the best option during an uncertain time
• The effort it took for Erin and Colt to stay connected while living apart
• First love, first heartbreak, and losing a family he had also grown attached to
• How those experiences affected Colt’s thoughts about love, marriage, and relationships
• Faith, choosing not to serve a mission, and what Colt wishes Erin understood about his beliefs
• People pleasing, rejection, and what five and a half months of door-to-door sales taught him
• The power of consistency and how one difficult summer changed his confidence and perspective
• The difference between feeling abandoned and recognizing that sometimes life simply doesn’t go according to plan
• How their relationship has changed as Colt has grown from Erin’s little boy into one of her closest friends

There are things Erin knew about her son’s childhood, things she thought she understood, and things she hears for the first time while sitting across from him in this conversation.

And maybe the biggest lesson of the entire conversation comes in one simple moment. As Erin acknowledges the things she didn’t always get right as a mom, Colt reminds her:

“We’re all trying.”

Because sometimes there isn’t a perfect decision. Sometimes life doesn’t work out the way anyone planned. You make the best choice you can, keep moving forward, and eventually realize that even the best worst option can become an important part of who you are.

Submit listener questions or share your story as a possible pod guest at www.laylowpod.com

Thanks for laying low with me. ❤️

✨ LAY LOW POD'S FIRST SPONSOR — KYDEN SUPPLY

I've personally been using peptides for about two years, and I'm excited to welcome Kyden Supply as Lay Low Pod's first sponsor.

Kyden Supply offers third-party tested peptides, including NAD+ and GLOW, with support available if you're not sure where to start.

Visit www.kydensupply.com and use code LAYLOW10 for 10% off.

Great prices on third-party tested peptides! Visit www.kydensupply.com and use code LAYLOW10 for 10% off.

What happens when the life you thought you were building suddenly falls apart—and you weren't the one who chose it?

In Episode 23 of Lay Low Pod, Erin sits down with Julie Jeppson, formally Julie Boyé, a single mom of eight who spent years sharing her family publicly before finding herself navigating a painful and very public divorce.

Julie gets real about:

• Raising eight kids while rebuilding her own life
• Going through a four-year legal battle
• Having your marriage end publicly when thousands of people are watching
• Mormon culture, marriage and the expectations placed on women
• Holding onto faith while questioning the people and systems around you
• Financial survival and learning how to provide for a family on your own
• Anger, grief and why healing doesn't happen on anyone else's timeline
• Finding your voice after feeling silenced
• The pressure to “give yourself grace” when you're still in survival mode
• Letting go of the life you thought you were supposed to have
• Reinventing yourself when you don't even know what comes next
• Figuring out who you are outside of being a wife and mom

This isn't just a conversation about divorce. It's about what happens when change chooses YOU—and how you begin putting yourself back together when the life you planned is no longer the life you're living.

Julie is still in the messy middle of it, and that's exactly what makes this conversation so real.

Submit listener questions or share your story as a possible pod guest at www.laylowpod.com

Thanks for laying low with me. ❤️

✨ LAY LOW POD'S FIRST SPONSOR — KYDEN SUPPLY

I've personally been using peptides for about two years, and I'm excited to welcome Kyden Supply as Lay Low Pod's first sponsor.

Kyden Supply offers third-party tested peptides, including NAD+ and GLOW, with support available if you're not sure where to start.

Visit www.kydensupply.com and use code LAYLOW10 for 10% off.

Great prices on third-party tested peptides! Visit www.kydensupply.com and use code LAYLOW10 for 10% off.

What if you’re not failing—you’re just in the messy middle? This week, Erin is talking about the space between where you started and where you’re going. The part where things don’t always look like you thought they would, the wins aren’t obvious, and you have to keep showing up without knowing exactly how the story ends.

Inspired by Benny Blanco’s book Fck Failure*, Erin shares some of her favorite lessons from his career and connects them to her own season of change—especially the way she’s redefining success after years of tying it to money, achievement, and security.

✨ LAY LOW POD'S FIRST SPONSOR — KYDEN SUPPLY

I've personally been using peptides for about two years, and I'm excited to welcome Kyden Supply as Lay Low Pod's first sponsor.

Kyden Supply offers third-party tested peptides, including NAD+ and GLOW, with support available if you're not sure where to start.

