Your Life After

Rachel Alexander wanted to spend our time together talking about navigating co-parenting with a narcissist, dating as a single parent, reactions she experienced after leaving her abusive ex, the relationship of the church with abusers, and the importance of therapy. She sees healing as a continual process and believes the more we talk about domestic violence, the more we heal and help others.

Guest on this episode

Rachel connects people with homes and the lifestyles they want. Slated to make the top 15% this year for local Realtors, she credits her success with a conscious decision to open up, live authentically, and being able to tell her story. She finds that the more she gives, the more she receives. As a survivor of domestic violence in an abusive marriage, she has the goal of being able to help just one woman leave a similar relationship each time she tells her story. She believes that there is always a reason for what we go through; to help others.

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Aisha Moore doesn’t want other women to experience what she did. She joined me to talk about how we focus on jobs and accolades and how that can lead to our soul being undernourished.

Guest on this episode

Aisha Moore is a self-care advocate and stress management expert. Her father inspired her 20-year career in public health and service in various healthcare-related associations. She has a unique perspective because she “over-served” until she was stressed out to the point of being on short-term disability. After getting serious about self-care, she was able to heal anxiety naturally, boost her career, and revive a failing marriage. She now helps successful leaders who are overwhelmed change their thought processes, systems, and habits to serve without sacrificing their sanity.

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Shea Atkin wants to destigmatize the word trauma and let listeners know that even though healing from trauma is messy, it’s still worth it. She says that we are only as sick as our secrets. We learn boundaries to know who is safe and has earned the right to hear our secrets and stories. Shea believes many of our current patterns (unaware or aware) are our attempts to reconcile a past that no longer exists.

Guest on this episode

I'm a survivor of major developmental childhood trauma and addiction. Somehow I made it through without dying, and in my second half of life, I have dedicated myself to healing from it and helping others heal from theirs as well. We are all in this together, and I hope we can each learn to live comfortably in our own skin.

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Shayna Acree joins us to talk about the grief journey that people experience after a significant loss in their life. Because of her own experiences, she understands how difficult it is to heal. She shares her thoughts with us about the different grief stages, how many people can get stuck in their grief following loss and trauma, and how to be okay with not being okay at times.

Guest on the show

Shayna Acree is a native of Tallahassee, Florida where she resides with her husband and children and she is a graduate of Florida State University.

Shayna lost her eldest child, Amyia, suddenly in December of 2012. In her first book, There is Hope on the Other Side of Grief, Shayna shares her personal story of her journey through grief and loss. Her hope is to inspire and empower others through their grief journey.

Shayna Acree is also a Certified Life Coach, specializing in assisting people’s journey through the different stages of grief and loss.

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Rebecca Kelly-Manders is a child of divorce. She survived growing up with a functioning alcoholic, joined the military where she wasn’t the greatest soldier (her words, not mine), and has had a mark left on her by the criminal justice system. She’s built a life of service through her own recovery from addiction and sharing her skills as a chef. We talk about that and more on season one’s final episode.

Guest on this episode

I always start these kinds of paragraphs with professional accomplishments, but really I’m just a human in the world trying to move through it as carefully as possible, helping as many people as I can and harming as few as possible. I am a devoted partner, Mets fan, and pet parent, I make a mean burger and I have two felonies. You get to decide what’s important, I already know.

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Community advocate Talethia Edwards joins us on Your Life after to talk with me about her childhood, community activism, building her parenting toolbox to battler her ghosts in the nursery, and how parenting her children is healing her and helping her in turn heal her community.

Guest on this episode

Talethia Edwards is a wife, mother, community, and family advocate. Her work finds her strategizing ways to empower and educate her community in order to change patterns of poverty and low achievement.

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The poet Reuben Jackson joins us on Your Life After to talk with me about this juncture where he is focusing on and contextualizing the impact of trauma on his life. Specifically, acknowledging and discussing the work he’s doing to work to live unmasked, no longer hiding or distancing his  "soft" (or softer) sides.

Guest on this episode

I was born in Augusta, Georgia, grew up in Washington, DC. Currently working as an Archivist with the University of The District Of Columbia's Felix E. Grant Jazz Archives. Previously hosted Friday Night Jazz on Vermont Public Radio, and as Archivist and Curator with the Smithsonian's Duke Ellington Collection. I'm also a published poet and a full-time nerd.

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darlene anita scott was young, active (she was a marathon runner), and seemingly healthy when she was diagnosed with heart failure. By learning to manage her chronic condition, she is learning that the residuals of both the diagnosis and the interventions create a ripple-like effect in her life. We talk about the risks of exceptionalism in intervention or treatments, somatic elegies, art, and expanding the definition of wellness (because the limited view of wellness can often be a trauma itself (and a barrier to accessing it).

