Anchor Moments

Krista Patrick

Every person you pass has a story you don't know. The cashier who barely makes eye contact. The man on the corner you walk around. The refugee who lives down the street. The soccer mom who seems to have it all together. The advocate who won't stop fighting. Anchor Moments is a podcast about the experiences that made us who we are - the moments we can't stop being shaped by, whether we want to be or not. Each episode, one person shares their story. Not a celebrity. Not a politician. An everyday person, whose life you might have walked right past without knowing - and whose story, once you hear it, changes how you see them forever. Because I've come to believe one thing: it's impossible not to love someone once you know their story. Anchor Moments is trauma-informed, mental-health-aware, and built for the people who feel unseen, and for the people who want to see them.

Episodes

  1. 2D AGO

    Ep. 0 Why This Show MUST Exist

    Episode 0: Why This Show MUST Exist Before the guests. Before the stories. This one is mine. This mini-episode is dropping on my birthday. I mention in this episode that there was a point where I genuinely did not know how many more I would have. I thought it was appropriate to start here. Full episodes drop every Wednesday starting April 29th. Before anyone sits across from me and tells me the realest thing they have ever said out loud, I owe you the same. In this mini episode, I explain what Anchor Moments actually is - not the cleaned-up version, the real one. I talk about my own anchor moments: the childhood I have spent decades trying to understand, the year my family was technically homeless, and the rock bottom that was not metaphorical. I was struggling with suicidal ideation. I do not say that lightly. I say it because it is true, and I think there are people listening who know exactly what that feels like and need to hear that someone came out the other side. I made a list. Not a bucket list. Things to do with my kids. Financial goals I needed to meet to set them up. I taped it to the wall so I would see it the second I opened my eyes. Some mornings it was the only reason I stayed. Then something strange started to happen. Every item on that list turned out to teach me something I did not expect. What started as a reason to leave became a reason to stay. This show is on that list. I also explain what I mean by an anchor moment - why the anchor is often not the event itself but the response, the silence, the thing that did not happen. I talk about who comes on this show, which is not celebrities or experts or people who survived something so extraordinary that the rest of us can only marvel. It is everyone. The cashier, the refugee, the quiet neighbor, the parent who made choices they still cannot fully explain. Because I genuinely believe - not as a talking point, but as something I have lived - that it is impossible not to love someone once you know their story. If you are new here, start here. A gentle heads-up: This episode includes discussion of childhood sexual abuse, suicidal ideation, and homelessness. I share these things because they are true, and because I think someone listening needs to know they are not alone in them. Resources are below. Please take care of yourself as you listen. Resources If anything in this episode touched something real for you, please reach out for support. 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline - call or text 988 (US) Crisis Text Line - text HOME to 741741 (US) Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline - 1-800-422-4453 (US) Psychology Today therapist finder - psychologytoday.com (US and international listings) National Homeless Shelter Directory - homelessshelterdirectory.org (US) SAMHSA National Helpline (mental health, grief, substance use) - 1-800-662-4357 (US) If you're outside the US - findahelpline.com connects you to crisis support in more than 200 countries. Befrienders Worldwide offers free emotional support at befrienders.org. If you don't feel ready to call anyone, even telling one safe person you're struggling counts. If this episode stayed with you Please follow, rate, comment, and share. One text to one person is the single biggest thing you can do for a show this size, and it might be exactly what someone in your life needs today. Tag us on socials @anchormomentspod. If you have a story you think belongs here, reach out at anchormomentspod.com or email hello@anchormomentspod.com. I'm Krista Patrick. This is Anchor Moments. You are already part of someone's story. Carry that with kindness.

    20 min
  2. MAY 13

    Ep. 6 The Girl Who Stayed, Part 2

    This is Part 2 of my conversation with Grace from Grace Filled Mama. If you haven't listened to Part 1 yet, start there - you need that foundation before you come here. When we left off, Grace had just hit the lowest point of her Cinderella story. The dresses were gone. Her mom's words were still hanging in the air. In Part 2, we pick up right there - and we talk about what happened next. A suicide attempt at nine years old. What God said to her in that moment. The vision that kept her here. And then years later, the slow and honest work of actually healing. Grace also shares four of the most practical, grounded things I've heard anyone say about rebuilding yourself after a childhood like hers. I took notes. I think you will too. In this episode: The hidden dress and what it meant to her in the darkest momentsA suicide attempt at age nine and the experience that changed everythingThe vision of her future family that kept her hereMeeting her husband at sixteen and knowing immediatelyThe sexual abuse she experienced the night before her weddingEarly marriage - the hard years and what it took to stayHolding her first daughter and realizing for the first time she didn't deserve what happened to herGoing no contact with her entire familyHow the suicidal ideation finally stopped - and what actually made the differenceFour things Grace wishes someone had told her sooner:Thinking through hard things instead of toxic positivityWhat it really means to love your neighbor as yourselfA daily practice for healing from body shame and sexual abuseThe new door - why healing doesn't feel good yet, and why that's okayTrigger warnings: This episode contains a suicide attempt, sexual abuse by a parent, religious trauma, descriptions of early marriage difficulty, and detailed discussion of suicidal ideation. Please take care of yourself as you listen. Resources: United States: Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988 | 988lifeline.orgRAINN (sexual assault support): 1-800-656-4673 | rainn.orgNational Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233 | thehotline.orgCrisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741International: Crisis Text Line (UK, Canada, Ireland): Text HOME to 741741Samaritans (UK and Ireland): 116 123 | samaritans.orgBefrienders Worldwide (international suicide prevention directory): befrienders.orgInternational Association for Suicide Prevention (crisis center directory): iasp.info/resources/Crisis_CentresConnect with Grace: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/grace_filled.mama/ Keep an eye out for Grace's personal development journal for husbands - she mentioned it's dropping soon and I'm excited about it. If this episode meant something to you, share it, leave a review, or tell one person. That is how people who need this find it. Thank you for being here.

    1h 2m
  3. MAY 13

    Ep. 5 The Girl Who Stayed, Part 1

    Grace from Grace Filled Mama grew up as the seventh child in a family carrying more pain than they knew what to do with. When her mom began losing the ability to walk around the time of Grace's birth, the family's grief landed squarely on the one person least able to carry it - a little girl who spent years believing she was the reason for everything hard in her family's life. In Part 1, Grace takes us all the way back. We talk about what it felt like to grow up invisible in a crowded house, to be pulled out of her own education at age six, and to find ways to survive from the shadows. And then the packages started arriving - beautiful, mysterious dresses that kept showing up on her porch - and everything got more complicated from there. This is one of the most honest conversations I've had on this podcast. I think you'll feel that. In this episode: Growing up as the seventh child and the weight that came with thatHer mom losing the ability to walk and how that shaped the family's dynamicBeing pulled from her education at age six and learning to read on her ownMoving herself into the basement to take up less spaceThe first mystery package - and the pure joy that came with itHow her parents responded to the dresses, and what that taught her about herselfChildhood sexual abuse Suicidal ideation beginning around age sevenTrigger warnings: This episode contains childhood emotional abuse and neglect, childhood sexual abuse, suicidal ideation in a child, religious trauma, and descriptions of parental manipulation. Please take care of yourself as you listen. Resources: If anything in this episode brought something up for you, please reach out. You don't have to sit with it alone. United States: Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988 | 988lifeline.orgRAINN (sexual assault support): 1-800-656-4673 | rainn.orgChildhelp National Child Abuse Hotline: 1-800-422-4453 | childhelp.orgCrisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741International: Crisis Text Line (UK, Canada, Ireland): Text HOME to 741741Samaritans (UK and Ireland): 116 123 | samaritans.orgBefrienders Worldwide (international suicide prevention directory): befrienders.orgInternational Association for Suicide Prevention (crisis center directory): iasp.info/resources/Crisis_CentresConnect with Grace: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/grace_filled.mama/ Don't miss Part 2 - subscribe wherever you listen so it lands right in your feed. If this episode meant something to you, share it. That is how people who need it find it.

    1h 21m
  4. MAY 6

    Ep.4 The Happy Human

    Taryn Thompson learned to make a sandwich when she was three years old, in case her mom passed out and wasn't there to feed her. That's where her story starts. What follows is thirty-something years of figuring out how to love yourself when the people who were supposed to show you how... couldn't. Taryn grew up with a mother deep in addiction and a father who was emotionally absent, and she spent most of her adult life not knowing how to be okay. Panic attacks in high school. A baby at 19. Weeks without electricity. A broken engagement that became her first real rock bottom. And a diagnosis of OCD and CPTSD that finally gave language to what she'd been living with all along. But this episode isn't about surviving. It's about what Taryn built on the other side of all of it. She runs a healing practice called The Happy Human. She's building a local community space called the Regulation Room, where anyone who's overwhelmed can walk in and just breathe. She got engaged in February 2026 to someone who waited six years for her. And she'll tell you herself - she still pulls over on the side of the road sometimes because a panic attack took the feeling out of her legs. She's still healing. She just knows now that healing doesn't mean it stops. It means you know how to stay. Taryn's anchor moment isn't one thing. It's a slow accumulation of choosing herself, over and over, until one day she named her business "The Happy Human" and realized: that's actually true. Trigger warnings: childhood neglect, parental substance abuse, abandonment, poverty, grief and loss, OCD, CPTSD, panic disorder, alcohol use, and family estrangement.

