In a manner that is absolutely true to these words from her DBT and life mentor, Seth Axelrod, Andrea Gold has completed her one year of prescribed treatment for breast cancer, with the best results one can hope for. Tune in to this episode to hear Andrea celebrate the completion of the year and reflect upon how she managed the suffering (a lot) and created fun and connection through it all (a lot). She brings an infectious and intelligent enthusiasm, an emotional and affiliative personality, and a bad-ass exposure and DBT lifestyle, to rather grim cancer-related events: diagnosis, staging, mastectomy, radiation, chemotherapy, and survivorship. Listen, connect, reflect…learn from her.

> In part 2 of the conversation with world class trainer Cem Eren, join Charlie and Nicole and enter the Lion’s Den, a practice environment thoughtfully constructed to support our training journey from the moment we step through the door until the moment we step out of it. As we tour the space, we hear how unconditional acceptance underlies Cem’s strategy for facilitating positive change, and how his intuitive application of dialectics translates to clients that consistently hit huge goals and make extraordinary transformations.

“In this episode, Nicole and Charlie tap into the wisdom that Cem Eren has gained from two decades of training elite NBA athletes, boxers, bodybuilders, beauty contestants, and ordinary humans of all ages. In examples that extend to therapy and coaching, Cem shares how he meets his clients every single day with freshness, compassion, dignity, and nonjudgmental presence, helping them connect with their strengths while building toward their goals.

What shapes the syntax of Self? How does context inform our inner lexicons? Are we more than the sum of all our actions?
In this episode Charlie and Nic explore the ways we find meaning through expressing identity, how we hold space for inner contradictions, and why self definition is a paradox, ripe for dialectical intervention.

In this second of our two-episode conversation with Natalia Garcia about her grieving process over the years since the death of her two-year-old son, we focus in on her altered relationship to time, rituals, and anniversaries; her remarkable use of DBT skills and dialectics to navigate the grieving process; the ways that she has made meaning out of her suffering; and a dinosaur, a gift from a fellow griever.

Since Nicole joined Charlie as co-host, several long-time listeners have asked Charlie, Who IS that woman?! It’s actually a great question and the answer is far from simple. In this podcast, Charlie and Nicole explore their own self-narratives and expand into a larger conversation about how we all see ourselves, how we define ourselves, how we represent ourselves, how we are seen by others, and how that affects us.

In 2018, Natalia Garcia spoke with me over three podcast episodes about how she was dealing with the catastrophic and traumatic death of her two year old son eight months earlier. He died in the middle of the night for unexplained reasons. In three podcasts she spoke at length of her life, of the death itself, and then the road to recovery. In this week’s podcast, we reprise selected excerpts from those podcasts, capturing her words and her wisdom that grew out of this terrible loss. She inspires.

In June of 2018, eight months following the death of her two-year-old son to the Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood (SUDC), Natalia Garcia joined this podcast for three episodes to describe the catastrophic loss and the ensuing grief process marked by her courage and skill in facing her vulnerabilities. Now, five years since the loss, she returns to the podcast to talk about the longer arc of the process of grieving her son and things that have happened since then. As before, this is a moving and inspiring story of courage that deals with a panoply of issues faced in any longer-term grief process.

In this episode, Charlie reflects on 100 episodes spent exploring human suffering. He synthesizes wisdom from interviews including coping with natural disaster, loss of a child, suicide, and cancer, arriving at seven overarching guidelines for survival.

In the final episode of our 4 part Series on coping with Suicide in the family, we hear from Teddy’s fiancé Mariya. Mariya’s developed a personal friendship with Ross and shares about that relationship and her experience grieving his suicide.

She also speaks about what it was like for her as someone outside the immediate family after Ross’ suicide: what it was like to be an outsider witnessing a family grapple with unspeakable loss, and how it felt to be a supportive partner to Teddy amidst her own grief.

The interview provides a window into the breadth of relationships impacted by suicide and gives perspective into the complexity of managing grief within and outside of a family system.