The Life Shift shares real and honest conversations about the moments that change us. Host Matt Gilhooly sits with guests as they tell true stories of life-changing events, unexpected challenges, and quiet awakenings that shaped who they are today.
Each episode offers meaningful and candid storytelling about grief, healing, resilience, identity, and growth. These are the personal stories that remind us what it feels like to be human. These are the turning points that stay with us.
If you are drawn to personal growth, emotional well-being, or stories of how people rebuild after loss, this show offers a gentle place to land. Listeners come for the life changes. They stay for the connection.
New episodes every Wednesday and Sunday.
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Resilience After Amputation: Rebuilding Life From the Ground Up
Season 5 · Episode 255
Wednesday, June 10, 2026 • Duration 58:39
Some stories don’t begin at the hardest moment. They begin with what comes after it. Scott Martin was 35 years old, coaching at the collegiate level, rubbing elbows with national team players at a Nike camp outside Chicago, when his body quietly started failing him. A fever. A bad night. A doctor who said drink Gatorade and sent him home. By the next morning, he was in a coma. A month later, he woke up as a quad amputee.
If you’re listening to figure out how someone survives that, you will. But what this conversation is really about is everything Scott carried in the years that followed. The way he worked instead of grieving. The discrimination he faced trying to return to coaching. The night he lost a $10 million malpractice trial, pulled into his garage, and sat alone in the silence with thoughts he doesn’t sugarcoat. And then, instead, made a list.
That list became a road. The road eventually led to a coaching job he worked for free, five adopted children from Romania and Ethiopia, two state championships with kids no one believed in, a soulmate he’d let go at 19 and found again 40 years later, and a book called Play From Your Heart published by Simon and Schuster. Scott didn’t heal in a straight line. None of us do. But he kept choosing the next thing, and this is what that looked like.
What You’ll Hear:
The moment Scott realized in his hospital bed that his life as he knew it was over, and how his mind responded
Why he buried himself in work for years after his amputation, and what that avoidance was protecting him from
The night he lost everything at once, and the choice he made in his garage that changed the direction of his life
How a news segment about adoption pulled him toward five children he never planned for
The parallel story of coaching a team of overlooked 12-year-olds to a state championship, and what they gave back to him
Why Scott believes the pieces of his life fit now, even with all the gaps and loss and detours in between
Guest Bio:
Scott Martin is a soccer coach, teacher, author, and father of five adopted children. After becoming a quad amputee at 35 following a near-fatal illness, he rebuilt his life through coaching, fatherhood, and eventually writing Play From Your Heart, a memoir published by Simon and Schuster. Scott lives in Wisconsin, coaches at the club level, and is passionate about using his story to support the disability community and anyone who has had to start over. His book is available for pre-order now wherever books are sold. Reach Scott at reader.playfromyourheart@gmail.com.
life after amputation, rebuilding identity after trauma, disability and resilience, overcoming depression, quad amputee recovery, coping with grief and loss, starting over in your thirties, adoption as transformation, identity after illness, shame and disability
Lemon-Sized Brain Tumor: The Life That Grew After Surgery
Season 5 · Episode 254
Sunday, June 7, 2026 • Duration 01:00:15
Some moments don't announce themselves. They arrive as headaches you explain away, as an MRI you schedule between school pickups and client calls. And then your phone rings ten minutes after you get home, and everything you thought you knew about your life gets quietly rearranged.
Jen Dary was 35, a business owner and new mom to two babies, when a neurologist told her she had a lemon-sized brain tumor sitting behind her left eye. What followed wasn't just a medical crisis. It was a complete unraveling of who she thought she was supposed to be, and a slow, surprising reconstruction of who she actually wanted to become.
In this conversation, Jen talks about the strange calm that preceded brain surgery, the spiritual visions that carried her through, and the grief that arrived weeks later in a coffee shop. She shares what it looks like to release the identity that doesn't fit anymore, and how she came to understand her life less as something that happened to her, and more as something she might have chosen.
