The Essential Table Podcast

What happens when you spend 57 years believing there’s something wrong with you, only to discover you’ve been trying to understand yourself without all the information?

Author and audiobook narrator Cristal Underwood joins me at The Essential Table to share how receiving an autism diagnosis at 57 changed the way she understood her childhood, relationships, and identity.

We talk about late-diagnosed autism in women, masking to fit in, emotional overwhelm, setting boundaries, and learning to stop apologizing for being different.

Cristal also shares the inspiration behind her children’s book, Ordinary Smordinary, a story about a little girl named Gigi who wishes she could be ordinary.

In this episode:

* Receiving an autism diagnosis later in life.

* Recognizing childhood experiences through a different lens.

* Autism masking and the pressure to fit in.

* Letting go of unhealthy friendships and setting boundaries.

* Taking responsibility without treating your differences as personal failures.

* Helping children feel understood rather than judged.

* Why self-acceptance matters at every age.

A question for you: What have you spent years believing about yourself that you’re beginning to question?

Connect with Cristal Underwood

Ordinary Smordinary: https://shorturl.at/YjdOh

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cristalunderwood68/

Explore The Power to Pivot Collective

Books and resources to question old beliefs, rebuild self-trust, and choose again.

https://thepowertopivotcollective.com

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Enjoy these stories? Help support The Essential Table, our companion podcast about honest conversations and human connection.

Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/theessentialtable

You are never stuck. You are never lost. You are never, ever alone.

At any given moment, you can use your power to pivot, make a new choice, and start again.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Allison Bond started writing five cards a day to strangers who needed encouragement.

Today, her faith-driven letter-writing ministry sends approximately 60–70 letters a week to incarcerated individuals, people experiencing homelessness, those struggling with addiction, and military personnel.

Allison joins me on The Essential Table with her favorite honey mustard pretzels to talk about kindness, judgment, compassion, and why human connection matters more than we sometimes realize.

In this episode:

* How five handwritten cards became a growing ministry.

* Why Allison writes to people society often overlooks.

* The difference between judgment and accountability.

* How her grandmother, faith, and personal experiences with anxiety inspired her work.

* Why small acts of kindness can make a lasting difference.

A question for you: When was the last time you made someone feel seen without expecting anything in return?

Connect with Allison Bond and Kindness Through Letters Project

On Facebook

Featured Article: Arkansas Woman Spreads Love Through Thousands of Handwritten Letters

Explore The Power to Pivot Collective

Books and resources to question old beliefs, build self-trust, and choose again.

https://thepowertopivotcollective.com

Support The Essential Table

Help bring more honest conversations and human stories to the table.

https://buymeacoffee.com/theessentialtable

Food gets us to the table. Conversation is where the healing begins.

What do Donald Trump, a Wawa Gobbler, and the human ego have in common?

Apparently, more than you might think.

This week on The Essential Table, John Chapkovich, founder of The Green Monkey Federation, joins me with one of his favorite comfort foods: the Wawa Gobbler. Think Thanksgiving dinner stuffed into a hoagie roll, complete with turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and gravy.

Somewhere between the sandwich and the conversation, we find ourselves talking about Donald Trump, political scapegoating, current events, and a question that reaches well beyond politics: Why are we so quick to find someone to blame, and what happens when we’ve already decided who the villain is?

We explore how perception shapes what we believe, why our ego gets defensive when our opinions are challenged, and how fear, shame, and guilt can interfere with honest communication.

We also talk about integrity, accountability, and the difference between listening to understand someone and listening for an opportunity to prove them wrong.

These patterns show up in our relationships, our families, our workplaces, and the conversations we have every day.

In this episode, we discuss:

* The comfort and nostalgia of Wawa’s Gobbler sandwich (note: Wawa is not a sponsor of The Essential Table).

* Donald Trump, political scapegoating, and the difference between blame and accountability.

* How perception, assumptions, and personal beliefs shape our understanding of current events.

* Why fear, shame, and guilt can trigger emotional defense mechanisms.

* What happens when our ego feels threatened or we’re put in the spotlight.

* The role of integrity and self-awareness in difficult conversations.

* How to communicate without immediately becoming defensive.

* Practical ways to create more honest conversations in business, relationships, and our communities.

A question to bring to your own table

When was the last time you entered a conversation genuinely willing to question your own perspective?

Think about the conversations you’ve had recently. Were you listening to understand, or were you preparing your response?

We don’t have to agree with one another to have a meaningful conversation. But we do have to be willing to listen, question our assumptions, and recognize when our own reactions are getting in the way.

Continue the conversation

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Where do you draw the line between holding someone accountable and making them the scapegoat?

Stay connected

The Power to Pivot Collective

Explore books, tools, and resources to help you understand your patterns, build self-trust, and choose again.

https://thepowertopivotcollective.com

Buy Me a Coffee

If you enjoy The Essential Table and want to help support more honest conversations, stories, and guests, you can buy me a coffee here:

https://buymeacoffee.com/theessentialtable

Food gets us to the table. Conversation is where the healing begins.

There’s a spot for everyone at this table.

What are you bringing to the table?

