Traveling Companions: Stories of Becoming

Kirk has come to think of the hardest moments in his life as unplanned detours rather than a broken road. When asked how they'd shaped him, he gently pushed back on the word itself — they didn't shape him, he says, they unlocked something. 

In this conversation, Kirk traces a journey that meanders through a fundamentalist upbringing, a heart diagnosis he was never expected to survive, and a marriage that began under someone else's porch roof — twists and turns that he's come to see not as a broken road, but as detours that led him toward the person he is becoming.

A note before you listen: Kirk shared his story with real courage and vulnerability, and we want to honor him and his story by letting you know what's ahead.

Parts of his journey touch on coming out, and the conversion therapy that followed. He also shares his experience of suicide, a serious health crisis, and what it's meant to sit with his own mortality.

If you're resonating with any of these experiences, there are people who have walked these paths. Resources are listed below — including the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, and the LGBT National Hotline. If you need to connect with someone, please reach out to one of them — and know that you're not alone.

We're deeply grateful to Kirk for sharing his story.

L.T. Kirk is a musician. His journey has included coming out within a fundamentalist Christian family, a heart diagnosis he was never expected to survive, and building a twenty-plus-year marriage with his husband, Donald. A year ago, Kirk left the United States to build a new life in Portugal, where he continues figuring out what home means from the middle of that transition.

You can connect with Kirk on Instagram at @2usgaysinexile.

Resources:

• LGBT National Hotline: Phone and chat support for LGBTQ+ people of all ages.
• 988 Lifeline: Call or text 988, 24/7, for anyone in emotional distress or crisis.
• Suicide Hotlines by Country
• The Trevor Project: 24/7/365 support in the US
• Trevor Space: International Digital Support Community for LGBTQ+ young people
• Befrienders Worldwide: Find a helpline by Country
• It Gets Better Project:  The It Gets Better Project inspires people across the globe to share their stories and remind the next generation of LGBTQ+ youth that hope is out there, and it will get better.
• Beyond Ex-Gay: An online community and resources for those who have survived Ex-Gay experiences.
• Born Perfect: An initiative from the National LGBTQ Rights Center with resources for survivors of conversion therapy. 

Say hello. I'd love to hear from you.

I'm Jennie Snyder, a leadership coach and the host of Traveling Companions. I created this podcast for anyone standing in that uncertain space between who they've been and who they're becoming. You don't have to travel it alone.

Podcast artwork by Desirae Rivera (desirae.design)
Music "Through the Years" by Roots and Recognition, The Bittersweet

🌐 travelingcompanionspodcast.com | 📧 [email] | [LinkedIn]

Stephanie Goodell has spent her career recognizing and developing potential in other people — first in higher education, then with high-growth entrepreneurs, and now in leadership and career-transition coaching. 

In this conversation, we sit inside the space between stability and freedom — the settled life in Boston against the pull of a creative one in Vermont, and what it might look like to hold both. Along the way, weeds become a way of talking about the old, deep-rooted stories we carry, and a quote Stephanie keeps taped to her refrigerator becomes a way of staying with the unresolved instead of rushing past it.

 "I want to beg you as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

                              – Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (Letter 4, 1903)

Stephanie helps organizations build the leadership capacity they need to navigate accelerating change — by focusing on the people who are overwhelmed, under-developed, and trying to do it all without support. 

She partners with HR and talent development leaders to create the conditions where managers can actually develop their teams and high-potential employees can step into bigger roles. Stephanie shows up as a thinking partner and she has a gift for seeing possibility in people, often before they see it in themselves. Her life's work is to develop that potential, to release the overwhelm, the isolation, the sense of leading all alone. 

Stephanie is the founder of Ripple & Flow Leadership. She can be reached at [email protected] and on LinkedIn. 

Guest appearance on: Code 3: Life. Reinvented., “Transition vs. Transformation: Ikigai, Agency & The Truth About Change with Stephanie Goodell,” November 24, 2025. 

Books mentioned in this episode:

• Brianna Wiest, The Pivot Year: 365 Days to Become the Person You Want to Be
• Brianna West, The Mountain is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage into Self-Mastery

Say hello. I'd love to hear from you.

I'm Jennie Snyder, a leadership coach and the host of Traveling Companions. I created this podcast for anyone standing in that uncertain space between who they've been and who they're becoming. You don't have to travel it alone.

Podcast artwork by Desirae Rivera (desirae.design)
Music "Through the Years" by Roots and Recognition, The Bittersweet

🌐 travelingcompanionspodcast.com | 📧 [email] | [LinkedIn]

Lance Huffman spent thirty-one years as an educator. When retirement came, he walked through that threshold with intention.