Guest on this episode

darlene is a poet, visual artist, and wellness advocate. As the so-called "quiet" girl a lot of her creative work explores the violence of silence and black girlhood. Her poetry and art has found homes in various literary journals, anthologies, and a few art galleries. Her advocacy has earned her spots on t.v., in print media, and on podiums before clinicians, politicians, influencers, and patients. darlene enjoys humid morning runs, blue nail polish, and homemade popcorn. She lives in Richmond Virginia.

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Strategy, directed autonomy, a well-stocked pantry, and a rollicking conversation about an experience in a dungeon are all on tap in my conversation with Christina Springer. Her very intentional life has allowed her to move more seamlessly than most through the COVID-19 crisis while some of us began to examine the very essence of how we live, eat, and educate our children.

Guest on this episode

Christina Springer is an Alt.Black artist who uses text, performance, video, and other visual expressions. Cave Canem shaped her voice. Her fourth collection of poetry, The Splooge Factory, was released by Frayed Edge Press in November 2018. Currently working on Rebrand The Past: a collection of paintings, fabric, mixed media objects, videos, textiles, and texts from a museum in our Black utopian womanist future. The first iteration, Futuristic Relics & Motherboards Sacred showed in San Jose, Dayton, and Pittsburgh.

Springer is the Resident Elder for Black Dream Escape, a project of Onika Reigns and her son Windafire which is a therapeutic art practice centering Black and Indigenous rest. (BIPOC always includes Queer.) With them, she will soon open BlackSpace a radical clinic. She has worked in non-profit arts management as the Co-Founder & Managing Director of Sun Crumbs, the Envirolink Network, and as the General Manager of WYEP FM. Springer resides in Pittsburgh where she home-educates her son.

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Liz Gilliam thinks this is a time for many to really sit with themselves to understand what it is about them that makes them happy. We talk about pleasure and self-intimacy in a way that expands beyond the erotic. And while things might not be perfect, her conversation urges us to unlock the things that bring us joy.

Guest on this episode

(Should I do this in the third person? I'm doing it in the third person. I'm The Rock.)

Liz Gilliam, MSW, is a Black woman (that's a title I'm PROUD of, in and of itself) with a passion for helping others live their best lives. She believes "Live your best life" is more than just a catchy saying, but rather an attainable goal that all have access to within themselves. In encouraging all to reach this point, she is adamant about meeting yourself where you are and understanding your place in your world. She has an MSW from Florida State University with a concentration in Social Leadership and Policy and is currently completing a Ph.D. in Education Policy and Evaluation. Her professional research focuses on Black Girls using fandom to find community and cope during COVID-19. Her personal research interests include Black Feminism, sexuality, and healing.

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The work she did in prison abolition led our guest, Onika Reigns to study more closely the essential idea of rest, both in the prison population and in her movement through the Black community. Her work has led her to develop her Black Rest Theory and colors the work she does in her therapeutic practice as well as in the Black Dream Escape.

Guest on this episode

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We examine the criminal justice system through the lens of criminal defense attorney Jessica Yeary, who is also running for Public Defender. She maps out the ripple effect that one arrest can have in one relationship, family, and community and how the impact of children watching arrests, or being arrested themselves, can affect their ability to cope. She also explains her three-part campaign platform, which is as trauma-informed as it is solution-focused. 

Guest on this episode

I am a board-certified criminal defense attorney who is committed to protecting the rights of those accused of committing a crime. I spent the first nine years of my career as an Assistant Public Defender and now continue to represent people in court in private practice at the law firm of Caminez & Yeary, PA. I am the President of the Tallahassee chapter of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and a proud member of the Tallahassee Women Lawyers.

During my decade-long career, I have seen, almost every single day, the toll that the criminal justice system takes on people’s lives. The most devastating and disproportional impact is in poor and minority communities where the sentencing disparity is rampant. Trying to maintain a healthy perspective as a mother, wife, and friend has been difficult when the weight and gravity of the work take hold. There is trauma in every single case I handle, and the scars run incredibly deep through years of over-incarceration and destroyed families. I haven't lost hope, though, and remain wholeheartedly committed to changing the criminal justice system one client and one case at a time.

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Children around the world are being asked to tap into their education in the midst of a global pandemic and community trauma. Jason Flom joins me to talk about what wellness looks like within the context of a school ecosystem and what we might need to be prepared for when school starts again in the fall of 2020. 

Guest on this episode

Jason Flom is the Director of Cornerstone Learning Community and is one of the founding faculty of the school. He earned a bachelor’s and masters in education at the University of Florida. He founded and edited Ecology of Education, a multi-author blog dedicated to exploring issues and ideas in education, from 2008 until 2017. In 2010 he was named an ASCD Emerging Leader (ASCD is the world's largest international education association) and UF College of Education distinguished alumni. In 2012 he joined Q.E.D. Foundation as their Director of Learning Platforms, working at the intersection of neuroscience, education, technology, and equity, in collaborating with schools and researchers across the nation. He joined ASCD's faculty in 2013 and has since worked with schools and school leaders on building capacity in social-emotional learning, professional learning communities, disrupting inequities, and many other areas. He regularly presents at national education conferences.

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