In this deeply intimate and soul-opening episode, we explore grief, self-trust, journaling, and the quiet courage it takes to return to yourself after unimaginable loss.

In this profoundly moving conversation, Kelly sits down with Marie Cruz, a coach, speaker, and retreat facilitator whose life has been shaped by resilience, reinvention, and radical self-honesty. Marie's story is not one of bypassing pain, but of learning how to sit with it, listen to it, and allow it to transform her from the inside out.

Raised in poverty in rural Louisiana, Marie became a young single mother and later built a successful corporate career. But her life shifted forever after the sudden loss of her mother, followed by the devastating loss of her son just two years later. What followed was not a search for answers outside herself, but a return inward.

Through years of journaling, spiritual inquiry, and deep emotional work, Marie developed what would become her signature process, The Nautilus Way, a guided journaling and self-inquiry method that helps women uncover truth, heal trauma, and reconnect with their essence.

In this episode of Broken Beautiful Me, Marie and Kelly speak openly about grief that rearranges everything, the loneliness of loss, and the power of creating spaces where women no longer have to protect others from their pain.

In this episode, Marie shares:

• 🌿 How grief reshapes identity and simplifies what truly matters

• 💔 Why losing a child changes the nervous system, the soul, and the way we see the world

• 📖 How journaling became a sacred portal for healing and self-connection

• 🌀 The four stages of her journaling process: reveal, review, rewrite, and rewire

• 🤍 Why women struggle to love themselves and how self-abandonment is learned early

• ✨ How intuition and inner guidance emerge when we stop silencing ourselves

• 🕊️ Why healing is layered and why we never "arrive" at the end

• 🌊 The power of women-only spaces, especially for bereaved mothers, to exhale fully

Marie also speaks candidly about her women's retreats, her work with grieving mothers, and why holding space without fixing is often the most powerful form of healing. She reflects on the courage it takes to trust inner wisdom, to stop editing ourselves, and to choose self-love even when it feels unfamiliar.

This is not a conversation about getting over grief.

It is about learning how to live alongside it with grace, truth, and presence.

A compassionate, grounding, and deeply human episode about loss, journaling, intuition, and the beauty that can emerge when we honor the cracks instead of hiding them.

Follow Marie Cruz

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/marieeurecrews

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/mariecrewsempowers

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@empowermentandgriefguide

Book – Even When She Rose (Amazon):

https://a.co/d/dayGabK

In this powerful and reflective episode, we explore loss, achievement, identity, and the courage it takes to stop measuring life from the outside in.

In this episode of Broken Beautiful Me, Kelly sits down with Alan Lazaros, CEO and co-founder of Next Level University, a globally ranked Top 100 podcast with over 2,300 episodes listened to in more than 180 countries.

Alan's story begins with profound loss. His father died when Alan was just two years old. Years later, his stepfather left, taking with him an entire extended family and financial stability. What followed was a childhood shaped by abandonment, pressure, and an unspoken belief that achievement could replace safety.

Driven to prove his worth, Alan became a high achiever. He excelled academically, rose quickly in corporate America, and achieved financial success at a young age. From the outside, his life looked like the definition of success. Inside, something was missing.

A near-fatal car accident at age 26 became a turning point. It forced Alan to confront a question many avoid: If this were the end, would I be proud of the life I lived? That moment cracked open a deeper journey, one focused not on external validation, but on meaning, alignment, and internal fulfillment.

In this deeply honest conversation, Alan shares how achievement without purpose can become another form of avoidance, and how personal growth, self-awareness, and meaning must come before lasting success.

In this episode, Alan shares:

• 🌱 How early loss shaped his drive, ambition, and fear of abandonment

• 💔 Why achievement can become a survival strategy rather than a source of fulfillment

• 🧠 The difference between external success and internal alignment

• 🔄 The Four Buckets of Life and why most people get stuck in the wrong one

• ⚖️ How to balance health, wealth, love, and purpose without burning out

• 🧩 Why inaccurate self-perception keeps people stuck, even when they work hard

• 🎯 The "glass and rubber balls" metaphor for focus, boundaries, and leadership

• ✨ Why meaning, not status, is the true driver of long-term fulfillment

Alan also speaks candidly about coaching, humility, and the uncomfortable truth that growth requires seeing ourselves clearly. He challenges listeners to rethink what they chase, why they chase it, and whether their success actually reflects who they are.

