S7-EP7: Sarah Marshall: Burning Man, Impermanence, and the City That Disappears

What if the bravest chapter of your life begins after everyone assumes your story is already written? In this episode of Spirit Talk Show: Bedtime Stories for Grown-Ups, Doyle welcomes author Lee Ann Walling, a journalist, political strategist, church musician, and lifelong storyteller who published her first novel at the age of 69. After decades shaping public policy, writing speeches, and helping communities tell their stories, Lee Ann finally turned inward and wrote her own. Her novel, The Salt and Light Express, follows Chris—an older woman traveling west in a small RV to scatter the ashes of her longtime partner at Bryce Canyon. Along the way, grief collides with faith, prejudice meets compassion, and unexpected friendships reshape what healing can look like. In this heartfelt conversation, Lee Ann reflects on reinvention later in life, the courage to write after decades in other careers, spiritual searching, and why it’s never too late to begin again. The discussion touches on grief, LGBTQ love, silent retreats, journalism ethics, and the strange beauty of the American West. Along the way, Lee Ann reads from the opening of her novel, sharing the story of a woman learning—sometimes awkwardly, sometimes painfully—how to live again after loss. If you’ve ever wondered whether creativity, love, or purpose has an expiration date, this episode offers a hopeful answer: it doesn’t. Because sometimes the road west isn’t about escaping the past.It’s about discovering the next right thing. Learn more about Lee Ann Walling and her work:https://www.leeannwalling.com/ Spirit Talk Show – Bedtime Stories for Grown-UpsHosted by Doyle Follow Spirit Talk Show on social media:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/spirittalkshowInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/doylespirittalkshow/X: https://x.com/doylespirittalk Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/spirittalkshow www.spirittalkshow.info If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, rate, and share it with someone who might need it.Sponsored by Incogni — they remove your personal data from broker sites automatically so strangers cannot buy your information. Get protected: https://deal.incogni.io/spirittalkshow

The goal is not to fix yourself. That one idea sits underneath everything Kristan Swan does. Most of what we are handed about self-work assumes something is broken and needs repairing. Kristan starts somewhere else — with understanding yourself more honestly, and with more compassion than you would usually allow. In this episode of Spirit Talk Show, Doyle sits down with Kristan to talk about self-discovery, journaling, healing, and what it really means to come home to yourself. Kristan shares the story behind her journaling practices, Spaghetti on the Wall and Heart Mapping, and how creative reflection helps people move past shame, inherited expectations, and the pressure to keep performing a life that no longer feels true. Together, they explore the stories we inherit from family, culture, marriage, faith, and fear — and how those stories shape us without our ever noticing. Kristan talks about learning to listen inward, and about building rooms where people can finally tell the truth about their own lives. This is a conversation about identity, belonging, vulnerability, and the courage it takes to ask: who am I beneath all the roles, expectations, and noise? A warm, reflective episode for anyone feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or ready to begin again. Learn more about Kristan Swan:https://kristanswan.com/

He was not supposed to survive. His cardiologist told him his heart was like a Toyota Corolla towing a giant trailer — it was just going to burn out. He had been through more pain than most people carry in a lifetime, and he had made peace with the idea that nature would simply finish what he had not. Then one summer afternoon, a friend needed company at a river, and he went along. He found a rock. He sat down. He closed his eyes and started listening. What happened next on that rock — in the silence between the water sounds, in the deepening levels of his own mind — is not something he can fully explain in a single conversation. He met a presence he describes as pure love and pure law. He asked the question he had been carrying since childhood: where were you? And he got an answer that took away every last piece of his anger. He also came home with a completely different relationship to water. Greg's journey from that rock led him deep into the science of molecular hydrogen — through Japanese research, top engineers, and the longest-lived population on earth — and eventually to the development of a health protocol built around the cleanest water, the cleanest air, and the removal of the chemicals that quietly compromise the human body every single day. He looks twenty-five. He is almost fifty. He will tell you that is not a coincidence. This is one of the more spiritually and scientifically layered conversations we have had on this show. Come with an open mind. Come with your questions. Come ready to be surprised. Find Greg and the Hydrogen Protocol at https://myhydrogenprotocol.com Spirit Talk Show – Bedtime Stories for Grown-UpsHosted by Doyle Follow Spirit Talk Show on social media:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/spirittalkshowInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/doylespirittalkshow/X: https://x.com/doylespirittalk Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/spirittalkshow www.spirittalkshow.info If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, rate, and share it with someone who might need it.Sponsored by Incogni — they remove your personal data from broker sites automatically so strangers cannot buy your information. Get protected: https://deal.incogni.io/spirittalkshow

There is a kind of love that asks you to give yourself completely to something that is not yet given to you. Foster parents know this love. It is patient in a way most love does not have to be. It is brave in a way most love never has to be asked to be. And it does not make headlines — it just keeps showing up in the dark, in the kitchen, at three in the morning, holding a small person and refusing to let the uncertainty in the room become the uncertainty in the embrace. That is the love Lane Igoudin has lived. In 2004, Lane and his husband Jonathan entered the Los Angeles foster care system — the largest in the country — hoping to give a home to a child who needed one. What followed was years of legal uncertainty, courtroom battles, and a day Lane still calls curbside delivery, when a newborn's arrival hung on a phone call that would not come. His memoir, A Family, Maybe, tells that story without polish and without sentimentality, because he believes some stories do not belong only to the person who lived them. In this episode, Lane and I talk about what it really means to parent through uncertainty, the moment that almost broke him, what he has learned about loving children whose future is decided by strangers on a timeline you do not control, and why he believes the foster system as it stands does not serve the kids it claims to protect. He will tell you he is not a hero. I will let you decide that for yourself. Find Lane and his book A Family, Maybe at laneigoudin.com. Now go make a story worth telling. Goodnight. Spirit Talk Show – Bedtime Stories for Grown-UpsHosted by Doyle Follow Spirit Talk Show on social media:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/spirittalkshowInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/doylespirittalkshow/X: https://x.com/doylespirittalk Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/spirittalkshow www.spirittalkshow.info If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, rate, and share it with someone who might need it.Sponsored by Incogni — they remove your personal data from broker sites automatically so strangers cannot buy your information. Get protected: https://deal.incogni.io/spirittalkshow

What happens when you stop waiting for “someday” and start living the story you’re meant to tell? In this luminous episode of Spirit Talk Show: Bedtime Stories for Grown-Ups, Doyle and producer Howie welcome Teri M. Brown—a novelist, memoirist, mother, grandmother, and adventurer whose life reads like a testament to resilience, curiosity, and quiet bravery. Born in Athens, Greece and raised as an Air Force kid all over the world, Teri learned early how to carry home within herself. After homeschooling four children, building a successful nonfiction career, and surviving a long chapter marked by emotional abuse, she made a bold decision: to finally write the fiction she had been holding inside for years. What followed was extraordinary. From Sunflowers Beneath the Snow, inspired by real stories of Ukraine, to An Enemy Like Me, a deeply human exploration of identity and war, to Daughters of Green Mountain Gap, Terri’s novels blend history with empathy in ways that linger long after the final page. Along the way, she and her husband pedaled a tandem bicycle more than 3,000 miles across the United States—an experience that reshaped her sense of courage and became the heart of 10 Little Rules for a Double-Butted Adventure. In this conversation, Teri reflects on: