Tiny Treasures: How to Feel Anger Without Becoming It

Where do Harry Potter and childhood trauma meet? For author Barbara Latinka, the connection is deeply personal. Growing up with Harry Potter, she saw more than a magical adventure. She saw a neglected, mistreated child discover that he had power—and that his beginnings did not have to determine his future. Years later, while working through her own childhood trauma in therapy, Barbara found a way to bring that possibility into her own storytelling. Her three-book series, Spells for Surviving a Haunted Childhood, tells her life story through magical realism. Darkness becomes a shape-shifting monster. Generational trauma becomes a curse she is determined to break. And each chapter ends with a “spell”—meditation, grounding, and mindfulness practices recast as invitations to discover a little magic within ourselves. In this moving conversation, Cari and Barbara explore how imagination can help us approach experiences we struggle to name—and how stories can offer more than escape. Sometimes, seeing ourselves in a character helps us feel less alone and imagine possibilities for our own lives. Barbara shares her journey through a childhood marked by addiction, neglect, and abuse, the enduring love of her grandfather, and the importance of finding a therapist who could truly understand her experience. Together, they explore what it means to be seen, to make room for difficult feelings, and to interrupt the patterns handed down through a family. Trauma can move through generations. But so can love. And sometimes the magic begins when we discover that the story we inherited is not the only story we can tell. The Treasures in the Trash: Stories can help us discover our own power – For Barbara, Harry Potter offered an image of a mistreated child whose future held belonging, courage, and possibility. Her books invite readers to imagine possibilities for themselves. Healing can have a language of its own – Shape-shifting monsters, generational curses, and grounding “spells” give Barbara a creative way to express experiences that once felt impossible to name. Trauma can be inherited, but so can love – Her grandfather’s love remained an inner source of support long after his death. The care we receive can become part of what we carry forward. Being seen matters—and finding the right support can take time – Barbara describes how a trusted friendship and a therapist who understood her childhood trauma helped her feel heard and supported. Difficult feelings deserve space without having to run the show – Barbara’s writing began with permission to feel anger and grief. Giving those emotions a place in her story helped her begin imagining what could come next.

What happens when the truth you have been avoiding becomes the only way forward? For Aaron Tabacco, PhD, that moment came in midlife, after years of trying to reconcile his identity, his faith, his marriage, and the family he loved deeply. In this deeply human conversation, Cari and Aaron explore authenticity, self-acceptance, grief, family transformation, and the courage it takes to stop living inside a false story. Aaron shares how coming out as gay became not the destruction he feared, but the beginning of a profound healing journey for himself, his former wife, and their three sons. Together they reflect on the need to be chosen, the hidden cost of abandoning ourselves, and what can happen when we begin to claim sovereignty over our own lives. Aaron also shares how his family chose to rewrite the traditional story of divorce, creating their own rituals of release, commitment, and love. Through the lens of executive coaching, emotional resilience, mental health, and personal growth, this episode asks what becomes possible when we stop turning away from the parts of ourselves that frighten us most. Sometimes the path to safety begins with telling the truth. And sometimes our deepest strength is waiting inside our greatest fear. The Treasures in the Trash: Being chosen can become a substitute for choosing ourselves – When our sense of worth depends on being seen, accepted, or selected by others, we can slowly disappear from our own lives. The stories that keep us safe can eventually become the stories that keep us stuck – What once felt necessary for belonging may no longer reflect who we are or the life we are ready to live. Telling the truth changes more than one life – Aaron discovered that hiding his suffering was not protecting his family because the pain he carried was already reaching the people he loved. We are allowed to write a different ending – By refusing the traditional scripts around coming out and divorce, Aaron and his family created their own language for love, release, commitment, and belonging. Our deepest fear may be holding our deepest strength – When we stop turning away from what frightens us and meet it with honesty, we may discover that the place we feared most is also where our freedom lives.

