Still & Standing Podcast™ (formerly Redefine Your Struggle™) by, Amy McCann

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🎙️Listen Here or WATCH Episode #13  ⚠️ Content Note
This episode includes adult themes and an open, honest conversation about emotional health and crisis. Please listen with care and discretion.

📞 If you or someone you know is experiencing emotional distress, call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988—available 24/7 for immediate, confidential support. You are not alone, and help is always here.

In this episode, I’m joined by Andy Grant—suicide prevention advocate, speaker, and host of the Real Men Feel podcast. Andy shares his personal journey with profound courage, reflecting on survival, emotional honesty, and what it means to stay connected to life through long-haul self-honor.

This conversation is shared in real-life hope and as an example of empowerment beyond survival. We also honor that every journey is unique—and in no way seek to diminish the complexities each person’s story may carry.

❤️May it reach the hearts that need it most.

For all things Andy Grant: https://theandygrant.com/

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🎙️Still & Standing Solo Episode #12

What if the key to peace of mind wasn’t the pause—but the preparation before it? In this episode of Still & Standing™, Amy McCann offers a powerful reframe for anyone navigating emotionally demanding, high-responsibility roles—whether in caregiving, leadership, entrepreneurship, or life transitions.

Drawing from The Power of Now, nervous system wisdom, and nature-based metaphors, Amy explores how stillness without preparation can feel more like collapse than calm—and how emotional and relational infrastructure can become your strongest source of stability.

✨ In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why preparation is the missing piece in most stress management advice
• How to leverage emotional fitness as infrastructure, not just reaction
• The difference between pausing and preparation
• How to build inner architecture that holds you in high-stakes seasons

🎯 This conversation is for: high performers, care partners juggling family life and work, and anyone who carries weight others may not see and refuses to burn out needlessly in the process.

Thank you for listening! 

Become an early listener and be the first to know about new episodes HERE

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🎙️🎧Episode #11

Featuring my first guest: Ande Lyons!  

👀WATCH HERE 

Radiant entrepreneur and host of the Don’t Be Caged By Your Age podcast, Ande Lyons, joins Amy McCann for a deeply personal conversation about empowered aging, emotional healing, and bold reinvention in midlife and beyond.

Ande opens up about harnessing emotional freedom, navigating family estrangement with grace, and finding spiritual steadiness through grief, healing, and new beginnings.

Together, they explore:

✅ Why aging is not decline, but a powerful gateway to reinvention
 ✅ How visibility and self-worth evolve in the second half of life
 ✅ The rituals that keep Ande grounded in joy, confidence, and clarity
 ✅ And the mantra that helps her walk with fear, not behind it

If you’ve ever felt “over the hill,” unsure how to navigate your next chapter, or pressured by outdated narratives about aging, this episode is a soulful invitation to reclaim your voice, vision, and emotional vitality.

🎧 Tune in and subscribe for honest conversations on emotional fitness, legacy leadership, and rising into your next season with grace and grit.

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🌿 Still & Standing – Episode 10
🎙 A Return to Freedom Within: When the Freeze Response Isn’t a Mindset Problem

What if the reason you're stuck isn’t a lack of discipline but a misunderstood freeze response?

In this powerful episode, Amy invites you into the quiet, often unseen experience of emotional paralysis — the kind that mindset tools alone can’t touch.

Drawing on her personal caregiving journey, the wisdom of actor/athlete/author Christopher Reeve, and the art of theatrical connection, she reveals why we can be fully functioning on the outside… while frozen on the inside.

If you’ve ever felt numb, disconnected, or secretly exhausted from holding it all together, this conversation offers a breath of relief.

✨ It’s not about hacks or habits. It’s about harnessing inner harmony.

🎧 Tune in to explore:

• Breaking down the barrier of brain freeze — why mindset adjustment isn’t always the problem or go-to solution, and a Superman perspective every human needs to hear
• Breaking free of hiring healers and the "hero" label as you know it, to conquer the most severe type of paralysis or existential crisis
• Breaking up with your unshakable resilience — for refined, unforgettable resonance within, and the kind of authentic freedom your soul might be yearning for

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🎙 When Credentials Aren’t Enough and Longevity Loses Its Appeal
Bonus Episode | Still & Standing Podcast

Description:
How do we avoid disappointment before it begins?

