In her late twenties, Rylee Tuggle was diagnosed with a rare disorder: hypokalemic periodic paralysis.

She applied her diagnosis to her work providing well rounded resources to children with medical disorders.

Her newest book, The Trusted Trio, is designed to be a support tool that identifies and defines trusted and safe people. It then validates your child’s emotions while providing tools to help safely express them. Your child will learn different coping skills to process their trauma.

Rylee shares her journey and tips for thriving after a diagnosis.

Olivia Swindler found herself shattered and grieving at the conclusion of an abusive relationship. 

Starting life over, she packed up and moved to France. And then COVID hit. Alone in her apartment, with roommates trapped in America, Olivia learned a lot. About the noises her apartment makes, the fact that her roommate doesn't do dishes, and more importantly about herself. 

Olivia shared her story on Releasing Trauma in November 2021. 

She's back on the show to check-in and let us know what life is like as an American living in France.

You’ve probably had a thought (or many thoughts) that has stopped you from asking for help.

Maybe it was, "I don’t want to bother people."

Or, "Everybody is busy, too."

Or, "I should be able to handle this myself."

Or, "I don’t want to make someone feel guilty if they have to say no."

You can see how those beliefs might stop you in your tracks, right?

You might even think to yourself, "Why would someone want to help me, especially if it doesn’t benefit them?"

Knowing how to extend a helping hand or ask for assistance when needed is one of the best ways to build trusting, collaborative and mutually beneficial relationships with colleagues, clients, family and friends. And yet, for far too many folks, “help fluency” remains elusive.

Deborah Grayson Riegel teaches concrete strategies to help others get better at offering, asking for and accepting help — and explores the ways in which “help fluency” builds better relationships both professionally and personally.

We discuss how to change our mindsets and behaviors from avoiding asking for help to leaning into it and asking without fear or guilt.

As a child your spirit has been broken. Many years later, in sweeps that special someone and soon that relationship spirals out of control.

Can you escape from someone that "Loves you" one minute then hurts you the next?

How do you empower yourself to heal from the shame, guilt of keeping your children in a violent situation and alienation from loved ones?

Releasing intimate details of life as an unwilling participant in situations and events, was very lifechanging for Melinda Kunst from being abused, raped, BD/SM, a swinger, hooked on pornography, and at times suicidal.

The battle she was fought was spiritual, legal, emotional, and mental. Feeling at times worn out, bullied and grasping for self-preservation, knowing you can thrive and have renewal from brokenness may seem unbelievable.

Melinda shares how she was able to leave and create a new life for her and her children.

Holly Dunn shares her personal story of survival and how it has motivated and inspired her to reach out to others.

The only known survivor of a serial killer, Holly refuses to let it negatively affect her life by using her tragic experience for the good of others.

Her personal mission and intense passion to be an advocate for women who have been victims of similar violence has led her to a life of public service and outreach.


Holly lends insight into her personal healing process and explains how she was able to continue her education and use her experience to jump full steam into a life of advocacy and community involvement.

Sibling sexual abuse is a silent epidemic throughout the world today.


In fact, it is one of the last remaining taboo subjects in our current public discourse.


Sibling sexual abuse is up to 5 times more common than other forms of childhood sexual abuse yet too many don't even know what it is and certainly do not the heavy toll that is taken on survivors.


Brad Watts discusses how survivors are impacted, what sibling sexual abuse is, how to recognize and respond to it, and how to aid survivors and families.

When Maria De Luna was 19 years old, she moved to Vancouver BC with her partner at the time.

They had a great life; cars, money, and business. But what people did not know is behind closed doors, Maria was getting abused mentally and emotionally, along with the drug abuse.

Maria struggled so much with self-worth and what love was. She stayed because he always told her while they fought, ” No one will ever love you like I do!”

Not knowing better, Maria believed him, thinking this was normal all couples fight and have arguments.

Until one day he physically pushed Maria, 8 months pregnant, and ended up killing their unborn child. 

Naturally Maria fell into a dark depression until she realized she no longer wanted to live that way. 

She began her healing journey.

As Maria continued her journey, her mom became very sick. Moving to Edmonton, Maria cared for her mother until she passed. Leaving Maria alone and distraught. 

Maria continued turning to light work and to this day continues to heal herself and others with her work.

Dr. Paul Zeitz shares a lifetime of struggles and hard-won lessons as a doctor, activist, father and son.

His complex dance between healing others and healing himself ultimately transforms his inexplicable anger into a full-throttled, open-hearted, soul-satisfying action.

Waging Justice is his personal story and yet also a universal one: a story of action, of courage and also of forgiveness. It is also a rallying cry to wage justice in our own lives, speak the truth, be bold and serve justice for all by taking action in our world today.

Waging Optimism offers a personal philosophy and political vision for addressing the major challenges facing humanity.

With persistent optimism, we can each make commitments and build movements, so together we can usher in a new era of justice.

In 2002, Jesse Crosson was a recent high school graduate with a rapidly worsening drug problem. His mother had tried to intervene, but by Thanksgiving that year, she felt helpless. The child she'd raised, kind and eager to fit in, was now out of control.


Things got worse, quickly. A week later, high on drugs, Jesse and three other people committed a home invasion and robbery. And a week after that, he got into an altercation that ended when he fired shots into a car that was chasing him. He hit and injured the two men in the car.


Jesse pleaded guilty to multiple felonies. Sentencing guidelines called for 11 to 16 years, but Albemarle County Circuit Court Judge Paul Peatross doubled that time to 32 years.


Jesse received a conditional pardon on his sentence and was released in August 2021, almost 19 years after being incarcerated.


In prison Jesse turned his life around. He earned a college degree in psychology. He's trained as a cook and electrician. He teaches yoga and Spanish. And he's a mentor to other inmates with mental health and substance abuse issues.

Ann Marie Balkanski's mom was an addict.

This caused Ann Marie to move around a lot, live with friends and random people her mother knew, and eventually end up in foster care at 10 years old.

Her father got her out of foster care at 12 but was absent in the majority of life, and Ann Marie eventually found herself moving around again. 

Ann Marie got her GED at 19 and got accepted into pre-med program at university. She made it into med-school early but battled financial instability and lack of support, a lot of comparison, self-doubt, tons of limiting beliefs, and low self-worth.

Searching for help, she got into meditation during medical school, went to traditional therapy, read lots of self-help books during and after med school, but still felt like a fraud after medical school.

The major pivot in her life was the passing of a childhood friend.

This woke her up and she became very aware of self and life and what she had manifested at that time. 

Traveling across US in travel trailer searching for answers, she found a hypnotherapist which transformed her life.

She went to school for hypnotherapy and dived even deeper into meditation.

Never looking back, her profound awareness of her limiting beliefs has healed self-neglect, abandonment issues, low self-worth, feeling like a fraud, major depression, and anxiety.

The moral of it all...Ann Marie learned how to get out of her own way and not be defined by her experiences.