This episode is a reminder that healing doesn't always look like slowing down. Sometimes it looks like realigning. Letting go of who you thought you had to be. And choosing a life built from meaning, not expectation.

A grounded, insightful, and deeply human conversation about loss, ambition, self-awareness, and the courage it takes to build a life that feels true.

⸻

Follow Alan Lazaros

Website: https://www.nextleveluniverse.com

Podcast – Next Level University:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/next-level-university/id1227858278

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alanlazarosllc

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanlazarosllc

Welcome to Season Four of Broken Beautiful Me.

In this deeply grounding and compassionate episode, we explore healing not through willpower or escape, but through presence, surrender, and learning to feel safe inside your own body.

In this intimate conversation, Kelly sits down with Hans Andreas Weygoldt, a transformational coach and breathwork facilitator whose journey from addiction to emotional freedom reshaped not only his life, but his understanding of what true healing requires.

After spending eight years caught in opioid addiction, Hans learned that what he was really trying to numb were unexpressed emotions, unresolved trauma, and a nervous system stuck in survival mode. His healing began not with force or discipline, but with surrender, curiosity, and breath.

Through his work today, Hans helps high-performing leaders and individuals uncover the hidden emotional patterns beneath stress, success, and self-sabotage. His approach blends neuroscience, breathwork, and consciousness-based coaching to support emotional regulation, presence, and authentic leadership.

In this thoughtful and heart-centered episode of Broken Beautiful Me, Hans and Kelly explore how healing unfolds when we stop running from discomfort and learn how to stay.

In this episode, Hans shares:

• 🌿 How suppressed emotions live in the nervous system, not the mind

• 🧠 Why success and achievement can become a form of emotional avoidance

• 💔 How generational trauma quietly shapes our relationship with anger, grief, and vulnerability

• 🌬️ Why breathwork creates safety for emotional release without substances

• 🤍 How shame begins to dissolve when it is witnessed without judgment

• 🔁 Why healing is not about fixing yourself, but learning to trust your inner experience

• ✨ How gratitude can transform guilt, regret, and pain into purpose

• 🕊️ Simple breath practices that can be used anytime to return to calm and presence

Hans also reflects on the importance of community, sharing, and connection in the healing process. He explains why healing is not meant to be done alone and how safe spaces allow the nervous system to finally let go of what it has been holding for years.

This is a gentle, powerful conversation about addiction, emotional liberation, breath, and the courage it takes to feel deeply in a world that often teaches us to shut down.

A compassionate, grounding, and deeply human episode about healing the nervous system, breaking generational cycles, and discovering peace through presence.

⸻

Follow Hans Andreas Weygoldt

LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hans-andreas-weygoldt-151777356/

Website

https://pneumorphosis.com

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/hans.andreas.weygoldt

Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/hansandreasweygoldt

What if the bravest thing you ever do isn't surviving what happened to you… but choosing to stop hiding it?

Welcome to Season Four of Broken Beautiful Me.

We begin this new season with a deeply honest and compassionate conversation about grief, trauma, therapy, and the courage it takes to live openly after years of silence.

In this profoundly moving episode of Broken Beautiful Me, Kelly sits down with Linda Feig Knipe, a retired high school counselor and first-time author who spent decades helping others through trauma while quietly carrying her own. After the death of her husband, Linda found herself at a crossroads that would change the way she lived, healed, and told the truth about her life.

Linda's story is one of resilience shaped over a lifetime. In her twenties, she survived sexual assault and lived for years with unprocessed trauma, shame, and PTSD. Later, while training to become a counselor, she was unexpectedly triggered and forced to confront what she had spent years burying. Therapy became not only a place of healing, but a turning point that transformed how she understood herself, her work, and her relationships.

Writing her book Braving Therapy later in life required Linda to face a new fear — the fear of being fully seen. For the first time, she chose honesty over protection, openness over silence, and courage over comfort.

In this intimate and thoughtful conversation, Linda shares:

• 🌿 How grief became a gateway to personal transformation

• 💔 The long-term impact of trauma and why silence can become toxic

• 🧠 What therapy really feels like from the inside — and why it's so hard to begin

• 🕊️ How shame shapes our inner lives and keeps us disconnected

• 💬 Why healing doesn't mean going back to who you were, but becoming someone new

• 🤍 The power of sharing our stories and learning we are not meant to do life alone

• 🔍 Why human connection matters more than ever in an increasingly digital world

Linda also discusses her book Braving Therapy, written as a companion for anyone who has ever wondered whether therapy might help but felt afraid to take the first step. Her message is clear: healing takes courage, honesty, and support — and no one has to do it alone.