What You'll Hear:
The phone call that changed everything, and the strange quiet before she told anyone
How Jen organized, planned, and kept moving as a way to survive the shock
The visions and spiritual experiences that shaped her recovery and her new book
What survivor's guilt looks like when you meet someone whose tumor wasn't benign
The shift from type-A responsibility to living like you don't need permission
How writing her memoir helped her leave something of herself for her sons
Guest Bio:
Author Jen Dary is a highly sought-after leadership coach, entrepreneur, brain tumor survivor, podcast host, and mom. As founder of the coaching firm Plucky, she has coached professionals from over 200 companies, including Google, Facebook, Slack, Code for America, The New York Times, and many more. She has shared her expertise with the Wall Street Journal, and as guest on including . She has written for and was published in Harvard Business Review's Work Smart Series. Jen was a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts resident and is active in the DC writing scene.
How Misha Brown Got Sober and Learned to Be His Own Best Friend
Season 5 · Episode 253
Wednesday, June 3, 2026 • Duration 01:03:56
Somewhere along the way, most of us learned to take better care of other people than we do of ourselves. We know the right things to say. We show up. We hold space. And then we go home to the version of our life we haven't quite told anyone about.
Misha Brown spent years doing exactly that. A performer from a tiny one-stoplight town, he built a life that looked full from the outside, travel to over a hundred countries, a career on cruise ships and stages, a laugh that could fill any room. But behind the shine was a quiet, persistent loneliness, and a drinking habit that had become the costume he wore instead of a self.
The shift came on Christmas Eve in a New Jersey hotel room. Empty cans, a makeshift ashtray, and a phone call with his best friend who was struggling. After hanging up, Misha looked in the mirror and asked himself a question that changed everything: why can't you be your own friend? It wasn't a dramatic moment. It was a quiet one. And sometimes that's exactly what breaks something open.
What You'll Hear:
How a missed college audition planted the first seeds of a fractured identity
Why performing became both a superpower and a way to disappear
The Christmas Eve hotel room moment that became an eight-year turning point
What it actually felt like to get sober, without a support group or a clear plan
The structured self-love framework Misha created for himself that became a book
How social media helped him find his people, and his purpose
Misha Brown is an undeniable entertainment powerhouse who excels as an influencer, podcast host, and performer. With a knack for captivating audiences, he shot to notoriety on TikTok in 2021 with the viral Lessons in Not Crossing a Gay Man series, amassing over 6 million followers. Named Motivational Creator of the Year and honored by the Webby Awards for social impact, he also earned a Best Comedy Podcast nomination from the Podcast Academy. Misha’s work has been spotlighted by People, USA Today, and Good Morning America, cementing his status as one of the most compelling voices online.
His debut book, , is available wherever books are sold. He lives in Texas with his husband and a collection of pets he is deeply devoted to. You can find him everywhere at @yourbestie_misha.
Under the Surface: The Shark Attack That Taught Tim Thomas to Trust
Season 5 · Episode 252
Sunday, May 31, 2026 • Duration 01:03:38
Some moments arrive quietly. This one arrived with teeth.
Tim Thomas spent most of his life moving through the world one decision at a time, eyes forward, gut leading. Fighter. Special Forces operator. A man who found clarity in high-stakes moments and chased them because that was the only place he felt fully present. It worked. And it also kept him from seeing almost everything that mattered beyond the edges of his own experience.
Then a shark bit him off the coast of Sydney, and something opened up. Not because of the danger. Because of a friend's eyes in the water. Because of one second where the stress fell out of his body and something unexpected arrived in its place. Peace. Not because the situation was okay. Because another person had his back. Tim calls it the moment he realized we don't need more stuff. We need more trust.
What You'll Hear:
The shark attack that rewired how Tim understands human connection
How living only through your own eyes leaves you unconsciously cut off from others
What Tim discovered about loneliness, fatigue, and why they're more dangerous together than either is alone
The "golden question" that broke his isolation during one of his lowest seasons
Why authentic conversations, not weapons or strategies, are the most powerful thing we carry
How breathwork and sleep became the tools that brought everything else back
Guest Bio:
Tim Thomas is a Father of two, former MMA fighter & Australian Special Forces Commando who now helps people reclaim their energy and mental clarity through sleep and breathwork. After working with veterans struggling with PTSD and noticing that real change began the moment their sleep improved, he created Breathwork in Bed to make better sleep simple and accessible for anyone battling exhaustion and overwhelm. His mission is helping people move from surviving their days to actually living them with peace, power, and presence.
