As well as producing weekly episodes of The Meaningful Life, our podcast engineer Michael Dooney is a brand new dad. This week, Michael and his wife Christy talk to Andrew about their life-changing and at times traumatic journey to parenthood. 

Michael and Christy battled infertility and grieved the loss of several pregnancies. When they finally conceived their daughter Elsie, they effectively held their breath for the next nine months, fearing something would go wrong at any moment. Now they are happily riding the rollercoaster of raising a newborn, and discovering life as a family of three. 

Michael also has a podcast exploring the art world, Subtext and Discourse. 

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Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50: https://www.patreon.com/andrewgmarshall 

Take a look at The Hypnobirthing Book by Katharine Graves

Find out about the birthing course Christy and Michael took online: https://www.hebammenzeit.de/hebammenzeit-in-english/  

Find out about Michael’s work in the Berlin art world here

Listen to Michael’s podcast Subtext & Discourse

Follow Michael on Twitter and Instagram and YouTube

 Read Andrew’s book on building a stronger relationship as parents: I Love You But You Always Put Me Last: How to Child-Proof Your Marriage

Read Andrew’s book on making meaningful change in your life Wake Up and Change Your Life: How to Survive a Crisis and be Stronger, Wiser and Happier

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall 

It isn’t hard as a parent to find advice on breastfeeding, your child’s education or managing their behaviour. What’s rarer is insight into how the parenting journey changes us as a person. Yet, becoming a mother is a unique opportunity for self-realisation.

In this episode Lisa Marchiano and Andrew take a deep dive into motherhood: how it connects us to previous and next generations, how easy it is to be “devoured” by the experience of mothering, and what it means to feel rage as a mother. 

Lisa Marchiano is a Jungian therapist from Philadelphia, and co-hosts the podcast This Jungian Life. She has recently published a new book called Motherhood: Facing and Finding Yourself. Lisa is also the parent of two teenagers.

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• Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50. 

Read Andrew’s book on how to build a strong relationship with your partner whilst still being good parents, I Love You But You Always Put Me Last

Read Andrew’s book on making meaningful change in your life Wake Up and Change Your Life: How to Survive a Crisis and be Stronger, Wiser and Happier

The relationship between a man and his penis is rarely discussed except as a joke. Men don’t often talk to each other about erection issues, and women are left in the dark.

Angus Barge took the plunge and spoke to his cousin about the problems he was having getting an erection at the age of 27. His cousin was also brave enough to break the silence, and this led them to create Mojo, a pill-free solution to erection issues. 

In this episode Andrew and Angus discuss the harm done to both men and women by the general silence over erection issues. It’s also the case that being let down by their penis can be a major fear for many men; and that there is liberation and happiness to be found in facing up to this fear. 

Follow Up

• Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50. 

Our parents’ divorce can have so many ramifications, some of which don’t become apparent until well into adulthood. How do we face up to and understand the unprocessed pain of divorce? How do we build more successful relationships of our own?

Terry Gaspard specialises in helping clients overcome the legacy of their parents’ breakups in order to build strong, happy relationships. Terry is also an expert on second marriages - these have a higher divorce rate than first marriages, but with support and skills, can bring a huge amount of happiness. 

Terry is a licensed therapist, author, and college instructor who works with children, adults, couples, and families. She also works from personal experience: her own parents divorced when she was ten, and she herself went through a divorce, and went on to make a very happy second marriage. Her book Daughters of Divorce is co-written with her own daughter. 

Follow Up

• Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50. 

When did you last learn to do something totally and utterly new? Tom Vanderbilt, author of Beginners: the Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning, was awestruck by his young daughter’s insatiable need to know how to do almost everything. He was inspired to embark on a year of learning purely for its own sake.

Tom had a truly unique year - a circuitous journey of learning, in which he attempted to learn chess, singing, surfing, drawing and juggling. These skills were chosen on the basis of difficulty and lack of marketability. 

Close encounters with scorpions aside, Tom found that his new sense of curiosity opened him up to a profound happiness and a deeper connection to the people around him. By reinventing himself in small ways, life began to seem more magical.

In this episode Andrew and Tom talk about just why it is that so many of us stop learning new skills as adults. While we’re encouraging our children to be adventurous and to try new things, are we ourselves afraid of failure? Have we forgotten the pleasure and rewards of starting from scratch?

Follow Up

• Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50. 

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on:

• Twitter https://twitter.com/andrewgmarshall 

Are you living a life you really believe in, or are you filling in time until your “real life” begins? Are you waiting on marriage, a better job, a new exercise regime or a beautiful house to create an authentic life? 