A compassionate, grounding, and deeply human conversation about grief, trauma, therapy, and the freedom that comes from finally telling the truth.

⸻

Follow Linda Feig Knipe

Website: https://lfeigknipe.com/

Book – Braving Therapy (Amazon): https://a.co/d/4f8FwWF

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/l._feig_knipe

FB: https://www.facebook.com/p/L-Feig-Knipe-100086436326648/

What if the moment that changes your entire life isn't a single event… but a series of wake-up calls your soul keeps sending until you finally pay attention?

In this profoundly moving episode of Broken Beautiful Me, Kelly sits down with Simon Lüthi, a former high-performing corporate executive who nearly died multiple times before discovering the spiritual path that would transform his entire existence. Today he is known as The Rocket Shaman — a healer, energy medicine practitioner, and end-of-life doula whose work blends ancient wisdom with modern suffering.

Simon's story begins long before adulthood: three near-death experiences as a child and teen, followed by years of pushing himself through perfectionism, pressure, and the relentless grind of corporate life. But everything began to unravel when he developed a mysterious autoimmune illness so severe he could barely get out of bed. Doctors couldn't explain it. Treatments failed. And then came cancer.

These crises didn't break him — they opened him.

Through shamanic training, energy medicine, ancestral healing, and an intense spiritual awakening, Simon discovered a deeper truth about illness, trauma, consciousness, and the unseen forces that shape our lives. His experiences guiding people through the final hours of life — and witnessing what happens in the moments just after — reshaped his understanding of love, death, and the continuation of the soul.

In this intimate conversation, Simon shares:

• ✨ The near-death experiences that marked him long before he understood them

• 🔥 How chronic illness and cancer became the catalysts for his spiritual awakening

• 🌿 The moment energy medicine finally shifted what modern medicine couldn't

• 💫 Why he believes with absolute certainty that life continues after death

• 🕊️ The signs and messages he's witnessed from loved ones who have crossed over

• 🌀 How trauma can live in the body across generations — and even past lives

• 🌙 What it means to guide someone through their final transition with peace and dignity

• 💛 Why self-talk, intention, and inner authority are essential to true healing

Simon also discusses his book, Becoming the Rocket Shaman, and how we can all begin reclaiming our power, our intuition, and the healing potential that lives inside us.

A powerful, healing, deeply spiritual exploration of illness, awakening, and the invisible threads connecting us to something much bigger than ourselves.

Follow Simon Lüthi

Website: https://www.therocketshaman.com

Book – Becoming the Rocket Shaman (Amazon):

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FFPBNKSM

Book – Becoming the Rocket Shaman (Barnes & Noble):

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/becoming-the-rocket-shaman-simon-luthi/1148299305

What if the moment that changes your entire life arrives as a glowing ball of light in your bedroom doorway when you are only sixteen years old?

In this deeply reflective episode of Broken Beautiful Me, Kelly sits down with Carmen Turner-Schott, MSW, LCSW, a licensed clinical social worker, Christian astrologer, teacher, and bestselling author who has spent nearly three decades helping trauma survivors find meaning, resilience, and healing.

Carmen's story begins in the Ozarks of Missouri, where she grew up feeling different from everyone around her. As a child she sensed things she couldn't explain, dreamt vividly, and carried emotions that didn't belong only to her. But everything shifted the summer before her senior year when she witnessed a glowing yellow orb of light in her bedroom doorway. Frozen in fear, unable to speak, she watched it move through her home as her mother tried to rationalize what neither of them could truly name. That moment became the spiritual turning point of Carmen's life.

In the years that followed, Carmen experienced profound loss and intuitive awakenings that led her toward psychology, trauma work, and eventually the study of astrology as a tool for self-understanding. She began reading charts by hand, long before computers, discovering that each chart reflects a person's emotional makeup, strengths, wounds, and the energy they carry through the world.