Visit www.kydensupply.com and use code LAYLOW10 for 10% off.

Maybe success isn’t just what’s in the bank account. Maybe it’s being happy, healthy, and excited for the future.

In this episode:

• Why the messy middle can feel like failure—even when you’re growing
• Redefining success beyond money and achievement
• Why failure, rejection, and bad seasons are part of winning
• What Benny Blanco’s career teaches us about staying in the game
• The surprising story behind Rihanna’s “Diamonds”
• The heartbreak behind Justin Bieber’s “Love Yourself”
• Why a detour can take you somewhere better than the original plan
• Learning when to pause, pivot, and keep going
• Why relationships and the people you build with matter
• How to stop moving the goalpost and recognize the life you’ve already built
• The simple “one inch forward” exercise for going after what you really want

You don’t have to have the whole thing figured out. You don’t even have to know exactly where you’re going. Sometimes you just have to keep moving one inch forward.

Because the messy middle isn’t where the story falls apart. It might be where everything starts coming together.

Submit listener questions or share your story as a possible pod guest at www.laylowpod.com

Thanks for laying low with me. ❤️

Great prices on third-party tested peptides! Visit www.kydensupply.com and use code LAYLOW10 for 10% off.

What if there’s more happening around us than we can see?

In this episode of Lay Low, Erin sits down with her personal psychic and medium, Meg, ([email protected]) for an open-minded conversation about intuition, energy, signs, the people we’ve lost, and the things in life we may never be able to fully explain.

Meg shares how she discovered her abilities, what it actually feels like to connect with someone who has passed, and the difference between being psychic and being a medium. She also explains why she doesn’t believe a reading should tell someone what to do with their life—but can instead offer clarity, healing, closure, and a different perspective.

The conversation also turns to the world right now: why everything seems to feel faster and more intense, the energetic shifts Meg believes are happening, and how self-awareness, perspective, and intuition can help people navigate seasons of uncertainty.

And then the conversation gets deeply personal when Erin’s late friend Amberly comes through with a message for her four boys.

Whether you believe in psychics and mediums, are completely skeptical, or simply find yourself curious about the things we can’t explain, this episode isn’t about telling anyone what to believe. It’s about staying open to the possibility that life may be bigger than what we can see.

In this episode:

• The difference between a psychic and a medium
• How Meg discovered and developed her abilities
• What it feels like to connect with someone who has passed
• Why loved ones may send signs from the other side
• The role intuition plays in everyday life
• Why Meg believes the energy of the world is shifting
• Creating your reality without giving away your personal power
• Finding peace and perspective in things we can’t explain
• A beautiful message from Erin’s late friend Amberly
• Why curiosity may matter more than certainty

Come curious. You don’t have to understand everything to leave room for something to bring you peace.

Submit listener questions or share your story as a possible pod guest at www.laylowpod.com

Thanks for laying low with me. ❤️

✨ LAY LOW POD'S FIRST SPONSOR — KYDEN SUPPLY

I've personally been using peptides for about two years, and I'm excited to welcome Kyden Supply as Lay Low Pod's first sponsor.

Kyden Supply offers third-party tested peptides, including NAD+ and GLOW, with support available if you're not sure where to start.

Visit www.kydensupply.com and use code LAYLOW10 for 10% off.

Great prices on third-party tested peptides! Visit www.kydensupply.com and use code LAYLOW10 for 10% off.

Sometimes being selfish is exactly what saves you.

In this episode of Lay Low, Erin sits down with her friend Ryan Gregerson—a divorce attorney, business owner, and host of the Yes And Land podcast—for an honest conversation about divorce, relationships, business, and what happens when choosing yourself means changing the life everyone else expected you to live.

Erin shares how Ryan became part of her story during a pivotal time in her life. At their very first mastermind meeting, a vulnerable moment opened the door to conversations and decisions that would eventually change the direction of her life.

The conversation turns to a word Erin heard often during her divorce: selfish. What if being selfish isn't always a bad thing? What if there are seasons when taking care of yourself, setting boundaries, making a change, or walking away is actually necessary to save yourself?

And because Ryan's podcast finds life lessons through Disney, they even turn to an unlikely source of inspiration: Cruella de Vil. Because maybe there's something to be learned from a woman who knows exactly what she wants, walks into a room like she owns it, and isn't afraid to take up space. Just…leave the puppies alone.

