Holding It Together (Kinda)
A candid podcast about mental illness and caregiving, exploring the messy reality of balancing life while supporting a loved one. It covers hospitalizations, medication battles, and the emotional toll on a household. Aimed at parents, siblings, partners, and anyone who feels overwhelmed, it offers real talk without clinical jargon or sugar-coating.
Episodes
#7 Companion Caregiver Burnout Is Information
Send us Fan MailDementia 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 Burnout Recovery, and pull out the parts that land hardest for so many of us: the moment you realize you’ve become the coordinator, the fin
Claude Racine: Postpartum Is Not The Baby Blues
Send us Fan MailThe 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 anxiety can actually feel like, why people minimize it, and how fast a new parent can lose their sense of self.Claude Racine joins me with raw
#6 Companion Who Gets To Decide When Minds Are Unsteady
Send us Fan MailClient 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 advocates, clinicians, providers, peers, and family members and how quickly “help” can turn into control when we confuse disagreement with incapacit
Allan Houston and Tamara Houston: What Does Radical Acceptance Look Like At Home
Send us Fan MailA 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 opening their home to Tamara’s sister Jill during a crisis, while raising seven kids and trying to keep their household steady. What unfolds is
#5 Companion If You Say Calm Down, We Fight
Send us Fan MailYour 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-sensitive people feel every day: the body stays on high alert long after the immediate threat has passed. We dig into “neurospicy” brains, sen
Annette: A Mother Learns That Survival Is Not The Same As Living
Send us Fan MailSevere 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 protect the people you love while you quietly disappear inside the role of “crisis manager.”We talk with Annette, a mother who lived that re
#4 Companion: Youth Mental Health Without The Fixes
Send us Fan MailMost 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 looking back at our conversation with five young people (ages 13 to 23) who spoke plainly about mental health, school pressure, performance
Reclaim Calm in the Chaos: Time Mastery with Walt Hampton
Send us Fan MailWhat 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 ourselves about balance. This is a lifeline for caregivers, creators, and leaders who feel stretched thin and want a sustainable way to show up fo
# 3 Episode Companion Memory Is Not A Care Plan When Stress Hits
Send us Fan MailCaregiving 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 medical teams, and keep your cool while anxiety is doing laps in your body. If you’ve ever left an appointment and thought, “I should have sai
Kala Allen Omeiza: I Got Bullied In An Autism Lab
Send us Fan MailWatching 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 mental health crisis, and therapy that finally connected the dots.We talk about what late autism diagnosis can look like when you’re a high ach
Episode 2 Care Companion: You Can Love Them And Still Feel Worn Out
Send us Fan MailLoving 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 topics we have talked about: caregiver grief and ambiguous loss, the quiet, unacknowledged pain that shows up when memory, personality, and fam
Justin Ray: Hospitals Without Walls
Send us Fan MailThe 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 retired Navy veteran, joins us from the trenches where hospitals, jails, families, and community care collide. We talk honestly about what happen
Episode 1 Companion: Six Hospitals Later And Everyone Still Acts Surprised
Send us Fan MailSix 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 foundation behind “Six Hospitals, Two States, Nine Months,” the episode that set the direction for our work on family mental health, caregivin
Communication and the Cost of Silence
Send us Fan MailA 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 family tries to warn the provider about medication interactions, gets blocked by privacy talk, and the outcome is catastrophic. It is a brut
When The Doctor Becomes Family with Dr Mohamed Elziam
Send us Fan MailA 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 his brother’s late-onset schizophrenia and what it’s like to live in two roles at once: the clinician who understands diagnoses and pharmacol
Elder Care Is A Life Plan with Shanika Batchelor
Send us Fan Mail“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 assisted living operation in Wisconsin, to rethink what long-term care can look like when dignity, autonomy, and community come first.We dig into
The Dilemmas of Addiction
Send us Fan MailWe 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 stabilization with success.<br><br>• co‑occurring disorders shaping addiction and depression<br>• families as first responders
The Great Earwax Contraband Caper with Jolene Breinig
Send us Fan MailCaregiving 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 Breinig, a home health nurse who works at the intersection of medical necessity and personal connection, to talk about what caregiving actually
The Future Proof Parent: Special Needs Planning Without Panic with Rebecca Iantuonni
Send us Fan MailThe 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 human, doable, and real, not like a pile of legal forms you will “get to someday.”We talk about the fragile “house of cards” so many familie
Understanding Hoarding
Send us Fan MailA 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 a memory system, a shield, or a last connection to someone they lost and trying to remove it can feel like real physical pain.Michael sits d
All the Wrong Doors
Send us Fan Mail“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 one who keeps getting discharged back home while you’re told to “just make some calls.” If you’ve ever felt like the door is there but your
