No One Is Normal

Life rarely asks whether you're ready before it changes the plan.

Bart Merrell knows that better than most.

In this episode of the No One Is Normal Podcast, I sit down with Bart, known as The Side Hustle Samurai, to talk about resilience, entrepreneurship, financial security, and what happens when the future you expected suddenly disappears.

Bart once planned to join the FBI and chase serial killers. One unexpected decision ended that dream before it started. Years later, several business deals collapsed after 9/11, costing him hundreds of thousands of dollars and bringing him dangerously close to bankruptcy. Then came another major turn when he learned his lower left leg would need to be amputated.

Each time, Bart had a decision to make about what came next.

We talk about the fear he experienced walking into the hospital on the morning of his amputation, the humor and mindset that helped him adjust, and how he eventually turned that experience into an opportunity to help other amputees facing the same uncertainty.

But Bart's story is also about preparation.

He believes relying on a single paycheck can leave people far more vulnerable than they realize. We explore how skills, hobbies, experiences, and even some of life's hardest chapters can reveal opportunities that are easy to overlook. Bart explains why a side hustle does not have to mean chasing somebody else's business idea. Sometimes the opportunity is already sitting inside something you know how to do.

This isn't a conversation about getting rich quickly.

It's about being prepared when life changes the plan, recognizing what you already bring to the table, and having the willingness to act when an opportunity appears.

As Bart puts it:

What happens when what happens, happens?

🌐 Connect with Bart Merrell, The Side Hustle Samurai:

Website: https://thesidehustlesamurai.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bartmerrell

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bartmerrell/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bart-merrell-2440148/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BartMerrell-SideHustleSamurai

🔗 More from me:
🎙️ Podcast & episodes: https://www.bradhhill.com/podcast
📖 Book: https://a.co/d/06CoAtVF
🎧 Audiobook: https://www.audible.com/pd/No-One-Is-Normal-Breaking-Free-from-Normal-Audiobook/B0GJFWBSBZ
🛍️ Merch: https://www.bradhhill.com/merch

Most people don't wake up one day and intentionally build a life they don't want.

It usually happens one small decision at a time.

We put things off. We tell ourselves we'll deal with it later. We hope life somehow organizes itself while we stay busy reacting to whatever shows up next. Before long, months or even years have passed, and we're still wondering why nothing seems to change.

In this episode of Under the Surface, I talk about why planning has nothing to do with controlling the future and everything to do with being honest about where you want your life to go. We look at the small choices that shape our finances, careers, relationships, and goals, and why direction is more important than perfection.

Life will always throw surprises your way. A plan won't eliminate them. But it can keep you moving forward instead of constantly starting over.

Because hope is important.

Direction is what turns hope into progress.

🔗 More from me:
🎙️ Podcast & episodes: https://www.bradhhill.com/podcast
📖 Book: https://a.co/d/06CoAtVF
🎧 Audiobook: https://www.audible.com/pd/No-One-Is-Normal-Breaking-Free-from-Normal-Audiobook/B0GJFWBSBZ
🛍️ Merch: https://www.bradhhill.com/merch

There comes a point when surviving is no longer enough.

You can check all the boxes. Build the career. Earn the degree. Get married. Have children. Accomplish everything you thought was supposed to make you happy.

And still feel disconnected from yourself.

In this episode of the No One Is Normal Podcast, I sit down with Brandi (Bee) Doyle, Army combat veteran, former nurse practitioner, coach, and founder of Double Libra Astrology, to talk about trauma, purpose, addiction, healing, self-awareness, and what happens when the life you built no longer feels like your own.

After serving as a combat medic in Afghanistan, Bee returned home carrying experiences that most people will never fully understand. While life continued moving forward on the outside, she struggled internally with post-traumatic stress, emotional pain, unhealthy coping mechanisms, and a persistent feeling that something was missing.

