Afleveringen
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What happens when nothing you accomplish ever seems to be enough?
In this solo episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy explores the long-term impact of chronic devaluation, especially when it begins in childhood. She shares personal stories of earning straight Aâs, leading teams, serving on committees, excelling in performance, and still feeling as though the finish line kept moving.
When you are told to go left and then criticized for not going right, you may stop trusting your own direction. Over time, that confusion can shape your confidence, your relationships, your ambition, and your ability to fully receive your own success.
This conversation explores:
Why devaluation can create overachievement and overfunctioningHow moving standards teach children to distrust themselvesWhy accomplished adults may still struggle to feel successfulHow early devaluation can affect romantic and professional relationshipsThe difference between creating from self-expression and performing for approvalHow to receive feedback without turning it into a verdict on your worthDevaluation did not stop Lisa from becoming a leader, performer, entrepreneur, writer, and creator.
She accomplished it anyway.
But the deeper work is learning to accomplish without still carrying the need to prove that she deserves to be valued.
What have you spent your life accomplishing in the hope that someone would finally recognize your value?
And what might you create next if you no longer needed their permission?
Welcome to the Edge.
www.lisalacy.com -
Bryan Blackmon left Texas for California chasing a dream. Instead, he found himself homeless, sleeping in his car, and drowning in alcohol and addiction.
Then an elderly landlord named Elaine chose not to give up on him.
Her belief became a turning point, but Bryan still had to do the work of becoming someone he could believe in, too.
Today, Bryan is sober, a recovery advocate, transformation coach, and the creator of Crab Crew Life, a community built around recovery, resilience, adaptability, accountability, and belief.
Bryan says the crab does not swim. It does not fly. It claws its way forward from the bottom of the ocean floor.
And so did he.
In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Bryan and Lisa explore:
⢠What homelessness and addiction look like from the inside
⢠The difference between getting sober and rebuilding your identity
⢠Why redemption is not a moment, but a daily routine
⢠The ordinary habits that restore dignity and self-respect
⢠How one personâs belief can help rewrite a life
⢠Why community can carry us when willpower is no longer enough
⢠Who we become when survival is no longer our only identityThis is a conversation about second chances, accountability, human connection, and the courage required to keep clawing forward when life has taken you all the way to the bottom.
Learn more about Bryan Blackmon and Crab Crew Life:
https://crabcrewlifââe.comLearn more about Lisa Lacy:
https://www.lisalacy.comWelcome to the edge.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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It is exactly midnight, I am editing Notes From a Certified Madwoman, and I have finally realized something:
Maybe I was never crazy.
Maybe I was wounded, dysregulated, surviving, and just slightly feral.
In this solo episode of Midnight Menopausal Meanderings, I talk about what happens when trauma is mistaken for personality, survival responses are reduced to mental illness, and the context of a personâs life disappears beneath the diagnosis.
This is not an argument against therapy, psychiatry, medication, recovery, or mental health treatment. Those things save lives, including mine.
It is an invitation to ask a fuller question.
Not only:
What is wrong with you?
But also:
What happened to you?
I also share why some details were intentionally left out of my book, why telling the whole truth can sometimes bring consequences from the very people who benefited from your silence, and why this book is not an attempt to explain or defend myself.
It is an exploration of what happens when we forget that context matters.
Because trauma may explain behavior without excusing harm.
Because a diagnosis may describe symptoms without telling the whole story.
And because sometimes the woman everyone called crazy was carrying more than one nervous system should ever have had to carry alone.
Notes From a Certified Madwoman is coming Fall 2026.
Welcome to the edge.
www.lisalacy.com
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The Price of Waiting for Permission and the Power of Becoming Visible Anyway
What happens when a woman stops waiting to feel confident, stops explaining every decision, and starts building the life she knows she is capable of creating?
In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with award-winning entrepreneur, author, podcast host, and founder of the Badass Queen⢠movement, Renee Carbone Fleming.
Renee filed for bankruptcy. Her marriage ended. She found herself rebuilding from the ground up and made a two-word decision that would shape everything that followed:
Watch me.
