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
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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