PRESCRIBING POSSIBILITY™

What begins as unimaginable loss can become a powerful force for healing, hope, and connection.

In this deeply moving episode of Prescribing Possibility, Dr. Dympna Weil sits down with sisters Jaimie and Brooke DiPalma, the founders of PS I Love You Day, a nationwide mental health awareness initiative observed every year on the second Friday of February.

After losing their father to suicide when Brooke was just 14 and Jamie was 17, the sisters made a courageous decision: to transform their grief into a movement that would break stigma, open conversations, and remind people they are never alone. What started as a small school initiative has now grown into a movement celebrated by over 600 schools, communities, and organizations across the country.

Together, they share:

• The emotional story behind PS I Love You Day and how it was born

• How wearing purple became a symbol of connection and support

• Why mental health conversations matter, especially for young people

• How schools use kindness campaigns, post-it notes, assemblies, and week-long programming to change culture

• The importance of grassroots action and “just starting”

• How small acts of love can have lifelong ripple effects

• The evolution of PS I Love You Day from elementary schools to colleges and communities

• The powerful theme for 2026: Be the Light
  

This episode is a reminder that possibility lives even in the darkest places—and that one brave idea can change thousands of lives.

Key Takeaways

• You don’t have to be an expert or have funding to make impact—just belief and action

• Mental health conversations save lives when they’re made safe and visible

• Kindness, visibility, and community matter more than perfection

How to Get Involved
Wear purple on the second Friday of February in honor of PS I Love You Day.
Register your school, workplace, or community and access free resources at:
https://psiloveyouday.net/

Support Resources
If you or someone you love needs immediate help, call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
Support is always available. https://988lifeline.org/

Thanks for listening. Your support means everything - so if you are moved to, please leave me a review and share this episode with a friend who may need the messages held here.

Don't be a stranger. You can reach me at [email protected]

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In this powerful episode of Prescribing Possibility, I sit down with Dr. Christine Yu Moutier, a physician, mother, and national leader in suicide prevention. We cover the most pressing questions parents, educators, and clinicians are asking right now. From the unsettling rise of AI chatbot dependency to the surprisingly simple things that can save a young person's life.

In this episode:

• The state of youth mental health today What the CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey tells us about anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation

• AI, chatbots, and your child Why Dr. Moutier is sounding the alarm about platforms like Character AI

• Warning signs that are easy to miss Why most suicide risk factors are invisible and why trusting your gut as a parent matters more than you might think.

• How to have the conversation How to open a caring dialogue and why asking directly about suicidal thoughts doesn't plant the idea it saves lives.

• The role of pediatricians and primary care How new AAP guidelines are bringing suicide risk screening to well-child visits

• Positive social contagion How peer-to-peer conversations and community events are modeling a stigma-free culture

Connect with Dr. Christine Yu Moutier:

• LinkedIn

Resources:

• Seize the Awkward — Youth-focused suicide prevention campaign from AFSP, NAMI, and the Ad Council

• Talk Saves Lives — AFSP's free one-hour suicide prevention education program

• Blueprint for Youth Suicide Prevention — A clinical guide for pediatricians, available on the AAP website

• Out of the Darkness Walks — Community walks hosted by AFSP chapters nationwide

• How to Find Your Local AFSP Chapter

• Real Convo Guides

• Teens and Suicide: What Parents Should Know

• The Good Behavior Game — Long-term upstream prevention research

• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — Call or text 988

• The Trevor Project — Crisis support for LGBTQ+ youth: 1-866-488-7386

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She was one of my very first guests. And I am so glad she is back.

Michelle Garside is a brand architect, writer, and truth teller who has spent her career helping visionaries, leaders, healers, and seekers uncover why they are here — and then share it with the world. She co-founded Soul Camp Creative, the Enchantment Experience, and the Connecticut Women's Club.

Her first book — Not Awakened: The Messy Truth About Finding Yourself — is available for pre-order on Amazon right now ahead of its February 23rd launch. And it is going to change people. Find it here https://www.notawakened.com/

What We Talk About

• What it felt like to close Soul Camp Creative — and why Michelle describes it as being let out of a gilded cage she didn't even know she was in
• What it means to be a brand architect and why the work always starts in the dark, not the light
• Why the magic is so often in the mud — and how our deepest wounds become our most powerful messages
  

A Line That Stayed With Me

"My prayer is that people read this and feel not so messed up — and that the clasp on their purse around their shame loosens just a little."