In this conversation, Lance reflects on what it cost to carry a version of himself that no longer fit — and what it took to finally put it down. He traces the weight of an inherited legacy, the parts of himself that got buried along the way, and what is slowly being uncovered on the other side.

A year in, he describes himself as an apprentice. What he's apprenticing toward is still taking shape.

This is a conversation about grief and gratitude, the cost of self-sacrifice, and learning to hold all of it — the full range of what it means to feel deeply: sadness and joy, grief and love.

In retirement, Lance Huffman is returning to apprenticeship — to creativity and artistic expression, breathwork and meditation, and grief ceremony facilitation — all in service to his own wholeness and helping others heal and become whole themselves.

A passionate advocate for educator wellbeing, Lance's practice integrates mindfulness and nature-based coaching techniques, empowering educational and other service-sector leaders to enhance self-awareness so they may foster positive change within their institutions.

This follows a thirty-one year career in public education, twenty of which he spent in the classroom teaching high school English and history, culminating in his role as Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction for Flagstaff Unified School District.

He lives in the mountains on the Colorado Plateau in northern Arizona with his wife, and visits their children and granddaughter often.

Lance can be reached on Instagram @Lance.Huffman.

Book referenced in this episode:

• Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

Say hello. I'd love to hear from you.

I'm Jennie Snyder, a leadership coach and the host of Traveling Companions. I created this podcast for anyone standing in that uncertain space between who they've been and who they're becoming. You don't have to travel it alone.

Podcast artwork by Desirae Rivera (desirae.design)
Music "Through the Years" by Roots and Recognition, The Bittersweet

🌐 travelingcompanionspodcast.com | 📧 [email] | [LinkedIn]

What does grief ask of us? And what does it open?

Momo (Monica Escobedo) has lived close to both questions — through her mother's death, her own cancer diagnosis, and the slow discovery of who she was becoming on the other side. In this conversation, we walk through grief as a threshold — the surprise of it, the importance of community, and the opening to vulnerability that loss, over time, can make possible.

This episode includes conversation about grief, terminal illness, and loss. If you're navigating something tender right now, we hope it offers companionship.

Momo (she/they) is a coach, space-holder, and creative companion supporting people through life transitions and grief. Born in Mexico and based in Canada since 1998, she spent nearly two decades as a software engineer before a personal experience in 2016 shifted the course of her life — leading her to volunteer at an oncology center supporting cancer patients and their families, and eventually to coaching work rooted in presence, connection, and the belief that we need to be witnessed during times of change.

Momo is also the co-host of Unframed with Patricia and Momo, a podcast that creates a space for exploring what it means to grow as coaches and humans navigating uncertainty, identity, and transformation, speaking from their own questions rather than answers.

Momo can be reached on her website: humanconnection.ca and on LinkedIn. 

Books referenced in this episode:

• Mary Frances O’Connor, Ph.D., The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss
• Mary Frances O’Connor, Ph.D., The Grieving Body: How the Stress of Loss Can Be an Opportunity for Healing

Say hello. I'd love to hear from you.

I'm Jennie Snyder, a leadership coach and the host of Traveling Companions. I created this podcast for anyone standing in that uncertain space between who they've been and who they're becoming. You don't have to travel it alone.

Podcast artwork by Desirae Rivera (desirae.design)
Music "Through the Years" by Roots and Recognition, The Bittersweet

🌐 travelingcompanionspodcast.com | 📧 [email] | [LinkedIn]

Corinne Hart spent nearly a decade at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), building a career around advancing women's rights and gender equality around the world. When the agency was shut down in 2025, the ground shifted beneath her — and what came next wasn't clear.

What held her back wasn't the lack of clarity. It was learning to trust what she already knew.

To carry with you:

• What makes it possible for you to trust what you already know? 
• What opens up when the ground beneath us shifts?

Corinne Hart is an executive and personal coach who helps women navigate career transitions and uncertainty with clarity and confidence. A former USAID senior advisor focused on gender equality, she now works with clients to reconnect with their values, rebuild self-trust, and take intentional steps toward what’s next.  

Corinne can be reached at [email protected] and on LinkedIn. You can find out more about her Rebuilding with Purpose Group Coaching program [here].

Say hello. I'd love to hear from you.

I'm Jennie Snyder, a leadership coach and the host of Traveling Companions. I created this podcast for anyone standing in that uncertain space between who they've been and who they're becoming. You don't have to travel it alone.