We discuss combat trauma, survival mode, motherhood, addiction, accountability, resilience, and the difficult process of rebuilding an authentic life. Bee shares how becoming a mother forced her to confront what she had spent years avoiding and why curiosity became one of the most important tools in her healing journey.

This conversation is not about having all the answers.

It is about having the courage to stop pretending everything is okay and finally asking:

Who am I underneath the roles, expectations, achievements, and survival strategies I have carried for years?

Because sometimes healing begins with a simple realization:

The life that looks successful is not always the life that feels authentic.

🌐 Learn more about Bee Doyle:
https://doublelibraastrology.com/

🔗 More from me:
🎙️ Podcast & episodes: https://www.bradhhill.com/podcast
📖 Book (Print + Kindle): https://a.co/d/06CoAtVF
🎧 Audiobook on Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/No-One-Is-Normal-Breaking-Free-from-Normal-Audiobook/B0GJFWBSBZ
🛍️ Merch & Support the Mission: https://www.bradhhill.com/merch

There is a strange kind of confidence that can come from getting your life together.

You become dependable. You build a career. You handle responsibility. People trust you. From the outside, it can look like growth, maturity, and self-awareness all rolled into one.

The problem is that functioning well is not the same thing as seeing yourself clearly.

In this episode of the No One Is Normal Podcast, I explore the uncomfortable but necessary process of honest self-assessment. Not the version that turns into self-criticism or shame, but the kind that helps us understand the gap between who we think we are and how we actually show up in the world.

We talk about personality, blind spots, defensiveness, control, vulnerability, and the ways strengths can quietly become limitations when left unchecked. I share my own experiences with personality assessments, leadership, relationships, and the realization that being capable is not the same thing as being self-aware.

This episode is about learning to look at yourself without tearing yourself apart. Understanding where your patterns came from without letting them become excuses. And recognizing that growth often begins when we stop defending the image and start paying attention to the person underneath it.

Because the question is not:

"What is wrong with me?"

The better question is:

"What is true about me?"

And sometimes that answer changes everything.

🔗 More from me:
🎙️ Podcast & episodes: https://www.bradhhill.com/podcast
📖 Book: https://a.co/d/06CoAtVF
🎧 Audiobook: https://www.audible.com/pd/No-One-Is-Normal-Breaking-Free-from-Normal-Audiobook/B0GJFWBSBZ
🛍️ Merch: https://www.bradhhill.com/merch

Most people never think about accessibility until they need it.

They walk into buildings without wondering if everyone can get through the door. They make plans without thinking about whether the space was designed for everyone. They assume the world works because, for them, most of the time it does.

In this episode of the No One Is Normal Podcast, I sit down with Jenna Udenberg, educator, author, advocate, and founder of Above and Beyond With U, to talk about disability, resilience, inclusion, and what it means to build a life in a world that was not always designed with you in mind.

Diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis at age seven, Jenna has endured chronic pain, multiple joint replacements, more than a dozen surgeries, and countless accessibility challenges throughout her life. Yet what stands out most is not what she has endured. It is what she has built. From a 19-year teaching career to founding a nonprofit focused on accessibility and inclusion, Jenna has turned personal challenges into opportunities to help others.

We talk about disability, leadership, confidence, depression, advocacy, accessibility, and why asking better questions often matters more than having the right answers. Jenna shares practical ways people can create more inclusive communities and challenges the assumptions many of us make without even realizing it.

This conversation is not about sympathy.

It is about understanding.

Because disability is not rare. At some point, it touches all of our lives.

🌐 Learn more about Jenna and Above and Beyond With U:
https://www.aboveandbeyondwithu.org/

📚 Jenna's Memoir – Within My SpokesA powerful story of resilience, disability, identity, and finding purpose while navigating a lifetime of challenges.
https://a.co/d/020VH6ss

🔗 More from me:
🎙️ Podcast & episodes: https://www.bradhhill.com/podcast
📖 Book (Print + Kindle): https://a.co/d/06CoAtVF
🎧 Audiobook on Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/No-One-Is-Normal-Breaking-Free-from-Normal-Audiobook/B0GJFWBSBZ
🛍️ Merch & Support the Mission: https://www.bradhhill.com/merch

People use the word normal like the definition is obvious.

