The Just A Mom Podcast

Sierra works as the Community Prevention Manager for Johnson County Mental Health. But that’s not why she is on the podcast. Sierra shares an incredible story of her lived experience very candidly. Sierra struggled with postpartum depression, major insomnia, hallucinations, and psychosis after the birth of her first child. In this episode, Sierra shares how she felt so alone and afraid of being separated from her family and being able to work in the mental health field again. She discusses how frightening psychosis and visual hallucinations are, and that she didn’t even tell her psychiatrist about the hallucinations. 

Sierra was able to recover and manage her symptoms for several months, and eventually, she and her husband decided to have another baby. Sierra thought she would be able to stay on top of her mental health during her second pregnancy. However, early in that pregnancy, she had a major insomnia episode, which led to medication.  Major anxiety set in a couple of months later, which led to paranoia, delusions, and delirium. When she was seven months pregnant, she had a suicide attempt because of the delusions. Sierra felt chronically suicidal for weeks and concealed symptoms from her care team because she was afraid and wanted to protect her family from her dark thoughts. Sierra recovered and delivered a healthy baby boy.

Sierra talks about the incredible support from her husband and parents, and how she felt so much shame but also incredible empathy for others who struggle with mental illness. 

This episode of The Just A Mom podcast features Tracey Yokas, author of the book Bloodlines: A Memoir of Harm and Healing (https://www.amazon.com/Bloodlines-Memoir-Self-Harm-Healing-Generational-ebook/dp/B09CD4F614). In the book, Tracey explores her relationship with her own mother as well as the family dynamics of a child with mental illness.  Tracey’s daughter’s battle started with the death of Tracey’s mom in 2013 when her daughter was 13 years old and going into 8th grade.  It started one day with “I’m really not that hungry” and soon after that her daughter was diagnosed with disordered eating and depression. 

In this episode, Tracey chronicles the myriad of treatments they tried—counseling, partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient treatment, and eventually in-patient treatment. Tracey shares vulnerably how a big part of her journey was learning all of the things inside her that needed healing, and that she couldn’t control her daughter’s healing. Tracey also talks about how she felt so many of the things that many of us have felt—she didn’t want to share with people what was going on with her daughter, and she isolated herself a lot because of this. 

While so many of us talk about self-care as a vital part of maintaining our mental health, Tracey takes it a step further and challenges listeners to learn about themselves to become our best true selves.  She also emphasizes the importance of educating yourself about mental illness. 

Brandon Saho was a successful sportscaster in Cincinnati. He was living his professional dream, but away from his job there was an unseen story.  Brandon struggled with depression and suicidal ideation as well as alcoholism.  On this unique episode of The Just A Mom podcast, Brandon and his mom, Debbie, share about Brandon’s journey with mental illness, which included in-patient hospitalization.  Brandon left his “dream job” as a sportscaster to start The Mental Game podcast, where he interviews athletes, musicians, and celebrities to help break the stigma surrounding mental health and mental illness.  Brandon recently embarked on a 30-day tour of 30 states to speak and promote the podcast. You can find the podcast here: https://www.themental.game/ or https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mental-game-by-brandon-saho/id1651420750.

This episode is a continuation of my conversation with Kristina Miller, mom of former Ohio State University football player Harry Miller. In this episode, Kristina recounts some of the fears and challenges of parenting an adult son with mental health issues. 
Make sure to check out the Don’t Make It Weird Foundation (https://dmiw.org/ (https://dmiw.org/)), whose mission is to normalize the conversation around mental illness (https://www.thejustamompodcast.com/about). 
This is the final re-air of the summer. Stay tuned for new episodes in September! Make sure to follow The Just A Mom podcast on Facebook and Instagram.

If you haven't heard my conversation with Kristina, you don't want to miss this re-air. In the first of two episodes, Kristina talks about the beginnings of Harry's mental illness at a young age and all the things she did to help him. We discuss the tremendous pressure on student-athletes, particularly high-profile ones. Kristina also shares about the day she received the call that Harry was contemplating suicide and rushing from Georgia to Ohio to be with him, and how difficult it was to leave him there after six weeks.

*Trigger warning - this episode contains explicit talk about suicide and methodology 

This episode is a continuation of my conversation with Coach Dowling. If you haven't listened to last week's episode, please go back and listen to it. Coach Dowling is honest, raw, and real about his brother's death by suicide and his own mental health
struggles.

*Trigger warning- this episode contains explicit talk about suicide and methodology 

This episode is the first in a two-part series that you don't want to miss if you didn't hear it the first time. Coach Dowling is very open and vulnerable about losing his brother to suicide as well as his own battle with depression and suicidal ideation. He shares candidly about his time in an in-patient psychiatric hospital as well as the
incredible circle of support he has.

I decided to re-air this incredibly powerful episode of The Just A Mom podcast because of the meteoric rise in fentanyl addiction and deaths related to fentanyl use. Ronda’s son survived a fentanyl addiction. My conversation with Ronda is a no-holds-barred one. Her son battled an eating disorder and undiagnosed depression in high school. He found a bottle of narcotics after a family member’s surgery and took one to numb his pain—and was hooked.
Ronda recounts the moment things changed when they realized her son had been hiding a fentanyl addiction for 3  1/2 years in college, the failed rehab stent, followed by a 2.5-year successful recovery journey.  On a celebratory note, Ronda’s son recently celebrated his seventh year of sobriety. Ronda’s message to parents is this: addiction can happen to anyone.

My incredibly brave and strong friend Suzanne talks about losing her son, Nic, to suicide in 2017.  She started noticing signs of anxiety and depression before people were really talking openly about mental health. Suzanne shares deeply intimate details about losing her son her grieving process, and how losing a child to suicide can happen to anyone. 

Suzanne shared with me (and I’m sharing this with her permission) that she had no idea how freeing it would be to tell her story on The Just A Mom podcast. She said since the time of recording, she has found herself more willing/able to share her story. I would encourage everyone to follow in Suzanne’s footsteps and share your story with a safe person.

When I first started The Just A Mom podcast, I was only focused on interviewing parents of children who have struggled with mental health issues.  That changed when I met with Trevor, and he shared the story of the last few years with me. Trevor is an adult who suffers from depression and suicidal ideation.  Trevor was a middle school teacher and coach for my two oldest kids and went on to be a middle school principal.  I can tell you from personal experience that Trevor was the teacher all the kids wanted for social studies—he was young, fun, cool, and energetic.  But over the years the darkness started creeping in. Trevor helps us understand that even though a person can appear to have it all together, there is often a very different scenario going on inside. 

Trevor was at the top of his profession, being named National Digital Principal of the Year in 2021, when, for the sake of his mental health, he made a significant career move to the world of E-Sports. Since the time of our interview, he has moved into a new position with SchoolAI (https://schoolai.com/).