Podcast artwork by Desirae Rivera (desirae.design)
Music "Through the Years" by Roots and Recognition, The Bittersweet

🌐 travelingcompanionspodcast.com | 📧 [email] | [LinkedIn]

When Vanessa Wedderburn was laid off, the professional disruption was only the beginning. What followed was something harder to name — a slow unraveling of the identity she had built around her work, and what opened up in its place. 

In this conversation, Vanessa talks about what it's like to sit inside that uncertainty — the disorientation of not knowing who you are beyond what you do, the grief of losing something you didn't choose to let go, and the winding process of rediscovering yourself in the middle of it. 

To carry with you:

• Who am I without the roles I’ve been carrying?
• What might become possible if I let go of what no longer fits?

________________________________________________________________________________________

Vanessa Wedderburn is a communications strategist and storyteller who has spent her career helping school districts and organizations build trust through clear, thoughtful communication. She writes about her own experience of navigating transition on her Substack, Notes from Vanessa. Vanessa can be reached on LinkedIn and at vwcreativestrategy.com. 

Say hello. I'd love to hear from you.

I'm Jennie Snyder, a leadership coach and the host of Traveling Companions. I created this podcast for anyone standing in that uncertain space between who they've been and who they're becoming. You don't have to travel it alone.

Podcast artwork by Desirae Rivera (desirae.design)
Music "Through the Years" by Roots and Recognition, The Bittersweet

🌐 travelingcompanionspodcast.com | 📧 [email] | [LinkedIn]

Ten years into teaching, Kellie Sanders heard a woman at a backyard party mention that she had been a middle school principal. Her head whipped around. In all her years in education, she had never seen a woman in that role. That moment — what Kellie calls her "unicorn" — set off a chain of crossings she never could have mapped in advance.

In this conversation, Kellie traces the arc of her becoming: the lightning-bolt epiphany in a middle school classroom. The slow pull toward school leadership that cost her a relationship. And, the grinding doubt of two early principalships that left her asking a hard question — what's the common denominator here? Me. She talks honestly about the tension between calling and selfishness, the difference between a voice that invites and one that compels, and what it took to keep stepping forward even when she wasn’t sure which way to go.

To carry with you:

• Where in your life have you heard a voice calling you toward something you couldn't yet fully see?
• When doubt has made you question your direction, what has helped you find your footing again?

____________________________________________________________________________________

Dr. Kellie Sanders spent over thirty years in education — as a teacher, principal, and district leader. She is the co-founder of Lifeline for Courageous Leadership and co-author of The Courage to Lead and The Courage to Grow. She works with leaders navigating change and growth. Kellie can be reached at lifeline4leaders.com.

Say hello. I'd love to hear from you.

I'm Jennie Snyder, a leadership coach and the host of Traveling Companions. I created this podcast for anyone standing in that uncertain space between who they've been and who they're becoming. You don't have to travel it alone.

Podcast artwork by Desirae Rivera (desirae.design)
Music "Through the Years" by Roots and Recognition, The Bittersweet

🌐 travelingcompanionspodcast.com | 📧 [email] | [LinkedIn]

There are moments when you know you can't go back. And what's ahead isn't clear yet.

In this episode I'm turning the lens inward — sharing a threshold that shaped me, what it asked, and what it made possible.

Not quick fixes. No shortcuts. Just the honest territory of what it asks of us to put something down and step anyway.

"We cannot hold on to things and enter. We must put down what we carry, open the door, and then take up only what we need to bring inside. It's a basic human sequence: gather, prepare, put down, enter."
— Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

If you've ever stood in that uncertain place — or find yourself there now — this one is for you.

Say hello. I'd love to hear from you.

I'm Jennie Snyder, a leadership coach and the host of Traveling Companions. I created this podcast for anyone standing in that uncertain space between who they've been and who they're becoming. You don't have to travel it alone.

Podcast artwork by Desirae Rivera (desirae.design)
Music "Through the Years" by Roots and Recognition, The Bittersweet

🌐 travelingcompanionspodcast.com | 📧 [email] | [LinkedIn]

There are moments in every life when you can't go back to who you were — and who you're becoming isn't yet clear. Traveling Companions: Stories of Becoming is a podcast about that in-between space. Come join us.

Say hello. I'd love to hear from you.

I'm Jennie Snyder, a leadership coach and the host of Traveling Companions. I created this podcast for anyone standing in that uncertain space between who they've been and who they're becoming. You don't have to travel it alone.

Podcast artwork by Desirae Rivera (desirae.design)
Music "Through the Years" by Roots and Recognition, The Bittersweet

🌐 travelingcompanionspodcast.com | 📧 [email] | [LinkedIn]