But most of us were handed that definition long before we were old enough to question it.

In this episode of the No One Is Normal Podcast, I talk about the difference between what is familiar, what is healthy, and what people judge simply because they do not understand it.

We explore how family, school, work, culture, trauma, disability, grief, addiction, anxiety, and recovery all shape the way people move through the world. Sometimes what gets called “not normal” is actually just unfamiliar. Sometimes what gets called “normal” is something unhealthy that people have repeated for so long they stopped questioning it.

This episode is about separating difference from damage. It is about dignity, honesty, accessibility, self-understanding, and learning that the goal was never to become normal. The goal is to become honest enough to know what needs to change, what helped you survive, and what was never wrong with you in the first place.

Because maybe the better question is not:

Am I normal?

Maybe the better question is:

Am I being honest?

🔗 More from me:
🎙️ Podcast & episodes: https://www.bradhhill.com/podcast
📖 Book: https://a.co/d/06CoAtVF
🎧 Audiobook: https://www.audible.com/pd/No-One-Is-Normal-Breaking-Free-from-Normal-Audiobook/B0GJFWBSBZ
🛍️ Merch: https://www.bradhhill.com/merch

Some losses do not happen all at once.

Sometimes they unfold slowly. Over years. Through caregiving, exhaustion, changing roles, and the quiet grief of watching someone you love slowly fade in front of you while life keeps moving around you.

In this episode of the No One Is Normal Podcast, I sit down with Debbie Weiss to talk about caregiving, grief, burnout, identity, and what happens after survival mode finally begins to quiet down.

Debbie spent decades taking care of others. Beginning at 17 after her father suffered a massive stroke, she eventually became a caregiver for her son with special needs and later for her husband as he battled physical illness, severe depression, and terminal cancer.

But this conversation is about more than caregiving.

It is about what happens after loss.

We talk about grief that begins long before someone dies. The quiet exhaustion of always showing up for everyone else. The guilt of choosing yourself. The resentment caregivers are often too ashamed to admit. And the difficult reality of learning how to rebuild when so much of your identity was tied to taking care of someone else.

Debbie shares the mindset shifts that helped her move forward, how she learned to stop living as a victim of circumstance, and why healing does not mean forgetting the people we loved.

Because moving forward is not the same thing as moving on.

Sometimes life after loss is not about becoming someone new.

Sometimes it is about finally finding the person you forgot to take care of along the way.

🌐 Learn more about Debbie Weiss:
https://www.debbierweiss.com/

📚 Debbie’s books:
https://www.debbierweiss.com/books

🎙️ Maybe I Can with Debbie Weiss: https://maybeicanwithdebbieweiss.buzzsprout.co

🔗 More from me:
🎙️ Podcast & episodes: https://www.bradhhill.com/podcast
📖 Book (Print + Kindle): https://a.co/d/06CoAtVF
🎧 Audiobook on Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/No-One-Is-Normal-Breaking-Free-from-Normal-Audiobook/B0GJFWBSBZ
🛍️ Merch & Support the Mission: https://www.bradhhill.com/merch

Death changes more than the room. It changes the people standing in it.

In this episode of the No One Is Normal Podcast, I talk about grief, funerals, family dynamics, and the things death exposes once there is no more pretending that time is unlimited.

This is not a philosophical conversation about death from a distance. It is about the version people actually live through. The hospital rooms. The funeral home air. The calls nobody wants to get. The tension that surfaces inside families. The regrets. The awkward moments. The greed that sometimes shows up before someone is even laid to rest. And the love that suddenly feels bigger once somebody is gone.

