What does it actually take to make love last thirty years?

Not the highlight reel version. The real one.

In this episode Faith shares the love story she has never told in full — meeting Johnny at 15, falling fast and hard, breaking up, writing a handwritten letter in 1996 to get him back, becoming teenage parents, moving across the country with nothing but each other, and figuring out — slowly, imperfectly — what it actually means to choose someone for thirty years.

This is not a fairytale. It is something better.

It is an honest conversation about what love asks of you — in the early years, the hard years, and the ones where you look across the room at someone you have known for decades and still feel grateful they called that same day.

Because real love is not the butterflies.

It is the staying.

The choosing — again and again — especially when it is hard.

If you have ever loved someone — or wanted to — this episode is for you.

Still Building is a podcast about becoming — honestly.New episodes every week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

A gentle note before you press play — this episode goes to tender places. We talk about grief, loss, and the people we carry with us. If you are in a hard season right now please be kind to yourself as you listen. This one is worth it — but take your time getting there.

Grief is one of the things we carry the longest and talk about the least.

We tuck it away so life can keep going. We perform okayness long before we feel it. We tell ourselves we should be over it by now.

We are not over it. We are just carrying it differently.

In this episode I dedicate time to the people I have lost — my brother Luke, who died at 16 and whose quiet gentle presence I still see in my youngest son. My dad, a wonderful and complicated man who broke a painful family cycle and gave us something he never had. My father-in-law Enrique — the most uncomplicated love our family has ever known — whose unexpected loss less than a year ago still catches me off guard every single day.

And my mom — the strongest woman I have ever known — who has taught me more about carrying grief than anyone else in my life. Not by pushing through it. But by sitting down in it. With grace. With faith. With presence.

This episode is also for you — wherever your grief lives. Because grief is not only about death. It shows up in relationships that ended, seasons that are over, dreams that didn't come true, and losses that don't always have names.

And for the women walking beside someone who is grieving — I want to offer you the most important thing my mom taught me.

You don't have to fix it.

You just have to stay.

Still Building is a podcast about becoming — honestly.New episodes every week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

At some point this year I stopped asking how do I build more — and started asking something I had never made space for before.

What do I actually want?

Those are very different questions. And for most of my career I didn't have the luxury of the second one.

In this episode I talk honestly about what happens when the life you built is good — and something inside you still shifts. About four and a half years in startup healthcare that taught me who I am as a leader. About finding out I might be laid off and sitting with three weeks of fear, grief, and — unexpectedly — relief.

Relief that someone was finally forcing me to ask what I actually wanted.

I talk about being a professional unicorn — someone whose background doesn't fit neatly into any one box — and learning to see that as a strength rather than something to apologize for. About choosing intentionally for the first time instead of taking the first role offered out of fear. About returning to traditional healthcare not as the person who left burned out in 2021 — but as someone who finally knows who she is as a leader.

And about choosing presence over trajectory. Home over flight. Joy over protection.

This episode is for any woman who has worked hard for a long time and is quietly starting to wonder what she actually wants for herself.

Still Building is a podcast about becoming — honestly. New episodes every week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

I never planned to be a leader. I planned to stay at the bedside - a labor and delivery nurse doing the work I loved.

And then my manager was let go. And someone asked me to step in.

That one yes changed everything.

In this episode I talk about the loneliness of leading former friends, the imposter syndrome that followed me into every room, and what was really underneath all that building -protection. For my family. For the stability I had spent my whole life trying to create.

And then COVID came. A parking lot swabbing tent. Scared doctors. Seven days a week for months - until I became physically ill, burned out, and for the first time in my career didn't love what I was doing anymore.

This is the episode about what happens when you give everything.

And what's possible when you finally start building for yourself.

Still Building is a podcast about becoming — honestly. New episodes every week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

More Than One Chapter: Identity Beyond Roles and Seasons

When she was a pregnant teenager, a nurse midwife told her something she's carried for decades: this is part of your story, not your whole story. In this episode, she returns to those words and unpacks what they've meant through every season since.

