Well, That F*cked Me Up! Surviving Life Changing Events.

Send us Fan Mail

Tara Pyfrom, is a writer from the Bahamas now living in Canada.

In 2019, Hurricane Dorian hit the Bahamas as a Category 5 storm. Her wife, their six-year-old daughter, their five dogs and her, ended up trapped in their attic for over 24 hours while nine feet of ocean came into their house. They lost about 90% of what they owned.

However, they were incredibly lucky. A lot of people didn't make it out.

Six weeks later, they moved to Canada and started over. That's where the really fucked up part began.

Everyone understands the immediate disaster. Your house is gone. You're rescued. People check on you. There are cameras. There's news coverage. People bring things. And then, eventually, everyone goes home and gets on with their lives.

Except someone who has gone through such terror, doesn’t necessarily get to.

Tara developed PTSD. She was trying to be a wife and a mother while also figuring out how the hell you rebuild a life when the one she had is gone. They moved countries, brought five dogs across an international border, started over with very little and tried to function inside a completely new immigration system while dealing with everything that had just happened.

At one point she was so overwhelmed by the paperwork, the constant decisions and just trying to keep everything moving that she completely lost it, over dinner!

This was one of the first times Tara really understood that she wasn't okay. She’d survived a Category 5 hurricane, but it was her kid refusing to eat dinner that finally pushed her over the edge.

There was also a weird pressure to be grateful because they had survived. She I was grateful. But gratitude doesn't magically make everything that happened disappear.

Tara eventually wrote a memoir about the whole thing, The Ocean in Our Blood. While the book is heavy on surviving the hurricane, what happens when the adrenaline is gone and you're left trying to figure out how to be a person again?.

This is an epic episode with a blow by blow account if their survival!

Site: http://www.tarapyfrom.com/

IG: www.instagram.com/tarapyfrom

FB: http://www.facebook.com/tarapyfromwriter

Order on Amazon:

https://a.co/d/35OHhcV

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Jodie Herbert brings a lifetime of lived experience caring for family members with complex disabilities, including raising a son with Level 3 autism. Navigating significant support needs and disability systems became deeply intertwined with her own life and eventually shaped her work as a disability advocate.

Life can change in the blink of an eye, and with the birth of her first son, things would never be the same again.

This is an amazing episode filled with hope, humor, and triumph over the most life changing of events!

Business: https://www.abilitypathways.au/.

Media: https://www.guestsonair.com/profile/jodie-herbert

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

At fifteen, Joshua Waldron was told he would never walk again. After five years of rehab he destroyed his wheelchair and decided that not walking, was not an option. Join us this week to hear his extraordinary story!! Joshua has spent the decades since testing one idea: difficulty chosen deliberately is the most efficient route to a life worth having. He calls it Hard Is Fun, and his book on the philosophy launches in January 2027.

Thanks Joshua we loved having you on the show!

Site: https://hardisfun.com/

Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories
How a dog taught Dr. Andy Neillie to lead. You don't have to be famous to be fascinating.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

David Shepherd was working in investment banking when a serious back injury forced him to step away and reassess the career and life he was building. That period ultimately led him to retrain and create a very different professional future.

Another inspiring story about how a serious life changing event can actually correct your life's course in unexpected ways!

Site: https://www.guestsonair.com/profile/david-shepherd

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

Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories
How a dog taught Dr. Andy Neillie to lead. You don't have to be famous to be fascinating.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides is a clinical psychologist whose interest in understanding suffering grew from her own experiences of a difficult home life, anxiety, depression, and feeling unseen as a young person. A formative encounter with a psychologist changed the direction of her life, leading her into nearly three decades of work in mental health. She now combines clinical psychology, mindfulness, and psychedelic-assisted therapy to explore trauma, healing, and meaning. In this episode, we have some amazing conversations around living through emotional pain, finding support, and discovering a path toward healing.

Site: https://www.guestsonair.com/profile/dr-maria-elena-lukeides

Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories
How a dog taught Dr. Andy Neillie to lead. You don't have to be famous to be fascinating.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Jeffrey Deskovic is a wrongful conviction expert, attorney, speaker, exoneree, and founder of The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice, where he works to free innocent people and change the laws that allow wrongful convictions to happen in the first place.

His mission is rooted in lived experience. Arrested as a teenager and wrongfully convicted at 17, Jeffrey spent 16 years in prison for a murder and rape he did not commit. He was finally exonerated in 2006 through DNA testing, after the actual perpetrator was identified. Rather than allowing that injustice to define the rest of his life, Jeffrey used his compensation, education, and hard-earned insight to build a foundation dedicated to exoneration, policy reform, and public education.

This is an AMAZING episode!