Tim Thomas wants to gift you 28 days of great sleep. Sound good? These links are for immediate and natural sleep improvement; They’re Tim’s company's online resource called - The ‘Breathwork in Bed’ app. The app will guide you to sleep with peace and out of bed with power. Enjoy!
What Happened to You: Breaking the Cycle Sixty Years in the Making
Season 5 · Episode 251
Wednesday, May 27, 2026 • Duration 54:03
Some of us build an entire life before we realize the foundation was made of survival, not solid ground. If you have ever pushed hard, achieved big, and still felt like something underneath you was quietly trembling, this episode is for you.
Kathleen McKune grew up in a home marked by abuse, neglect, and a kind of chaos that required a five-year-old to climb up to the stove and start making dinner for her siblings. She became a high-achieving entrepreneur, a strategic facilitator, a co-founder, a mother, and an author. She did all of it with what she calls "steeled up Kathleen": walls up, eyes forward, purpose driving every step. The struggles were internal. The world only saw the results.
In 2017, Kathleen was facilitating a trauma training in Kansas City when a slide went up showing the Adverse Childhood Experiences scale. She assumed most people in the room would score close to her. Most scored zero, one, or two. She had written down an eight to fib a little, knowing she was actually a nine. That moment, at 56 years old, was the first time Kathleen understood that not everyone grew up the way she did. It did not break her. It gave her language. It gave her science. And slowly, years later, it gave her permission to begin asking who she actually is underneath all the survival.
What You'll Hear:
How perfectionism rooted in childhood fear shaped Kathleen's entire professional identity
The moment a data slide cracked open sixty years of assumed normalcy
What it felt like to write a book with her twin sisters and learn, in detail, what had happened to each of them
The difference between managing trauma and actually healing, and the question that finally forced her to reckon with it
Why dancing is the first piece of her authentic self she has found, and what that means for the journey ahead
How Kathleen chose the purpose that was once given to her, and what it means to finally own it
About Kathleen McKune
Kathleen Harnish McKune is a co-founder and CEO of Team Tech, a strategic facilitation firm, and the CEO of Remarkably Resilient, a nonprofit dedicated to trauma-informed resilience education. She co-authored the book Remarkably Resilient: Community Matters alongside her twin sisters Sharon and Karen, sharing the neuroscience of trauma and a framework for building resilience. Kathleen works with state and local governments, corrections, child welfare agencies, and incarcerated populations across Kansas, and brings both lived experience and rigorous research to her mission of helping people understand what happened to them, and how to move through it. You can find her at .
What Survives: A Story About Loss, Resilience, and Inner Friendship
Season 5 · Episode 250
Sunday, May 24, 2026 • Duration 01:01:02
There is a kind of grief that never gets to happen out loud. It stays pressed down inside you, shaped by the people around you who couldn't hold it. Matin knows that grief. She found out her mother had died by reaching for a hand that didn't reach back. She was thirteen. And then the world she had counted on, her mother's family, her father's warmth, the permission to even cry, quietly fell away.
What followed was years of building a life on her own terms. Studying in secret. Sleeping on hard surfaces just to avoid going home. Moving from Iran to Japan to finally have room to breathe. She did it without anyone telling her she could. She did it by becoming her own closest companion, the kind of friend who says, I remember when that happened, and we got through it together.
Matin is a plant molecular biologist who studies mangrove trees, organisms that live between land and sea, in conditions most things can't survive. She sees herself in them. In this conversation, she shares what it took to finally reach peace, and why she believes all of us should talk about our stories, not as something brave or rare, but as something ordinary and necessary.