That decision became a philosophy, a movement, and the foundation of the WATCH ME Methodâ˘, Reneeâs five-principle operating system for women who are done seeking permission, shrinking their ambitions, and waiting for approval before taking action.
Renee went on to build a direct-sales organization that generated more than $13 million, lead a team of over 400 people, create a multimillion-dollar brand empire, publish three books, launch the Unapologetically Badass podcast, and see her brand featured on the NASDAQ billboard in Times Square.
In this bold and honest conversation, Lisa and Renee explore:
⢠What reinvention really looks like before the success story becomes polished
⢠Why overexplaining quietly weakens a womanâs authority
⢠The hidden emotional and financial cost of waiting for approval
⢠Why confidence is the result of execution, not the requirement for it
⢠How women can become visible before they feel completely ready
⢠What Renee had to survive, release, and rebuild between bankruptcy and success
⢠How to stop asking others to approve the future you are creatingThis is a conversation for every woman who has ever known she was capable of more but kept waiting for permission to prove it.
Connect with Renee Carbone Fleming:
https://badassqueen.coConnect with Lisa Lacy:
https://www.lisalacy.comWelcome to the edge.
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Female Anger, Menopause, and What Happens When the Manageable Woman Disappears
People celebrate strong women until those women get angry, set boundaries, stop apologizing, or remove access.
In this episode of Midnight Menopausal Meanderings, Lisa Lacy explores female anger, menopause, nervous-system overload, and what happens when the emotionally manageable woman begins to disappear. Menopause may not create a new, irrational woman. It may reveal the woman who spent decades swallowing betrayal, exhaustion, grief, emotional labor, and uncomfortable truths to keep everyone else comfortable.
This conversation also holds the harder truth: anger can carry important information, but justified rage can still cause harm. Trauma explains behavior. It does not excuse it. Healing is not about silencing anger or worshipping it. It is about learning to hold truth without destruction, boundaries without cruelty, and power without abandoning our humanity.
This episode draws from Lisaâs upcoming book, Notes of a Certified Madwoman, an exploration of trauma, survival, identity, nervous-system adaptation, and the women we became in order to survive.
Who benefited from the version of you who carried her suffering quietly?
Welcome to the edge.
www,lisalacy.com
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What happens when the thing that made you feel most alive nearly kills you?
âRocketmanâ Dan Schlund is one of the last professionally trained Rocketbelt pilots in the world. For a decade, he flew jet packs at events across 25 countries and six continents, performing hundreds of flights without a parachute and with only seconds of fuel strapped to his back.
But Danâs most extraordinary story began after the spectacle ended.
Following devastating burns, extensive skin-graft surgeries, and a crash that left him with a broken neck, Dan lost far more than his ability to fly. He lost his income, his marriage, and the identity he had built around being the Rocketman. He also became dependent on pain medication and had to rebuild his life from the ground up.
Dan eventually founded National Set Medics, growing it into a multimillion-dollar company that provides medical professionals for film and television productions nationwide. Ten years after his final flight, he purchased the Rocketbelt and training hangar and returned to the air one more time for his memoir and documentary, The Last Rocketman.
In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy and Dan explore:
⢠What happens when your identity disappears overnight
⢠The difference between courage and fearlessness
⢠How the nervous system responds after catastrophic injury
⢠Addiction, recovery, and the invisible work behind a comeback
⢠Calculated risk and decision-making under pressure
⢠Why Dan believes fear is information, not instruction
⢠What it took to strap the Rocketbelt on one final timeDanâs message is not that we should become fearless. It is that courage can be practiced, preparation can change our relationship with fear, and our worst experience does not have to become our final one.
Learn more about Dan, his book, and the documentary:
https://rocketman.tv/Learn more about Lisa Lacy and Notes From the Edge:
https://www.lisalacy.com/Welcome to the Edge.
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Psychiatric labels, medical dismissal, and what happens when a human being becomes paperwork
What happens when a provider sees your psychiatric history before they truly see you?
