My Heart of the Story

Why Does Compassion Feel Like Pity?

So........ I started therapy.

I barely scratched the surface of my story before I noticed a look on my therapist’s face that felt like pity—and every part of me wanted to shut down.

In this episode of The Messy Middle, I’m unpacking why compassion can feel like pity, why being witnessed can feel more like being exposed, and why I’m so damn tired of constantly trying to analyze, improve, and heal myself.

I also wrestle with neuroplasticity and the maddening space between knowing something and actually being able to live it. If our brains can create new pathways, why do the old ones still feel so automatic? Why can I recognize the pattern and still find myself right back inside it?

This is a raw conversation about therapy, motherhood, identity, grief, joy, the beautiful life Dillon and I created—and the pain of realizing it looks so different from the childhood I experienced.

Maybe healing isn’t always about finding the lesson or turning pain into purpose. Maybe the void isn’t asking to be filled.

Maybe it’s asking to be witnessed.

Learn more about neuroplasticity from Cleveland Clinic:
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/neuroplasticity

A Marine Corps helicopter crew chief, his wild-woman ex-wife, combat deployments, homemade hooch—and the unconventional family they built around their son.

In this episode of My Heart of the Story, Bryan and I continue peeling back the layers—and this time, we pick up our story in 2003: the year he was sent to Iraq with less than a week’s notice, our marriage came to an end, and we began figuring out how the hell to raise a child together while living very separate lives.

Bryan takes us inside the next chapter of his Marine Corps career: flying in support of the Jessica Lynch rescue mission, surviving a helicopter crash in Afghanistan, and being named the Marine Corps Aviation Association’s 2003 Enlisted Aircrewman of the Year.

We also revisit the gloriously questionable ways Marines kept themselves sane on deployment—including homemade hooch, foam-bat beatings, Russian hats, and a New Year’s Eve fight that apparently disappeared into the military abyss.

But beneath the helicopters, combat stories, and military chaos is another story: two very young divorced parents trying to raise their son across deployments, distance, new relationships, and new marriages.

In this episode, we talk about:

• Bryan’s role in the Jessica Lynch rescue mission

• The helicopter crash he survived in Afghanistan

• Deployment friendship, dark humor, grief, and the things people do to cope

• How combat experience shaped his leadership and need for control

• What it means to trust the people beside you with your life

• Raising Bryan while his dad was frequently deployed

• Why we never used court-ordered visitation or fought over holidays

• Dillon’s role in creating a family where Bryan never had to choose sides

• The moment all my men ended up together in the same room

• Why our unconventional co-parenting relationship actually worked

We didn’t always get it right. We were young, stubborn, occasionally reckless, and very much ourselves. But we agreed early that whatever happened between us, Bryan would never be asked to carry it.

This conversation includes discussions of combat, PTSD, suicide, alcohol, military culture, and plenty of mature language.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Loops Fore Troops
https://loopsforetroops.com/

Reveille & Retreat Project
https://www.reveilleandretreatproject.org/

VETERANS CRISIS LINE

If you’re a veteran in crisis—or concerned about one—call 988 and press 1, text 838255, or visit:

https://www.veteranscrisisline.net/

Support is free, confidential, and available 24/7.

Music licensed through Soundstripe.
Code: YZWTMMR0YSDXK9DU

#MyHeartOfTheStory #TheExHusbandEpisodes #VeteranStories #MarineCorps #CoParenting

Content note: This episode includes discussion of firearms, veteran suicide, military sexual trauma, and an attempted carjacking.For years, I minimized my military service.I only served four years.
I didn’t see combat.
I wasn’t highly decorated.
Surely, someone else’s service mattered more than mine.

Then I attended a Women Veteran's firearms-safety retreat—and found myself surrounded by women carrying versions of that very same story.

In this episode, I share what happened when firearms training met flowers, ceremony, acupuncture, farm-to-table meals, freezing my ass off in a tent, and the rare freedom of being fully myself without worrying that I was too much.

I also explore the military conditioning I carried into motherhood and the rest of my life: mission first, emotions later. When my children became the next mission, I never stopped to ask what parts of me were still waiting to be recognized.

This weekend wasn’t only about becoming more confident with a firearm. It was about taking up space, receiving care, honoring the women who served beside me—and finally claiming a truth I spent far too long hiding from:

My story matters.
My service fucking matters.

If you know a woman veteran who has minimized her service or struggled to feel as though she belongs, please share this episode with her.

