Life Shift™ | Pivotal Moments & Life Change

Matt Gilhooly
  • 5.0 (2)
  • Personal Journals
  • Updated Weekly

The Life Shift shares real and honest conversations about the moments that change us. Host Matt Gilhooly sits with guests as they tell true stories of life-changing events, unexpected challenges, and quiet awakenings that shaped who they are today. Each episode offers meaningful and candid storytelling about grief, healing, resilience, identity, and growth. These are the personal stories that remind us what it feels like to be human. These are the turning points that stay with us. If you are drawn to personal growth, emotional well-being, or stories of how people rebuild after loss, this show offers a gentle place to land. Listeners come for the life changes. They stay for the connection. New episodes every Wednesday and Sunday. For more information, please visit https://www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com

  1. 11 hrs ago

    Estrangement, Grief, and an Alcoholic Father

    Some goodbyes don't come with a conversation. They come with a phone you keep picking up and putting back down. Brittany Perham grew up in a house full of friends and happy memories, with a mom who protected her and her brother, and a father whose drinking nobody named out loud. In college, when things got scary, she made one of the hardest grown-up decisions of her life. She stopped answering his calls. The silence stretched to almost fifteen years. When her brother reconnected with him before his wedding, Brittany found herself back in a little bit of contact, just in time for her father's final year. There was one good phone call, a recipe, a "good to talk to you." And then there was a hospital room at Mass General, where she and her brother had to decide to let him go. Then came the surprise. Weeks before he died, her father had changed his will and named her the executor of an estate that turned out to be buried in debt. It took almost seven years to close. This is a tender, honest conversation about estrangement, about guilt and sadness living side by side, and about how a story keeps changing each time we tell it. Brittany is a poet and a teacher, and she talks about her father with so much care and so much honesty. I loved every minute of this one. What You'll Hear: Growing up in what looked like the perfect childhood while living with a father's quiet addiction The decision at 21 to get a therapist and step away from her dad Why estrangement never really feels like freedom Walking around the house holding the phone, unable to make the call The one good phone call, and a recipe she'll never forget Taking her father off life support and the strange intimacy of that moment Being named executrix of an indebted estate she never saw coming Why the story of her father is ultimately a story of not knowing Guest Bio:Brittany Perham's new memoir, Executrix (University of Georgia Press), won the 2025 AWP Sue William Silverman Prize for Creative Nonfiction. She is also the author of Double Portrait (W.W. Norton), which won the Barnard Women Poets Prize and was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award; The Curiosities (Free Verse Editions); and, with Kim Addonizio, the collaborative word/art project The Night Could Go in Either Direction (SHP). Her writing has received support from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Hemingway House, the James Merrill House Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, the Wallace Stegner Fellowship Program, and Yaddo. She taught for fifteen years at Stanford University before joining the English faculty at Endicott College, where she is an associate professor. She lives in San Francisco and Massachusetts. Website: www.brittanyperham.comExecutrix (University of Georgia Press): https://ugapress.orgListen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/followSubscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ Keywords: estrangement, grieving an estranged parent, alcoholic father, children of alcoholics, executor of an estate, grief, memoir, memory, family stories, complicated grief You Might Also Like: Grief and Fatherhood: The Song That Changed Everything Part of Me Died That Day: Learning to Live After the Worst Day of Your Life Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    Estrangement, Grief, and an Alcoholic Father

  2. 4d ago

    Coming Out as a Trans Woman at 45: The Filter That Changed Everything

    Some of us carry a weight for so long that we forget it isn't supposed to be there. Chloe Kelly spent 35 years being very good at being someone she wasn't. She learned the rules early. Play sports. Earn man points. Don't stand out. Never let anyone see. She got so good at the performance that even she couldn't see through it for decades. There was a soulmate. A house. A good job. Everything that was supposed to add up to happiness. And underneath all of it, a quiet leak. A dripping tap that just wouldn't stop. Then, at 45, on her lunch break, she downloaded a face filter app. She pressed a button. And she couldn't look away from what she saw. This is a conversation about what it feels like to live inside the wrong story for 35 years, and what it feels like when the real one finally starts. Chloe is warm, funny, honest about the hard parts, and sickeningly happy in the best possible way. She's calling in from Buenos Aires, because of course she is. What You'll Hear How Chloe spent decades earning "man points" and what that kind of performance actually costs The FaceApp moment on a lunch break that cracked everything open Why telling her wife was the point of no return, and how that conversation went What it felt like to discover joy after a lifetime of quiet sadness Solo travel across 18 countries as a trans woman in her forties, the beautiful parts and the hard ones Why she now wants to give the person she used to be a hug instead of a shake Guest BioChloe Kelly is a British writer who transitioned at the age of 45 after decades of suppressing her true identity. After leaving a 25 year corporate career, she is rebuilding her life through writing, travel and sharing her experiences to help others navigating major life changes. She has written for PinkNews, is currently writing a guide for people transitioning later in life, and is also working on a travel memoir about travelling solo around the world as a trans woman in her forties, exploring identity, courage and reinvention. She documents her travel adventures through her Girl:Avanting YouTube series. YouTube | Instagram | Substack Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/followSubscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ gender identity, late transition, transgender story, transitioning later in life, self acceptance, authenticity, performing for others, telling your wife you are trans, solo travel as a trans woman, finding joy You Might Also Like: Trystan Reese: A Journey Through Love, Identity, and Family Cancer: The Diagnosis That Stopped the Reinventing Reclamation: Coming Back To The Girl Who Got Shut Down Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    Coming Out as a Trans Woman at 45: The Filter That Changed Everything

  3. Oct 4

    First Responder Mental Health: What a Helicopter Crash Opened Up

    Maybe you know what it is to be the steady one. The person who shows up, holds it together, and makes sure everyone else is okay before anyone thinks to ask about you. Jeff Abbott has been that person for more than 25 years in emergency medicine, most recently as a Critical Care Flight Paramedic and base manager. On April 26th, 2022, his friend and pilot Jim died in a helicopter crash. Jeff responded to the scene in another aircraft, kept his people together all day, and then went home and broke down in his wife's arms. What followed was eighteen months of anger he couldn't name, nightmares he couldn't shake, and a slow realization that being built for this work didn't make him immune to what it carries. This is a conversation about what happens inside the people who show up when everyone else needs help. We talk about EMS culture, dark humor, and the quiet cost of never asking for anything in return. We talk about Boulder Crest, EMDR, breathwork, and watching chickens until his nervous system remembered what calm felt like. And we talk about a book Jeff started 25 years ago, found in an old email, and finally finished because it was time. He tells it plainly, the way someone does once they've set some of the weight down. What You'll Hear Growing up in blue collar Buffalo, a military dream cut short by a knee injury, and 25 years in EMS The April 2022 helicopter crash that killed his friend and pilot Jim Eighteen months of anger as the mask that fear and shame wear Boulder Crest, EMDR therapy, breathwork, and watching chickens Why self acceptance is the wall that has to come down The book he started 25 years ago and finally finished Guest BioJeff Abbott is a Critical Care Flight Paramedic, author, and speaker with more than 25 years in emergency medicine. His career has taken him from ground EMS to critical care and flight medicine, where functioning calmly in chaos became both a skill and part of his identity. He is the author of Built For This: A Paramedic's Reckoning, a candid memoir about EMS culture, dark humor, camaraderie, loss, and what happens when being able to keep functioning is mistaken for being unaffected by the work. paramedicabbott.comBook: Built For This: A Paramedic's Reckoning Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/followSubscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ first responder mental health, paramedic PTSD, grief and anger, asking for help, EMS culture, flight paramedic, trauma recovery, Boulder Crest retreat, EMDR therapy, losing a friend You Might Also Like: Anger: The Drink I Never Stopped Drinking Part of Me Died That Day: Learning to Live After the Worst Day of Your Life Identity: More Than the Thing You're Known For Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    First Responder Mental Health: What a Helicopter Crash Opened Up

