Grief, Art, and Healing: Paula Di Marco on Finding Beauty Through Loss

A gentle note: This conversation includes discussions of depression, addiction, substance use, and suicide loss. Please take care while listening. In Canada, call or text 988 for suicide crisis support, available 24/7. Have you ever looked at someone and thought they had it all together, without knowing what they were going through behind closed doors? Maybe you’ve been that person. Smiling, showing up, and telling everyone you’re fine when, inside, you’re doing everything you can just to make it through another day. In this deeply personal episode of Hard Beautiful Journey, I sit down with my cousin, Brendan Futrell, for an honest conversation about men’s mental health, addiction, vulnerability, and the courage it takes to speak up. What makes Brendan’s story especially meaningful is that he isn’t sharing it from the other side of his struggles. He’s still in the messy middle. We talk about the pressure men feel to be strong, the shame that can come with setbacks, and the importance of creating space for honest conversations about mental health. Brendan also shares how fitness and healthier daily habits helped him rebuild his confidence, what fatherhood has taught him about emotional openness, and why compassion matters when we don’t know someone else’s story. And through two unexpected stories of kindness, we’re reminded that sometimes the smallest gesture can help another person feel seen. In this conversation, we explore: * Why men often struggle to talk openly about mental health * Addiction, sobriety, and navigating setbacks * How physical fitness and daily routines can support emotional well-being * Fatherhood and teaching children that emotions are okay * The importance of asking for help and supporting one another * Gratitude, compassion, and recognizing the humanity in everyone Brendan reminds us that being strong doesn’t mean keeping everything inside. Sometimes the strongest thing we can do is admit we’re struggling. And maybe, just maybe, hearing his story will give someone else the courage to speak up. Connect with us Tiffany Carson — Tiffany Carson Website Brendan Futrell: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brendan.futrell.3 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brendanfutrell/ I’d love to hear from you. ❤️ Have you ever struggled to tell someone you weren’t okay, or wished you knew how to better support someone you love? Share your thoughts in the comments below. Your words might be exactly what someone else needs to hear today.

My guest today is Taras Machula — hypnotherapist, spiritual regression practitioner, teacher and founder of Healing with Love. At the heart of Taras’s work are two ideas that I absolutely love: Healing Forward and building a Living Legacy. We talk so much about what gets passed down through generations — trauma, fear, shame and patterns we didn’t choose. But what if healing gets passed down too? What if the healing, compassion, wisdom and love we receive changes how we show up for our children, our relationships and our communities? And what if those ripples continue into lives we may never even see? That’s Healing Forward. And then Taras takes it one step further by asking: What can exist because I was here? That’s Living Legacy. And friends...this conversation gets personal too. Taras guides me through an energetic compassion experience that brings up something about my voice that connects directly to my own spiritual awakening nearly seven years ago. In this conversation, we explore: * How losing his father changed Taras’s spiritual path * Why compassion may be where healing begins * What happened during my energetic compassion experience * Learning to trust your intuition — and yourself * Why vulnerability can be a superpower * Healing Forward: how our healing can ripple into other lives * Living Legacy: creating something meaningful because you were here * And one beautiful question: What are you going to do with the healing you’ve received? Maybe healing isn’t only about what we’ve survived. Maybe it’s also about what we choose to do with everything we’ve learned along the way. Heal your heart. Heal It Forward. Build a Living Legacy. Find Taras:Healing with Love + Taras’s work → https://tmachula.com/ And when you’re done listening, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this question: What is something you’ve received — healing, love, compassion, wisdom or forgiveness — that you want to Heal Forward? Can’t wait to hear!

Have you ever known something deep down — really known it — and then talked yourself right out of it? Friend, this episode is for you. This week I’m sitting down with one of my favorite humans on the whole planet (and my actual bestie), Bonnie Koenig. Bonnie is a tarot mentor, meditation teacher, and somatic breathwork facilitator — and she teaches tarot in a way I’d never heard before. Not as fortune-telling, nothing spooky — but as a mirror. A tool that hands you gently back to yourself and helps you hear the quiet knowing that’s been there all along. We go everywhere in this one. What tarot actually is (and why it gets such a bad rap), the years Bonnie spent genuinely afraid of the cards, and the self-doubt so many of us carry — “I can’t trust this because it came from me.” She shares her cottage story and she lovingly demystifies the cards everyone’s scared of — Death, the Devil, the Tower — which turn out to be some of the most hopeful ones in the whole deck. And then? She reads my three-card pull live on the show. I asked the cards how I can grow this podcast and reach more of you. This is Earth School at its finest: the very thing that was hardest for Bonnie to believe about herself became the exact gift she now gives everyone else. In this episode: * What tarot really is — and the myth that keeps people away from it * Why Bonnie feared the cards for years, and what finally changed * Her very first reading ever — and the 40-year tarot reader who became her friend * The self-doubt thread: “I can’t trust this because it came from me” * The cottage story: how the cards helped her stop spinning * The “scary” cards, demystified with so much love — Death, the Devil, the Tower * Reading with your intuition first (guidebook last!) * A live three-card reading, right here on the show Where to find Bonnie: * BonnieKoenig.com — hop on her email list for a free guide to start reading tarot with just one card * Her six-week private tarot mentorship — learn the cards and your own language with them * Her podcast, Tarot with Bonnie and Peter (with Tarot with Bonnie coming soon!) Come keep this going with us in The Living Room — my community over on Substack. There’s only one door in, and it’s at tiffanycarson.ca. This week’s question — I’ll answer first, then I want to hear yours: What’s something your intuition keeps nudging you about, that you keep talking yourself out of? Take a deep breath with me, let the hard stuff blow away, and go find something today that makes you laugh. Until next time, friends. 💛