What You'll Hear:
Growing up with a father who was both deeply loving and unpredictable, and what that did to a child's sense of safety
The moment Matin discovered her mother had died, and being told not to cry
Losing her entire maternal family in the grief that followed, and the deep loneliness that set in
How she secretly studied through high school, skipped dinner for four years, and fought her way to college just to survive
Building an academic career across continents, including surviving a violent assault in Japan, and still choosing not to become defined by her pain
What turning forty felt like, and the inner bond she credits with getting her here
Guest Bio:
Matin Miryeganeh grew up in Rasht, Iran, and is now a plant molecular biologist based in Japan, where she has lived for sixteen years. She studies mangrove trees, and the connection she feels to these resilient organisms runs deeper than science. Matin is also the author of , a memoir in which she shares her journey through loss, isolation, and the long, quiet road to peace. You can find her book on Amazon and Goodreads:
Grief and Fatherhood: The Song That Changed Everything
Season 5 · Episode 249
Wednesday, May 20, 2026 • Duration 53:12
Maybe you grew up loving someone who was always somewhere else. Always present in the house but somehow out of reach. If that landed in a part of you that still carries it, this episode might feel like a long exhale.
Matt Fogelson grew up wanting more of his father than his father knew how to give. When his dad died unexpectedly during Matt's college years, the grief that followed wasn't just about loss. It was about all the conversations they never had, the closeness that always felt one step away. Matt went to law school, followed the family blueprint, wore his father's suits to work, and spent years trying to fill a hole that kept its shape.
Then he brought his own son home for the first time. The baby wouldn't stop crying. The dog was barking. Nothing was working. And without thinking about it at all, Matt started singing. What came out was a Grateful Dead song. It wasn't logical. It was just true. And that small, strange, middle-of-the-night moment quietly became the beginning of something he'd been waiting his whole life to start.
What You'll Hear:
The specific moment of grief that intensified when Matt became a father himself
Why music became a bridge to a part of himself he'd put away
How singing the same song to his son for 14 years shaped their connection
The bar mitzvah moment that made him realize he was repeating his father's patterns
What writing a memoir taught him about understanding and forgiving a man he never fully knew
The advice his aunt gave him after his father died, the advice he rolled his eyes at, and why he wishes he'd heard it sooner
Matt Fogelson is an author, former attorney, and lifelong music obsessive who spent decades navigating the emotional distance passed down through generations of his family. His memoir, Restrung: Fatherhood in a Different Key, traces the journey from grief to presence through the language of music. He lives with his family and can be found at mattfogelson.com.
Listen and follow:
Honesty Over Comfort: The Confession That Changed Everything
Season 5 · Episode 248
Sunday, May 17, 2026 • Duration 58:51
Maybe you've done something you're not proud of. Maybe you've done it more than once. And maybe the hardest part wasn't the doing, it was the sitting with what it said about you.
Nick Gomez grew up moving fast, through friendships, through relationships, through versions of himself he wasn't sure he believed in. Raised in Cancun with a lot of freedom and very little guidance, he learned early that if no one found out, it didn't really happen. That belief followed him into adulthood, into relationship after relationship, until one moment changed the math entirely.
This is a conversation about what it actually takes to tell the truth when you know it's going to cost you. About the patterns we carry from childhood without realizing it. About grief, writing, the strange relief of finally saying the thing out loud, and what it looks like to slowly, imperfectly become someone you actually respect.
What You'll Hear:
Why Nick kept repeating the same pattern across three relationships, and what finally broke it
The three months he spent deciding whether to confess, and what helped him find the courage
How writing a memoir in 30 days helped him process what he'd done and understand why
The role his father's death played in reshaping who he wanted to be
What honesty looks like now, in dating, in friendships, in how he shows up for himself
Why grief so often goes unspoken, and what it actually looks like to support someone who's losing someone
Guest Bio: Nick Gomez is an author, filmmaker, and coach based in the United States. Originally from Cancun, Mexico, Nick has written multiple memoirs exploring identity, honesty, and the messier parts of being human. Two of his books are available as free audiobooks on YouTube. He approaches his work, and his life, with a commitment to authenticity that took years to build and that he keeps rebuilding every day. You can find him at https://www.realnicholasgomez.com/
Listen and follow:
Grief, Ancestors & Cuba: Finding Your Mother Again
Season 5 · Episode 247
Wednesday, May 13, 2026 • Duration 55:33
Maybe you know this feeling. Someone died and you kept going, because that was what you were supposed to do. You stayed busy, you stayed capable, and somewhere along the way you convinced yourself that you had handled it.
Rebe Huntman lost her mother to cancer at 19. The grief counselors told her to move forward. So she did, with discipline and determination and a full, successful life. But 30 years later, on the edge of turning 50, she realized she had never actually let herself miss her. Not really.