In this episode:

• When choosing yourself gets labeled as selfish
• Why sometimes you have to save yourself first
• The vulnerable conversation that helped change Erin's life
• Learning to trust yourself through major life changes
• Why divorce doesn't automatically mean a marriage failed
• What Erin and Ryan learned from their own divorces
• Parenting and co-parenting through change
• Why kids may be more adaptable than we give them credit for
• Dating, relationships, and knowing yourself better the second time around
• The importance of communication, kindness, and curiosity in relationships
• Entrepreneurship, loneliness, and finding people who understand the weight you carry
• What Cruella de Vil can teach us about confidence, authenticity, and owning a room
• Finding the lesson in the chapters of life you never planned for

There are times when choosing yourself will disappoint people. There are times when someone may even call you selfish for doing it.

But sometimes being selfish isn't about caring less about everyone else.

Sometimes it's about finally caring enough about yourself to make the change that saves you.

Submit listener questions or share your story as a possible pod guest at www.laylowpod.com

Thanks for laying low with me. ❤️

✨ LAY LOW POD'S FIRST SPONSOR — KYDEN SUPPLY

I've personally been using peptides for about two years, and I'm excited to welcome Kyden Supply as Lay Low Pod's first sponsor.

Kyden Supply offers third-party tested peptides, including NAD+ and GLOW, with support available if you're not sure where to start.

Visit www.kydensupply.com and use code LAYLOW10 for 10% off.

Great prices on third-party tested peptides! Visit www.kydensupply.com and use code LAYLOW10 for 10% off.

Sometimes life changes slowly. And sometimes something happens that shakes everything you thought you knew about yourself, your relationships and the life you thought you were going to have.

Hayden Panettiere calls these moments “life quakes” in her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning—and after listening to her tell her own story, Erin couldn't stop thinking about the life quakes that shape all of us.

Erin dives into Hayden's deeply personal memoir and discovers far more connections to her own life than she expected. Hayden spent virtually her entire childhood performing, becoming famous before she was old enough to understand what fame meant. Her story moves through childhood fame, family turmoil, sexuality, motherhood, a traumatic delivery, postpartum anxiety, addiction, rehab, custody, abusive relationships and the complicated ways we sometimes try to survive feelings we don't know how to carry.

In this episode:

• The Lindsay Clancy trial and postpartum mental health
• Why appearing “fine” tells us very little about what's happening underneath
• Hayden growing up in Hollywood and never really knowing life without performing
• Childhood fame, identity and authenticity
• Sexuality and sharing the parts of ourselves we've kept hidden
• Family turmoil, divorce and why “a broken home is still a home”
• Erin's experience creating a new version of home for her boys after divorce
• Hayden's traumatic birth and postpartum experience
• Erin's anxiety after her newborn son was hospitalized with RSV
• Motherhood and the enormous pressure women can carry
• Alcohol, pills, addiction, rehab and attempts to quiet emotional pain
• Motherhood, custody and making painful decisions for your children
• Domestic violence and why leaving isn't always as simple as it looks from the outside
• Shame, survival and finally telling the parts of our stories we'd rather hide
• Why another woman's bravery can make us brave enough to tell our own truth
• “Life quakes” and the experiences that divide our lives into before and after
• Letting go of old versions of ourselves and moving toward a more aligned life

Our hardest experiences don't have to disappear for us to move forward. We can acknowledge the choices we're proud of, the ones we aren't, the things that happened to us and the things we wish we'd done differently—and decide what we're taking with us into the next version of our lives.

Life is short. And a life of alignment is priceless.

Submit listener questions or share your story as a possible pod guest at www.laylowpod.com

Thanks for laying low with me. ❤️

✨ LAY LOW POD'S FIRST SPONSOR — KYDEN SUPPLY

I've personally been using peptides for about two years, and I'm excited to welcome Kyden Supply as Lay Low Pod's first sponsor.

Kyden Supply offers third-party tested peptides, including NAD+ and GLOW, with support available if you're not sure where to start.

Visit www.kydensupply.com and use code LAYLOW10 for 10% off.

Great prices on third-party tested peptides! Visit www.kydensupply.com and use code LAYLOW10 for 10% off.