Site: https://www.guestsonair.com/profile/jeff-deskovic

Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories
How a dog taught Dr. Andy Neillie to lead. You don't have to be famous to be fascinating.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Trauma has a way of convincing us that what happened to us will always define who we become. For years, Michael Rodriguez, believed many of the fears, insecurities, and survival instincts he carried were simply part of who he was.

His childhood was shaped by addiction, domestic violence, and periods spent in women's shelters with his mother as they escaped an unsafe home.

As an adult, life brought different challenges. The loss of his father to cancer, years of financial hardship while sleeping on the floor of an attic to keep his first business alive, burnout, anxiety, divorce during COVID, and the constant responsibility of leading a growing business while raising a family.

What Michael has learned is that adversity changes us, but it doesn't have to define us. Healing wasn't a single breakthrough moment. It came through thousands of small choices: learning to forgive without excusing, choosing purpose over resentment, replacing survival habits with healthier ones, and recognizing that resilience isn't something we are born with, but is something we intentionally develop over time.

Michael wrote a book, Become Unshaken: Joy, Regardless. And today he helps individuals, leaders, parents, and organizations understand that while none of us gets to choose every chapter of our story, we all have the opportunity to influence the chapters that come next.

What an amazing conversation! Thanks Michael!

Website: Home - Become Unshaken

Podcast: Become Unshaken Podcast | Podcast on Spotify

Book: Become Unshaken: Joy, Regardless: Rodriguez, Michael: 9781632969477: Amazon.com: Books

Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories
How a dog taught Dr. Andy Neillie to lead. You don't have to be famous to be fascinating.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Robin Rosenbluth's mother died when she was young, and her abusive and neglectful father put Robin and her sister in foster care - even though other family members offered to take them. Later, with the help of a high school guidance counselor, she was encouraged to continue her education and find scholarships to fund college. What makes her story unique is the year she taught and lived in Songa, a remote village in northern Kenya. There, Robin began to heal from the abuse and abandonment she'd suffered, finding more connection with the local people than with her father or foster parents.

Her memoir, LIVING WITH STRANGERS: Healing a Wounded Heart in a Distant Land, describes her time in Kenya as well as her childhood. It's a story of triumphing against the odds, an urgent call to do better for the children currently in foster care, and a testament to the enduring importance of study abroad programs as a tool for forging understanding and connection in a fractured world.

This is a deeply moving, personal ad inspiration episode, and shows that no matter how hard the struggle, we can still be freedom!

Author website: https://www.robinrosenbluth.com/

Substack: https://robinrosenbluth.substack.com/

Simon & Schuster website to purchase/order books: Simon & Schuster

Amazon purchase: Amazon

Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories
How a dog taught Dr. Andy Neillie to lead. You don't have to be famous to be fascinating.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Dan Stachofsky's story is deeply personal— he lost his daughter at 14 years old, after a medical journey where conventional approaches fell short. That experience shaped not just him, but his entire family, and ultimately led him down a very different path around health and recovery.

As you can imagine, this is a deeply moving episode covering the highs and lows of raising a child that needs extra care, all while navigating the healthcare system, znd eventually the alternative solutions the family were forced to explore.

Thank you Dan for your amazing episode!

Dan's non-profit: https://essentialenergy.us/ focused on education and sharing solutions around improving energetics in the body and environment (addressing harm caused by non-native EMF)

Community: https://d2nuqustvkkmpol2p8d0.app.clientclub.net/communities/groups/light-is-life/home?invite=6a888fa6632dd20a4ba2b05d

Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories
How a dog taught Dr. Andy Neillie to lead. You don't have to be famous to be fascinating.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Loulita Gill joins us this week for a deeply raw and amazing episode about childhood rejection.

Loulita is complex trauma survivor. She was repeatedly told by her mother, as a small child, that she was unwanted.

This narrative continued through Loulita’s childhood when her mother actually said the words ‘I rue the day you were born’.

The rejection, and PTSD was huge. She has been able to turn her life around and survive what should not have been survivable.

Her story is quite tragic but full of lessons and inspirational moments.

http://www.loulitagill.com

Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories
How a dog taught Dr. Andy Neillie to lead. You don't have to be famous to be fascinating.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

When Heather White was 27, she was driving with her fiancee, at 2:00am, on Memorial Day weekend, 1981, when all of a sudden, her car stopped dead in the middle of the Long Island Expressway. With no warning, a car crashed into them from behind. The car immediately burst into flames, they were taken to a local hospital and her fiance died shortly thereafter - leaving his two young sons without a father. Heather never saw him again. She had 3rd degree burns over 25% of her body including my face and hands.

The trauma that Heather experienced that night seem incomparable. Where does someone even begin to recover!

Today, Heather has been happily married for almost 40 years and she has an amazing daughter and lives a happy and fulfilled life.

Join us for an utterly breathtaking and inspiring episode!

https://heatherwhitephotos.com/

Instagram

Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories
How a dog taught Dr. Andy Neillie to lead. You don't have to be famous to be fascinating.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

This week we welcome Leslie Lopez, host of Mothers in Arms and an advocate for accessible third-party reproduction. She speaks openly about stillbirth, infertility, and the mental health journey of building a family through surrogacy, as a single mother.

Leslie spent six years working with California Fertility Partners before having her biological daughter as an independent parent via egg donation and gestational surrogacy.

Her story isn't just about the medical process — it's about the unexpected grief, the tools she built to survive the emotional weight of six years of treatment, and how she found hope and community on the other side.

Leslie discusses the mental health side of infertility, and navigating trauma while pursuing parenthood, and building resilience through non-traditional family structures.

Thanks Leslie!

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@mothersinarmspod?si=LMqJcusLbvOEXXhw

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mothers-in-arms/id1768849257

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4zXe2X5Y7SVarKhRzJFbpP?si=Rp6M1syiQjOPb4bql5ppEQ

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mothersinarms.pod?_r=1&_t=ZP-98dvfDMKDKp

Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories
How a dog taught Dr. Andy Neillie to lead. You don't have to be famous to be fascinating.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Freya Maberley's family are all neurodivergent. Her siblings/parents and grand parents were all undiagnosed. She was diagnosed ADHD at 53, and she is Autistic too, and proud!

Her brother is undiagnosed AuDHD and her home growing up was dictated by anger and violence. She was always considered the 'normal" child in the family, but her high sensitivity meant that she became the responsible one, taking on the people pleaser role of the family dynamic.

Freya's son is diagnosed AuDHD, dyslexic, dysgraphic. Her daughter undiagnosed AuDHD. Raising them was a constant battle of advocacy, being gaslit by the system, her own struggle to accept the diagnosis.

Freya has created a technique called The White Room. A visualization that helps a person reclaim what was lost in interactions with others. It's a kind of soul retrieval, without needing to be spiritual. It's a very grounded exercise, that once a person knows how to do it, they can do the visualization by themselves.

Freya is working as a Therapist (Psychology, Social Work, Counseling and Animal Assisted Psychotherapy) in Victoria, Australia.

Insta: @freyas_farm_ballarat

Facebook: Freya's Farm: Animal Assisted Therapy

Tiktok: @freyas_farm

Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories
How a dog taught Dr. Andy Neillie to lead. You don't have to be famous to be fascinating.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Those who first meet Simon Morrell are often very surprised at his history and background. You see, today, Simon, as one of Wales’ singularly most qualified martial artists and fight coaches with a library of books to his name, comes across as a confident person, but his childhood and early adult years were an experience far from anything that may have provided this.

​Simon was badly bullied, violently assaulted (at one time, an attempt on his life was made by a knife wielding thug) and eventually succumbed to terrifying panic attacks that threatened to ruin his life. He fell to agoraphobia, and for a long time was unable to leave his house.

​However, he was quite remarkably able to turn his life around when he found his path in writing and Martial Arts. He is the author of the award-winning books and true stories, From Bullied to Black Belt and the sequel An Everyday Warrior, as well as three other books of his own and five books his has Ghostwritten.

This episode it raw, emotive and brutal at times. But Simon is a kind hearted and extremely likable guy who has been to hell and come back fighting!

https://www.simonmorrell.com/

Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories
How a dog taught Dr. Andy Neillie to lead. You don't have to be famous to be fascinating.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Hannia Zanana, founded her coaching practice out of Cairo that has grown entirely through word-of-mouth across several countries. She was diagnosed with epilepsy at 18, later with Hashimoto’s, and had a 5kg fibroid surgically removed. What she’s most fired up about is the thing her own body taught her over a decade: the life you are living has a direct relationship to the health of the body you are living it in. As she left the family business, stepped into her calling, and made the deeper changes, her symptoms started to ease. Her body, she says, had been keeping a precise account the whole time.

She works as an Intuitive Guide, holding coaching, inner child work, astrology, and numerology. Her clients describe her as someone who sees your best self even when you cannot.

This is an amazing story of self discovery! Thank you Hannia!

https://www.instagram.com/be.hlth/

http://www.behlth.com

Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories
How a dog taught Dr. Andy Neillie to lead. You don't have to be famous to be fascinating.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

This week we have a great chat with Jane Garnett, who thought she was living her ‘perfect life’ unhappy and unfulfilled! Jane’s memoir is the realization that she'd spent years pursuing a false version of happiness and success. She didn't have any healthy role models growing up, so she based her idea of fulfillment on what she saw in movies and popular culture. She became a Hollywood producer who worked for Leonardo DiCaprio, had a powerful Hollywood husband, social status, and all the external markers of success she thought would finally make her happy— but instead, she was miserable and lonely.