In this deeply personal solo episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy explores the dangerous gap between being treated as a medically complex human being and being reduced to âthe psychiatric patient.â
Drawing from her lived experience inside mental health facilities, jail, addiction recovery, emergency rooms, and repeated life-threatening medical crises, Lisa examines how quickly dignity, autonomy, and credibility can disappear once a diagnosis enters the room.
This episode explores institutionalization, medical gaslighting, hospital trauma, psychiatric bias, and the devastating consequences of being labeled emotional instead of symptomatic, anxious instead of endangered, and crazy instead of sick.
It also offers an early look into Lisaâs forthcoming memoir, Notes From a Certified Madwoman, releasing in October. Part memoir, part cultural critique, and part nervous-system conversation, the book asks a question that could change how we understand trauma and mental illness:
What if the diagnosis was sometimes describing survival?
Mental illness should never cancel physical illness.
A psychiatric record should never erase a patientâs credibility.
Institutionalization should never require the surrender of human dignity.Learn more about Lisa, the podcast, and her upcoming work at:
https://lisa-lacy.com
Notes From a Certified Madwoman releases in October.
See you at the edge.
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What happens when you grow up without hearing âI love you,â without being held, and without learning what safe, enduring affection feels like?
In this deeply personal solo episode of Midnight Menopausal Meanderings, I explore the difference between loving someone and knowing how to experience love.
My parents never told me they loved me. My father wrote the words in letters I would not open until decades later, after he died. My mother never said them. I learned touch through violation rather than comfort, and when I became a mother, I had to consciously teach myself how to hug my daughter and say, âI love you.â
For years, I believed love meant providing. I became the financial provider, the problem-solver, the rescuer, and eventually a workaholic driven by survival.
Now, with the help of transformational coach Steve Barton, I am exploring a different idea:
Love can be wisdom.
Love can be trust.
And love can simply be love.We also talk about menopause, the disappearing bullshit filter, and the challenge of setting boundaries that are loving, direct, and final. Because you can love someone, understand them, forgive them, and still decide they no longer have access to you.
This next chapter is not about performing love.
It is about finally learning what love feels like when it does not require self-abandonment.
What did you perform in order to survive?
Learn more at lisalacy.com
See you at the edge.
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Burnout, Boundaries, and Why the Most Capable Person in the Room May Be Closest to the Edge
What happens when competence becomes a survival strategy?
In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with life coach and former technology leader Loren Silverman for an honest conversation about burnout, overthinking, boundaries, self-abandonment, and the hidden cost of always being the capable one.
After nearly two decades working in technology, program management, and digital transformation, Loren realized that the part of his career that mattered most was not the technology. It was helping the people behind it.
He also recognized a difficult truth: persistence can look admirable from the outside while quietly costing us our satisfaction, health, and connection to ourselves.
Today, Loren is the founder of Silverman Coach and the creator of Life Reboot: Nerd Edition, a coaching experience for nerds, geeks, overthinkers, and overwhelmed professionals who are ready to trade chaos for clarity, build meaningful boundaries, and finally follow through on what matters.
Together, Lisa and Loren explore why the most capable person in the room may also be the person closest to the edge, how competence becomes a performance, and why real transformation is often built through small, repeatable choices rather than dramatic overhauls.
They also discuss the difference between persistence and self-abandonment, the role values play in decision-making, and what it takes to stop treating yourself like a problem that needs to be optimized.
Learn more about Loren Silverman and Silverman Coach:
http://silverman.coachLearn more about Lisa Lacy and Notes From the Edge:
https://www.lisalacy.comWelcome to the edge.
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How Parents Can Recognize Risk, Interrupt Addiction, and Become Their Childâs Strongest Protective Force
Every parent wants to believe their child will know how to recognize danger, make the right decision, and walk away when drugs enter the picture.
But todayâs drug landscape is more accessible, potent, and aggressively marketed than many families realize. By the time a parent knows something is wrong, the problem may already be much larger than anyone understood.
In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with author, educator, private investigator, and addiction prevention advocate Dave Kopeny.
Dave grew up in a home consumed by addiction. He was given LSD at eight years old, knew how to roll a joint by nine, and later lost his father, brother, and sister-in-law to alcohol and drug use.