She opens up about the freer life she quietly imagined before becoming a mother at 17, and speaks directly to any woman who stepped into a role — mother, caregiver, partner, provider — before she fully knew herself, often without space to grieve the "becoming" that got interrupted.

Along the way, she shares what three very different children taught her: growing up alongside her daughter, parenting her son with more patience while rebuilding community in a new city, and learning presence and flexibility from her tender-hearted youngest. When her daughter left for college, she came face to face with the question so many mothers eventually ask — who am I beyond this?

This is an invitation to gently excavate the parts of yourself that titles and seasons may have buried. She closes with reflective questions to help you begin reclaiming the woman underneath the roles.

Chapters

• 00:00 — More Than One Chapter
• 01:05 — The Life I Imagined
• 03:03 — Roles Before Self
• 04:52 — Growing Up Together
• 06:30 — When They Leave Home
• 08:17 — Starting Over Somewhere New
• 10:39 — Lessons From Our Youngest
• 11:36 — Becoming Alongside Love
• 12:45 — Your Story, Not the Whole Story
• 14:57 — Questions to Reclaim You
• 16:34 — Closing Encouragement

Growing Up Fast:

Grief, Responsibility, and Becoming

The speaker reflects on how becoming a mother at 17 “saved” her by giving her direction and responsibility, reshaping her priorities and creating distance from peers. She traces this accelerated maturity back to losing her brother Luke in a car accident at 13, learning to carry grief quietly while watching her parents and siblings grieve. She describes a warm, loving father whose mental illness brought uncertainty, and a mother who steadily held the family together through grief and hardship, modeling quiet strength. A supportive nurse midwife during her pregnancy made her feel seen and capable, inspiring her calling to become a labor and delivery nurse. She names the hidden costs and gifts of growing up fast, discusses how grief endures and integrates over time, and offers reflective questions and encouragement to others with similar experiences.

00:00 My Daughter Saved Me

01:12 Losing Luke at 13

03:20 Loving My Father

04:45 My Mom the Rock

06:11 Becoming a Mom at 17

07:09 Called to Nursing

08:28 Outgrowing Friendships

10:07 You Are Not Alone

11:27 What Growing Up Fast Gave Me

12:39 Living With Grief

13:47 Permission to Grieve

15:18 How It Shaped My Life

16:24 Questions and Closing

This is where it started.

At 45, I found myself sitting with a question I didn't expect — not what do I need to accomplish next, but who am I becoming now?

In this first episode, I share my story honestly. Growing up fast. Becoming a mother before I fully knew who I was. Building a career in nursing and healthcare leadership. Choosing commitment through decades of marriage. And arriving at midlife to find that the building isn't done — it's just asking something different of me now.

We talk about what it means to grow up before you're ready. What survival mode does to your identity. What perimenopause actually feels like — in your brain, your patience, your sense of self. What shifts when your children become adults. And what happens when the question changes from how do I build stability to who do I want to be now that stability is here.

This episode is for the woman who has built something she's proud of — and still feels like there's another layer waiting.

You don't have to be a mother or a wife to feel this.

You just have to be a woman who is still becoming.

Still Building is a podcast about growing inside the life you've already built. Honest, reflective, unhurried. New episodes weekly.

At 45, I've been sitting with something I didn't expect.

I'm not finished becoming.

Still Building is a podcast for women in the middle of it — accomplished, capable, responsible — and quietly realizing there's another layer waiting. We'll talk about the things that don't get talked about enough. Perimenopause. Identity after achievement. Marriage at midlife. Parenting young adults. Caring for aging parents. Grief. Chosen family. And the strange, beautiful recalibration that happens when you realize you are not done becoming.

This isn't a podcast about reinvention. It's not about blowing up your life and starting over.

It's about growing inside the life you've already built.

Whether you've built a family, a career, a community, or simply a version of yourself you're proud of — you're in the right place.

New episodes coming soon.

You're not alone. You're not behind. You're not finished.

You're still building.