Humans do need to have goals and plans, but it is also destructive to ignore those inner voices telling us what would bring us individual meaning. Instead of putting off developing an authentic self, it is almost always possible to start planning and creating right now. 

Philip Carr-Gomm is an expert in psychosynthesis, an  “awe-inspiring territory that has the power to transform us”. He believes that something magical happens when the worlds of modern psychology and ancient spiritual teachings are brought together. Philip has studied Druidry extensively and from 1988-2020 was the leader of The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids. He has a degree in Psychology and has trained in psychotherapy, play therapy, Montessori education, yoga nidra, mindfulness meditation and Sophrology. Philip recently created an online school, The Art of Living Well, to offer courses combining psychological and spiritual understanding.

Follow Up

• Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50. 

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on:

• Twitter https://twitter.com/andrewgmarshall 

Fenella Hansen brings her own life experiences of grief, loss, mental health and trauma to her counselling work. After losing her mother to cancer, she made a dramatic career change from IT into counselling, and has since worked extensively with survivors of various forms of trauma. 

Fenella has herself also suffered medical PTSD and family violence, which she believes gives her a unique perspective and level of empathy in her work with her clients.

Fenella worked in mental health for 7 years before moving to work with survivors of childhood sexual abuse. She has worked with complex trauma clients and is also a trained expert in trauma sensitive yoga and mindfulness. Fenella has her own private practice in Melbourne, and is currently training in psychedelic therapy. 

Follow Up

• Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50. 

• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel Van der Kolk.

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on:

• Twitter https://twitter.com/andrewgmarshall 

We all think of infidelity as something that happens to someone else. When betrayal enters our own safe universe, it comes as a terrible shock. Many couples confronting infidelity end up re-examining just about everything in their lives: not just their marriage, but their work, their relationships with family and friends, and how they find meaning and fulfilment. Sometimes it can even be these couples who end up with the strongest partnerships of all.

Dr. Caroline Madden, PhD is a Los Angeles based pro-marriage therapist who specializes in helping marriages recover after infidelity. Caroline is the author of several relationship books including: "Fool Me Once: Should I Take Back My Cheating Husband?" and "After a Good Man Cheats: How to Rebuild Trust & Intimacy With Your Wife” and “Blindsided by His Betrayal”. 

In this episode, Caroline and Andrew draw on decades of shared experience working with couples affected by infidelity. They talk through the complex, painful process of rebuilding after the discovery of betrayal. 

Follow Up

• Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50. 

• Why Did I Ever Cheat? Help Your Partner (and Yourself) Recover From Your Affair

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on:

• Twitter https://twitter.com/andrewgmarshall 

Dena Justice’s lifelong interest in mentoring and coaching began at age seven, when she took her first social-emotional training program. At 15, she taught her first personal development course. She has undertaken years of training in conflict management and mediation, leadership, communication, facilitation, and has two Master’s degrees.

Despite loving her career, Dena hit a point where she felt empty - a classic case of a high performer and leader hitting burnout. That led her to choose a powerful pivot out of her J-O-B and into her own business.

At the same time, Dena also consciously decided to up-level ALL of her relationships, including spending 3 years intentionally single so she could identify and change the patterns she was repeating that were contributing to relationship dissatisfaction. Now she is in the most amazing relationship with a man she loves more than anything. And all of the other relationships in her life are incredible.

Combining all of her experience, Dena now helps other women who are high performers hitting burnout and are scared to admit they’ve hit a plateau or a wall. She helps them get out of their own way and move to the next level to increase their impact so they feel fulfilled and inspired again, as well as helping them create the relationships they want in their lives.

Follow Up

• Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50. 

• EcstaticCollective.com

• FB: @denajustice

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on:

• Twitter https://twitter.com/andrewgmarshall 

What is it like to step away from individual freedom and enter into a life of submission and domination? This week’s witness is Slave Phil, a writer, blogger and podcaster at Master Slave Lifestyle. 

From early childhood, Phil was drawn to being controlled and dominated by others. At the age of eighteen, he began exploring the master slave lifestyle. For Phil, this was “part of his soul”, not just play or an aspect of his personality. 

Phil talks with Andrew about the ways in which this lifestyle challenges social norms - why WOULD someone want to be controlled? For Phil and others who live this way, being controlled and shaped by another person brings the freedom of letting go of responsibility. Compared to conventional relationships, the rules of engagement are written down, discussed and regularly reviewed, rather than being invisible, confusing and often outdated.

Follow Up

• Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50. 

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on:

• Twitter https://twitter.com/andrewgmarshall