Beyond Well With Sheila Hamilton

One of the main components of mental strength is living in congruity with your values and your desires. We are focusing on stories of women who made complex and sometimes controversial decisions in mid-life to turn toward the version of their lives that they'd always imagined for themselves.  Karen Karbo uprooted her life and career as a bestselling author to live in Couillure, France, and make her way through the mountain of paperwork and bureaucracy to become a French citizen. At the same time, Karen's daughter gave birth, complicating the long-distance relationship. With exquisite grace, consideration, and compelling reasoning, Karen talks about why it's essential we navigate our own wishes with as much care as we offer to our loved ones. 

Dr. Norman E. Rosenthal is a world-renowned psychiatrist, public speakinger, and best selling author who is known for his innovative research and inspirational writing. In this interview, Dr. Rosenthal talks about poetry as medicine for the soul. In a world that is maared by loss and deprived of pleasure, Rosenthal believes poetry can help fill in the gaps, offering a retreat from a troubled world and hope for a better future. 

No two people will experience the same range of emotions during grief. The experience of loss is as unique as our DNA, and any attempt to define its duration, intensity or lasting impact falls short. Dr. Jim Polo discusses the intimacy of grief.

Ivan Maisel is Vice President/Editorial and Senior Writer at on3.com. He has covered college football for nearly four decades, at ESPN, where he served as Editor-at-Large for ESPN College Football 150, Sports Illustrated, Newsday, and The Dallas Morning News. His conversation on navigating a year of grief after the suicide of his only son is one of our favorite interviews of the year.   

Cheryl Strayed is a New York Times bestselling author, playwright, and screenwriter. This interview is a must listen for anyone who is also navigating grief and encountering people who cannot hold another person's suffering.

Dr. Brian Goff and Dr. Jenna LeJeuene join us to talk about the myth of the "five stages of grief." 

Kimi Culp is a multi-talented producer, writer, and person living with bipolar disorder. As a creative working in the demanding field of journalism, Culp relied on her hypomania to help her succeed--until she suffered her first devastating depression and could no longer function. Kimi kept the secret about her diagnosis for decades. In this interview, Culp describes the impact of coming out regarding her diagnosis. 

Dave Dahl is the face of a multi-billion dollar bread-making company and the marketing genius behind the name, 'Dave's Killer Breads.' Dave isn't a killer, but he has made some pretty bad mistakes that landed him in prison, where he began to recognize that his early drug and alcohol use was an attempt to self-medicate his bipolar disorder.  In this interview, Dave talks about the necessity of dual diagnosis and what leveling up to his potential really means. 

Willa Goodfellow's extraordinary run through bipolar disorder may be familiar to others whose diagnosis was missed for many years: incredible highs, devastating lows, a difficulty maintaining relationships, a mercurial run through life. When Goodfellow finally sought help through medication, she thought her challenges might be over. For many people with psychiatric problems, medicine does not work. The side effects are so numbing and intolerable that people find other ways to cope with their minds and behaviors. Goodfellow has done just that with resilience and a belief in her own self-discovery, she is living proof that it is possible to live well with bipolar disorder.

Dr. James Polo talks about the psychiatric complications of Bipolar Disorder and why it can be so difficult to diagnose and treat. People with bipolar disorder often wait to seek help until they have experienced a devastating depression following a manic or hypomanic episode.  Polo brings hope to anyone who is living with bipolar disorder, as well as those who love someone suffering from this type of mood disorder.

Andrew Solomon is a NYTimes bestselling author, and a thought leader on mental health and well-being. In his widely viewed Ted Speech, Solomon says, "The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality, and it was vitality that seemed to seep away from me in that moment." This is an interview that is so important for anyone you know who battles depression.  Solomon has taken an eye-opening journey into his own experience with depression and interviewed hundreds of other people who also suffer from this brain disorder. With empathy, sensitivity, and understanding, Solomon discusses the complexity, the mystery, and the difficulty of living with depression. 

Lidia Yuknavitch is the author of several bestselling books, including her latest 'Thrust' which the Los Angeles Times calls the "Best Book of the Summer."  Yuknavitch talks about the power of storytelling to make sense of the world we are living in and the one we might just be barreling toward. She describes how, after the death of her infant daughter, Yuknavitch pieced her life back together with small scraps of paper and threads of awareness.  Please share this episode with anyone who is suffering from a traumatic loss. Yuknavitch holds the listener with exquisite care and tenderness--a gift to anyone who currently can't see their way forward. 

This was one of the first episodes we recorded. Performance artist Scott Erickson describes in intimate detail how mid-life, young children, little sleep, and a desire to feel again led to his creation of the one-man show, 'Say Yes, A Liturgy of Not Giving Up On Yourself.' Erickson's exploration of the spiritual journey of depression is one of the most fascinating conversations we've had regarding the role of art, faith, and getting out of bed even when you don't feel like it. Share this episode with anyone lacking the vocabulary for living through the hardest times.

Kelly Williams Brown wrote a bestselling book about adulting and then her life fell apart. In the book, "Easy Crafts for the Insane" Brown talks about how mental illness snuck up on her after divorce, friendship difficulties, and unexpected trauma, including breaking three limbs over the course of seven hundred days.  Warning: This episode deals with the impulse of attempted suicide and how common suicidal ideation is in the depths of deep depression.

The Anxiety Sisters (Abs and Mags) bonded in college over their shared difficulty with just about everything that seemed to come easy for other students. Decades later, the two have built a substantial community of people who share their experiences of living with anxiety while continuing to find joy, purpose, and happiness despite the ebbs and flows of their ongoing symptoms. (Part two)

The Anxiety Sisters (Abs and Mags) bonded in college over their shared difficulty with just about everything that seemed to come easy for other students. Decades later, the two have built a substantial community of people who share their experiences of living with anxiety while continuing to find joy, purpose, and happiness despite the ebbs and flows of their ongoing symptoms. (Part one)

Harris Goldberg is a skilled director and writer, and he also lives with debilitating anxiety and OCD. Goldberg's command of the internal parts of our lives that cause us pain and suffering is so evident in his interviews, and he shares how he may have finally cracked the code on how to live well with a severe form of anxiety. 

Portland-based pop-soul singer-songwriter Laryssa Birdseye is most known for emotionally powerful and sometimes scathing "break-up" songs. But Laryssa has plumbed emotional wreckage and heartache to get to the place where she creates rather than perseverates, and the end product is both grittily honest and relevant to the lives of so many women who have struggled with  subtance-use and anxiety.

Most people with bipolar disorder do not seek care when they are enjoying the perks of hypomania. They seek care when the behaviors of mania have destroyed their relationships, jobs, or careers, or they have sunk into the inevitable low of Bipolar Depression.  Dr. Pritham Raj talks about the unique characteristics of bipolar depression and why it is so dangerous.

Comedic writer Courtenay Hameister takes an unflinching look at her life through the lens of anxiety. This is one of our most listened-to episodes because Courtenay is as real as anxiety, and anyone who has ever been told to "stop being so anxiety-ridden" understands the madness of this instruction. It is through self-compassion and understanding, humor, and the right combination of meds that Courtenay keeps her razor-sharp ability to comment on her approach to managing a serious condition.