🌿 From My Heart to Yours

Rae

❤️ Rae-minder

You don’t have to prove that your story was hard enough, impressive enough, or important enough to claim it. It happened to you. It shaped you. It matters.

Resources & Support

🌿 Reveille & Retreat Project — Empowering military women through healing, growth, and community.

🎯 NRA Women On Target® — Firearm education and instructional shooting clinics for women.

❤️ Veterans Crisis Line

If you’re a Veteran in crisis—or you’re concerned about one—confidential support is available 24/7:

• Call 988, then press 1
• Text 838255
• Chat online with the Veterans Crisis Line
• You do not need to be enrolled in VA healthcare to receive support.

These resources are also available to service members and the people who care about them. Veterans Affairs crisis-support information

Sometimes the deepest truth doesn't reveal itself until after the microphone is turned off.

I thought this episode was about hormones.

Or holistic health.

Or moving to Oregon.

Or the books that changed my life.

But after sitting with it for a few days, I realized it was about something much bigger...

Changing my mind.

For years, I've been collecting tools for healing—self-help, herbalism, faith, nature, books, community, Human Design, nervous system work, and now bioidentical hormones. Every one of them has shaped me in some way.

What I've come to realize is that healing isn't about finding the right tool.

It's about staying open enough to receive what this season of your life is asking of you.

In this episode, I share the winding road that brought me here—from prescriptions to holistic living, from certainty to curiosity, from believing I had to figure everything out on my own to learning that asking for help might be one of the bravest things I've ever done.

Maybe growing isn't about having all the answers.

Maybe it's about becoming the kind of person who's willing to let the answers change.

🌿 FROM MY HEART TO YOURS

📚 Books & Resources Mentioned

• A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
https://a.co/d/0iHc0LbY

• The Conscious Parent by Dr. Shefali Tsabary
https://a.co/d/048vtkop

• Stutz (Netflix Documentary)
https://qr.netflix.com/title/80102204

❤️ Sit With This

Where in your life are you clinging to certainty when curiosity might serve you better?

✍️ Write It Down

What belief or identity have I outgrown, but I'm still carrying because it's become part of who I think I am?

🌱 Carry This With You

Changing your mind isn't losing yourself. Sometimes it's the clearest sign you've found yourself.

I'd love to hear your heart.

If this episode resonated with you, I'd be honored if you left a comment on YouTube, shared it with someone who needs it, or reached out to tell me what part of the story stayed with you.

Big love.
Deep roots.
Soft shoulders.
Brave fucking heart.

Life looks a little different around here these days.

One son has moved to Alaska. Another is building his own life. Our youngest is preparing to leave the nest. After more than twenty years of raising kids, Dillon and I suddenly find ourselves asking...

Now what?

This conversation is exactly what you'd hear if you pulled up a chair at our kitchen table.

We laugh about our terrible financial decisions, talk honestly about what survival mode cost us, reflect on life after the cannabis industry, share why we're finally thinking about retirement, and tell a few stories about paddle boards, practical jokes, and why Dillon insists on making every adventure just a little more terrifying than it needs to be.

More than anything, this episode is about choosing each other again in a brand-new season of life.

If you're navigating marriage, parenting adult children, faith, finances, or simply wondering what comes next...welcome. You're in good company.

❤️ If this conversation resonates, I'd love for you to subscribe, leave a comment, and share your own story.

My Heart of the Story is a place for honest conversations about life, love, loss, healing, laughter, and everything in between—because someone else's story always has a way of helping us understand our own.

Control Is What Love Looks Like When It's TerrifiedLast night I had what we lovingly call a "Chrissy Pissy Pants" moment.

One FaceTime call with our adult kids sent me into a full-blown spiral. Not because anything catastrophic happened... but because they're adults now. They're making their own decisions, living their own lives, and my mama heart suddenly remembered that I can't protect them forever.

What started as worry about my children became something much deeper.

Grief.
Control.
Faith.
The illusion of safety.
The terrifying realization that maybe I've been trying to do God's job.

In this Messy Middle episode, I talk about the fear that showed up after losing Teva, why I've become afraid of my own thoughts, what it means to love with open hands instead of clenched fists, and the question I can't stop asking myself:

Whose children are these?

This isn't an episode with tidy answers.

It's an honest conversation about parenting adult children, learning to surrender, laughing at ourselves in the middle of the chaos, and trusting that love doesn't have to control everything to be real.

If you've ever laid awake imagining every worst-case scenario for someone you love...