What if the moments when your life stops making sense aren't interruptions in your path - but the very things pointing you toward it? There is a Sanskrit word for the experience of having the world you thought was solid suddenly crack open: samvega. It can happen when something falls apart. But it can also happen when everything goes according to plan. You get the title. The money. The relationship. The thing you were certain would make you happy - and a quieter voice inside asks: Is this it? Vish Chatterji knows these moments well. As a young man, Vish had a clear picture of success: America, achievement, the powerful executive in the suit. And he got there. But along the way came moments that punctured the story he had been living - moments of disappointment, disillusionment and unexpected redirection. In this conversation, Cari and Vish explore what happens when we stop treating those moments as problems to solve and begin asking what they might be here to show us. They talk about how easily achievement can become a way of outrunning deeper questions; why high performers are particularly good at overriding the signals that something needs our attention; and why there may not be one dramatic awakening that changes everything. Instead, Vish suggests, a life may be shaped by a series of samvega moments - each one nudging us a little closer to who we are becoming. They also explore an important paradox: listening to the deeper voice doesn't necessarily mean abandoning the life you've built. Sometimes we needed every chapter. The invitation is to learn how to witness ourselves while we are living it - to participate fully without becoming so consumed by the race that we can no longer hear ourselves. And sometimes, the treasure that emerges from the trash isn't something new at all. It is a part of ourselves that has quietly been there all along, waiting for us to recognize its value. Because the question may not be simply, How do I get out of this? It may be: What is this here to teach me? The Treasures in the Trash Samvega is the moment the old story stops working. It is the disillusionment that comes when something punctures the world we thought was predictable and secure. It can feel like everything has gone to trash - and that may be precisely where something true becomes visible. We are remarkably good at outrunning what we don't want to know. Another promotion. Another goal. More money. A new purchase. Staying busy can keep us from confronting the uncomfortable question underneath all the striving: Is the life I'm building actually the life I want to be living? There may not be one big awakening. Vish describes life as a series of samvega moments - small and large encounters with disappointment, discomfort and disillusionment that gradually redirect us. The question is whether we notice them or simply return to the status quo. Listening doesn't always mean leaving. Not every moment of disillusionment is an instruction to quit the job, end the relationship or reinvent your life. Sometimes we need the chapter we are living. Spiritual practice gives us the capacity to step outside the momentum long enough to witness ourselves inside it. The treasure may have been with you all along. Long before Vish became a coach or studied Vedic astrology, meditation, yoga and his Indian spiritual heritage were quietly accompanying his more conventional ambitions. Eventually, what had seemed like separate parts of his life began to reveal themselves as one path. Pain can contain a question. Vish closes the conversation with a different way of meeting difficult moments: rather than asking only how to make the hurt stop, step back and ask, What is the bigger picture? What is the context of this hurt? What is its purpose? What am I being asked to learn?

“Everything that we think we can hold onto is going to go. And isn't that freeing?” — Jordan Kersten Jordan Kersten has learned to greet life's interruptions differently than most of us. Again and again, her body has asked her to stop. A knee that no longer held her. A concussion that slowed her mind. An illness without answers. Another injury that made independence impossible. None of them were experiences she would have chosen. Yet each one became a doorway into a deeper way of being alive. As Jordan shares her story, it becomes clear that this conversation isn't really about injury. It's about what happens after the life we expected gives way to the life that's actually unfolding. The body changes. Certainty disappears. Something familiar is lost. And in the space that's left behind, another way of seeing begins to emerge. Cari and Jordan wander through questions of mindfulness, vulnerability, safety, expression, and what it means to find your voice when the ground beneath you keeps changing. Together they explore how compassion grows through lived experience, why receiving can be harder than giving, and how even the most painful interruptions can deepen our connection to ourselves and to one another. There is a quiet wisdom running through this conversation. Not everything that breaks us is asking to be fixed. Sometimes it's asking us to become more awake. The Treasures in the Trash The reliable becomes unreliable. That isn't failure—it's part of being human. Our deepest growth often begins the moment certainty falls away. Compassion is rarely learned through ideas. It is learned through lived experience. Our own struggles soften us toward the struggles of others. Finding your voice begins with feeling safe. Authentic expression isn't something we force; it's something that naturally emerges when we no longer have to protect ourselves. Healing isn't always returning to who we were. Sometimes it's becoming someone we couldn't have become any other way. Sometimes the body interrupts us before the soul can. The moments that stop us often become the moments that awaken us.

"As long as you're still harming yourself, how much kindness can you put out there? How much compassion can you put out there?" — James Rosser What happens when the life you built no longer feels like your life? For James Rosser, the question arrived through an unimaginable moment. In his late twenties, during the height of the AIDS epidemic, James was mistakenly diagnosed with a terminal illness and told he likely had eight months to live. Then, after repeated testing, he learned the diagnosis was wrong. But something had already shifted. What began as a confrontation with mortality became something more surprising: a confrontation with exhaustion. Exhaustion from carrying a life that looked successful from the outside but no longer felt true on the inside. Exhaustion from perfection. Performance. Hiding. Becoming someone instead of being someone. In this deeply personal conversation, Cari and James explore the unexpected ways suffering can become a doorway—not because pain is inherently noble, but because turning toward suffering instead of reacting against it can reveal who we are and what matters most. Together they unpack the difference between mindfulness and meditation, the hidden aggression inside self-improvement, the origins of the inner critic, and why compassion is not softness—it is courage. James shares how Buddhist practice, self-compassion, and years of learning to stay with difficult experience transformed his relationship with himself and ultimately changed the direction of his life—from finance to therapy, teaching, healing, and service. This episode is an invitation to pause long enough to ask: What if your pain isn’t asking you to become someone else? What if it’s asking you to become more fully yourself? The Treasures in the Trash: Suffering can become a doorway — Sometimes the moments we would never choose reveal the values and truths that quietly shape the rest of our lives. Reactivity and response are not the same thing — The space between what we feel and how we respond may be where freedom begins. Self-improvement can hide self-rejection — The drive to become better can sometimes be fueled by the painful belief that we are not enough as we are. Compassion changes everything — When we stop treating suffering as failure and begin meeting it with care, healing becomes possible. The inner critic often began as protection — What feels harsh today may once have been trying to keep us safe. Looking for the good is a practice — Our minds naturally scan for danger, but kindness and awareness help us remember what else is here. Your heart already knows something — Sometimes the most important question isn’t “What should I do?” but “What does my heart need to hear?”