The major turning point comes when Jane is unexpectedly called to the hospice bedside of her beloved mentor, Dr. Marie, the therapist who helped inspire Jane’s own career change. Jane was already in a period of deep personal reckoning: her marriage was unraveling, she was estranged from her closest friend, and she was questioning nearly every major decision she’d made. And then she sees this woman she loved and admired, who had already lost her longtime partner and become estranged from her son, facing the end of her life alone.

It forced Jane to confront something she’d spent most of her life trying to outrun: that no amount of achievement, status, or external success can protect us from loneliness, grief, or pain. That experience ultimately shaped the philosophy she practices today: helping people reconnect with themselves instead of living by inherited definitions of success or happiness.

Thanks Jane!!

Links:

• @thebananajane
• Jane Garnett Bio
• Jane Garnett Website

••This Time with Feeling (Book Website)

Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories
How a dog taught Dr. Andy Neillie to lead. You don't have to be famous to be fascinating.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

This week we are lucky to have Zoe Rose on the show, who talks openly about her early life, when she was constantly bullied at school for her weight. To make matters worse, her home was not a safe space, with her parents unhappy and rowing, even throwing things, Zoe was unable to find safety in any situation. This of course, all feeds in to later life, where she picked a man who was not good to her, and even hid their pregnancy from his family, for the first 8 months! Zoe has taken her life back, she is changing the way she feels about herself, and shifting her perspective, to live life for herself and not for others. Its a come back story that should be heard. Thanks Zoe!

Site: https://www.iamzoerose.com/

Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories
How a dog taught Dr. Andy Neillie to lead. You don't have to be famous to be fascinating.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Melissa Strong, was electrocuted at home, while working on a design project related to opening her now-acclaimed restaurant (Bird & Jim) in Estes Park, CO. She died briefly and came back, experiencing a forest and tunnel! When she came back, the damage was so severe that charred bones in her hands were visible, jutting out where fingers once were. Doctors initially told her she would likely only have four fingers left — her pinkies and index fingers. A passionate, elite climber, this was difficult news for Melissa to swallow.

The recovery was long and brutal, both mentally and physically. At one point in the hospital, her arms were surgically sewn together, and she was riding a stationary bike in that condition just trying to keep her body moving and her mind sane. Six months later, she managed to open her first restaurant, and eventually found her way back to rock climbing.

She wrote a memoir about the experience, published by Falcon, called Climbing Through: A Courageous Story of Grit, Healing, and Second Chances (March 3, 2026, paperback). Returning to climbing became a huge part of rebuilding both physically and mentally.

This is a story of immense strength and inspiration! Thank you Melissa!

Site: http://www.melissastrong.com/

Book:Climbing Through: A Courageous Story of Grit, Healing, and Second Chances

Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories
How a dog taught Dr. Andy Neillie to lead. You don't have to be famous to be fascinating.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

In this wonderful episode, Machan Taylor traces her journey from postwar Japan to the world stage with Pink Floyd and Sting. Uprooted from an idyllic childhood in Yokohama, Taylor was thrust into a New Jersey suburb where she didn’t speak the language and felt utterly alone. And yet she learned to turn devastation into song. And wrote her book, 'Naked Out Loud' is a meditation on identity, perseverance, and the courage it takes to come to terms with, and reveal one’s true self. Machan speaks from the heart, talking openly about her feeling of 'not being enough' and discussing the benefits she gained from her discoveries with psychedelics. She bravely invites us to ride along with her through her life story!

Site: www.machantaylor.com

Book: https://a.co/d/0fLrLInd

Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories
How a dog taught Dr. Andy Neillie to lead. You don't have to be famous to be fascinating.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Ron Camacho is a veteran law enforcement executive who currently serves as the Chief of Police for the North Charleston Police Department (NCPD)

Ron was an angry, egotistical supervisor. He was running over people, “collecting men’s tears” in disciplinary meetings, and strutting through the halls like he'd won something. His ego was out of control and he had no idea. Then his wife (now ex) gave him an ultimatum: marriage counseling or out of the house. He didn’t know it then, but therapy was going to save his life.

Six months of intensive therapy ripped open wounds Ron stuffed down for years. And in the process, something unexpected happened: the anger started to leave. The ego started to deflate. He started to see himself, and everyone around him differently.

Dr. Ron Camacho brings a deeply personal story centered on overcoming significant life adversity and rebuilding through discipline, mindset, and personal responsibility. His journey reflects a clear “before and after” transformation, with a strong emphasis on resilience, recovery, and the long-term process of regaining control after life-altering challenges. What an amazing episode!

Book: Bringing Ego to the Forefront: The First Step Toward Ego-Free Leadership – Books – Manuscripts

Site: Camacho Consulting

Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories
How a dog taught Dr. Andy Neillie to lead. You don't have to be famous to be fascinating.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Support the show