This one's for you.

What Grief Uncovered:

Ten days after losing my beloved French Bulldog, Teva, I sat down to reflect on what grief had uncovered.

This isn't simply a story about losing a dog. It's about what can happen when we stop trying to outrun our grief and become willing to sit with it instead.

As I allowed the heartbreak, the guilt, the anger, the questions, and even the moments of unexpected relief to exist, grief began revealing something much older than the loss itself—an old wound I'd known was there for years, but had never quite seen through this lens.

In this episode, I share that journey. We talk about marriage, faith, surrender, nervous system healing, and the stories we unknowingly carry until life cracks us open wide enough to see them.

I don't believe every painful experience has to teach us something. But I do believe that when we're willing to stay with our stories—without rushing to fix them or explain them—we sometimes uncover a deeper truth waiting underneath.

For me, that truth wasn't found in becoming enough.

It was remembering that I already am.

Because sometimes the thing breaking your heart isn't the deepest wound.

Sometimes it's just the doorway.

Before you move on with your day, I want to leave you with one question.

If this is the doorway... what is it inviting you into?

You don't have to answer it today.

Just carry it with you.

And if this conversation resonated, I'd love for you to share it with someone whose heart might need it too.

Thank you for letting me be a small part of your story.

The World Meets the Children We Raised

A conversation with my oldest son about growing up, letting go, and learning life the hard way

This Memorial Day weekend conversation started with new podcast equipment and quickly turned into something much deeper.

My oldest son Bryan and I sat down to talk about growing up, moving away, making mistakes, financial lessons, relationships, family dynamics, and what happens when the children you raised begin building lives of their own.

We talk about leaving home, chasing storms in Florida, learning lessons the hard way, navigating heartbreak, substance use, independence, and the strange reality that growth often happens outside of what feels safe.

As Lincoln prepares for his next adventure in Alaska and our family finds itself standing in another season of transition, we also explore something many parents quietly carry—the grief, pride, fear, and uncertainty that come with letting go.

This is a conversation about becoming. About learning through experience. About loving people enough to let them live their own stories.

And maybe most of all, it's a reminder that none of us really know what we're doing—we're all just figuring it out one decision at a time.

Because the world eventually meets the children we raise, and then life invites us to discover who we are beyond the roles we've always known.

We're back with the stories that raised us:

In this episode, we come back to the aftermath—
what it felt like after sharing our story out loud,
and what came rushing back in once we did.

We talk about losing friends way too young
and how that kind of grief doesn’t just break your heart…
it rewires your life.

The drinking.
The numbing.
The anger.
The quiet belief that nothing really mattered anymore.

We don’t clean it up.
We don’t skip the hard parts.

This is the truth about what happens when you don’t know how to process grief…
and how many of us were never taught how.

But this isn’t just about what we lost.

It’s about what came after.

The healing.
The clarity.
The moment you realize you can’t numb your way through life forever.
And the slow, sometimes brutal, process of becoming someone new.

This is the messy middle.
This is the becoming.

If you’ve ever:

• lost someone and didn’t know how to carry it
• used anything to numb what you didn’t want to feel
• questioned why certain parts of your story still live in your body

This conversation is for you.

You’re not broken.
You’re becoming.

If this one hits… share it with someone who’s been through it too.

And if you’re in the middle of grief right now… please don’t carry it alone.
Let yourself be witnessed. Reach out to someone.

This one is raw.

No polished takeaway. Just me… sitting in the middle of it.

Lately, life has felt like a snow globe that got picked up and shaken—nothing catastrophic, nothing dramatic… just enough disruption to make everything feel a little off. My body feels different. My energy feels different. My mind is loud. And if I’m being honest, I’ve been hard on myself in ways I thought I had already worked through.

In this episode, I talk about:
– what it feels like to not recognize yourself for a minute
– the pendulum swing between “I’ve got this” and “what the hell is happening”
– body image, aging, and the mental spiral that comes with it
– motherhood, control, and the fear we don’t always say out loud
– learning to ask: what am I actually afraid of?
– and what it looks like to choose presence… even when perfection is nowhere in sight

This isn’t a “how-to” episode.
It’s a “me too” episode.

If you’ve been feeling like you’re in the messy middle of something—physically, emotionally, spiritually—this is your reminder that you’re not alone.

We don’t have to have it all figured out to show up.

Sometimes showing up is the work.

Big love. Deep roots. Soft shoulders. Brave f*cking heart.