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Real Talk with Tina and Ann
Tina and Ann met as journalists covering a capital murder trial, 15 years ago. Tina has been a tv and radio personality and has three children. Ann has a master's in counseling and has worked in the jail system, was a director of a battered woman's shelter/rape crisis center, worked as an assistant director at a school for children with autism, worked with abused kids and is currently raising her three children who have autism. She also is autistic and was told would not graduate high school, but as you can see, she has accomplished so much more. The duo share their stories of overcoming and interview people who are making it, despite what has happened. This is more than just two moms sharing their lives. This is two women who have overcome some of life's hardest obstacles. Join us every Wednesday as we go through life's journey together. There is purpose in the pain and hope in the journey.
Episodes
199 episodes
Building Kids Who Can Stand on Their Own: A Recipe for Raising Today’s Youth
We talk with life coach and TEDx speaker Randi Crawford about why teen anxiety is skyrocketing and how parents accidentally train kids to avoid discomfort. We share practical ways to build resilience, accountability, and trust so kids can handl...
From Grief to Justice on Death Row: Sophia Laurenzi’s Journey
We sit with writer Sophia Lorenzi as she tells the story of losing her dad to suicide and the shock of how “normal” things can look right before a crisis turns fatal. We also trace how her grief shaped her work as a death row investigator and w...
MentalHappy: Tamar Blue’s Mission to Make Mental Health Available to All
Anxiety can make you feel like you’re the only one struggling while you’re surrounded by people. That isolation gets worse when mental health support is expensive, hard to schedule, or simply not available where you live. We wanted a conversati...
If we didn’t choose the trauma, how do we choose what happens next?
Life can fracture in a single moment, and the crack line often becomes the date we measure everything against: before and after. We’re reflecting on a powerful conversation with Tim Smith, author of Fault Line Still Standing, whose own fault li...
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He Thought He Was Getting a Day Off from School: Kidnapped at Six: Tim Smith's Journey from Trauma to Healing
A single morning can redraw the map of a child's entire life.At six years old, Tim Smith woke up believing he was getting a day off from school. Instead, it became the day that changed everything. In this powerful conversation, Tim, auth...
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Building Workplaces for Every Brain: And a Love Letter from a Neurotypical to Neurodivergent Leaders
We break down how leaders can co-regulate or co-disregulate a team, and why tiny shifts in structure can radically change safety and performance for neurodivergent professionals. We also read a love letter that names the cost of masking and the...
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Neurodiversity in the Workplace: Building Better Workplaces for ALL Minds
In this episode, Ann interviews Jessica Lee from Neuro Talent Works and Melody Valenzuela from Rapport Educational. Together, they challenge the idea that workplace success means fitting into old systems, then map out how to redesign hiring and...
Taking Off The Mask: The Bravest Thing you will Ever Do is Be Seen
Have you ever walked into a room and felt yourself switch on a “socially acceptable” version of you before you even said hello? We’re naming that experience for what it is: masking, the practiced art of blending in to stay safe. We talk about h...
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Your Voice Tells a Story Long Before You Ever Say a Word: what is your Vocal Autobiography?
What if the reason you struggle to use your voice has very little to do with speaking—and everything to do with what you've lived through?After the unimaginable suffering of World War I, one man's search to heal his own trauma became the...
The Voice Beneath the Silence with Ann
Your voice is more than the words that come out of your mouth. It tells the story of what you learned was safe, what you learned would be punished, and what you believed would finally make you seen. Sometimes "finding your voice" isn't about be...
What If We Stopped Making Children adapt to a One-Size-Fits-All School and Started Building the System Around Them?
Erin Simpson on Trauma-Informed Education, Mental Health, Autism, ADHD, and Helping Every Child Thrive A child melts down in class and the adult response is almost automatic: calm down, make a better choice, try harder. We wan...
The Longer You Hold onto Things, the Heavier They Get: What can you put down?
A single quote sparks a hard truth: the longer we hold on to pain, the heavier it becomes. We talk through emotional weight, how survival and masking become habits, and why healing starts when we decide some things no longer belong on our shoul...
The Things We Carry After We Leave: Part 2 with Anna Hebra Flaster
A family gets 48 hours to leave Cuba and suddenly everything becomes a decision made under fear. We sit down with author and journalist Anna Hebra Flaster for Part 2 of her story, and what unfolds is equal parts heartbreaking and darkly funny, ...
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Beside Every Struggle is a Gift: The Art of Neurodivergence
What if the very things we've been taught to hide are actually our greatest strengths?For so long, neurodivergence has been viewed through the lens of deficits, delays, and difficulties. But what if we looked at it differently? What if, ...
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The Sound of Freedom: A Family's Escape
A single sound can carry a whole country inside it. When author Anna Hebra Flaster talks about hearing a motorcycle, she’s not being poetic, she’s describing a trauma stamp from childhood, the moment her family learned they had permission to le...
One of the Greatest Tragedies in Life Is Not Failure. It's Quitting Before We Get to the Other Side.
What if the hard isn't a sign to quit?What if the resistance, the setbacks, the waiting, and the closed doors are actually preparing you for the very thing you've been praying for?After reading Adassa's memoir, Love Keeps Showing ...
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Adassa the Voice of Encanto: What if the Detour is the Path
Disney magic rarely shows you the part where the dream takes an unplanned detour. Our guest, Adassa, the Golden Globe, Oscar, and Grammy-winning artist who voiced Dolores in Disney’s Encanto, tells the full behind-the-scenes story: the 20-plus ...
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When Systems Fail
A Mother’s Day drive turns into a hit-and-run with a drunk driver, and we walk through the shock of trying to keep our kids calm while the help we expect never arrives. We connect that crash to a separate crisis where mental health funding coll...
The Strong Still Need Holding
Love that Stays: A Light That Remains.Not walking through the hardest of times alone.Listen to Tina share how her friend’s calling hours changed her.Listen to Ann share how a stranger at a Neurodivergent Conference reach...
Stop Shrinking Before Growth: it is Ok to be Seen
We talk honestly about why success can feel scarier than failure. We name the pattern of shrinking right before growth and remind ourselves that being seen is not selfish. • struggling with visibility even while hosting a growing podca...
Sextortion And Kids: A Calm Parent Response Can Save A Life
We talk honestly about sextortion, how quickly it escalates, and why shame keeps kids silent when they need support the most. We share practical, step-by-step guidance for parents who want awareness without panic and a home where kids come to u...
Finishing A Memoir And Finding Healing
We celebrate a personal milestone as Ann finishes her memoir and turns the writing process into hard-won lessons about trauma, neurodivergence, and self-compassion. We unpack how survival skills can masquerade as personality, and how healing st...
You don't have to be the Trauma that Raised You: An Interview with Author Lena Fein
A spotless house. A raging mother. A silent father. And a child who learns to survive by shutting down her own heart. We’re joined by Lena Fine, author of *Shattering the Mirror: One Woman’s Journey of Healing*, for a raw conversation about chi...
From Immigrant to 700 million dollar deal: Taking the road to discover self with Michael Yang
The internet didn’t arrive with fanfare for most people, but Michael Yang remembers the exact moment it became real: a friend opens the Mosaic browser, types a simple URL, and information appears from far away. That flash of possibility turns i...
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From Invisible Courage to Visible Success: The Michael Yang Story
A life can look “successful” from the outside and still be held together by courage you never see. We sit down with Michael Yang, author of *Coming Alive on the Ride*, to trace the real roots of his drive: family history shaped by Japanese occu...