About Michelle Garside

Michelle Garside is a brand architect, writer, and truth teller devoted to helping people uncover why they're here and share it with the world. She is the author of Not Awakened: The Messy Truth About Finding Yourself — available for pre-order on Amazon now, officially out February 23rd.

Connect With Michelle Garside

• 📚 Pre-order Not Awakened on Amazon — search "Not Awakened Michelle Garside"
• 🌐 Soul Camp Creative: soulcampcreative.com
• 🌿 The Not Awakened Experience at Omega: omegainstitute.org
• 📲 Instagram: @michellegarside
  

Thanks for listening. Your support means everything - so if you are moved to, please leave me a review and share this episode with a friend who may need the messages held here.

Don't be a stranger.

You can reach me at [email protected]

Website

https://www.dympnaweil.com

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https://substack.com/@dympnaweil

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This one is a solo episode. Just me and a question I have been sitting with for a while now.

How do we stay open-hearted when the world keeps asking us to become hardened?

Because if you are anything like me, you have been feeling it. The weight of the news. The political noise. The economic uncertainty. The collective grief that has become so constant it barely registers anymore. The sense that we are being asked to digest more than we were ever designed to hold.

And somewhere in the middle of all of it — we are still supposed to show up. For our patients, our families, our work, each other.

This episode is about what that actually takes. Not the performative version. The honest one.

What We Talk About

• The two survival strategies most of us default to — shutting down or staying hyper-engaged — and why neither one creates peace
• The critical difference between resilience and emotional self-abandonment — and why we so often confuse the two
• Why we were taught to call exhaustion strength and what that has cost us
• What emotional regulation actually looks like — and why it is not about never feeling upset
• The question to ask when life feels heavy — and why the impossible questions make everything worse
• What's mine to carry today — and why that answer looks different for everyone
• Boundaries as an act of love — not selflessness, not weakness, but sustainable care
• What we let into our bodies, our nervous systems, our spaces — and why protecting that is wisdom
• The CALM Method — Compassion, Awareness, Listening, and Mindfulness — as survival tools for right now
• What staying human actually looks like on an ordinary day — and why ordinary care is more powerful than we think
• Tenderness as courage — and why softness is not the same as fragility
• The one question worth returning to: what helps you come back to yourself?
  

A Line That Stayed With Me

There is a difference between resilience and emotional self-abandonment. One builds strength. The other leaves you exhausted.

Free Resource Mentioned

📥 Download the free CALM Method guide
👉 https://dympna.myflodesk.com/calm

Don't be a stranger.

You can reach me at [email protected]

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https://www.dympnaweil.com

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Today I sit down with Dr. Easkey Britton, marine social scientist, big wave surfer, author, and one of the most original thinkers I have encountered on the relationship between water, the body, and what it means to be fully alive. Easkey was literally named after a surf break on the wild northwest coast of Ireland, and has spent her life at the intersection of the sea and science — researching what water does to us physiologically, emotionally, and communally.

We talk about Blue Health, the neuroscience of awe, the ancient Irish understanding of water as medicine, and what happened when Easkey became the first woman to surf in Iran. We talk about nervous system regulation, forest bathing, terpenes, and the shared experience of being in water with other human beings. We talk about what it means to notice beauty in a world that moves too fast to let us.

And somewhere in the middle of it all — we talk about coming home to yourself.

What We Talk About

• The ancient Irish understanding of water as medicine — sacred springs, holy wells, and rituals of the sea
• What Blue Health actually is and what the science is showing us about water's effect on the nervous system and brain
• Liquid Therapy — the ocean therapy charity in Donegal creating access to the sea for young people with physical disabilities and mental health challenges
• Easkey's groundbreaking journey to Iran in 2013 — becoming the first woman to surf there and what that experience taught her about belonging, barriers, and the ocean as a leveler
• The Be Like Water initiative and what happened when women in Iran learned to surf by starting with attunement rather than technique
• How shared experience in water breaks down barriers that persist on land
• The science of awe — why nature and music are two of the biggest sources of everyday awe and what that means for our nervous systems
• Terpenes — the molecules released by trees that literally change the biochemistry of your brain
• Entrainment and how shared communal experiences synchronize our nervous systems
• The difference between consuming life and actually feeling it
• The ocean breath practice — a simple, beautiful way to connect with water wherever you are
• The art of noticing — one beautiful thing a day and what happens when you start keeping a log of i

Connect With Easkey Britton

🌐 Website: easkeybritton.com

📲 Instagram: @easkeysurf

📚 Books: Saltwater in the Blood, Ebb and Flow, 50 Things to Do by the Sea

Thanks for listening. Your support means everything - so if you are moved to, please leave me a review and share this episode with a friend who may need the messages held here.

