That Wasn‘t Supposed to Happen

Five months after her second child was born, Michelle started to do that thing we are all told not to do (and we all equally can't help but do): she compared her babies one to the other. Baby 1 was active, exploratory, babbling as early as anyone can remember. Baby 2 was quiet, seemed uninterested, appeared helpless. The differences were too many to ignore and by eight months, Colton, Baby 2, was referred for developmental physical...

Nicole Palma showed signs of extreme, unexplained fatigue as early as elementary school. She'd receive a precise diagnosis in her twenties.

A tale 'as old as time,' it seems, a woman misdiagnosed, misjudged, altogether missed. And that's just the beginning of the story.

Nicole and I leave few stones unturned this week as we look at life with medical anomalies, with disabilities, with compounding stressors. From fighting for the dia...

Sequestered twice over (once in the the throes of parenthood, again in the ache of a pandemic), Kiersten Greene found a lifeline on roller skates. An activity they loved in their youth, the practice of starting anew turned into a daily meditation, a discipline, a port for someone unmoored by back-to-back episodes in losing their identity.

An Assistant Professor who has been studying Digital Literacy since we were picking Top Ten fr...

My best friend has this best friend that is the perfect amount of intimidating. They call her "HardCory" and for years I have been in awe. Cory is full of confidence, with more than enough talent, personality, and damn-good-stories to back it up. Like when college didn't go according to plan and she still made it in the fashion industry, without the major major labels are looking for. She achieved the dream of leaving the nightmare...

My 9th grade boyfriend once bought me roses from Waldbaum’s. (Waldbaum’s—if you don’t know—was Long Island’s premier grocer in the 90’s.) He must have been nervous they wouldn’t last as he asked the cashier, “are these, like, gonna die?” And the cashier—without looking up or at my boyfriend—replied, “all things die…eventually.”

Welcome to the final episode of That Wasn’t Supposed to Happen, where your host is now the guest, and o...

In September of 2017, Michelle Horton was instructed to pick her niece and nephew up from a local police station. She had few further details. In the days that followed, Michelle was shuffled between meeting her sister’s confidant, to meeting lawyers, to learning the ins and outs of the local jail, to learning—little-by-little—the reason her sister was even in one.

This week, we hear the story of criminalized survival from the fa...

Megan and I lived in the same house, though not at the same time. It was a house we would each leave but pained us both to do so. Though I did it before the house, and she after, this wasn’t the only experience in hard goodbyes for either of us…especially when for the better.

Listen to Megan recall the relationship that broke her up, that may have led to her tumor, that left her in need of two dollars. While fighting cancer and r...

On Friday, March 13, 2020, teachers and students in New York State parted ways for the weekend. The weekend would turn into a mandated two-week lockdown. And the two-week lockdown—for public schools—wouldn’t end until the following September.

Lockdowns, Zoom tiles, hybrid models, and synchronized instruction tasked teachers with the impossible. Truly. But teaching—I have learned—is simply empathy in action, and Campbell and her pee...

Monica Ayres gave birth to her and her partner Jim’s first child on March 10, 2020. Their home state of New York would begin full lockdown mere days later. An inherently isolating time in normal circumstance, Monica’s postpartum experience was broad brushed in profound loneliness. There were no visitors, no meal trains, no relentless check-ins, no casual chats to take her mind off nursing, or diapers, or the fact that the body keep...

This week local ICU nurse Rich and I talked chaos, COVID units, quarantined hallways, altered care, mental burnout, resource depletion, and (somehow) persistence.

Though nursing wasn’t Rich’s first choice, surviving the frontlines of a pandemic has made it his most important one. I get the feeling he doesn’t choose nursing despite all he’s seen, rather he soldiers on because of it.

There is little I can add to Rich’s story. There...

For this week’s episode I’m joined by friend and noted photographer, Jeff Bisti. Lovingly known as “that photo booth guy,” Jeff captured some of the most precious memories at some of the most seminal parties throughout Kingston, NY. Though his tale begins at a wedding gone awry, Jeff and I leave on a love song to BSP, to Kingston, to the good ole days.

If ever you’ve done gig work, this episode is for you. If ever you’ve worked in ...

For today’s episode I spoke with Fiona McKenna, a dear friend, an accomplished teacher, a Type1 diabetic, and a child of the Girl Power 90’s. Which mixed swimmingly with her headstrong tendencies. Until it didn’t.

From learning to inject her own insulin at the age of 6, to navigating coaches, teachers and friends that didn’t understand her illness, Fiona fought hard to not be defined by her diabetes. Until she didn’t.

Join us for a...

For our inaugural episode I sat down with Jean Michel, owner of Megabrain Comics, in Rhinebeck, NY. Jean's story winds as long and as interrupted as the proverbial yellow brick road, nevertheless he, too, finds the way home.

We travel through the towns and relationships he bounced in and out of, when--as he puts it--life happened to him. Fate intervenes and a chance encounter at a temp job leads Jean to owning a business. Naturally...