Life Shift™ | Pivotal Moments & Life Change

147 Days: Raising and Losing My Sister

If you have ever loved someone so much that you quietly rearranged your whole life around them, this conversation will feel familiar. At twenty-two, Andrea Wilson Woods got the phone call that split her life into a before and an after. Her mother no longer wanted to be a mother, and her eight-year-old sister, Adrienne, needed someone. Andrea said yes without knowing what she was saying yes to. She worked multiple jobs so she could be there for school pickups, dinners, and school events. She built a life around one person. And then, three weeks shy of finishing her first year of high school, Adrienne was diagnosed with stage four cancer. What followed was 147 days, and a grief that Andrea would spend years learning how to actually feel. This is a story about caregiving, about the friends who show up and the ones who quietly disappear, about laughing in hospital rooms because laughter is its own kind of survival. It is about the mistake of pretending you are okay, and the slow work of finding yourself again when the person who was your center is gone. What You'll Hear: What it means to become a parent to your sibling before you are ready Why some people vanish when things get hard, and how to ask for the help you actually need The humor that lived inside the hardest days The cost of pushing grief down, and why grieving out loud matters Advocating for someone you love, all the way to the end What it looks like to find a new North Star, more than once Guest Bio Andrea Wilson Woods is a keynote speaker, a writer who loves to tell stories, and a patient advocate who founded the nonprofit Blue Faery: The Adrienne Wilson Liver Cancer Association. For over ten years, Andrea worked in the education field as a teacher and professor for public and private schools as well as universities. Andrea obtained her master's degree in professional writing from the University of Southern California; her nonfiction writing has won national awards. Her best-selling and award-winning book, Better Off Bald: A Life in 147 Days, is a medical memoir about raising and losing her sister to liver cancer. https://www.amazon.com/stores/Andrea-Wilson-Woods/author/B07X51HH8W https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawilsonwoods/ https://www.facebook.com/bluefaerylivercancer/ https://www.instagram.com/bluefaeryliver/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/blue-faery https://www.youtube.com/c/BlueFaery/ -- Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/follow Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ -- sibling loss, becoming a parent young, caregiving and grief, losing a sister, delayed grief, finding purpose after loss, childhood parentification, hospice and dying at home, friendships that fade after loss, finding a new north star Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rock Bottom: Where the Most Fulfilling Life Began

There is a version of you that other people count on. The one who shows up, who fixes things, who holds the whole thing together. So what happens when that version can no longer do the thing that made it yours? Robert spent thirty-two years as a surgeon. Then an accident took his hand, and the surgeries that followed took something he never expected to lose. First his career, slowly. Then, quietly, his footing. What he thought was control turned out to be an addiction, and the person who saw it clearly was the one who loved him most. This is a story about the identity we build to survive, and what is left of us when it falls away. It is also, gently, a story about what grows back. Robert does not wrap his hardest years in a neat bow. He sits with the darkness, the withdrawal, the fog that made getting out of a chair feel impossible. And then he tells us what he found on the other side, and why he believes his worst chapter was the one that wrote his best. What You'll Hear Why success can become a place to hide from the fears we never dealt with The moment a wife's ultimatum became an act of love What eight days of rehab and seven weeks of withdrawal actually feel like The brain fog that no achievement could push through How a packet of five herbs reopened a door he thought was closed Choosing not to return to the career that once defined him Guest Bio Robert R Beltran MD, Pharm D, FACS. Doctorate degrees in medicine and pharmacy from the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center. Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. Double board certified by the American Board of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery and the American Board of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Surgical practice for 31½ years, performing 14,000 surgeries. Founder, CEO and Chief Formulator for Recomnd Nutrition. www.recomnd.com -- Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/follow Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ -- losing your identity after a career ends, opioid addiction recovery, surviving withdrawal at home, prescription painkiller addiction, finding purpose after addiction, rebuilding after rock bottom, starting over later in life, when your work is your identity, hope after addiction, healing after loss of self Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Starting Over: You Can Lose Everything and Still Be Okay

Have you ever built a life so carefully that you forgot to ask whether it was actually yours? Lora did everything right. The good girl, the good student, the good wife, the good mom. And then, right on the edge of an empty nest and a little freedom, she found out her husband had been living a second life for fifteen years. This is a conversation about what happens after the floor gives way. Lora talks about collapsing, literally, and then getting back up. About the slow realization that the people who hurt her did not get to decide who she became. And about the harder mirror underneath the betrayal, the one that showed her all the ways she had been abandoning herself long before anyone else did. It is tender and honest and, in the end, hopeful. Not because everything wrapped up neatly, but because Lora found out something worth knowing. You can lose the whole thing and still be okay. What You'll Hear: How perfectionism can quietly become your entire identity The visceral moment everything Lora believed came apart Why she stopped waiting for the pain to disappear and started rebuilding The turning point: they don't get to ruin my life What the betrayal revealed about the ways she was betraying herself Choosing boundaries, honesty, and a smaller, deeper circle Guest Bio: LORA CHEADLE, JD CHt is an author, TEDx speaker, and leadership wellness coach who specializes in burnout and betrayal recovery. She is the author of It’s Not Burnout; It’s Betrayal: 5 Tools to FUEL UP & Thrive, the award-winning book FLAUNT! Drop Your Cover and Reveal Your Smart, Sexy, & Spiritual Self, and hosts the top-rated podcast, FLAUNT! Create a Life You Love After Infidelity or Betrayal. Website: https://loracheadle.com/ Social Media Links: YouTube: www.youtube.com/@LoraCheadleLifeChoreographer Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/loracheadle/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lora.cheadle --- Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/follow Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anger: The Drink I Never Stopped Drinking