Those experiences became the foundation for more than 30 years of work with adolescents, young adults, and families navigating addiction and other high-risk behaviors. Throughout his career, Dave has served as a school counselor, teacher, probation officer, law enforcement officer, gang investigator, and private investigator specializing in teen addiction and intervention.
Together, Lisa and Dave explore:
⢠Why the âwar on drugsâ failed
⢠How parents can recognize the early warning signs of substance use
⢠The difference between healthy supervision and destructive surveillance
⢠How social media and modern drug markets target young people
⢠What parents should do when they suspect their child is using drugs
⢠How families can replace fear and helplessness with awareness, action, and hopeDave is the author of Tip of the Spear: How to Educate, Supervise, and Monitor Your Child in a World of Increasing Drug Abuse and Addiction and the founder of ASAP Community, where he provides parents with practical tools to protect and support their children.
Connect with Dave Kopeny:
https://asapcommunity.orgConnect with Lisa Lacy:
https://www.lisalacy.comWelcome to the edge.
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Jim Hughes on Identity, Fear, Self-Judgment, and Becoming the Person Beneath the Performance
The person who got you here may have been exactly who you needed to become.
The achiever. The problem-solver. The founder who never stops moving. The leader who learned how to carry the pressure, meet the expectations, and become whatever the moment required.
But what happens when that identity begins keeping you from where you want to go next?
In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with coach, author, speaker, and Untamed founder Jim Hughes for a conversation about the stories, fears, and deeply rooted beliefs that quietly shape who we become.
Jim has lived in 12 countries, built and led a multimillion-dollar engineering business in Australia, explored an extraordinary range of careers, and even skied the worldâs longest giant slalom race wearing only a G-string. For the past decade, he has helped high-achieving founders and leaders stop living as the people they believe they should be and begin becoming the people they genuinely want to be.
Together, Lisa and Jim explore:
⢠The hidden ways founders and high performers waste energy
⢠Why motivation may be overrated
⢠How fear disguises itself as ambition and growth
⢠Why changing what you do is not enough without examining who is doing it
⢠The role self-judgment plays in keeping people stuck
⢠How voices from our past continue influencing decisions they are no longer entitled to make
⢠What it takes to release the identity that helped you surviveThis is a conversation about success, identity, performance, and the courage required to stop obeying the person you once needed to be.
Connect with Jim Hughes and Untamed:
https://www.becomeuntamed.comConnect with Lisa Lacy:
https://www.lisalacy.comNotes From the Edge is where we explore trauma, identity, recovery, reinvention, and the deeply human stories underneath the roles we perform.
Welcome to the edge.
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Curiosity, Compliance, and Teams That Think.
Why do capable, intelligent teams stop taking initiative?
Sometimes it is not because people are lazy, disengaged, or unwilling to contribute. Sometimes they have learned that following directions is safer than asking questions, challenging assumptions, or offering an original idea.
In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with Dr. Katie Trowbridge, an award-winning educator, TEDx speaker, leadership strategist, author, and CEO of Curiosity 2 Create.
After more than 25 years in the classroom, Katie began bringing the principles of curiosity, trust, and thoughtful questioning into organizations. Her work helps leaders move beyond managing behavior and toward creating cultures where people think deeply, contribute ideas, take ownership, and lead with purpose.
Together, Lisa and Katie explore:
⢠Why leadership shifted from developing people to managing compliance
⢠Why capable teams sometimes stop taking initiative
⢠The leadership habits that unintentionally silence good ideas
⢠What great teachers understand about human development
⢠How curiosity and trust create stronger workplace cultures
⢠The CREATE Method⢠and how leaders can build teams that think for themselvesDr. Katie Trowbridge is the author of Lead Boldly, Think Deeply and the creator of the CREATE Methodâ˘, a framework designed to help leaders develop stronger thinkers and more sustainable organizational cultures.
Learn more about Dr. Katie Trowbridge and Curiosity 2 Create:
https://curiosity2create.orgLearn more about Lisa Lacy and Notes From the Edge:
https://www.lisalacy.comJoin us for a human conversation about leadership, curiosity, and what becomes possible when people are trusted to think.
