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Trauma has a way of convincing us that what happened to us will always define who we become. For years, Michael Rodriguez, believed many of the fears, insecurities, and survival instincts he carried were simply part of who he was. 

His childhood was shaped by addiction, domestic violence, and periods spent in women's shelters with his mother as they escaped an unsafe home. 

As an adult, life brought different challenges. The loss of his father to cancer, years of financial hardship while sleeping on the floor of an attic to keep his first business alive, burnout, anxiety, divorce during COVID, and the constant responsibility of leading a growing business while raising a family.

What Michael has learned is that adversity changes us, but it doesn't have to define us. Healing wasn't a single breakthrough moment. It came through thousands of small choices: learning to forgive without excusing, choosing purpose over resentment, replacing survival habits with healthier ones, and recognizing that resilience isn't something we are born with, but is something we intentionally develop over time.

Michael wrote a book, Become Unshaken: Joy, Regardless. And today he helps individuals, leaders, parents, and organizations understand that while none of us gets to choose every chapter of our story, we all have the opportunity to influence the chapters that come next.

What an amazing conversation! Thanks Michael!

Website: Home - Become Unshaken

Podcast: Become Unshaken Podcast | Podcast on Spotify

Book: Become Unshaken: Joy, Regardless: Rodriguez, Michael: 9781632969477: Amazon.com: Books

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Robin Rosenbluth's mother died when she was young, and her abusive and neglectful father put Robin and her sister in foster care - even though other family members offered to take them. Later, with the help of a high school guidance counselor, she was encouraged to continue her education and find scholarships to fund college. What makes her story unique is the year she taught and lived in Songa, a remote village in northern Kenya. There, Robin began to heal from the abuse and abandonment she'd suffered, finding more connection with the local people than with her father or foster parents. 

Her memoir, LIVING WITH STRANGERS: Healing a Wounded Heart in a Distant Land, describes her time in Kenya as well as her childhood. It's a story of triumphing against the odds, an urgent call to do better for the children currently in foster care, and a testament to the enduring importance of study abroad programs as a tool for forging understanding and connection in a fractured world.

This is a deeply moving, personal ad inspiration episode, and shows that no matter how hard the struggle, we can still be freedom!

Author website: https://www.robinrosenbluth.com/

Substack: https://robinrosenbluth.substack.com/

Simon & Schuster website to purchase/order books: Simon & Schuster

Amazon purchase: Amazon

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Dan Stachofsky's story is deeply personal— he lost his daughter at 14 years old, after a medical journey where conventional approaches fell short. That experience shaped not just him, but his entire family, and ultimately led him down a very different path around health and recovery.

As you can imagine, this is a deeply moving episode covering the highs and lows of raising a child that needs extra care, all while navigating the healthcare system, znd eventually the alternative solutions the family were forced to explore.

Thank you Dan for your amazing episode!

Dan's non-profit: https://essentialenergy.us focused on education and sharing solutions around improving energetics in the body and environment (addressing harm caused by non-native EMF)

Community: https://d2nuqustvkkmpol2p8d0.app.clientclub.net/communities/groups/light-is-life/home?invite=6a888fa6632dd20a4ba2b05d

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Loulita Gill joins us this week for a deeply raw and amazing episode about childhood rejection.

Loulita is complex trauma survivor. She was repeatedly told by her mother, as a small child, that she was unwanted.

This narrative continued through Loulita’s childhood when her mother actually said the words ‘I rue the day you were born’.

 The rejection, and PTSD was huge. She has been able to turn her life around and survive what should not have been survivable. 

Her story is quite tragic but full of lessons and inspirational moments.

www.loulitagill.com

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When Heather White was 27, she was driving with her fiancee, at 2:00am, on Memorial Day weekend, 1981, when all of a sudden, her car stopped dead in the middle of the Long Island Expressway. With no warning, a car crashed into them from behind. The car immediately burst into flames, they were taken to a local hospital and her fiance died shortly thereafter - leaving his two young sons without a father. Heather never saw him again. She had 3rd degree burns over 25% of her body including my face and hands. 

The trauma that Heather experienced that night seem incomparable. Where does someone even begin to recover! 

Today, Heather has been happily married for almost 40 years and she has an amazing daughter and lives a happy and fulfilled life. 

Join us for an utterly breathtaking and inspiring episode!

heatherwhitephotos.com

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This week we welcome Leslie Lopez, host of Mothers in Arms and an advocate for accessible third-party reproduction. She speaks openly about stillbirth, infertility, and the mental health journey of building a family through surrogacy, as a single mother.

Leslie spent six years working with California Fertility Partners before having her biological daughter as an independent parent via egg donation and gestational surrogacy. 