Have you ever quit the thing everyone could see, only to find the thing nobody could see was still running the show? Zach Brittle is a couples therapist who spent decades certain that alcohol was the danger. He grew up afraid of becoming someone he wasn't, carrying stories about drinking that were planted in him long before he ever had a drop. When he finally put the bottle down in November of 2020, he expected relief. What he found instead was anger, the kind that had been hiding in plain sight his whole life, quietly running every relationship he had. This episode follows Zach through that harder, truer work. Not the quitting, but everything that came after it. The slow rebuilding of trust with his daughters, the patience required while his wife found her own sobriety two years behind him, and the strange, steady gratitude that replaced the pride he used to need. It's a conversation about what we each call our drug of choice, and what it actually costs to finally put it down. What You'll Hear: Why Zach's fear of alcohol started long before he ever took a drink The moment his daughter confronted him, and why he calls it brave What changed the night he poured out his last drink on November 13th Why he says quitting drinking was the easy part of his recovery How the chaos in his family shifted onto someone else once he got sober The theory he now uses with couples about everyone's hidden drug of choice Guest Bio: Zach Brittle is a licensed mental health counselor, Certified Gottman Therapist, Certified Relational Life Therapist, speaker, and host of Marriage Therapy Radio, a relationship podcast with more than 4 million downloads. He has spent years helping couples navigate conflict, connection, repair, and intimacy with more honesty and skill. In addition to his clinical work, Zach speaks openly about his own recovery journey and the deeper work of learning to stay present in the face of anger, uncertainty, and relational pain. His story brings together themes of sobriety, emotional responsibility, marriage, and personal transformation in a way that is both honest and deeply human. Follow Zach on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn all under the same handle @marriagetherapyradio --- Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/follow Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ --- sobriety, recovery from alcohol, anger and addiction, parenting through change, couples therapy, asking for help, family healing, gratitude in recovery, fatherhood and forgiveness, honesty after addiction Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Surrender: The Wave That Changed Everything

Have you ever kept moving because stopping felt more dangerous than going? Pat knew that feeling better than most. He filled his life with travel and sport and constant motion, not because he loved being busy, but because stillness was where his hardest thoughts lived. Then on an ordinary foggy morning, a wave put him face-first into a sandbar at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. He broke his neck. He stopped breathing in the water. And somewhere between almost dying and being pulled back to shore by his friend John, something in him reorganized completely. This episode follows Pat from a childhood that taught him to hide what he felt, through years of outrunning himself across more than fifty countries, into a hospital bed where he had to relearn how to move his own foot, and finally into the life he lives now. One built, day by day, on a phrase he still says to himself. Even when it's bad, it's good. What You'll Hear: How a childhood built on toughness taught Pat to hide what he was really feeling The accident at Ocean Beach, and the minutes he spent saying goodbye to the people he loved What it was like to be rescued, revived, and told his neck was broken How he found gratitude inside a body that had to relearn how to walk Why he now works with young people who carry the same silence he used to carry What it means to finally live in the present instead of always running from it Guest Bio: Patrick Yalon is a San Francisco-based deputy probation officer, high school basketball coach, endurance athlete, writer, and the author of the upcoming memoir Still Here. In 2024, he nearly died in a catastrophic surfing accident at Ocean Beach, where he broke his neck, drowned, was revived on the beach, and underwent emergency spinal surgery. What followed was a long and uncertain recovery that forced him to rebuild not only his body, but his identity and sense of purpose. Since then, Patrick has used endurance, reflection, and writing as part of that rebuilding process, including taking on the Moab 240 ultramarathon. He writes and speaks about trauma, resilience, meaning, and what it means to live fully after nearly losing everything. iRunFar article: https://www.irunfar.com/still-here-running-the-moab-240-mile-after-a-near-death-surfing-accident --- Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/follow Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ --- near death experience, surviving trauma, spinal cord injury recovery, learning to be present, outrunning your feelings, gratitude after tragedy, second chance at life, healing from silence, masculinity and emotion, finding purpose after trauma Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices