Groove with Portia

Portia Booker
  • 5.0 (13)
  • Health & Fitness
  • Updated Semiweekly

Welcome, friend. I’m Portia Booker, storyteller, producer, and host of Groove with Portia. Groove with Portia is a storytelling podcast centered on one powerful question: how did you find your groove through adversity? If you’re here, chances are you’ve experienced grief. The loss of a loved one, a dream, or the version of yourself you once knew. Maybe you pivoted from corporate life into entrepreneurship, or maybe everything you worked for was suddenly stripped away. Every Thursday, I sit down with everyday people, leaders, creatives, and visionaries who share how they turned pain into purpose, obstacles into opportunities, and grief into growth. These conversations are honest, soulful, and healing. Groove with Portia is recognized as a top 10 percent global podcast, reflecting a growing community that believes in the power of storytelling to guide, teach, and restore. If you’re navigating loss, faith, mental wellness, or a major life transition, you’re in the right place. Welcome to the groove.

  1. 22h ago

    Flowers Die. Grief Doesn't. So How Do We Show Up?

    What if moving on was never the goal? On this episode of Groove with Portia, I sit down with Kelly Edmondson, founder of Timely Presence and mother of Darius, for an intimate conversation about child loss, continuing bonds and what it really means to keep living when someone you love is no longer physically here. Darius was Kelly's oldest child, born on Christmas Day, and someone she describes as magnetic, determined and a gift to the world. He died at 28, but Kelly doesn't believe her relationship with her son ended with his death. She shares how she continues to mother him, the special place she created to feel connected to him and why hearing other people tell stories about Darius gives her new experiences of her son even after his death. We also challenge the language of “moving on.” Kelly says she will never stop being Darius's mother. Instead of leaving him behind, she has learned how to integrate his loss into her life while continuing to live, love and carry his memory forward. As a former trauma ICU nurse, Kelly had been present for hundreds of people at the end of life. But losing her own son taught her something her professional experience couldn't: the pain experienced at the moment of death isn't the entirety of grief. Sometimes grief reveals itself months later, when you reach for the phone, encounter a milestone or suddenly realize what that person's absence means in your everyday life. That realization eventually became part of the heart behind Timely Presence. The company helps people show up for grieving loved ones throughout the first year by sending gifts around birthdays, anniversaries, Mother's Day, holidays and other predictable emotional milestones. As Kelly puts it, “flowers die and grief doesn't.” This isn't a conversation about leaving our loved ones behind. It's about learning how grief and joy can coexist, continuing the bonds that death cannot erase and giving ourselves permission to stay present while carrying the people we love with us. Connect with Kelly and learn more about Timely Presence: thetimelypresence.com

  2. 1d ago

    Why Some of Life's Biggest Detours Become New Beginnings

    What happens when the life you built suddenly changes direction? On this episode of Groove with Portia, I sit down with entrepreneur and Podcast Connections co-founder Noémi Beres for a conversation about grief, resilience, entrepreneurship, reinvention and learning how to embrace the season you're in. Noémi shares the lasting lessons she carries from her father, who continued planning for the future and showing up for his family while living with cancer. She also opens up about losing her father and grandmother within a short period of time, followed by another major loss when the successful travel business she had built since 2007 came to an abrupt end during the pandemic. Instead of giving up on entrepreneurship, Noémi started again. We talk about what that season taught her about resilience, raising her son while navigating online schooling, building a new business from scratch and discovering that sometimes the detours we never planned can reveal strengths we didn't know we had. We also get into the podcasting industry and have a candid conversation about what many hosts and guests overlook. Noémi explains why successful podcasting requires consistency, preparation and genuine relationship building, and why podcast guesting should be viewed as more than a one-time opportunity to promote yourself. For Noémi, podcasting is ultimately about connection. She calls podcast guesting one of today's most powerful networking tools and encourages guests to continue building relationships with hosts after the recording ends rather than simply moving on to the next interview. And when I ask Noémi what finding her groove means after everything she's experienced, her answer brings the entire conversation together: discovering who she is throughout the journey, accepting that life will continue to change, doing the inner work and remembering to enjoy the life happening right now. Connect with Noémi Beres: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noemiberes/

  3. 2d ago

    How to Find Yourself After a Toxic Relationship

    Can you find gratitude for what an experience taught you without being grateful that it happened? On this episode of Groove with Portia, I sit down with author Nicole Kranz for a candid conversation about toxic relationships, psychological abuse, self-respect and what it takes to rediscover yourself after leaving a relationship that changed you. Nicole shares why she doesn't believe healing requires forgiving or forgetting. Instead, she found an unexpected form of gratitude—not for the harm she experienced, but for the lessons she carried forward. One of the biggest was learning the power of saying no and understanding that self-respect is a boundary worth protecting. We also challenge one of the most common questions asked of people experiencing abusive or controlling relationships: “Why didn't you just leave?” Nicole explains why leaving can be far more complicated than it appears from the outside and challenges friends and loved ones to ask a different question: “How can I help you?” Nicole also opens up about what she describes as an “entire reset” of herself. Rebuilding required confronting shame, sadness, old patterns and beliefs about herself while learning what it meant to truly respect the woman she was becoming. Her novel, This Is Bullsh*t, Not a Love Story, draws from those experiences and challenges us to recognize the difference between love and a relationship where respect has disappeared. This conversation isn't about putting a positive spin on trauma. It's about what can happen when anger no longer gets to write the rest of your story. Sometimes finding your groove means looking back at the person you once were with compassion, choosing yourself and deciding you're no longer willing to settle. As Nicole shared at the end of our conversation, part of her journey was realizing that the first person she needed to be able to count on was herself. Connect with Nicole Kranz: nicolekranz.com

  4. Sep 10

    Can Virtual Reality Teach Your Brain to Calm Down?

    What happens when you're trained to tell everyone else's story but never given the space to process what those stories are doing to you? Before becoming the CEO of Healium, Sarah Hill spent years working in television news. She covered homicides, domestic violence, grieving parents, court cases and some of the worst days of people's lives. Like many journalists, there wasn't always an opportunity to stop and process what she had witnessed before moving on to the next story. Eventually, Sarah realized those experiences had accumulated. On this episode of Groove with Portia, Sarah and I have a conversation that hits close to home for both of us as former television journalists. We talk about the stories journalists carry long after the cameras turn off, career transitions, resilience and why our paths don't always have to be linear. We also explore the technology Sarah went on to build. Healium uses virtual reality with biofeedback and neurofeedback to allow users to visualize changes in things like heart rate and brain patterns while experiencing immersive environments. Sarah describes it as “media as medicine”—using storytelling and immersive media as tools for self-awareness and self-regulation. But one of the most important parts of our conversation is what Healium isn't. Sarah emphasizes that the technology is not a diagnostic tool and isn't intended to replace medication or professional counseling. Instead, she sees it as another tool that can work alongside human care. Because no matter how sophisticated our technology becomes, sometimes what a person needs most is another human being willing to see them. And perhaps Sarah's biggest reminder is that finding your groove doesn't require following a straight path. Sometimes the unexpected turns give us exactly what we need for whatever we're meant to build next. Connect with Sarah Hill and learn more about Healium: https://tryhealium.com/

  5. Sep 8

    What Would You Sacrifice to Save Your Child?

    Imagine being told your child might not live past 18. For Richard Williams, that wasn't a hypothetical. After losing Trevor's twin brother, Nigel, before birth, Richard nearly lost Trevor as well because of severe Hemophilia A. Years later, Trevor's mother died from cancer when Trevor was only five. On this episode of Groove with Portia, Richard sits down with me in person to share what it meant to become a father determined to give his son as much life as possible—no matter how long that life might be. Richard describes a reality most families never see. Trevor's clotting factor alone could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. With insurance policies carrying lifetime caps, Richard learned to monitor how much treatment had been covered, update his résumé and change employers before his son's medical expenses exhausted the available insurance coverage. He did this for approximately 20 years while helping support a household of seven children. But Richard's story didn't end when Trevor grew up. Through Save One Life, Richard learned about children with bleeding disorders living in countries where families may have little access to treatment, medical expertise or financial resources. Today, he sponsors children internationally, serves on the organization's scholarship committee and is taking his advocacy on the road. At 75, Richard is riding his vintage motorcycle nearly 5,000 miles across the United States to raise awareness and help other families. This conversation is about more than hemophilia. It's about what a parent will sacrifice for their child, the healthcare resources we often take for granted, the loved ones we continue carrying with us after they're gone, and what can happen when we decide our adversity will not be the end of our story. Connect with Richard: https://saveonelife.net/