This episode follows Rebe's pilgrimage to Cuba, a country where the dead are not gone, where ancestors are spoken to daily and the veil between worlds is treated as thin and navigable. What she found there, in the dances, in the drumming, in the quiet workroom of a spiritist in El Cobre, was not magic for its own sake. It was permission. Permission to stop moving past her grief and start staying in it.
What You'll Hear:
How Rebe mastered the art of moving forward and the cost it quietly carried
The moment in Cuba when her understanding of death, grief, and ancestry completely shifted
What it felt like to reimagine the hospital room scene she had been carrying for 30 years
How a country with a different relationship to death gave her a new way to love her mother
The small, daily rituals she brought home from Cuba and what they have meant for her healing
Why showing up fully as yourself can become a quiet gift to everyone around you
Guest Bio:
Rebe Huntman is a writer, former Latin dancer, and choreographer who has spent her career at the intersection of movement, storytelling, and spirit. She spent decades running a professional dance company and teaching college and high school before turning her full attention to writing. She splits her time between Delaware, Ohio and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Her debut memoir, My Mother in Havana: A Memoir of Magic and Miracle, was published in 2025 and chronicles her transformative pilgrimage to Cuba in search of her mother and herself. Find her at rebehuntman.com and on Instagram @rebehuntman.
Living With MS: Finding Strength From the Inside Out
Season 5 · Episode 246
Sunday, May 10, 2026 • Duration 43:37
Maybe you have had a moment where your body tried to tell you something and you looked the other way. A small signal, easy to explain away. This episode is for anyone who has ever dismissed a whisper, and then had to reckon with what that whisper was trying to say.
Shruti grew up as a working mom in Melbourne, living a normal, full life, when tingling in her feet gradually became something she could no longer ignore. Over years, that quiet signal grew into a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, a progression from walker to wheelchair, and a complete reshaping of her career, her home life, and her sense of self. What she found on the other side was not what most people might expect. She found strength, not the performed kind, not the kind someone else told her she had to have, but a deep, steady resilience that rose out of the hardest circumstances of her life.
This is a conversation about what it means to carry an invisible illness through a world that cannot see it. It is about traveling alone to Kerala to try Ayurvedic therapy on nothing but hope. It is about reliving your hardest moments to write a memoir, and about looking back at all the worry you carried before, and finally letting it go.
What You'll Hear:
How Shruti's MS symptoms progressed over nearly a decade before a turning point shifted her entire life
What it felt like to lose her job, her mobility, and her previous identity, and how she moved through that
The solo trip to Kerala for Ayurvedic treatment, and what she found there beyond the therapy itself
How writing her memoir, My Invisible Battles, helped her discover a version of herself she had never met before
The connection between stress, chronic illness, and finally releasing the need to overthink everything
Why she believes strength is not something anyone can teach you, and where it actually comes from
Guest Bio:
Shruti Ghate is an author and mother of two based in Melbourne, Australia. After years of living with multiple sclerosis, she published her memoir, My Invisible Battles, to offer guidance and solidarity to others navigating an invisible autoimmune illness. Her work is grounded in the belief that sharing our stories can reach farther than we imagine.
brain tumor survivor, life shift moment, identity after illness, brain surgery recovery, spiritual awakening, finding purpose after trauma, survivor's guilt, meningioma, radical acceptance, living with intention
Be Your Own Bestie: A No-Nonsense Guide to Changing the Way You Treat Yourself
father son relationship, grief after losing a parent, emotional distance in families, fatherhood and identity, music as healing, inherited trauma, becoming a present parent, memoir writing as grief, breaking family patterns, unresolved loss
grief after mother's death, ancestral healing, Afro-Cuban spirituality, pilgrimage and transformation, learning to talk to the dead, disenfranchised grief, mother loss, life after 50 identity, Santeria and healing, memoir of magic and grief
Find Shruti and her book at www.shrutighate.com, and on Amazon Kindle worldwide.
living with multiple sclerosis, invisible illness, chronic illness resilience, autoimmune disease journey, progressive MS, finding strength, wellness memoir, identity after diagnosis, invisible battles, caregiver support MS
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