See you at the edge.
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What happens when someone you love is in crisis, refuses help, and waiting for them to become âreadyâ may cost them their life?
In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with attorney, former prosecutor, and family crisis advocate Mark Astor for a necessary and deeply human conversation about addiction, severe mental illness, involuntary treatment, family trauma, and the difficult line between compassion and enabling.
Mark is a partner at Astor Simovitch Law, where he helps families navigate crises involving psychiatric instability, substance use, failed treatment efforts, medical complexity, and resistance to care. His work includes emergency guardianships, recovery planning, and legal intervention through Florida laws such as the Baker Act and Marchman Act.
This work is not theoretical for Mark.
Two days after burying his father, he stood beside police and paramedics as a member of his own family was involuntarily transported for psychiatric evaluation. That experience gave him a perspective no courtroom ever could and ultimately shaped his mission to help families take informed, lawful, and compassionate action before irreversible harm occurs.
Together, Lisa and Mark explore why âwaiting until they are readyâ can sometimes be deadly, how cognitive impairment affects a personâs ability to recognize that they need help, and when legal intervention may become an act of love rather than punishment or control.
They also examine the emotional burden carried by parents, spouses, and siblings, the civil-rights questions surrounding involuntary treatment, and how families can preserve a loved oneâs dignity while still acting to protect their life.
Behind every diagnosis, arrest, psychiatric hold, or involuntary commitment is a human being trying to survive and a family desperately trying not to lose them.
Learn more about Mark Astor and his work:
https://x.com/AstorSimovitch
https://www.instagram.com/
https://www.tiktok.com/@astorsimovitchlaw
Learn more about Lisa Lacy and Notes From the Edge:
https://www.lisalacy.comWelcome to the edge.
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Addiction, Bipolar Disorder, and Rebuilding a Life with the S.O.B.E.R. Method
What happens when you remove the substance, but the pain, pressure, and survival patterns underneath it remain?
In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with author, entrepreneur, podcast host, and addiction recovery advocate Massimo Rigotti for an honest conversation about addiction, bipolar disorder, grief, confidence, and the complicated work of rebuilding a life in recovery.
After navigating addiction, mental-health challenges, professional upheaval, and devastating personal loss, Massimo created the S.O.B.E.R. Methodâ˘, a framework combining Stoic principles, self-observation, behavior modification, the execution of positive habits, and holistic restoration.
Together, Lisa and Massimo explore why abstinence may be only the beginning, what traditional recovery models can sometimes overlook, and how shame, identity, self-trust, and confidence influence a personâs ability to create lasting change.
They also examine the hidden dependencies of high-achieving professionals, the difference between looking functional and genuinely being well, and what it takes to stop escaping yourself and begin building a life you no longer need to numb.
Learn more about Massimo Rigotti and the S.O.B.E.R. Method:
Digital S.O.B.E.R. Method: Beat Phone Addiction and Reclaim Your Attention in 5 Stoic Steps â Available now! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H93ZTVS9/Free gift! Want the tools I use with clients? https://sobermethod.com/5tools
Your Future is S.O.B.E.R.â˘Website: https://sobermethod.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sobermethod/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sobermethod
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sobermethod
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sobermethod
Learn more about Lisa Lacy and Notes From the Edge:
https://www.lisalacy.comWelcome to the edge.
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Richard Spegal on Dark Fantasy, Mental Health, and the Battles Within
Author Richard Spegal returns to Notes From the Edge for a deeper conversation about the profoundly human truths hiding inside dark fantasy.
Richard creates supernatural worlds filled with danger, moral complexity, and characters who are anything but one-dimensional. Beneath the monsters, battles, curses, and impossible choices are people wrestling with grief, trauma, isolation, identity, loyalty, responsibility, and the war taking place inside their own minds.
Drawing from 21 years of service in the United States Army, including the 82nd Airborne Division and the Pennsylvania National Guard, Richard brings an uncommon understanding of discipline, leadership, sacrifice, survival, and the emotional cost of always being expected to remain strong.