I signed up for a retreat in Costa Rica to learn how to use my voice. What I didn’t know was that my body had a completely different curriculum in mind! Back in February, I flew into the middle of the Costa Rican jungle for a week-long retreat called Expressions — no spa, no vacay, not even close. And almost the second we drove deeper into those trees, my body went into full revolt. Panic. A migraine that put me in the fetal position. A bone-deep certainty that I was NOT supposed to be there. I had a travel agent lined up. I had my exit planned. I was ready to go. And then Maryn asked me one question…and everything I’d been holding onto came pouring out. In this solo episode, I’m taking you all the way there with me — the panic in paradise, the moment it all cracked open, an eagle I will never forget, and a song I was absolutely terrified to sing out loud. It’s one of the most vulnerable stories I’ve shared on the show, and it taught me that using your voice isn’t always about words. Sometimes it’s about finally exhaling something you’ve been carrying for decades. So here’s the question I want to leave you with: Is there something you thought you’d made peace with long ago that your body still seems to be holding onto? What might it feel like to finally set it down? You don’t have to fly to a jungle to find it. You just have to be willing to go there. Let’s keep going together! The Living Room is our community over on Substack — it’s where we keep these conversations going long after the episode ends. I’ve already shared my answer in there, and I’d love to hear yours. Head to the “Chat” area in Substack. You can sign up easily at https://tiffanycarson.ca/ And before you go, take one more deep breath with me. Let the hard stuff blow away, and go find something today that brings you joy or makes you laugh. Until next time, friends. 💛

What if you died...and came back with instructions? My guest today, Dr. Holly Porter, spent 70 days in the hospital after COVID took her to the very edge — respiratory failure, two intubations, sepsis. And somewhere in the middle of it all, she crossed over. She had a life review. And she came back carrying a message that has honestly not left me since we talked: “Love ‘em where they’re at.” Not fix them. Not judge them. Not drag them to where you think they should be. Just love them, exactly where they are. This one hit close to home for me. Because years ago, standing on a beach in the hardest season of my own life, and thinking about my brother in the height of his addiction, I was given almost the exact same words: "Love him through it." And that shift changed everything between us before he passed. So when Holly shared the message she was given on the other side...it made the one I heard feel even more real, even more important. Like it was being validated right there in front of me. Two different women, two different hard seasons, the same instruction: just love them. In this episode, Holly opens up about her near-death experience and what her life review showed her about love and purpose. She shares the assignments she was given on the other side — the nonprofit she was told to start (and got running in 25 days!), the business deal she was told to walk away from, and the book she was nudged to finish, Near Death SHIFT: What Dying Taught Me About Life, Business, and Purpose, released on 11.11 — the very date she walked out of the hospital. But we don’t stop at the miracle. We go into the hard beautiful middle of it: her “two years of hell” after surviving, the grief of losing her singing voice, learning that surrender is the hardest part of her own SHIFT framework (Surrender, Hope, Intuition, Faith, Transformation), and the heartbreak of loving her daughter through addiction — including the truth so many families carry quietly: sometimes grieving someone who is still living is harder than grieving someone who has died. We talk about intuition and trusting your “knowings,” how to stop living in victim mode, why her hardest lessons taught her she can do hard things, and the one thing she’d say to anyone lying in their own version of a hospital bed right now: pray — because on the other side, she saw the thousands of people who were praying for her. This is a conversation about resilience, healing, grief, faith, hope, and the lessons our hardest seasons come to teach us. It’s about spiritual awakening, personal growth, and finding purpose after everything changes. 💛 Your Living Room question this week, inspired by Holly’s life review: If your life flashed before your eyes today, what’s one small, ordinary moment of love that you’d want to see again? Share yours below on this episode. I’ll post mine first! Find Holly: * Everything in one place: linktr.ee/hollyporter * Website: hollyporter.com * Book: NearDeathSHIFT.com * Nonprofit — Adventure Bucket Wish Foundation: AdventureBucketWish.org * Instagram: @hollyporterinternational * Her near-death story in full: search “Holly Porter near-death” on YouTube