Set Boundaries And Still Love Them with Dr Michelle Sherman author of Loving Someone with Mental Illness
Send us Fan MailYour 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 talk about the hidden workload of family caregiving, the silence that grows around stigma, and the very real barriers in the US mental health s
Caregiver Stress Reset with Alicia Feller
Send us Fan MailYour 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 former Department of Mental Health executive, to get specific about the physical toll of caregiver stress and the smallest moves that can bri
Make The Strawberry Bunny Then Eat It with Kathy Micheel
Send us Fan MailCaregiving 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 illness, appointments, meds, and the constant emotional load. For us, the real breakthrough is accepting a truth most caregivers were never ta
Is This Mushroom Edible with Emerson Kerr
Send us Fan MailAI is everywhere right now, and the noise makes it easy to assume one of two extremes: either it saves healthcare or it destroys it. I sit down with Emerson Kerr, a longtime sleep medicine leader and C-suite executive at Nox Medical, to talk about a third path where AI supports clinicians and caregivers while the human touch stays in charge.We dig into what “precision medicine” can
Why Your Brain Wants Jelly Beans with Dr Matthew Galati
Send us Fan MailYour brain is not a fixed object, and neither is your future. I sit down with Dr. Matthew Galati, a family medicine and rehab physician who also survived a severe traumatic brain injury after a brutal car crash. He spent days in a coma, woke up unable to talk or walk, and had to relearn basic skills from the ground up. Then he did the thing the “experts” warned might never happen:
Caregiver Misconceptions with ("Host") Victoria Cuore
Send us Fan MailHIPAA gets thrown around like a brick wall, guardianship gets sold like a silver bullet, and families get blamed for not having “the right paperwork” while they’re actively in crisis. We slow all of that down and get specific about what’s true, what’s hype, and what actually helps when you’re trying to protect someone you love during a mental health emergency.Michael Mackniak and V
A Daughter’s Guide To Dementia and Caregiver Burnout Recovery
Send us Fan MailSilence is one of the cruelest parts of caregiving. When a parent has cancer, people show up with food and texts. When dementia or a mental health crisis blows up your family’s “normal,” the support often evaporates and you’re left holding the paperwork, the fear, and the grief that starts long before a funeral. We get into that reality with Karmen Jenkins, a retired licensed clini
The Cloak of Client Choice
Send us Fan MailA locked door, a hoarse voice saying “go away,” and a body on the brink of failure. We dive into the harrowing gray zone where autonomy meets danger and ask a hard question: when a mind is hijacked by illness, is “client choice” really a choice? Using Anne’s near-fatal refusal as the anchor, we unpack how good intentions and recovery-language can morph into paralysis, leaving provi
An Off Switch For Neurospicy Brains with Danniel Worthen Cullumber
Send us Fan MailTrauma doesn’t always arrive like a lightning strike. Sometimes it settles in, becomes routine, and starts shaping the way a whole household breathes, talks, sleeps, and copes. We sit down with Danniel Worthen Cullumber, MSW, LCSW of Willow Medela Wellness, a Utah trauma therapist and licensed clinical social worker, to name what that kind of trauma really is and why “just move on”
The Kidz Are Alright (Kinda) with My Kids
Send us Fan MailThe kids are not confused about what they need. They’re tired of performing, tired of being reduced to a checklist, and tired of pretending the pressure isn’t real when the “social mirror” lives in their pockets 24/7.We sit down with five young people spanning ages 13 to 23 and ask the questions adults usually dodge: Do you feel watched at school? What kind of support actually help
This Is What It Takes with Victoria Cuore
Send us Fan MailCaregiving doesn’t just exhaust your schedule. It rewires your brain into a constant loop of meds, appointments, forms, and fear and then the system expects you to sound calm, concise, and “reasonable” on command. We’re done pretending that’s normal. Michael Mackniak sits down with Victoria Cuore, a domestic violence survivor, crisis advocate, and longtime caregiver, to lay out wha
Caregiver Grief And The Pain Of Loving Someone Who Changed with Dr. Joann Schaeffer, Author of The Unspoken Side of Grief
Send us Fan MailCaregiving can break your heart in slow motion. When a loved one lives with dementia, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or chronic disease, you can find yourself mourning the person you knew while still making meds, appointments, and meals happen. That confusing mix of love, resentment, guilt, and exhaustion has a name, and naming it can be the first real relief.We sit down with Dr.
6 Hospitals. 2 States. 9 Months
Send us Fan MailA straight-A teenager with color-coded plans becomes a revolving door patient in six hospitals across two states in just nine months—and her family learns the hard way that the “safety net” often feels like a series of holes. We open the door on the front line of caregiving: 2 a.m. phone calls, ER chairs, and the emotional math of arguing for care in a system that speaks in acronym
MIGMA: Make Involuntary Guardianship Mandatory Again!! With Rebecca Iantuonni
Send us Fan MailA policy can sound compassionate and still be dangerous when you read the fine print. We’re talking about Project Safe Harbor, a reported VA and DOJ partnership that would ramp up guardianship proceedings for certain veterans, including people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. On paper it’s framed as “timely and appropriate care.” In practice, it risks turning a housing
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