In this short bonus episode, I explore two often-overlooked blind spots: assuming longevity equals success, and assuming credentials guarantee connection.

Whether interviewing a long-married couple or hiring for care, it’s easy to lean on surface-level signals of trust based on years together or work experience.

But what if presence matters more?

I share a behind-the-scenes story from my experience hiring home health nurses and how bringing a beginner’s mind to the table helped me move beyond repeated disappointment to find not just competence, but high-quality, long-term care partners.

This episode invites you to reconsider how you evaluate connection — and how curiosity may be the missing piece when credentials fall short and connection doesn’t follow.

🎧Early Listener Link

🧑‍🧑‍🧒 US Home Care Crisis Resource

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🎧 Resources That Helped Guide This Episode:

• The Silence of Shunning: A Conversation With Kipling Williams
  Psychology Today
  https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beyond-bullying/201309/the-silence-shunning-conversation-kipling-william
• What Is the Silent Treatment—and Is It Abuse?
  Medical News Today
  https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/silent-treatment
• "I Felt Dead Inside": The Psychological Cost of the Silent Treatment
  Medical Xpress
  https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-04-felt-dead-psychological-silent-treatment.html
• Healing the Pain of Estrangement
  American Psychological Association (APA Monitor)
  https://www.apa.org/monitor/2024/04/healing-pain-estrangement
• Shunning & Sibling Estrangement
  YouTube / Ali-John Chaudhury, Psychotherapist
  https://youtu.be/yKgU9SLznBU

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Enjoy this replay from 2022!  WATCH this episode 👀

Meet Faisal Ensaun! 

I am proud to be associated with our guest, Faisal Ensaun, a fellow Certified High Performance Coach. He is an immigrant from a war-torn country and has faced immense challenges, including overcoming addiction and bouts of deep personal despair. 

Today, he stands as a beacon of success, fulfillment, and purpose, reaching heights that seemed unimaginable in his childhood. [intro from Faisal's website https://www.faisalensaun.com/about]

In this episode, Faisal brings us the depth of his experience in ways that help us better understand how to answer the question: What are the signs you’re avoiding emotional pain? And the #1 thing we all must do, as painful as it is, is to live a life of meaning and connection.

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🎙 Season II-Episode #6: The Difference Between Strong and Still—It Changed My Life

My journey to creating Still & Standing™ was shaped by a personal turning point that unfolded across more than two decades—redefining not just my dreams, but the spirit with which I chose to live them. 

It began with my then-boyfriend’s spinal cord injury, continued through our years as husband and wife, (and my role as a primary care partner) and led into the chapter that followed: co-parents and ex-spouses moving along separate paths, with a shared history shaped by life’s most tender complexities.

This isn’t just about surviving difficulty. It’s about discovering a deeper kind of strength—the kind that doesn’t demand noise to be real.

If you've ever had to hold it all together while everything was falling apart...
 If you've ever had to lead, love, or keep showing up when calm wasn’t an option…
 This episode is for you.

🌀 This is where we begin—at the intersection of emotional resilience, soulful leadership, and authentic strength.

 🔖 Save this for when you need a reminder that stillness and strength are not opposites.

#StillAndStanding #PodcastLaunch #Resilience #EmotionalIntegrity #LeadershipFromWithin #LegacyInTheMaking

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This is a requested audio by one of my community members! 

Listen to my #1 parenting insights, crisis, and what surrender taught me while raising teenage twin daughters. 

In this raw and heartfelt episode, I open up about the season of parenting I never expected—the teenage years that tested everything I thought I knew. From the painful grip of ego and silent shame to the power of surrender, I share personal stories and insights for any parent (or caregiver) currently in (or approaching) the teen stage. This isn’t expert advice—it’s a lived journey that might shift how you see your own.

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Episode #5  Title~ When the Authorities Knock:  Practicing Peace and Clarity Under Pressure

My husband, Sean, and I originally conducted a private session with my MasterPeace-of-Mind™ students in 2023. I bring it to you in worldwide current relevance: 

We live in a continued chapter with off-the-rails character smashing and social perceptions passed off as truth. 

One challenge we can all work on is this: 

The only person left standing—no matter how things land—is you.

It sounds obvious. Even cliché.

But what happens when you are being accused of wrong, and those seemingly much larger in status or perception of physical strength seem to have the power to take you down? How might this journey help us reconsider our own perceptions and accusations of others?