We talk about grief in a real way. Not the polished version people post online, but the messy version. The version that hits months later when you hear a voice, smell something familiar, or realize there will not be another phone call, another visit, or another chance to say what you meant to say.

This episode also explores what funerals reveal about people. Who softens. Who hardens. Who reaches for connection. Who reaches for control. And what death has a way of exposing in families once emotions are running high.

Because death is undefeated.

The real question is:

Who do we become in full view of it?

🔗 More from me:🎙️ Podcast & episodes: https://www.bradhhill.com/podcast📖 Book (Print + Kindle): https://a.co/d/06CoAtVF🎧 Audiobook on Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/No-One-Is-Normal-Breaking-Free-from-Normal-Audiobook/B0GJFWBSBZ🛍️ Merch & Support the Mission: https://www.bradhhill.com/merch

Addiction rarely starts with the substance.

In this episode of the No One Is Normal Podcast, I sit down with Jennifer Chase, recovery coach, speaker, and founder of Rise Addiction Life Coaching, to talk about addiction from three perspectives: daughter of an alcoholic, addict, and mother of a child struggling with addiction.

Jennifer shares how trauma, childhood instability, and years of emotional pain shaped the path that eventually led her into addiction after a brain tumor surgery left her living in chronic pain and prescribed opioids.

She opens up about the guilt of realizing she had unintentionally become part of her son’s addiction story, the shame that followed, and what finally shifted when the consequences of addiction outweighed the relief addiction once provided.

We talk about trauma, people-pleasing, masking, and how many addictions are lessabout weakness and more about trying to survive emotional pain. Jennifer sharesone of the most powerful mindset shifts of the episode:

Not “What’s wrong with you?” but “What happened to you?”

We also discuss the stigma surrounding addiction, why society judges some copingmechanisms while praising others, and why empathy and accountability can existat the same time.

This conversation is about healing, responsibility, recovery, and the possibility ofrebuilding — even after life feels completely broken.

🌐 Learn more about Jennifer Chase: https://www.riseaddictionlc.com

💜 Need help or support?Jennifer welcomes outreach through her website if you or someone you love isstruggling with addiction or recovery.

🔗 More from me:
🎙️ Podcast & episodes: https://www.bradhhill.com/podcast
📖 Book (Print + Kindle): https://a.co/d/06CoAtVF
🎧 Audiobook on Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/No-One-Is-Normal-Breaking-Free-from-Normal-Audiobook/B0GJFWBSBZ
🛍️ Merch & Support the Mission: https://www.bradhhill.com/merch

A lot of adulthood starts making more sense once you understand the emotional climate you grew up in.

In this episode of the No One Is Normal Podcast, I talk about family life, instability, and the quiet ways childhood shapes who we become long before we have language for any of it.

This is not about blaming family or putting private moments on trial. It is about understanding what happens when unpredictability becomes normal, when you learn to read tension before words are spoken, and when connection feels rare enough that you hold onto it harder than most people understand.

I share how growing up in emotional instability shaped the way I watched people, attached to relationships, stayed alert, and struggled to fully relax even when life became calmer. We talk about how many things we call “personality” are actually adaptation, and how survival skills built early in life can quietly follow us into adulthood.

This episode explores nervous system patterns, emotional caution, loneliness, connection, and why some people feel “too much” when relationships finally feel safe.

Because sometimes the better question is not:

“What is wrong with me?”

Sometimes the better question is:

“What did I learn too early that I still carry today?”

This conversation is about context, self-understanding, and learning that being shaped by something is not the same thing as being sentenced to it forever.

🔗 More from me:🎙️ Podcast & episodes: https://www.bradhhill.com/podcast📖 Book (Print + Kindle): https://a.co/d/06CoAtVF🎧 Audiobook on Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/No-One-Is-Normal-Breaking-Free-from-Normal-Audiobook/B0GJFWBSBZ🛍️ Merch & Support the Mission: https://www.bradhhill.com/merch