Today, Carmen is a professor of social work and a sought-after astrologer whose work bridges spirituality, psychology, and healing. In this conversation, she shares:

• 🌟 How growing up empathic shaped her sense of identity and belonging

• 🕯️ The night she encountered the glowing orb that opened her spiritual path

• 🔮 Why astrology is less about prediction and more about understanding your inner landscape

• 💫 The difference between your sun, moon, and rising signs, and why the moon sign reveals your emotional truth

• 🧡 How each astrological sign heals differently, and what that means for self-care

• 🌙 Why trauma shows up in specific parts of the birth chart, and how that knowledge helps survivors rebuild

• 🌏 How ancient symbolism, psychology, and spirituality all converge through astrology

Carmen also talks about her newest book, Your Astrological Energy, and how understanding your chart can help you cultivate compassion for yourself, deepen your relationships, and navigate your life with clarity and confidence.

A warm, illuminating exploration of intuition, identity, healing, and the mysterious ways we are guided toward who we are meant to become.

Follow Carmen Turner-Schott

Website: https://www.carmenturnerschott.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carmenturnershottauthor

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deepsouldiversastrologywithcarmen

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@carmenturnershott

🎧 Listen to more episodes of Broken Beautiful Me for stories of hope, resilience, and healing.

What if the truth you discover decades later changes everything you thought you knew about your life, your loss, and your identity?

In this moving episode of Broken Beautiful Me, Kelly sits down with Lisa Sugarman, an author, crisis counselor, and three-time survivor of suicide loss who has transformed profound grief into purpose, community, and healing.

Lisa's story begins in childhood with the loss of her cousin at nine years old and the sudden death of her father just a year later. For 35 years she believed he died of a heart attack. In her mid forties, she learned the truth that he died by suicide, forcing her to grieve him all over again and reshaping her understanding of her past, her pain, and herself.

Today, Lisa is a passionate mental health advocate, a crisis counselor with The Trevor Project, a storyteller with NAMI, and the founder of The HelpHUB, one of the most comprehensive free mental health resource platforms available. She also facilitates Safe Place, a virtual support group for suicide loss survivors, and cohosts The Survivors Podcast.

In this conversation, Lisa shares:

• 💔 What it is like to lose a parent twice, and how hidden truths create both wound and wisdom

• 🌙 The three years she quietly cried herself to sleep while holding her life together on the outside

• 🧭 How a single podcast appearance became the catalyst that changed the direction of her life

• 🤝 The power of sharing our stories to break stigma, build connection, and create community

• 🪢 Why grief never ends, and how it becomes the tether that keeps us connected to those we love

• 🧩 How The HelpHUB is helping people find crisis support, tools, and treatment when they need it most

A tender and courageous exploration of grief, truth, connection, and the healing that begins when we finally speak the stories we've held inside.

📘 Lisa is the author of Surviving: Finding Hope After Suicide Loss (2026), How to Raise Perfectly Imperfect Kids and Be OK With It, Untying Parent Anxiety, and LIFE: It Is What It Is.

Follow Lisa Sugarman:

Website: https://www.thehelphub.co

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisa_sugarman

The Survivors Podcast: https://www.thehelphub.co/podcast

The HelpHUB: https://www.thehelphub.co

🎧 Listen to more episodes of Broken Beautiful Me for stories of hope, resilience, and healing.

What if the key to healing is not just in the body but in the soul?

In this powerful episode of Broken Beautiful Me, Kelly sits down with Dr. Carolyn Larkin Taylor, a neurologist who has dedicated more than three decades to understanding the connection between the brain, emotion, and spirit.

A graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Hahnemann Medical College, Dr. Taylor completed her neurology residency at the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned the Humaneness in Medicine Award and was recognized as one of Philadelphia's Top Docs for Women.

She recently published Whispers of the Mind: A Neurologist's Memoir, a deeply moving collection of personal and professional essays that explore how we face illness, addiction, trauma, and the search for meaning.

In this conversation, Dr. Taylor shares:

• 🧠 How resilience and gratitude can rewire the brain for healing

• 💊 Why addiction is a neurological disease, not a moral failure

• ✍️ The power of writing and reflection to process grief

• 💔 Lessons from patients who taught her the meaning of courage

• 🌿 How compassion and forgiveness transform both patient and healer

A heartfelt exploration of what it means to be human, fragile, resilient, and beautifully connected.

📘 Whispers of the Mind is available now wherever books are sold.

Follow Dr. Carolyn Larkin Taylor:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61566811690823

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolyn.larkin.taylor/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolynlarkintaylor-author

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/carolynlarkintaylor/

🎧 Listen to more episodes of Broken Beautiful Me for stories of hope, resilience, and healing.