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Take a deep dive into a featured guest’s personal history; the pivotal moments of their childhood and adulthood that defined them and the crucial and sometimes painful decisions they made that forever changed the course of their lives. Each episode of And Then Everything Changed is an intimate conversation; sometimes funny, sometimes profound. Hosted by Ronit Plank. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE, a short story collection: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/ Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/
Episodes
Monday Feb 03, 2020
Monday Feb 03, 2020
As a young clinician tending to patients at the end of their lives Becky Aud-Jennison was frustrated by institutional death and the lack of sacredness around the dying process. Whereas many caregivers, like the culture at large, hadn't yet seemed to have accepted Death as a part of living, she was driven to sit by people's bedsides to help them have a more mindful experience and to spend time with them because that's what they wanted.
When she cared for and then lost her own beloved brother to brain cancer three years ago and then her mother ten months after that, she acted as death doula, caring for each, celebrating their lives, and holding vigil afterward. Helping her loved ones experience death on their terms and the grief she's experienced losing two of her soul connections inspired Becky to create The Death Dialogues Project. She is passionate about helping to illuminate the ways our culture can choose to treat each person's end-of-life journey as sacred as their birth.
Connect with Becky:
Click here for more info. about The Death Dialogues Project
Connect With Ronit:
For more about this episode click here!
Tuesday Jan 28, 2020
Tuesday Jan 28, 2020
For years Jeanette Graham felt like she was broken. School, everyday tasks, and relationships seemed to challenge her more than her peers and leave her frustrated, exhausted, and misunderstood
It wasn't until her husband shared with her that he suspected she could have ADHD that she considered there might be an explanation for the difficulties she'd experienced her whole life. After confirming that she was one of 15 million adults in the US living with ADHD, and learning more about the many ways in which ADHD can profoundly affect so many aspects of life including marriage, parenthood, and work, Jeanette made it her mission to educate herself and provide resources for others living with ADHD.
In this episode Jeanette shares her story and offers gentle advice for those living with ADHD and those who love them.
Episode Resources:
Connect with Jeanette:
Connect With Ronit:
For more about this episode click here!
Guest Bio
Jeanette Graham is a wife and mother of 3, she also has Combination/Primary Inattentive type ADHD. Jeanette was diagnosed in the spring of 2017 and that diagnosis changed her whole world. Since the diagnosis Jeanette has started a podcast that chronicles her journey navigating her symptoms and struggles.
Tuesday Jan 21, 2020
Tuesday Jan 21, 2020
When Zaakirah Nayyar was 9 months old she lost her right eye to non-hereditary Retinoblastoma, a rare childhood eye cancer.
With a prosthetic eye and declining hearing from radiation treatments Zaakirah often felt like she didn’t fit in. But with encouragement and support of her family and her own innate confidence, Zaakirah never experienced her deafblindness as a disability.
Through her life and also her work as a photographer, digital marketer, and author of the new memoir Seeing Life Through A Different Lens, Zaakirah strives to appreciate what she's gone through while always moving ahead with humor and resilience.
Connect with Zaakirah:
Seeing Life Through a Different Lens
Connect With Ronit:
For more about this episode click here!
Childhood cancer/Deafblind/Diff-Ability
Guest Bio
Zaakirah Nayyar Muhammad is a Brand Cultivating Strategist, professional photographer, and digital marketer who helps small businesses with social media, branding, and growth.
At 6 months old, a camera saved her life when a photo her mother took helped discover she had a rare childhood eye cancer tumor. At 9 months old, she was taken into surgery to have her right eye removed and her hearing slowly began to decline as she got older, but her other three senses kicked in and are functioning well.
At age five her mom gifted her with her first camera and by the time she attended technical high school, she was studying commercial photography. and she moved to Washington D.C. to expand her education in professional photography and videography.
She has just published her memoir Seeing Life Through a Different Lens that she hopes will inspire parents, guardians, and teenagers who are affected by childhood cancer or who are eye cancer survivors.
She currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee.
Tuesday Jan 14, 2020
Tuesday Jan 14, 2020
After her husband’s death in the 9/11 World Trade Center attack, Abigail Carter’s grief cracked her wide open. During an intense period of national mourning she rejected public memorials and found a way to grieve and remember her husband in her own way.
As she turned to writing to make sense of what had happened to her and her family and adjusted to her new life as a widow she discovered that things that had been holding her back no longer did. In this episode, Abigail, an author, and a painter, as well as a widow and a mother, shares how she chose to live a more positive story of widowhood and what her life is like nearly twenty years after the loss of her husband.
“You’ve got 2 choices with anything that happens in your life—any kind of hardship, any kind of suffering…you can choose a negative route or a positive route. And the negative route tends to be really hard work. The positive route if you can get there is a little more like paddling a boat with the current instead of against it.” --Abigail Carter
To Connect with Abigail:
Tuesday Jan 07, 2020
Tuesday Jan 07, 2020
One in four adults in the U.S. has a criminal record and Bea Spadacini, a social justice advocate and writer, whose work in Bosnia and sub-Saharan Africa centered on international development and humanitarian relief created the One in Four podcast to help humanize and elevate the voices of those who have been recently released from prison. Every year when the roughly 650,000 incarcerated men and women return to their communities their successful reintegration depends not only on their need for food, housing, and work but vital mental health services and support to help them cope with trauma and depression so they can sustain a very difficult period of reentry.
In this episode Bea talks about her work documenting stories of drought, poverty, and human rights abuses globally, why she views every story shared with her as a gift, the moment she decided to adopt her daughter, and what working with the formerly incarcerated has taught her: That people are not defined by their worst mistakes.