  4. Sep 30

    Grief, Friendship, and Finishing a Documentary After Loss

    Maybe you know what it is to lose someone in the middle of building something together. To be left holding a piece of unfinished work and a hole where a person used to be, with no idea how to carry either one. Jan Becker is a filmmaker who set out with his close friend Christian to make a documentary about a vision quest in the high desert. They finished shooting, went their separate ways for the holidays, and then, on the fourth of January, Jan got a text. Christian had died in a plane crash, along with his two young daughters. What follows is the story of the year Jan spent alone in an editing room with his friend's face on the screen, turning grief into something he could hold. He talks about the strange sense that the desert had been preparing him, about losing his father two years earlier, and about how finishing the film became the way he learned to mourn. This is a conversation about what we do with the things left unfinished, and about how the work of our hands can carry us through the parts of grief that words cannot reach. What You'll Hear The phone call on the fourth of January that changed everything Why finishing the film became Jan's way through grief What it feels like to edit footage of someone you have lost The vision quest, and the sense that it had been preparing him Grieving a best friend and a father as one long process Choosing meaning and connection over recognition Guest Bio Jan Becker is a German-born, Los Angeles-based filmmaker, director, producer, and editor. He has worked in media production for more than 15 years, with credits across documentary, television, and commercial storytelling. His work often explores transformation, healing, trauma, spirituality, and the deeper psychological forces that shape human lives. Jan is the director, producer, and editor of Vision Quest, a feature documentary about a 10-day wilderness retreat in the California high desert and the healing power of nature. The film became deeply personal after the tragic death of his friend, co-director, and producing partner Christian Oliver, who appears in the film. Through his production company, Exalted, Jan is developing documentary and narrative projects that make inner transformation visible through cinematic storytelling. exalted.la | visionquestfilm.com | Vision Quest Trailer | Instagram Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/follow Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ sudden loss, losing a best friend, grief and creativity, finishing what someone started, film as healing, plane crash grief, processing a father's death, vision quest, meaning after loss, storytelling as healing You Might Also Like: Grief: Making Something Beautiful From What Broke Part of Me Died That Day: Learning to Live After the Worst Day of Your Life 147 Days: Raising and Losing My Sister Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    Grief, Friendship, and Finishing a Documentary After Loss

  5. Sep 27

    Trusting Your Intuition When It Scares You

    Some of us have known something about ourselves for a very long time. And we have spent just as long trying to pretend we didn't. Kate Saint Clair grew up seeing and hearing things no one around her could explain. She was the curious kid who asked too many questions and got lies as answers. The sensitive one who felt everyone else's feelings as if they were her own. For years, she tried to be the tough kid. The normal one. The person who didn't see anything. But the knowing didn't go away. It never does. This episode is about the long, quiet war between who you are and who you think you're allowed to be. Kate's shift didn't come from one single moment. It came in pieces: a voice in a park that moved her and her toddler away from danger. A skin cancer diagnosis that stripped her of every way she'd been performing. A six-year-old girl making a deal with her dead grandfather in a dark bathroom and then spending two decades honoring it. What she eventually found wasn't just peace with her gift. It was herself. What You'll Hear: How growing up feeling "too sensitive" became the foundation of a career helping others The moment Kate heard a voice in a park that may have saved her daughter's life, and what it finally pushed her to do Why a skin cancer diagnosis became the unexpected turning point that made her stop deferring and start leading What it looks like to fight the thing you were born for, and what finally makes you stop How Kate shifted her career from reading for others to teaching everyone that the ability is already theirs The story of a six-year-old girl, a closed bathroom door, and a grandfather she refused to talk to for nearly twenty years Guest Bio: Kate Saint Clair is a Human Intuition Expert, psychic medium, and intuitive advocate who has been teaching intuition as a practical, embodied skill since 2007. Her work is devoted to normalizing intuition and helping people trust their inner guidance with clarity and confidence. Through her books, live programs, and communities like The Clair Club, she supports people in understanding how intuition communicates through the Clairs: clear knowing, feeling, seeing, hearing, and sensing. Known for her grounded, direct approach, Kate empowers people to move from self-doubt to self-trust and live guided from the inside out. ‘Find out which Clair you use the most to access your personal Intuition’: https://www.katesaintclair.com/quiz A chapter of her book Be Guided and Be Great and some free resources including energy meditations, an intuition tracker, and more: https://www.katesaintclair.com/resources Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/follow Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ -- intuition development, psychic medium story, trusting yourself, childhood shame, sensitive people, spiritual awakening, self-acceptance, life shift, finding your purpose, embracing your gift Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    Trusting Your Intuition When It Scares You

  6. Sep 23

    Grief, Addiction, and the Long Road Back to Yourself

    Maybe you know what it is to finally exhale. To reach a season where the noise quiets down, the plan starts to work, and for the first time you let yourself believe things might actually be okay. Ryan was 24 and living in Denver when he reached that place. He had married young, moved more times than he could count, and spent his whole life feeling unsettled. And then, quietly, life started to come together. One ordinary Tuesday he went to work, and at lunch he got a call that his wife had not shown up for hers. She had been killed that morning by their next door neighbor. What followed was almost twenty years Ryan spent trying to outrun that day, through grief he could not name and an addiction that nearly took his life. This is the story of how he finally stopped running, and found his way back. Ryan does not tell this story to shock anyone. He tells it because he spent two decades believing he had to carry it alone, and he wants you to know that you do not. What You'll Hear What it feels like to finally feel settled after a lifetime of moving The ordinary morning that split his life into before and after How grief and addiction can quietly braid together Losing years of memory, and hiding it from everyone The lowest night that finally turned him toward help Why telling the story out loud began to set him free Guest Bio Ryan Roberts is a father of four between 3 and 16 years old and a full-time network engineer. He is the author of the memoir Fragmented: The Crossroads of Trauma, Addiction and Recovery. He has been sober since February 16, 2018, and his mission is to help people find recovery, hopefully sooner than he did, and to meet them wherever they are on their journey. Digital Diatribe | Substack Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/follow Subscribe to the newsletter: thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ sudden loss, losing a spouse young, grief and addiction, recovery from alcoholism, feeling settled, complicated grief, finding purpose again, sobriety, memory loss and grief, telling your story You Might Also Like: Part of Me Died That Day: Learning to Live After the Worst Day of Your Life Anger: The Drink I Never Stopped Drinking Grief: Making Something Beautiful From What Broke Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    Grief, Addiction, and the Long Road Back to Yourself

  7. Sep 20

    Foster Care, Grief, and Finding Belonging Among Strangers

    Maybe you know what it feels like to hold everyone else together before you are old enough to hold yourself. To learn young that love can leave, and that safety is not something every kid gets to keep. Robin was eight when her mother died. By eleven, her father had chosen a new life over his children and sent Robin and her younger sister into foster care, rather than let them live with the aunt who wanted them. Five and a half years passed with no contact from her family. She grew up among strangers, first in a shelter and then in a foster home where she was fed but never really loved. And still, somehow, she kept reaching for people. At eighteen she traveled alone to a village in Kenya and found the belonging that had been missing her whole life. This is a conversation about what happens after the people who were supposed to stay decide to go. Her story is not tidy, and she does not pretend it is. But Robin is proof that a hard beginning does not get the final word, and that love, once you let it in, can be the thing that carries you the rest of the way. What You'll Hear The moment a father's choice changed the course of two young lives What it means to be parentified as a child, and how it stays with you Becoming sensitized to racism as an eleven year old inside the foster system The year in Kenya that turned strangers into family How raising her own children became a way to reparent herself Why Robin believes love is the counterpoint to grief Guest Bio Robin Rosenbluth, author of the forthcoming memoir, Living With Strangers: Healing a Wounded Heart in a Distant Land (to be published by She Writes Press on October 27, 2026), is a former foster teen who advocates for finding permanent homes for older foster youth. She has worked in the nonprofit sector in New York, raising funds for museums, women's organizations, healthcare, and environmental causes, and has taught fundraising at New York University and Columbia University. She has studied memoir and the craft of writing with many renowned authors and writes a Substack, My Jagged Journey as a Debut Writer. Robin and her wife have raised two children who now have families of their own. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. robinrosenbluth.com | Substack: My Jagged Journey as a Debut Writer Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/follow Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ losing a parent young, foster care survivor, childhood abandonment, finding belonging, grief and love, reparenting yourself, feeling unwanted, chosen family, healing after a hard childhood, foster youth advocacy You Might Also Like: 147 Days: Raising and Losing My Sister Grief: Making Something Beautiful From What Broke Starting Over: You Can Lose Everything and Still Be Okay Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    Foster Care, Grief, and Finding Belonging Among Strangers