  6. Sep 4

    When a Diagnosis Changes Your Life

    In this powerful episode of Groove with Portia, host Portia Booker welcomes Ellen Lubensky, a patient advocate and founder of the Mental Health Choice Project, for a vulnerable and important conversation about mental health treatment, misdiagnosis, psychiatric medication, medication withdrawal, informed consent, and patient rights. Ellen shares her personal experience of being diagnosed after a brief psychiatric evaluation while attending Stanford University and the lasting impact that diagnosis had on her life. She opens up about navigating years of treatment, experiencing serious physical challenges, questioning the care she received, and finding the strength to advocate for herself. Together, Portia and Ellen explore what it means to feel pressured into treatment decisions while experiencing fear, anxiety, grief, or emotional distress. They discuss the importance of asking questions, getting second, third, or even fourth opinions, and remembering that patients deserve to understand their options before agreeing to a treatment plan. In this episode, they talk about: Why a quick diagnosis can have long-term effects on a person’s life and medical records The importance of informed consent in mental health and all areas of healthcare Why signing paperwork is not the same as truly understanding a treatment plan How to ask questions about medication risks, benefits, alternatives, and possible side effects Why it can be helpful to bring a trusted friend, family member, or advocate to medical appointments How to slow down and take a pause before making non-emergency healthcare decisions Why getting a second opinion can be an act of self-advocacy, not disrespect The role of trust, communication, and collaboration between patients and providers The grief, loneliness, and friendship challenges that can arise during difficult health experiences The importance of building a support system when you are struggling emotionally Ellen’s work through the Mental Health Choice Project to promote patient choice and awareness One of the central messages of this conversation is simple but powerful: you have choices. You are allowed to ask for clarity. You are allowed to request time to think. You are allowed to seek another provider. And you are allowed to say no when something does not feel right for you. Ellen also shares information about her advocacy work through the Mental Health Choice Project, which seeks to encourage more compassionate, transparent, and patient-centered mental healthcare. To connect with Ellen Lubensky, visit her professional website at ellenlubensky.com and learn more about the Mental Health Choice Project at mentalhealthchoiceproject.org. If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of self-harm or suicide in the United States, call or text 988 to connect with the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. If there is immediate danger or a medical emergency, call 911 or contact local emergency services. This episode is intended for educational and awareness purposes only. It is not medical, psychiatric, legal, or therapeutic advice. Do not start, stop, or change medication without speaking with a qualified healthcare professional. If this conversation resonates with you, please like, comment, share, and subscribe to Groove with Portia for more conversations about grief, healing, mental health, advocacy, and navigating life’s most difficult moments.

  7. Aug 27

    Who Do You Reach for When You're Not Okay?

    We have more ways to communicate than ever before. We can text, chat, connect through social media and even turn to artificial intelligence when we need someone—or something—to talk to. So why are so many people still feeling alone? On this episode of Groove with Portia, I sit down with Dena Trujillo, CEO of Crisis Text Line, to explore how the mental health conversation is changing and what we may be missing when it comes to loneliness, connection and asking for help. Dena shares her perspective from leading an organization providing free, 24/7 mental health support through text, chat and WhatsApp. Together, we talk about the role technology can play in making support more accessible, while also asking an important question: How do we embrace innovation without losing the human connection people need? We also explore what Crisis Text Line can teach us about listening without immediately trying to fix someone, the role volunteers play in creating meaningful connection, and what it takes to sustain the people and organizations doing emotionally demanding, mission-driven work. At the heart of this conversation is something much simpler than technology: people need to feel heard. And sometimes asking for help doesn't begin with a phone call. Sometimes it begins with a text. Connect with Dena and learn more about Crisis Text Line: https://www.crisistextline.org/ Connect with Portia: https://linktr.ee/portiabkr Interested in being a future guest on Groove with Portia? Send your story or interview pitch to portiatheproducer@gmail.com

  8. Aug 13

    Menopause, Identity and the Woman You’re Becoming

    We’re finally talking about menopause. But are we really listening to what women are experiencing? On this episode of Groove with Portia, I welcome back my longtime friend and menopause expert Carleeka Basnight Menendez for a conversation about where the menopause conversation is today—and the work that still needs to be done. We’ll talk about the symptoms women still aren't prepared for, advocating for yourself at the doctor's office, creating menopause-inclusive workplaces, and the emotional, personal, and spiritual changes that can come with this season of life. Connect with Carleeka: https://www.insoinc.org/ Connect with Portia: https://linktr.ee/portiabkr Interested in being a future guest on Groove with Portia? Send your story or interview pitch to: portiatheproducer@gmail.com

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5
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About

Welcome, friend. I’m Portia Booker, storyteller, producer, and host of Groove with Portia. Groove with Portia is a storytelling podcast centered on one powerful question: how did you find your groove through adversity? If you’re here, chances are you’ve experienced grief. The loss of a loved one, a dream, or the version of yourself you once knew. Maybe you pivoted from corporate life into entrepreneurship, or maybe everything you worked for was suddenly stripped away. Every Thursday, I sit down with everyday people, leaders, creatives, and visionaries who share how they turned pain into purpose, obstacles into opportunities, and grief into growth. These conversations are honest, soulful, and healing. Groove with Portia is recognized as a top 10 percent global podcast, reflecting a growing community that believes in the power of storytelling to guide, teach, and restore. If you’re navigating loss, faith, mental wellness, or a major life transition, you’re in the right place. Welcome to the groove.

Information

  • Creator
    Portia Booker
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    271
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Portia The Producer
  • Show Website
    Groove with Portia