Beyond Well with Sheila Hamilton

Drew Holguin was born in a predominantly black neighborhood to mixed-race family. "I was too white in my neighborhood, but not white enough at the white dominant schools I attended. Regardless of where I was, I wasn't accepted." Holguin began delivering drugs as a way of getting attention and friends. Holguin is one of 3.45 million kids in this country who are suspended or expelled from public school, with few options for what comes next. Open School is an innovative education program for students like Drew, who needed something different than a traditional school. Open School knows which kids are most likely to drop out. Educators interested in the whole person find those students and surround them with what they need to graduate and get ahead; rigorous academics, teachers who believe in them, and a whole lot of relentless love and support. In this conversation, Drew talks about how emotional skill-building helped him create a healthy relationship, earn his Master's degree in Social Work, and return as a program manager in the counseling department at Open School. www.openschoolnw.org

Storm Large: musician, actor, playwright, author, awesome. She shot to national prominence in 2006 as a finalist on the CBS show Rock Star: Supernova, where despite having been eliminated in the week before the finale, Storm built a fan base that follows her around the world to this day. Storm joins us to talk about growing up with a severely mentally disturbed mother and the message she received from her mother's doctor, "Oh yeah, you will absolutely end up like your Mother. It's hereditary." But, this conversation is not about Storm's efforts to outrun a diagnosis, it's an artist's journey back to herself. Storm's autobiographical musical memoir, Crazy Enough, played to packed houses in 2009 during its unprecedented 21-week sold-out run in Portland. She's back for the ten-year reunion stronger, wiser, and larger in spirit than ever before. (Don't miss the after the show conversation about cancel culture and what really goes on in therapy.)

Today’s show with Nyna Giles exposes the good and bad news about psychological suffering. Let’s start with the bad news first… Psychological suffering doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t care who you are, how wealthy your friends are, how beautiful you are, or what circles you run it. Psychological suffering can and will affect us all. Of course, privileges give certain people access to resources that may help those people cope more effectively with the suffering life deals them, but the suffering will happen all the same. Nyna’s mother had all the trappings of the “perfect” life: she transcended her humble beginnings to become one of the “beautiful people,” hobnobbing with the rich and famous, including Grace Kelly, who she counted as her closest friend. And yet, psychological suffering, this time in the form of psychosis, came crashing down on that beautiful picture. As her mother’s world shrank, Nyna did what any child would do; she tried her very best to “save” her mom. But, of course, even our best attempts to save our loved ones often fail. But here’s the good news… Being able to live a life of meaning and purpose also does not discriminate. It doesn’t matter who we are, where we live, what forms of suffering life has given us, what we have done or what has been done to us, living whatever life we have been given in a way that is personally meaningful and has integrity for us is possible for every one of us. To find more information, links and After The Show Notes, please subscribe.

Sophia Shalmiyev was eleven when she immigrated to New York City from Leningrad, motherless, displaced, and terrified. Shalmiyev is clear-eyed and unsentimental about the trauma and poverty she endured as a child and how it shaped the woman she is today as a feminist, artist, and mother. Shalmiyev is fiery and unapologetic in her views of what it takes to raise a feminist son. Her opinion of her newly adopted country is equally as compelling. "I love America," she says, "It's broken, like me." Shalmiyev is the author of Mother Winter, an MFA graduate of Portland State University, and a visual artist. She lives with her two children in Portland, Oregon.

For the last few years, Laurel Braitman, has been teaching writing and communications skills to medical students and doctors at Stanford University, helping healthcare professionals connect more meaningfully with their patients, their peers, and themselves. Nearly 30% of American medical students are depressed and one in ten have thoughts about suicide. Practicing physicians are even worse off with some of the highest suicide rates in the nation. It's how we learn to communicate with one another that matters most. The most important thing we can do in the time we have here is connect with other people and ideally, make them feel less alone. Laurel also studies we can learn from the emotional lives of non-human animals, including her New York Times bestselling book, Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves helped us see how we can learn a lot from our non-human animal counterparts.

If you've ever felt like giving up or wondered what the point of life is, Scott Erickson wants you to know you're not alone. Through performance art, story-teaching, participation, and image curation Scott talks about the overwhelming voices he encountered that told him three things--nothing new will ever happen, you are sick and ugly, and dying is better than living. Then, Scott got curious about his interior life. And by examining his own existential crisis, Scott began to see this moment not as an ending but as a doorway into a much deeper invitation to understanding our hopes, vocation, and our existence itself. His live presentations are beyond the beyond. #suicide #depression #anxiety #performance #art #storytelling #hope#existential #crisis #faith

This is truly one of the most beautiful conversations we've had about the experience of psychosis and what it means to lose touch with reality. Sarah Townsend tenderly examines the terrifying experience of postpartum psychosis through art, film, psychology and explains why love and connection is key to finding ground again. Sarah C. Townshend, Author, Therapist, Mother. Setting the Wire, a Memoir of Postpartum Psychosis available at www.SarahTownsendwriter.com

The CDC estimates that for every one person who dies by suicide, eight people are profoundly affected. The grief, shock and sadness is shared by friends, coaches, church members and community members. 48,000 people died by suicide in 2018, leaving behind hundreds and thousands of people asking the question "WHY?" Leslie Abraham's husband died by suicide after a perplexing descent into depression. Her interaction with the psychiatric system is not uncommon--medicine didn't seem to help and her husband's shame over his condition forced the family into isolation. In this revealing and intimate interview, Leslie discusses what it means to be a suicide loss survivor and to rebuild her own view of mental health in the wake of such a significant loss.

Reema Zaman is the first born child of a Bangledishi family, whose parents moved to Thailand and Hawaii before Reema turned six. In other words, she became used to being considered different. Reema's experience as a young woman growing up in cultures where women were not regarded as equal humans created a litany of problems--anorexia and sexually and emotionally abusive relationships with men. Reema has wrestled free from those nightmarish experiences to not only tell her story, but rewrite her own path forward as a woman, a feminist, and an actress. Her memoir, I am Yours, tells the story of how Reema wrestled free of her past to become an inspiration for millions of other young women.

We're thrilled to welcome Lidia Yuknavitch, author of nine books, including The Chronology of Water, The Small Backs of Children, The book of Joan, and the Misfits Manifesto. Lidia's Ted Talk, The Beauty of Being a Misfit has been viewed 2,862,000 times. We think she has something to share about how telling and retelling your story can help re-frame traumatic experience.

Dr. Stuart Ablon is Director of THINKKIDS/Psychiatry at Massachusetts General and the co-inventor of Collaborative Problem Solving. In this interview with Sheila Hamilton and Dr.'s Brian Goff and Jenna LeJeune, Dr. Ablon talks about parenting explosive children. The well-researched truth, "They Do As Well As They Can" may change the way you think about discipline forever.

Kerry Cohen is the author of Loose Girl and is a certified sex therapist. Her work with people recovering from sex and pornography addiction is grounded in compassion and understanding. In this interview with Sheila Hamilton, Dr.'s Brian Goff and Jenna LeJeune, Kerry talks about why sex and porn addiction is often a substitute for grief, loss and meaningful attachment.