Please note: this story includes suicide loss, heavy drinking and drug use. Todd Maguire was 25 when his partner, Karen, died by suicide. Months later, in a bar, he ran into an old friend who had gone undercover. Todd listened to the stories for a couple of hours. Then they…
Todd walks through the night everything changed, the confusion, the shock, and how unreal those first moments felt. Full conversation on The Life Shift Podcast. Content note: this episode includes loss and suicide. If you're struggling, call or text 988 in the US.
Content note: this episode includes a detailed account of discovering a loved one's suicide. Todd Maguire spent twenty-seven years with the Queensland Police Service, most of it as a detective, including two years working undercover under a new identity: Donny Wilson. But the badge and the alias were only part…
Todd Maguire never wanted to be a police detective, but a dare turned into 27 years of service and a life-changing loss. Todd's story starts with a simple dare at a pub that led him into a 27-year career in the Queensland police force. He spent years working as an…
Travis gained weight on his medication and felt dismissed by the doctors he went to for help. He talks about tapering himself off, and what it feels like when the usual path stops working.
A visualization Travis's therapist taught him. Every ugly thought gets crumpled up like paper and floats downstream. He talks about how simple it is, and how it helped him watch his own mind with a little more compassion.
Travis talks about an intense stretch of therapy and the breakthrough that came out of it, learning how to actually be there for himself. Years of managing everything alone, and then something shifted.
Travis describes dissociation as an out-of-body experience. You're there physically, and mentally you're gone. He talks about the drive home he can't remember, and how his mind went to the one place that had always felt safe.
The medication meant to control Travis's seizures gave him hallucinations. He talks about the neurologists, the psychiatrist who ruled out mental illness, and the hard choice he made to taper off against medical advice.
After the diagnosis, Travis went back to a therapist, found a functional medicine doctor, and changed the way he ate. None of it happened fast. He talks about those first real steps toward feeling like himself again.
Travis talks about the moment he understood that stress was what set off his seizures. It changed how he saw everything, and it's where therapy finally came into the picture.
After his seizures, Travis walked out of jobs mid-shift and never went back. He couldn't find the words to explain what had just happened. He talks about the shame of that, and about slowly building a career again from the ground up.
In late 2024 the seizures came back all at once, and this time doctors had a name for it. PNES, stress firing through the body in a pattern that looks like epilepsy. Travis talks about what it was like to finally hear that word.
He woke up surrounded by paramedics. The first question was about drugs. The full story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDxQHt6Z75w
Please note: this story includes seizures and medical trauma, described plainly. Travis White was twenty-three and newly engaged. He was working on web development homework when he started to feel off. His chest was beating strangely. He kept zoning out. When he got up to turn off the light, it…
Travis White shares his story of surviving sudden, unexplained seizures and the disorienting path of medical recovery that followed. At 23 and newly engaged, Travis woke up surrounded by paramedics with no memory of what happened. What followed was a month of intense struggle, featuring dozens of seizures and a…
Content note: this episode includes discussion of suicidal thoughts and a crisis hotline call. Travis White was twenty-three, newly engaged, and by his own description living the dream when his body started sending signals nobody had taught him to read. One ordinary night, studying for a web development class, he…
Months after his third child was born, Travis hit a breaking point. He called 988, and then his brother-in-law called too and told him plainly that he mattered. Travis talks about how much that one phone call changed. Content note: this clip mentions a crisis hotline call.
Angela was on a small boat in the middle of the ocean when the pandemic began. Every day she checked in with her family. Then she learned the virus had already reached them. The full story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfranGk5cNw
Content note: the full episode includes discussion of sexual assault and an abusive relationship. This clip does not. Angela Harger Thompson left Panama on March 7, 2020, on a small sailboat headed for the Marquesas. Five people were on board, along with a dog. A week out, news of the…
Angela slowly came to see that her relationship was abusive, and she left. Then he claimed the documentary she filmed at sea was his. She talks about hiring attorneys and fighting for her footage until he finally backed down. That footage became Quarantine at Sea.
Angela talks about the devastation after the assault, the feeling of being completely alone with it, and the slow work of taking back control of her body and her choices. Content note: sexual assault.
Angela realized she'd been living in a place where she was waiting for someone else to say, okay, you're in. Out on the water, that changed. She talks about creating her own opportunities and doing the inviting herself.
Sixteen days with just two people on the boat, and a storm near the equator straight out of Castaway. The boat heeled over to forty-five degrees, and Angela looked out the galley windows and saw nothing but water. She talks about the dream she held onto in that moment.