In this conversation, we explore:
⢠Why fantasy can reveal truths that realism sometimes cannot
⢠How invisible mental health struggles become visible through monsters, curses, and supernatural transformations
⢠The influence of military service on Richardâs portrayal of trauma and moral injury
⢠Why flawed, emotionally complicated characters feel more genuinely human
⢠What readers may be searching for when they enter darker fictional worlds
⢠Whether the parts of ourselves we fear most are truly monsters or simply wounded places asking to be understoodRichard is the author of the Wolves and Ravens trilogy and the Eternal Nights series, where paranormal danger collides with questions about humanity, survival, love, and the choices we make when there are no easy answers.
Explore Richard Spegalâs books and work:
https://richardspegal.comLearn more about Lisa Lacy and Notes From the Edge:
https://www.lisalacy.comWelcome to the Edge.
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In this deeply personal solo episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy records at 3 a.m., during the hour when the world grows quiet and every unfamiliar sensation in the body becomes impossible to ignore.
Lisa lives with hereditary antithrombin deficiency, a rare congenital blood disorder that allows her blood to clot even while she is taking medication designed to prevent it. After surviving multiple pulmonary embolisms, permanent lung damage, years of medical dismissal, and surgical menopause, she knows what it means to live inside a body that cannot be completely trusted.
But this episode is about more than illness.
It is about the unbearable loneliness of carrying something no one else can see.
It is about looking capable while quietly monitoring every cramp, pressure, breath, and unfamiliar sensation. It is about needing accommodations without appearing visibly sick, explaining limitations other people cannot understand, and constantly trying to determine whether the danger is physical, hormonal, psychological, or all three.
Invisible illness can turn a person into the patient, investigator, advocate, and frightened witness of their own body. It can make ordinary life feel like a continuous negotiation between vigilance and joy.
Lisa explores medical trauma, mortality, menopause, fear, purpose, and the exhausting expectation that people living with chronic illness should perform strength simply to remain worthy of care.
This is not a story about becoming fearless.
It is a conversation about learning to live fully while acknowledging that fear is sometimes reasonable, uncertainty is real, and invisible does not mean imaginary.
Learn more about Lisa and Notes From the Edge at:
https://www.lisalacy.comSee you at the edge.
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Recovery, AI, and the Human Cost of a Missed Moment in Addiction Treatment
What happens when someone finally finds the courage to ask for help, calls a treatment center, and no one answers?
To an organization, it may look like a missed call or a dead lead. But on the other end of that phone is a human being standing inside a brief and potentially life-changing moment of willingness.
In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with David Sichel, founder of Blueshirt Media and a person in long-term recovery who understands this experience personally.
Before entering recovery, David reached out for help with his addiction and never heard back. Today, he has built a HIPAA-compliant AI platform designed specifically for addiction treatment centers, helping them answer calls around the clock, reconnect with people who previously asked for help, and transfer qualified callers directly to admissions professionals.
Together, Lisa and David explore:
The performance of appearing okay while actively drowning
What silence communicates when someone finally asks for help
The human being behind every so-called âdead leadâ
Whether AI can protect human connection rather than replace it
Where technology must stop and trained professionals must step in
The ethical, emotional, and human cost of an unanswered callThis is not simply a conversation about technology. It is a conversation about timing, shame, recovery, responsibility, and what can happen when someone answers at exactly the right moment.
Host: Lisa Lacy
https://www.lisalacy.comGuest: David Sichel, Blueshirt Media
https://www.blueshirtmedia.comWhat did you perform in order to survive?
Welcome to the edge.
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On August 9, 1969, while the worldâs attention turned toward the Manson murders across town, another woman was killed on what society considered the wrong side of Los Angeles.
Her name was Cletha, and she was my grandmother.
She was a poor mother of six whose injuries left her face unrecognizable, yet her death was recorded as natural causes. The man responsible never faced a courtroom. There was no justice, no public outrage, and no lasting headline to make sure the world remembered her.
But her story did not end there.
