Friendship Breakups. Emotional Loneliness. Healing Without Words. In this episode, belonging researcher Nic and ecotherapist Natalia Szyszka guide you through the quiet, often overlooked pathways back to connection after a friendship ends—through trees, water, wind, and stillness. This is not a conversation about plants. It’s a conversation about belonging, grieving, and reconnecting to something that won’t abandon you.
Whether you're in the middle of heartbreak, burnout, or just feeling socially untethered, this episode offers an invitation: what if nature was the most trustworthy friend you’ve never turned to?
[01:00]You’re Not Depressed—You’re Grieving a Life That Can’t Love You Back
What if what we call sadness is just an unmet need for connection—with the world itself?
In a world obsessed with progress, we’ve lost sight of the emotional cost of disconnection. If you're feeling lost after a friendship ends or a life transition, this segment reframes emotional pain as evolutional wisdom—and offers a radically grounding perspective.
[07:00]Nature Isn’t “Nice”—It’s Necessary
The mountains, the ocean, even the wind—these aren’t metaphors. They’re medicine.
We challenge the idea that peace comes only from people or therapists. There is ancient biological memory inside you that knows how to feel safe—this conversation will help you find it again.
[14:00]The Tree Doesn’t Judge You, and That’s Why You Heal
Could nature offer the emotional safety many relationships can't?
Natalia shares how non-human connection can ease emotional pain after rejection, loneliness, or rupture. This is not detachment—it’s reconnection on different terms. If you’ve been hurt by someone close, this will help you feel seen and less alone.
[19:00]Urban Loneliness Is a Design Flaw, Not a Personal Failure
Why we should stop blaming individuals for feeling isolated in environments built to disconnect us.
Learn how to rethink your mental health not as a personal weakness but as a natural response to unnatural conditions. This will give you language—and agency—to seek healing in radically different ways.
25:00]Friendship Isn’t Always Human: Relearning How to Feel Accompanied
Could walking through a forest replace a coffee with a friend? Not quite—but almost.
If you’ve lost a connection and feel unsure how to begin again, this segment offers a gentle roadmap to co-regulation, self-reflection, and belonging without performance. A powerful segment for anyone healing from disconnection. [32:00]Don’t Just Heal—Reclaim Your Place in Something Bigger
How letting go of being the “main character” creates freedom, not loneliness.
The final portion introduces practices you can use right now—walks, rituals, even how you listen—that reduce pressure, increase presence, and invite new relationships (with people, places, or the planet). You'll leave this episode not just with calm, but with clarity.
🔗 Share this episode with someone who:
Is grieving a lost friendship or relationship
Feels disconnected and doesn’t know how to begin healing
Lives in a city and is quietly burning out
Needs to remember they belong—even in silence
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The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.