What happens when the person you love brings a different definition of marriage into the relationship?

Pesa and Whitney Shayo, founders of Live Your Best Marriage, join Melvin E. Edwards on Stories from Real Life for a conversation about the expectations couples inherit—and the understanding they build together.

With Kenyan and American backgrounds and more than two decades of marriage, the Shayos bring a personal perspective to questions about culture, family, faith, and partnership.

The conversation explores:

• The assumptions we bring from childhood into marriage.• How two people can experience the same relationship differently.• Family expectations and difficult conversations about boundaries.• The difference between an apology and lasting change.• Preserving individuality while building a shared life.• What children learn from watching their parents.

Explore Pesa and Whitney’s work:https://liveyourbestmarriage.com/

Find the United Front Audit:https://unitedfrontmarriage.com/

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Media Well Done, LLC

What happens when the political identity you inherited begins to collide with the faith that helped shape it?

Melvin E. Edwards talks with educator and fellow John Brown University alum Lisa Heisner about faith, politics, race, and the difficult process of reconsidering long-held beliefs. Drawing on their shared evangelical backgrounds and years of Republican alignment, they discuss the experiences that caused each of them to question assumptions about political identity and Christian witness.

Lisa reflects on voting for Donald Trump in 2016, what subsequently changed her thinking, and why she believes loving someone is fundamentally different from trusting that person with leadership. The conversation also examines racial justice, the meaning of “pro-life,” social media, ministry, and what happens when political loyalty and religious conviction become difficult to separate.

In this episode:

* Lisa and Melvin revisit their John Brown University years and the Christian environments that helped shape them.

* Lisa describes growing up in a culture where evangelical Christianity and Republican politics became closely intertwined.

* They discuss Donald Trump as a turning point in how they thought about character, leadership, politics, and Christian witness.

* Melvin reflects on his experiences as a Black Christian and how events in 2020 and 2024 affected his relationship with predominantly white evangelical spaces.

* Lisa explains how learning more about racial history—and her experience working in real estate—challenged assumptions she had carried for years.

* They examine the difference between political slogans and personal action, including what it means to describe oneself as “pro-life.”

* Both discuss how direct relationships with people in crisis can complicate beliefs that seem simple when considered only in the abstract.

* Lisa encourages listeners to examine inherited political identities, investigate claims for themselves, and consider what their convictions require in everyday life.

It is a candid conversation between two old college acquaintances about something that can be extraordinarily difficult to do: question what you have always believed and decide for yourself what should remain.

Notable Quotes

* “There is a vast difference between loving someone and trusting someone.”

* “If God has blessed you with this wealth, how are you blessing other people?”

* “My job is to love, to befriend, to minister to.”

Stories from Real Life

Media Well Done, LLC

Content note: This episode includes discussion of childhood abuse, sexual abuse, addiction, and trauma.

What happens when the silence that helped you survive becomes difficult to leave behind?

Author Rich Dunning joins Melvin E. Edwards on Stories from Real Life for a deeply personal conversation about memory, identity, survival, accountability, and the decision to finally tell his story.

Through his memoir, Silence Was My First Language, Rich reflects on a childhood marked by poverty, abuse and instability; the role alcohol played in helping him cope; and the long journey toward sobriety, healing and understanding the ways his past followed him into adulthood.

The conversation also explores the people and places that gave Rich hope, the family he built as an adult, why he chose to take his wife’s last name, and his effort to turn painful experience into something that can help vulnerable children through the First Language Foundation.

Topics include:

* Why silence became a means of survival.

* Childhood abuse, poverty, homelessness and addiction.

* The complicated relationship between trauma and achievement.

* Baseball as an escape and a path toward opportunity.

* Sobriety, accountability and breaking generational patterns.

* Writing honestly about memories that are difficult to revisit.

* Family, fatherhood and the remarkable story behind the Dunning name.

* Supporting vulnerable children through the First Language Foundation.

* And the unexpected return of Rich’s teenage rap persona: Sir Rock.

CORRECTION: During the interview, Rich refers to a book as 10,000 Hours. The book he was referencing is Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, which discusses the idea that extensive deliberate practice—popularized as the “10,000-hour rule”—can contribute to high levels of expertise.

Explore Rich’s work: Rich Dunning’s websiteLearn about the memoir: Silence Was My First LanguageLearn about the initiative: The First Language Foundation

Stories from Real Life website

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