    1h 32m
  5. APR 29

    Ep.3 I'm a Damn Good Mom

    Episode 3 - Teresa: I'm a Damn Good MomThe step work she put down a hundred times. The words she finally let herself mean. When you first meet Teresa, you get warmth. You get someone who will talk to absolutely anyone, who FaceTimes her sister every single morning, who moves her body every day because she knows what happens when she doesn't. What you don't see is the years she spent just surviving - going to work, keeping the lights on, showing up in all the ways that looked right from the outside while quietly disappearing on the inside. She was a functioning addict for years while raising her girls. Nobody knew. She barely knew. The version of herself she was becoming in private was starting to show up in places she did not want it to, and the fear of rejection she had carried her entire life made it almost impossible to say that to anyone out loud. Near the end of our conversation, she told me she is a damn good mom. She said it like she had finally earned the right to believe it. She has. A gentle heads-up: This episode includes discussion of addiction and recovery, childhood family dynamics, parenting through an identity you are still figuring out, and the kind of guilt that does not leave just because you have changed. Resources are below. Please take care of yourself as you listen. Resources If anything in this episode touched something real for you, please reach out for support. 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline - call or text 988 (US)Crisis Text Line - text HOME to 741741 (US)SAMHSA National Helpline (substance use, mental health) - 1-800-662-4357 (US)Narcotics Anonymous meeting finder - na.org (international)SMART Recovery (science-based alternative to 12-step, online meetings worldwide) - smartrecovery.orgPsychology Today therapist finder - psychologytoday.com (US and international listings)If you're outside the US - findahelpline.com connects you to crisis support in more than 200 countries. Befrienders Worldwide offers free emotional support at befrienders.org. If you don't feel ready to call anyone, even telling one safe person you're struggling counts. If this episode stayed with you Please follow, rate, and share. One text to one person is the single biggest thing you can do for a show this size, and it might be exactly what someone in your life needs today. Tag us on socials @anchormomentspod. If you have a story you think belongs here, reach out at hello@anchormomentspod.com. I'm Krista Patrick. This is Anchor Moments. You are already part of someone's story. Carry that with kindness.

    1h 16m
  6. APR 29

    Ep.2 Rohmel: Money is Just Paper

    Episode 2 - Rohmel: Money is Just Paper The stories of what happened to us, and who we became because of it. When Rohmel was fourteen, his mother died of cancer three months after her diagnosis. A week after that, the family friends who'd taken them in said it was time to go. He and his father - a once-celebrated chef who had simply shut down - ended up on a street with the highest murder rate in the country. Eight months. No car, no shelter, no plan. The only white kid on a block where Crips, Bloods, and the Mexican Mafia all wanted him gone. He had a knife fight his first full day. He's sixty-something now, starting a company named after his autistic stepson, training young entrepreneurs in honor of a friend's little boy who died running a lemonade stand. He says he doesn't feel fear. He also can't fully forgive himself for the divorce that cost him three years of his daughter's childhood. Both of those things are true at the same time. A gentle heads-up: This episode includes discussion of parental loss, childhood homelessness, gang violence and near-death experiences, and a parent's grief over time missed with their child. Faith is also woven throughout - as it was for Rohmel, then and now. Resources are below. Please take care of yourself as you listen. On faith in this episode Rohmel's faith isn't peripheral to his story - it's the lens he uses to look at everything in it. He names God directly and often. If that's not your language, his story still belongs to you. This show holds every guest's experience as their own, not as a prescription for anyone else. What I keep coming back to isn't the theology - it's the fact that a boy who should have died every day for eight months came home carrying both a fearlessness most of us will never know and a regret he still won't release. Both shaped who he is. And - not but - he's still becoming. Resources If anything in this episode touched something real for you, please reach out for support. 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline - call or text 988Crisis Text Line - text HOME to 741741Psychology Today therapist finder - psychologytoday.comNational Homeless Shelter Directory - homelessshelterdirectory.orgSAMHSA National Helpline (grief, mental health, substance use) - 1-800-662-4357If you don't feel ready to call anyone, even telling one safe person you're struggling counts. If this episode stayed with you Please follow, rate, and share. One text to one person is the single biggest thing you can do for a show this size, and it might be exactly what someone in your life needs today. Tag us on socials @anchormomentspod. If you have a story you think belongs here, reach out at hello@anchormomentspod.com. I'm Krista Patrick. This is Anchor Moments. You are already part of someone's story. Carry that with kindness.

    1h 51m

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
6 Ratings

About

Every person you pass has a story you don't know. The cashier who barely makes eye contact. The man on the corner you walk around. The refugee who lives down the street. The soccer mom who seems to have it all together. The advocate who won't stop fighting. Anchor Moments is a podcast about the experiences that made us who we are - the moments we can't stop being shaped by, whether we want to be or not. Each episode, one person shares their story. Not a celebrity. Not a politician. An everyday person, whose life you might have walked right past without knowing - and whose story, once you hear it, changes how you see them forever. Because I've come to believe one thing: it's impossible not to love someone once you know their story. Anchor Moments is trauma-informed, mental-health-aware, and built for the people who feel unseen, and for the people who want to see them.

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