"One out of every three Black boys born today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime, as can one of every six Latino boys—compared to one of every 17 white boys. At the same time, women are the fastest growing incarcerated population in the United States.”
There are twice as many people sitting in local jails awaiting trial and presumed innocent than in the entire federal prison system. And each year, 650,000 men and women nationwide return from prison to their communities. They face nearly 50,000 federal, state, and local legal restrictions that make it difficult to reintegrate back into society."
RESOURCES:
To learn more about this episode Click Here!
To connect with Bea:
Restorative justice/Adoption/Human rights
Monday Dec 23, 2019
Monday Dec 23, 2019
The number of students on college campuses who don’t have enough to eat and who regularly experience food insecurities is rising. In this episode, Natalie Nation, a Masters of Public Health student and food justice advocate talks about her experience with the Food Shelf on her own campus and the nation's increasing need for this free resource, that food insecurity falls on a huge spectrum and applies to anyone with a lack of safe, reliable access to adequate amounts of nutritious food, and how one of her most important roles as advocate is to create spaces for people who have experiences with food insecurity to share their stories where they might not have previously felt comfortable or felt safe to do so.
Happy Holidays from And Then Everything Changed! Thank you for subscribing and rating and reviewing. And thank you so much for getting the word out and sharing this podcast with your friends and family.
For more on this episode: https://andtheneverythingchangedpodcast.com
For more about Natalie: linktr.ee/feedthatnation
Food insecurity/Food justice/College campuses
Tuesday Dec 17, 2019
Tuesday Dec 17, 2019
Alesha Brown, a child abuse survivor and motivational speaker doesn’t have a memory from childhood when she wasn’t being hurt or when she wasn’t walking around in fear. For years after her abuser died, she was drawn to a pressure cooker-life similar to the combat zone she had known at home and for years she would ask herself why she was unlovable. That all changed on a crucial day in young adulthood when she understood in her bones that what had happened to her was not who she was; that what she had experienced was profoundly damaging but she didn’t have to keep reliving her past. It was the day she decided to stop letting the words of her abuser control her life or dictate her actions; the day she understood the power to survive was in her hands. Alesha shares her story and suggestions for reaching out to those who might be struggling, the signs of elevated sadness in others, and how to approach loved ones who might be in trouble.
Note that during this interview, we encountered some sound inconsistencies.
For more on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs):
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/childabuseandneglect/acestudy/index.html
Resources for the prevention of child abuse:
http://www.preventtogether.org
For more about this episode visit:
https://andtheneverythingchangedpodcast.com
For more on the work Alesha does:
http://www.thejoyguru.net/about.html
Child Abuse/Resilience/Survivor
Wednesday Dec 11, 2019
Wednesday Dec 11, 2019
The night Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico Monique Caradine heard wind ravaging her home, watched water filling her bedroom, and awoke to find a community devastated by damage far worse than she or her neighbors had ever imagined. Without running water and no power for six months the sick and poor became more vulnerable and Monique, a former radio and television personality from the South side of Chicago and a certified coach whose business relied on internet faltered. As she visited and offered aid to families on the island she found her experience helping women tap into the abundance in their lives and her strong faith fortified and guided her. Hurricane Maria taught her that every storm in life has a beginning and an end. It taught her that in the midst of a storm may be when people discover who they are but in its aftermath, they discover who they can become.
For more about Monique and photos visit:
https://andtheneverythingchangedpodcast.com
Monique's podcast:
Hurricane Maria/Resilience/Weathering personal storms
Wednesday Dec 04, 2019
Wednesday Dec 04, 2019
Medical student by day, women's circle leader by night, Cassandra Wilder sought to discover the source of her body's pain and found the answer in her past. The victim of physical abuse as a child and a dangerous partner as a young woman, Cassandra left her corporate job and traveled to Guatemala where for the first time she experienced the safety of a women's circle. More and more as she healed herself and her practice grew, she saw how shame and trauma in her patients' lives manifested as cysts, infertility, and debilitating cycles; more and more she discovered the power of sharing one's story. In this episode, Cassandra helps identify symptoms of trauma in the body and resources for getting well.
For more on Cassandra:
https://www.goddessceremony.com/cassandra-wilder
https://andtheneverythingchangedpodcast.com
Support for getting out of an abusive relationship:
https://www.helpguide.org/articles/abuse/getting-out-of-an-abusive-relationship.htm
If you are the victim of domestic abuse, reach out for help. In the US:
https://www.womenshealth.gov/relationships-and-safety/get-help/state-resources
National Domestic Violence Hotline 800-799-7233 https://www.thehotline.org
Domestic violence/Finding one's voice/Women's circle
Monday Nov 25, 2019
Monday Nov 25, 2019
Before he began his 6-month walk across the United States, Tom Griffen waded into the Pacific Ocean, hugged his friends, and said goodbye to his girlfriend of 7 years. Tom age 45 and a former athlete and ultramarathoner, had finally decided to fulfill his decades-long dream of crossing America on foot. But what he thought would be a solitary 3,300-mile walk soon became a journey of self-discovery as a steady stream of strangers offered Tom help and compassion and Tom, who had never felt able to truly trust others and kept people at arms-length began to let down his guard. He discovered that the act of accepting offerings from these "roadside saints" was what helped him finally begin to feel comfortable in his own skin; he discovered kindness can’t be stopped.
For more information, photos of Tom's walk, and discussion visit:
https://andtheneverythingchangedpodcast.com
For Tom's blog visit:
For more on Tom and his journey:
Instagram: tomswalkinglife
Walk across America/Revelation/Self-discovery