Don't be a stranger.

You can reach me at [email protected]

Website

https://www.dympnaweil.com

Substack (or other newsletter)

https://substack.com/@dympnaweil

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https://www.instagram.com/dympnaweil/

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What if your relationship with food was never really about food at all?

That is the question at the heart of this conversation, and the answer is more profound and more compassionate than most of us have ever been offered.

Today I sit down with Stephanie Mara, creator of Somatic Eating™, for a conversation that gently reframes everything we think we know about eating, body image, and the behaviors we've spent years trying to fix, control, or overcome.

Stephanie brings two decades of private practice experience alongside her own deeply personal journey through digestive issues, diet culture, and the discovery that what she was really navigating all along was trauma, nervous system dysregulation, and a body doing its absolute best to keep her safe.

This episode is not about what to eat. It's about learning to listen to what your body has been trying to tell you all along.

What We Talk About

• What somatic eating actually means — and why the word somatic matters

• How Stephanie's own digestive issues and history with diet culture led her to create an entirely new framework

• Why our food behaviors are not pathologies — they are the wisest, most adaptive responses available to us at the time

• The connection between trauma, nervous system dysregulation, and our relationship with food and body image

• Why it is never really about the food — and what it actually is about

• Attachment styles and how our earliest experiences of safety shape the way we eat

• The difference between interoception, proprioception, and exteroception — and how each one offers a different doorway back into the body

• Somatic pauses — a simple, individualized practice for reconnecting with yourself throughout the day

• Why some people need to tune in more and others need to tune in differently — and how to know which one you are

• The concept of allostatic load and why reducing your stress bucket throughout the day changes everything about your evenings

• How small, consistent moments of nervous system regulation create more choice — around food and everything else

A Note From Dympna

What I love most about Stephanie's work is the compassion at the center of it. She is not asking you to fix your relationship with food. She is asking you to get curious about what it has been trying to communicate. That is a very different invitation — and a much kinder one.

Connect With Stephanie Mara

• 🌐 Website: stephaniemara.com

• 🍽️ Somatic Eating: somaticeating.com

• 📲 Instagram: @_stephaniemara

• 🎙️ Podcast: Satiated Podcast

• ✉️ Email: [email protected]

• 📬 Free 5-day email series: available at stephaniemara.com

Don't be a stranger.

You can reach me at [email protected]

https://www.dympnaweil.com

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Ever feel like you're doing everything "right" and still feeling drained? This episode of Prescribing Possibility is for anyone, especially high achievers who's tired of running on empty and ready to reconnect with what matters most. Dr. Mary Leung, a triple-board-certified physician turned certified life coach, gets candid about her own experience of burnout, and how she rewrote the script of her life to find clarity, balance, and real joy. Her story is packed with both heart and practical tools to help you shift from survival mode to intentional living.

Thanks for listening. Your support means everything - so if you are moved to, please leave me a review and share this episode with a friend who may need the messages held here.

Don't be a stranger.

You can reach me at [email protected]

Website

https://www.dympnaweil.com

Substack (or other newsletter)

https://substack.com/@dympnaweil

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It's just us today.

Join me for a conversation about one of the simplest and most useful tools I've found — one I use personally, teach regularly, and come back to especially when life feels like it's running the show instead of me.

It's called the CALM Method. And before your brain tells you this sounds too simple to matter — I'm going to lovingly challenge that thought. Because the things that change us most often aren't complicated. What makes them powerful is consistency, intentionality, and practicing them in the middle of real life — not in retreat centers or perfectly quiet rooms.

CALM stands for Compassion, Awareness, Listening, and Mindfulness. And in this episode I walk you through exactly what each one looks like in practice — not in theory, but in the parking lot at Target, in the checkout line at the grocery store, sitting in your car after a long day trying not to fall apart before you walk through the door.

Free Resource Mentioned in This Episode

📥 Download the free CALM Method Workbook a practical, simple tool to help you reconnect with yourself and find your way back to calm in the middle of real life.
👉 https://dympna.myflodesk.com/calm

Thanks for listening. Your support means everything - so if you are moved to, please leave me a review and share this episode with a friend who may need the messages held here.

Don't be a stranger.