In this deeply personal episode, I honor my grandmother and confront the generational trauma, domestic violence, silence, and survival that traveled through the women in my family. This is a conversation about what happens when pain is inherited, when women are denied justice, and when one generation finally decides the cycle will end with them.
Cletha, you are the reason I teach trauma-informed martial arts in domestic violence shelters. I cannot help but believe that if you had been given the skills I have today, you might still be here with us.
I pass those skills on to other women so they do not suffer the same fate and so they know how to defend themselves, their bodies, and their lives.
My grandmother may never have received justice, but she will not be forgotten.
Her legacy lives in every woman who learns to protect herself, reclaim her voice, and refuse to disappear quietly.
This one is for Cletha. Welcome to the Edge.
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Childhood Trauma, Self-Destruction, and Reclaiming the Person Beneath the Performance
Content note: This episode includes discussion of childhood sexual abuse, suicide attempts, addiction patterns, abusive relationships, and trauma recovery. Please listen with care.
What happens when the version of you that learned how to survive becomes the identity you no longer know how to remove?
From the outside, high-functioning survival can look like success. It can look like earning degrees, building businesses, raising children, creating projects, and continuing to show up for everyone around you.
Underneath the achievement, however, may be a nervous system still running on fear, people-pleasing, overworking, perfectionism, and the relentless need to prove your worth.
In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with trauma specialist, embodiment coach, author, podcaster, filmmaker, entrepreneur, and founder of Victim 2 Victor, Anu Verma.
Anu has survived childhood trauma, suicide attempts, addiction patterns, abusive relationships, financial manipulation, and years of self-destruction disguised as coping. While appearing successful and capable to the outside world, she was often disconnected from herself and driven by the identities she had created to feel safe.
Today, she helps others understand the unconscious beliefs and survival patterns shaping their lives, rebuild self-trust, regulate their nervous systems, and move toward emotional resilience and lasting transformation.
Together, Lisa and Anu explore:
How high-functioning survival hides beneath achievement
Why people-pleasing and overworking can become trauma responses
What harmful coping mechanisms are trying to protect us from
How childhood trauma can distort love, intimacy, and self-worth
The difference between being desired and being valued
How financial and emotional abuse erode identity and boundaries
What people misunderstand about suicide and hopelessness
Why healing requires compassion for the person you became to survive
What rebuilding yourself actually looks like in the messy middleThis is not a polished transformation story.
It is an honest conversation about the masks we wear, the pain we numb, the roles we perform, and the courage it takes to reclaim the person underneath them all.
Host: Lisa Lacy
https://www.lisalacy.com
Guest: Anu Verma, Victim 2 Victor
https://linktr.ee/healing.journeyyWhat did you perform in order to survive?
Welcome to the edge.
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The dogs woke me up. Menopause made sure I stayed awake. And suddenly my nervous system was hosting a 3:00 a.m. board meeting about every decision I have made since 1997.
In this episode of Midnight Menopausal Meanderings, we are talking about the biology behind menopause-related insomnia, including hormonal changes, temperature dysregulation, nervous-system activation, and why one small interruption can leave you staring at the ceiling for hours.
But this conversation goes deeper than sleep.
What happens when exhaustion, hormonal changes, and limited emotional bandwidth make it harder to keep performing, accommodating, and pretending everything is fine?
Maybe menopause does not create a new woman.
Maybe it reveals the woman who no longer has the neurological energy to tolerate bullshit.
We explore:
⢠Why sleep becomes more difficult during menopause
⢠How estrogen and progesterone changes affect the brain
⢠Why hot flashes and nighttime awakenings can trigger hypervigilance
⢠How sleep deprivation affects emotional regulation
⢠Why your tolerance for emotional labor may suddenly disappear
⢠How to listen to the truths that surface at midnight without immediately blowing up your entire life before breakfastYou are not failing at sleep.
Your biology has changed, your nervous system is adapting, and your body may finally be refusing to finance the performance.
Learn more about Lisa Lacy:
https://www.lisalacy.comNotes From the Edge is where we have the conversations we should have been having all along.
Welcome to the edge.
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