This week, Erin sits down with her friend of over 20 years, Janene, someone she met as a young mom, and reconnected with after both of their divorces. They've built a friendship on disagreeing without breaking, and this episode is exactly that in action.Janene grew up Mormon in Utah County, and what she remembers most isn't church on Sundays — it was survival, image, and learning early that her value was tied to how she looked. Erin and Janene trace the through line from being teenagers with zero real conversations about sex, to marriages that fell apart in very different ways, to a second marriage for Janene that landed her in a one-stoplight town where she was labeled a Jezebel before anyone gave her a chance.But the conversation goes deeper, too. They get into the pattern they both keep circling back to: how, over and over, when a man in their life messed up, the blame somehow found its way back to them. Erin tells a deeply personal story she's never told Janene before. Janene opens up about how pressure, guilt, and a desire pulled her toward experiences — including swinging — that she now recognizes she didn't actually want.This episode includes:

• How Erin and Janene met at work over 20 years ago, and how they found their way back to each other post-divorce
• Growing up Mormon in Utah County vs. being Mormon-adjacent — and why that distinction actually matters
• The embarrassing bishop's office story Erin has never told Janene before
• Janene's experience at 16 that taught her exactly how shame gets assigned in these communities
• What it felt like to move into a small town as a divorced mom and be treated like an outcast
• The real reason Janene believes pornography played a role in her marriage
• How "no" turned into pressure, turned into a threesome, turned into swinging
• Erin and Janene's genuinely different takes on porn — and why they can disagree without it becoming a fight

Erin and Janene don't wrap this one up with a bow — there's too much left to say, and they both know it. What they land on instead is the thing that's held their friendship together for two decades: telling the truth, even when it's messy, even when it doesn't make you look good.

Submit listener questions or share your story as a possible pod guest at www.laylowpod.com

Thanks for laying low with me. ❤️

✨ LAY LOW POD'S FIRST SPONSOR — KYDEN SUPPLY

I've personally been using peptides for about two years, and I'm excited to welcome Kyden Supply as Lay Low Pod's first sponsor.

Kyden Supply offers third-party tested peptides, including NAD+ and GLOW, with support available if you're not sure where to start.

Visit www.kydensupply.com and use code LAYLOW10 for 10% off.

Great prices on third-party tested peptides! Visit www.kydensupply.com and use code LAYLOW10 for 10% off.

This week on Lay Low, it's just Erin — sitting down to say some things she's needed to get off her chest for a long time. She's spent almost two decades in survival mode — financially, personally, in her work — and she's finally ready to leave that version of herself in the past.

Before diving in, Erin catches listeners up on the week it's been: eclipse season energy, football season, and a documentary she cannot stop thinking about. But the episode goes deeper, too. She opens up about where survival mode actually started — an investment that cost her family everything back when her kids were little, the divorce that followed, and the relationship after that where she finally saw a red flag she'd been missing for years. She talks about what she actually needs from a partner going forward, why hustle isn't the same thing as healing, and the small, intentional changes she's been making lately that are quietly adding up to something bigger.

This episode includes:

• Riding out eclipse-season energy instead of fighting it
• Forty-eight hours with her son Colt, a Zach Bryan concert, and the moment she wanted more of
• Where her survival mode really started — and the two decades it took her to notice
• The investment that set her first marriage back in a way she never fully recovered from
• The red flag she didn't see until it became the biggest lesson of her last relationship
• What she actually needs from a partner going forward
• Small, intentional changes: pink shoes, cutting a ten-hour-a-week habit, and leaving an office she's outgrown
• Why "more moments like this" might be the most powerful thing you say to yourself all year
• A challenge to shake up one thing in your routine this week

Maybe the version of herself that's been surviving for so long doesn't have to be the version she brings into what's next.

Submit listener questions or share your story as a possible pod guest at www.laylowpod.com

Thanks for laying low with me. ❤️

✨ LAY LOW POD'S FIRST SPONSOR — KYDEN SUPPLY

I've personally been using peptides for about two years, and I'm excited to welcome Kyden Supply as Lay Low Pod's first sponsor.

Kyden Supply offers third-party tested peptides, including NAD+ and GLOW, with support available if you're not sure where to start.

Visit www.kydensupply.com and use code LAYLOW10 for 10% off.