Not the casserole. Not the wine. Not the perfect conversation starter.

You.

Every conversation begins with more than what is happening in the moment. We bring our history, expectations, assumptions, old wounds, unfinished arguments, beliefs, fears, and the stories we’ve already decided are true.

Sometimes we’re not responding to what someone actually said. We’re responding to everything we carried into the room with us.

In Episode 3 of The Essential Table, we explore what it means to become more aware of what we’re bringing into our relationships, our conversations, our work, and our decisions.

What are you defending?

What are you assuming?

What are you afraid of?

What part of this belongs to today—and what part belongs somewhere else?

Self-awareness gives us something incredibly valuable: choice.

The choice to pause before reacting.

The choice to tell the truth without making someone the villain.

The choice to have a boundary without turning disagreement into rejection.

The choice to say, “I don’t know.”

And sometimes, “I don’t know” is exactly where the most honest conversations begin.

This episode is also about curiosity, judgment, accountability, repair, and the questions that can create change.

Instead of asking only, “Who’s right?” we can sometimes ask:

What happened?

What am I missing?

What can we learn?

What would we do differently?

Whether we’re talking about relationships, family, work, business, community, or the next chapter of our own lives, meaningful change often begins with one honest question. Sometimes you simply have to stop pretending the current version is working.

In this episode, we explore:

* What we carry into conversations without realizing it

* How past experiences can shape present reactions

* The difference between reacting and responding

* How self-awareness creates more choice

* Setting boundaries without turning people into villains

* Why “I don’t know” can be a powerful answer

* The role of curiosity in relationships and personal growth

* Curiosity versus judgment

* Accountability, repair, forgiveness, and beginning again

* How questions can create meaningful change

* What happens when we stop reducing people to their job titles, beliefs, or social media profiles?

The question to take with you:

Before your next difficult conversation, ask yourself:

What am I bringing to the table?

Are you bringing curiosity?

An old argument?

An expectation?

A story you’ve already decided is true?

The need to be right?

The willingness to be surprised?

And perhaps the bigger question:

Are you leaving enough room for the person across from you to be more than you expected?

Want to hear more? Consider buying me a coffee!

If you enjoy The Essential Table, and want to support the work that we are doing, considering buying me a coffee. This helps support the time to record, edit, publish, and promote these conversations.

Keep the conversation going

What are you bringing to the table right now?

And what might happen if you put down something you’ve been carrying for far too long?

You never know what might happen next.

Have you ever been completely wrong about someone?

Most of us have.

We make assumptions. We fill in the blanks. We create an entire story about someone based on a single opinion, decision, belief, mistake, or label.

And then we forget something important:

We gave ourselves a whole story. Why do we give everyone else a category?

In this episode of The Essential Table, we’re talking about what happens when we become curious about the people we think we understand.

We talk about political differences, religion, family, relationships, work, conflict, and the assumptions we make about people whose lives look different from ours.

Understanding someone does not mean agreeing with them.

Listening does not require abandoning your beliefs.

Curiosity does not mean tolerating cruelty or giving up your boundaries.

It simply means being willing to ask:

What happened to you?What shaped the way you see this?What am I assuming?What did you actually say?What would happen if I asked one more question?

Sometimes the differences between us are real and important. Sometimes they are exactly what gives us an opportunity to learn something we could never discover from inside our own experience.

Sometimes, once we hear someone’s story, the distance gets a little smaller.

We may still disagree.

We may still see the world differently, but the other person becomes visible again.

That is the conversation I want to create at The Essential Table: a place where we can tell the truth, ask better questions, disagree without turning one another into enemies, and remain curious enough to discover what we might have missed.

We don’t have to leave every table agreeing.

Sometimes two people simply choosing to listen is enough.

In this episode, we explore:

* Why we create stories about people before we actually know them

* The difference between understanding someone and agreeing with them

* Why listening is not the same thing as surrendering your beliefs

* How assumptions can turn ordinary disagreements into unnecessary conflict

* What happens when we become curious instead of defensive

* The stories and experiences underneath people’s beliefs and opinions

* Why the person behind a position matters

* How this shows up in families, marriages, friendships, workplaces, and communities

* Why boundaries and listening can exist at the same time

* What it means to leave room for someone to change their mind

* How curiosity can create more meaningful human connection

* Why we don’t have to resolve every difference to share the same table

A question to take with you

Think about someone you strongly disagree with.

Do you actually know why they believe what they believe?

Have you ever asked?

Or have you already decided you know the answer?

If you would like to support this work:

If you are enjoying The Essential Table and want to support this work, consider buying me a coffee!

Keep the conversation going

What happens when you stop trying to convince someone and start trying to understand them?

And what might change if you gave someone else the same complexity, context, and grace you automatically give yourself?

Tell the truth. Stay curious. Make room for another human being.

And when you can, keep a seat open.

You never know who might need it.

The table gives us a reason to sit down. Conversation gives us a reason to stay. There is something about a table. We celebrate around one. We grieve around one. We drink coffee long after it has gone cold because the conversation got good.

We pass recipes through generations. We feed people when there is nothing useful to say. We argue. We laugh too l…