  8. Sep 16

    Healing Trauma Together: Why You Cannot Force Safety

    You know the version of yourself you built to get through. The one who keeps the peace, reads the room, holds it together so no one else has to worry. Maybe you have wondered who you would be if you ever set that version down. This week I sat with Tarah and EJ Kerwin, two therapists who spend their days helping couples find their way back to each other. They came in curious about a therapy they wanted to understand before recommending it, and instead they found themselves in the middle of their own life shift. For Tarah, a supervised ketamine session opened a door to something her body had been carrying since she was a little girl, something she might have lived her whole life never knowing. For EJ, it became a slow lesson in letting go of the control he had always mistaken for love. What stays with me is how gentle they are with all of it now. There is no neat bow here, no tidy lesson about pain making you stronger. There is a woman learning that she was allowed to feel safe in her own body. There is a man learning that joy is something you have to actually go looking for. And there are two people who found out that you cannot force safety onto a person, you can only make enough room for it to arrive. What You'll Hear Why keeping the peace can quietly cost you your own voice What it feels like when your usual ways of coping stop working The difference between controlling a relationship and creating safety in one How buried memory can reshape the way you see your whole life A kitchen conversation that started with letting go and ended in more love Why real change is never too late, at fifty, at eighty two, at any age Guest Bio Tarah and EJ Kerwin are the founders of Relationship Renovation and creators of the Relationship Renovation Model™, as well as hosts of the Relationship Renovation Podcast. They blend raw honesty, humor, and decades of combined experience to help couples deepen intimacy and build emotional safety. Known for their vulnerability and real-life storytelling, they share practical, research-backed tools rooted in attachment science and nervous system regulation. EJ is also the founder of Men Who Do the Work, a group helping thousands of men create emotional safety and show up more intentionally in their relationships. Together, their work includes the nationally recognized Relationship Renovation Counseling Center in Tucson, Arizona, a globally ranked top 1% podcast, the Relationship Renovation @ Home manual (available on Amazon), a global online community, and private coaching for couples and individuals. They are passionate about helping partners break old patterns, rebuild trust, and create lasting, intentional connection. Instagram | YouTube | Facebook | TikTok Relationship Coaching | Relationship Renovation at Home Manual | Patreon Community Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/follow Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ childhood trauma healing, recovered memories, ketamine assisted therapy, emotional safety in marriage, releasing control in relationships, couples healing together, learning to feel joy, self compassion after trauma, feeling safe in your own body, we are not uniquely broken You Might Also Like: Anger: The Drink I Never Stopped Drinking The Cost of Quiet: Learning to Speak Up After Years of Silence Starting Over: You Can Lose Everything and Still Be Okay Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    Healing Trauma Together: Why You Cannot Force Safety
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The Life Shift shares real and honest conversations about the moments that change us. Host Matt Gilhooly sits with guests as they tell true stories of life-changing events, unexpected challenges, and quiet awakenings that shaped who they are today. Each episode offers meaningful and candid storytelling about grief, healing, resilience, identity, and growth. These are the personal stories that remind us what it feels like to be human. These are the turning points that stay with us. If you are drawn to personal growth, emotional well-being, or stories of how people rebuild after loss, this show offers a gentle place to land. Listeners come for the life changes. They stay for the connection. New episodes every Wednesday and Sunday. For more information, please visit https://www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com

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