Holding It Together (Kinda)
Here we will get real in our conversations about Mental Illness and Caregiving, and the messy reality of keeping it all balanced.
No sugar-coating, no clinical jargon—just real talk about the hospitalizations, the medication battles, and the toll it takes on a home
This is for the parents, siblings, and partners who are doing the impossible every single day.
Holding It Together is a home for the overthinkers, the multitaskers, and anyone who feels like they’re one spilled coffee away from a meltdown.
Episodes
36 episodes
Nesh Pillay: Be Kind To Little Man
A brain injury can steal your past without touching your personality, and that gap is where so many families get lost. I sit down with Nesh Pillay, known from Amazon Prime’s 50,000 First Dates, to talk about what amnesia and traumatic brain inj...
#7 Companion Caregiver Burnout Is Information
Dementia doesn’t just change memory. It changes family roles, daily math, and the emotional weather in your house. On this midweek unpack, I step back into one of our most downloaded conversations, the Daughter’s Guide to Dementia and Caregiver...
Claude Racine: Postpartum Is Not The Baby Blues
The postpartum period can look normal from the outside while it feels like a full-body emergency on the inside. After the headlines around the Lindsay Clancy case, I wanted a real conversation about what postpartum depression and postpartum anx...
#6 Companion Who Gets To Decide When Minds Are Unsteady
Client choice can feel like a clean principle right up until the moment symptoms surge, risk rises, and everyone around the person feels responsible for the outcome. I walk through why that moment becomes an ethical tightrope for legal advocate...
Allan Houston and Tamara Houston: What Does Radical Acceptance Look Like At Home
A hospital discharge can look like “problem solved” on paper while a family is still staring at the real question: where does our loved one safely go next? We sit down with Allan and Tamara Houston for a candid, grounded conversation about open...
#5 Companion If You Say Calm Down, We Fight
Your nervous system can’t “just calm down” if it’s still scanning for danger. We do a midweek unpack of our conversation with Danielle Worthen Cullenberg, and it’s one of those talks that puts words to what so many neurodivergent and sensory-se...
Annette: A Mother Learns That Survival Is Not The Same As Living
Severe mental illness can turn a household into a command center overnight. One day you’re parenting, working, and planning for the future. The next day you’re tracking symptoms, bracing for outbursts, negotiating with hospitals, and trying to ...
#4 Companion: Youth Mental Health Without The Fixes
Most adults want to help kids who are stressed, anxious, or shutting down, but we often reach for the fastest fix: another app, another framework, another lecture delivered with good intentions. This midweek unpack slows that impulse down. I’m ...
Reclaim Calm in the Chaos: Time Mastery with Walt Hampton
What if “busy” is the shield that keeps you from what you most need? We sat down with Walt Hampton—executive coach, author of The Power Principles of Time Mastery, and long-distance runner—to rethink time, energy, and the stories we tell oursel...
# 3 Episode Companion Memory Is Not A Care Plan When Stress Hits
Caregiving can feel like being the only person holding the whole system in your head and it’s exhausting for reasons most people never see. We unpack what happens when you’re expected to remember every detail, translate a loved one to rushed me...
Kala Allen Omeiza: I Got Bullied In An Autism Lab
Watching someone succeed can fool us into thinking they’re fine. Then Kala Allen Omeiza says something that stops us cold: she worked in top autism research spaces and still didn’t learn she was autistic until 24, after a painful rupture, a men...
Episode 2 Care Companion: You Can Love Them And Still Feel Worn Out
Loving someone who is still alive but no longer feels like the person you knew can mess with your head in ways most people never see. On this midweek unpack of Holding It Together Kinda, I slow things down and revisit one of the most tender top...
Justin Ray: Hospitals Without Walls
The scariest part of a mental health crisis is not the diagnosis, it is the moment you realize the system can see the problem and still tell you it does not qualify. Justin Ray, a board-certified psychiatric nurse practitioner and 22-year retir...
Episode 1 Companion: Six Hospitals Later And Everyone Still Acts Surprised
Six hospitalizations in nine months can look like “care,” yet still leave a family right where they started: scared, depleted, and forced to explain the same story to strangers who only see a single moment. We slow things down and unpack the fo...
Communication and the Cost of Silence
A single missed conversation can be the most dangerous part of treatment. We start with David, a 62-year-old man living with schizophrenia who is stable on a complex antipsychotic regimen until an urgent care visit adds the wrong sedative. His ...
When The Doctor Becomes Family with Dr Mohamed Elziam
A white coat can make people think medicine is all control, clarity, and clean answers. Then a crisis hits your own family, and you learn how fast that illusion collapses. We sit down with Dr. Mohamed Elziam, a family physician, to talk about h...
Elder Care Is A Life Plan with Shanika Batchelor
“A nursing home” is one of the most emotionally loaded phrases in caregiving and it often shuts down the real conversation we need to have. We sit down with Shanika Bachelor, founder of Armana Assisted Living in Egypt and co-founder of an assis...
The Dilemmas of Addiction
We explore the hard edge between autonomy and suffering through Jamie’s story and the wider reality of co‑occurring addiction and mental illness. We ask when saving a life becomes enough, how families hold the line, and why systems confuse stab...
The Great Earwax Contraband Caper with Jolene Breinig
Caregiving gets called a “labor of love,” but that phrase can hide the bruising reality: the physical work, the mental load, the split-second decisions, and the guilt that keeps families trying to do it all alone. We’re joined by RN Jolene Brei...
The Future Proof Parent: Special Needs Planning Without Panic with Rebecca Iantuonni
The scariest caregiving question isn’t medical. It’s the quiet one that shows up at 2 a.m.: “What happens to my loved one when I’m gone?” I sit down with my friend of 40-plus years, attorney Rebecca Iantoni, to make special needs planning feel ...
Understanding Hoarding
A home packed with newspapers, dogs, broken toasters, or “valuable” scraps can look like a simple cleanup problem until you hear what the objects mean. Hoarding isn’t a character flaw, and it’s rarely about laziness. For many people, a pile is ...
All the Wrong Doors
“No wrong door” is one of the nicest promises in mental health policy. It’s also the line that can break you when you’re living the reality: months-long waits, intake appointments that lead nowhere, referral lists that are outdated, and a loved...
Set Boundaries And Still Love Them with Dr Michelle Sherman author of Loving Someone with Mental Illness
Your loved one can be struggling in plain sight, and somehow the whole family learns to whisper about it. We sit down with clinical psychologist Dr. Michelle Sherman, author of *Loving Someone with Mental Illness or a History of Trauma*, to tal...
Caregiver Stress Reset with Alicia Feller
Your shoulders are up near your ears, your jaw is locked, and you are running on adrenaline again and calling it “fine.” If that sounds like caregiving life, you are not imagining it and you are not weak. I’m joined by Alicia Feller, LCSW and f...
Make The Strawberry Bunny Then Eat It with Kathy Micheel
Caregiving can look heroic on the outside while you’re shaking behind the safety gate on the inside. We name that gap and get honest about the cost of trying to be endlessly patient, present, and “fine” while managing chronic illness, mental il...