The Boy Who Decided to Get Up
A Dog, a River, and Breaking the Cycle of Abuse
Peter Bailey crossed a bridge on the outside of a fence just to feel seen. Years later, sobriety and the hero's journey gave him a map for every chapter of his life.
Host Matt Gilhooly introduces the show and why he created it.
Scott Martin lost his limbs at 35 after a coma. This is the story of how he chose a list over despair and rebuilt everything, one decision at a time.
Jen Dary was 35 when a lemon-sized brain tumor changed everything. In this episode, she shares what survival, grief, and radical life shifts really look like.
Misha Brown shares how one question on Christmas Eve, asked in a New Jersey hotel mirror, became the start of eight years of sobriety, self-love, and a life he actually recognizes.
Tim Thomas survived a shark attack off Sydney and discovered that what we need most isn't more stuff. It's trust. A conversation about isolation, sleep, and finding your way back.
Kathleen McKune spent decades as a high-achieving entrepreneur before a single data point revealed her childhood was far from normal. Her story of trauma, resilience, and healing.
Matin Miryeganeh lost her mother at 13, her family's support, and the permission to grieve. This episode is about what happens when you survive alone and slowly find your way back to yourself.
Matt Fogelson lost his father before they ever really knew each other, and when he became a dad himself, a single unplanned song in the middle of the night started him on a years-long journey back to himself.
Nick Gomez spent years repeating the same patterns in relationships until one honest conversation, the kind that cost him everything, finally started to change him.
When Rebe Huntman finally stopped moving forward and took a pilgrimage to Cuba, she discovered that her mother had been waiting there all along.
Shruti shares her journey living with multiple sclerosis, from early symptoms and a wheelchair to writing her memoir and choosing resilience every day.
Stephen Panus lost his 16-year-old son Jake in a sudden accident. This conversation explores grief, forgiveness, guilt, and what it means to keep walking when part of you didn’t survive.
At fourteen, Nick Prefontaine survived a coma that doctors said would end his independence, and spent the next two decades quietly building a life, a business, and a calling around the very voice that told him he'd run out of that hospital.
Evan Boyer learned that the life he was supposed to be building couldn't hold him until a Christmas morning NICU stay and a career gut-check arrived at the same time and showed him what it actually meant to let go.
A Navy SEAL veteran shares how a nine-year addiction brought him to his knees, and how rock bottom became the foundation of his life's real mission.
A stroke took Deb Meyerson's voice, her mobility, and eventually her Stanford career, and this is the story of how she and her husband Steve found a way to build something meaningful from what remained.
Wendy B. Correa discovered at 62 that her father wasn't her biological dad. Her story of childhood loss, family secrets, and healing is for anyone carrying something they were never allowed to say out loud.
Chris Magleby's story is about what happens when the control you've spent your whole life building finally cracks, and what you find when you stop trying to think your way out.