You can reach me at [email protected]

Website

https://www.dympnaweil.com

Substack (or other newsletter)

https://substack.com/@dympnaweil

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https://www.instagram.com/dympnaweil/

Linkedin

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What does it actually mean to know your body and how do we get there when the medical system, social media, and decades of inadequate education have left most women without the tools to even ask the right questions?

In this rich and wide-ranging conversation, I sit down with award-winning health journalist and author Meghan Rabbitt to talk about her landmark book The New Rules of Women's Health, a comprehensive, evidence-based guide to women's health at every stage of life. Meghan spent three years interviewing over 130 all-female experts across medicine, research, and clinical practice to create the book she wishes every woman had on her shelf.

What We Talk About

• How a single magazine article on women's brain health — and one phone call with Maria Shriver — led Meghan to write this book

• Why "bikini medicine" is no longer enough and what a truly comprehensive view of women's health actually looks like

• Meghan's personal story of years of heavy periods, fibroids that went undetected, and what she learned about her own role in that

• The single most powerful thing you can do before your next doctor's appointment — and it takes less than ten minutes

• Why women brag about their high pain tolerance and the real cost of that habit

• The evidence — or lack of it — behind cycle syncing

• The shame we carry about our own bodies and why it is costing us our health

• Why it's time to start calling things by their actual names

• How to be an empowered partner in your own care — not a passive recipient of it

About Meghan Rabbitt

Meghan Rabbitt is an award-winning health journalist whose work has appeared in Prevention, Women's Health, and dozens of other national publications. She spent three years and interviewed over 130 all-female experts to write The New Rules of Women's Health — Your Guide to Thriving at Every Age, a comprehensive, evidence-based guide to women's health across every life stage. She has worked closely with Maria Shriver and the Women's Alzheimer's Movement and is one of the most trusted voices in women's health journalism today.

Connect with Meghan

• Find The New Rules of Women's Health: https://newrulesofwomenshealth.com/

• Follow Meghan on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meghanrabbitt

Thanks for listening. Your support means everything - so if you are moved to, please leave me a review and share this episode with a friend who may need the messages held here.

Don't be a stranger.

You can reach me at [email protected]

Website

https://www.dympnaweil.com

Substack (or other newsletter)

https://substack.com/@dympnaweil

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https://www.instagram.com/dympnaweil/

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What happens when you dedicate your life to something you love… and then one day, you can no longer feel it?

In this deeply human and unexpectedly moving conversation, I sit down with Elizabeth Sobol, CEO of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, for a conversation that transcends music, leadership, and career paths.

This is a conversation about disconnection, burnout, awe, and what it means to come back to yourself.

Elizabeth shares her journey from a childhood steeped in storytelling and song in rural North Carolina to a high-powered career in New York City’s classical music world, eventually rising to Managing Director at IMG and later President of a label at Universal Music.

But beneath the success, something quietly unraveled.

She found herself sitting in concert halls, surrounded by extraordinary music… and feeling nothing.

What unfolds is an honest exploration of burnout before we had language for it, the cost of chronic stress and disembodied work, and the quiet crisis of losing connection to what once made you feel alive.

Together, Dympna and Elizabeth explore:

• The early roots of awe, wonder, and creativity and why they matter more than we realize

• The unseen emotional labor of caregiving roles beyond medicine

• Burnout as a physiological and relational experience

• Why live, communal experiences (like music and dance) are biologically regulating

• The concept of “entrainment” and how shared experiences sync our nervous systems

• The difference between consuming life… and actually feeling it

• How a surprising “retirement” call changed everything and led Elizabeth back to meaning

About Elizabeth Sobol

Elizabeth Sobol is the CEO of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC), where she has reimagined what a performing arts institution can be in the modern era.

During her tenure, she has transformed SPAC into a year-round cultural destination, expanding programming across culinary, literary, healing, and visual arts, while dramatically increasing access through education initiatives that now serve tens of thousands annually.

She also led the creation of the SPAC School of the Arts and major campus renovations designed to deepen community connection and accessibility.

Before SPAC, Elizabeth held leadership roles at some of the most influential organizations in the arts, including serving as President & CEO of Universal Music Classics and Managing Director of IMG Artists, where she worked with world-renowned artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Renée Fleming, and Joshua Bell.

Her career has spanned artist management, music production, and cultural leadership—but at its core has always been about one thing: bringing people into deeper connection with art, with each other, and with themselves.

Connect with SPAC

🌐 Website: https://spac.org
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spacsaratoga
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SPACSaratoga

You can reach me at [email protected]

Website

https://www.dympnaweil.com

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