Her story isn't just about the medical process — it's about the unexpected grief, the tools she built to survive the emotional weight of six years of treatment, and how she found hope and community on the other side.

Leslie discusses the mental health side of infertility, and navigating trauma while pursuing parenthood, and building resilience through non-traditional family structures.

Thanks Leslie!

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@mothersinarmspod?si=LMqJcusLbvOEXXhw

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mothers-in-arms/id1768849257

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4zXe2X5Y7SVarKhRzJFbpP?si=Rp6M1syiQjOPb4bql5ppEQ&utm_source=copy-link

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mothersinarms.pod?_r=1&_t=ZP-98dvfDMKDKp

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Freya Maberley's family are all neurodivergent. Her siblings/parents and grand parents were all undiagnosed. She was diagnosed ADHD at 53, and she is Autistic too, and proud! 

Her brother is undiagnosed AuDHD and her home growing up was dictated by anger and violence. She was always considered the 'normal" child in the family, but her high sensitivity meant that she became the responsible one, taking on the people pleaser role of the family dynamic.

Freya's son is diagnosed AuDHD, dyslexic, dysgraphic. Her daughter undiagnosed AuDHD. Raising them was a constant battle of advocacy, being gaslit by the system, her own struggle to accept the diagnosis.

Freya has created a technique called The White Room. A visualization that helps a person reclaim what was lost in interactions with others.  It's a kind of soul retrieval, without needing to be spiritual. It's a very grounded exercise, that once a person knows how to do it, they can do the visualization by themselves. 

Freya is working as a Therapist (Psychology, Social Work, Counseling and Animal Assisted Psychotherapy) in Victoria, Australia.

Insta: @freyas_farm_ballarat

Facebook: Freya's Farm: Animal Assisted Therapy

Tiktok: @freyas_farm

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Those who first meet Simon Morrell are often very surprised at his history and background. You see, today, Simon, as one of Wales’ singularly most qualified martial artists and fight coaches with a library of books to his name, comes across as a confident person, but his childhood and early adult years were an experience far from anything that may have provided this.

​Simon was badly bullied, violently assaulted (at one time, an attempt on his life was made by a knife wielding thug) and eventually succumbed to terrifying panic attacks that threatened to ruin his life. He fell to agoraphobia, and for a long time was unable to leave his house.

​However, he was quite remarkably able to turn his life around when he found his path in writing and Martial Arts. He is the author of the award-winning books and true stories, From Bullied to Black Belt and the sequel An Everyday Warrior, as well as three other books of his own and five books his has Ghostwritten.

This episode it raw, emotive and brutal at times. But Simon is a kind hearted and extremely likable guy who has been to hell and come back fighting!

https://www.simonmorrell.com/

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Hannia Zanana, founded her coaching practice out of Cairo that has grown entirely through word-of-mouth across several countries. She was diagnosed with epilepsy at 18, later with Hashimoto’s, and had a 5kg fibroid surgically removed. What she’s most fired up about is the thing her own body taught her over a decade: the life you are living has a direct relationship to the health of the body you are living it in. As she left the family business, stepped into her calling, and made the deeper changes, her symptoms started to ease. Her body, she says, had been keeping a precise account the whole time.

She works as an Intuitive Guide, holding coaching, inner child work, astrology, and numerology. Her clients describe her as someone who sees your best self even when you cannot.

This is an amazing story of self discovery! Thank you Hannia!

https://www.instagram.com/be.hlth/

www.behlth.com

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This week we have a great chat with Jane Garnett, who thought she was living her ‘perfect life’ unhappy and unfulfilled! Jane’s memoir is the realization that she'd spent years pursuing a false version of happiness and success. She didn't have any healthy role models growing up, so she based her idea of fulfillment on what she saw in movies and popular culture. She became a Hollywood producer who worked for Leonardo DiCaprio, had a powerful Hollywood husband, social status, and all the external markers of success she thought would finally make her happy— but instead, she was miserable and lonely.

The major turning point comes when Jane is unexpectedly called to the hospice bedside of her beloved mentor, Dr. Marie, the therapist who helped inspire Jane’s own career change. Jane was already in a period of deep personal reckoning: her marriage was unraveling, she was estranged from her closest friend, and she was questioning nearly every major decision she’d made. And then she sees this woman she loved and admired, who had already lost her longtime partner and become estranged from her son, facing the end of her life alone.

It forced Jane to confront something she’d spent most of her life trying to outrun: that no amount of achievement, status, or external success can protect us from loneliness, grief, or pain. That experience ultimately shaped the philosophy she practices today: helping people reconnect with themselves instead of living by inherited definitions of success or happiness. 

Thanks Jane!!

Links:

• @thebananajane 
• Jane Garnett Bio
• Jane Garnett Website

••This Time with Feeling (Book Website)

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