Groove with Portia

Portia Booker

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. 18h ago

    When Your Parents' Trauma Becomes Your Childhood

    Can you grieve a childhood you never had? What happens when you realize your parents were carrying pain they never learned how to heal? In this episode of Groove with Portia, I sit down with Juliana Bermesch, author of Life with Less of Me, for an honest conversation about childhood trauma, complicated family relationships, generational patterns, and the many forms of grief we experience beyond death. Juliana shares how growing up with anger and anxiety shaped her understanding of her parents, particularly her mother. It wasn't until she began writing her book that she fully recognized how her mother's own childhood experiences, depression, and abusive marriage affected her ability to parent. We also explore the grief that comes with changes to our bodies and independence. Juliana opens up about surviving a severe infection that nearly cost her a leg, learning to walk again, experiencing breast cancer, and finding ways to reclaim activities and parts of her identity that once felt lost. Our conversation also touches on the pressure to prove our worth through material possessions, the challenges of trusting our bodies after serious illness, and the importance of setting boundaries with people we love. Through it all, Juliana shares why writing Life with Less of Me became an opportunity to reclaim her life's work and continue advocating for children. This conversation is a reminder that grief isn't always about losing someone. Sometimes, we're grieving the childhood, health, relationships, or future we thought we'd have. What experiences from your childhood have you found yourself understanding differently as an adult? If this conversation resonates with you, please like, share, subscribe, and join us for more meaningful conversations about adversity, grief, resilience, and finding your groove. Connect with Julianna: https://www.juliannaburmesch.com/

  2. 5d ago

    What If Resilience Isn’t About Being Strong?

    What if resilience isn't about staying strong, pushing through and pretending nothing hurts? Kat Konkoli once believed resilience meant developing a tough exterior and refusing to let life's losses affect her. After losing her father as a child, her first love at 18 and, more recently, her mother, that definition of strength eventually stopped working. In this episode of Groove with Portia, Kat and I have an honest conversation about grief, identity and what it really means to be resilient when life keeps changing. Kat shares how years of powering through eventually led her to a point where she could no longer ignore what she was carrying. Her healing journey challenged her to redefine resilience as something much different: giving herself compassion, allowing herself to feel and recognizing that being human sometimes means not being okay. We also explore the identity changes that can follow the death of someone we love. Who are we when part of our identity was connected to someone who is no longer physically here? Our conversation also turns to another kind of hidden struggle: the student who appears successful on paper while quietly falling apart. Kat reflects on being a first-generation college student, working three jobs and navigating life without a roadmap while still showing up, smiling and achieving. Today, that experience informs her work through Rising Resilience Collective and her belief that schools need to pay attention to student wellbeing alongside academic performance. We also discuss nervous system regulation, self-identity, the importance of expressing rather than repressing difficult emotions and why vulnerability can sometimes help create safer spaces for other people. After everything she has experienced, Kat's definition of finding her groove has changed too. Following the death of her mother, she is thinking differently about how limited our time really is and what it means to reconnect with the person she was before limiting beliefs and society's expectations began shaping her. This isn't a conversation about becoming tougher. It's about discovering another way to be resilient. Connect with Kat: https://www.katkonkoli.com/

  3. Oct 13

    What If Your Calling Doesn’t Look the Way You Expected?

    What happens when the life you thought you were supposed to live no longer fits the person you're becoming? Kirsten Rudberg earned her Master of Divinity believing she was following a calling. But her path didn't lead to a traditional pulpit. After graduating during the pandemic, facing uncertainty about what came next and reconnecting with a creative side she had pushed down for decades, Kirsten began discovering that ministry could take a very different form. In this episode of Groove with Portia, Kirsten and I talk about identity, faith, creativity and the grief that can accompany changing direction in life. She shares why traditional ministry wasn't the right fit for her, how podcasting became a form of ministry and why listening to other people's transformative experiences through her podcast, Byte Sized Blessings, continues to shape the way she sees the world. We also explore what loss can open within us, the connections people experience after someone they love dies and the vulnerability involved in trusting someone else with your story. Near the end of our conversation, Kirsten shares another piece of her story: growing up as the oldest of three children in a challenging home and taking on responsibilities that left little room for childhood. Today, creativity, silliness and play have become part of how she is reclaiming something she didn't get to fully experience when she was young. Sometimes finding your groove isn't about discovering an entirely new person. It may be about finally giving yourself permission to embrace the parts of you that have been waiting for room to exist. Connect with Kirsten: https://bytesizedblessings.com/

  4. Oct 8

    Good Intentions Can Still Hurt at the End of Life

    What if the things we do with the best intentions at the end of someone's life aren't actually what they want? Lisa Pahl has spent years working in hospice and helping families navigate death, dying and difficult end-of-life conversations. She is also the co-founder and current owner of The Death Deck, a tool designed to make conversations about mortality a little easier. But professional experience didn't completely prepare Lisa for what happened when she became a caregiver herself. On this episode of Groove with Portia, Lisa opens up about caring for her mother-in-law, Kay, after she was diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer in 2020. Lisa entered the experience with years of hospice knowledge and plenty of ideas. She wanted to create legacy videos, document memories and use the resources she knew could someday help the family with their grief. There was just one problem. That wasn't necessarily what Kay wanted. Lisa shares how that experience humbled her and forced her to confront an important truth about end-of-life care: even when our intentions are good, the dying person's final chapter belongs to them. We talk about the pressure caregivers and end-of-life professionals can unintentionally place on people, why passion can sometimes blind us to what someone is actually communicating, and the importance of listening instead of assuming we know what a “good death” should look like. Our conversation also takes an unexpected turn into Lisa's volunteer work supporting women through the Humane Prison Hospice Project. Lisa shares what she has witnessed among incarcerated women confronting illness, grief and mortality, including women creating memorials, making flowers from tissue paper and documenting memories of people who have died behind prison walls. That raises an even bigger question: Who gets to have their life remembered as more than the worst thing they've ever done? We also discuss why families often wait until someone is dying to ask important questions about their life, final wishes, estate, accounts and personal history. Lisa challenges another common assumption along the way: people don't necessarily hate talking about death. They may simply need a way into the conversation. From bringing The Death Deck into breweries to watching strangers spend 15 minutes discussing questions about mortality, Lisa has seen what can happen when we make death conversations less intimidating and more human. This episode is about death, but it's also about agency, dignity, caregiving, legacy, grief and the conversations that can make an incredibly difficult season a little less complicated for the people we love. Because talking about death doesn't make it happen. Sometimes it simply helps us prepare for life. Connect with Lisa Pahl and learn more about The Death Deck: https://thedeathdeck.com/

  5. Oct 6

    Grief Has No Timeline, So Why Do We Give It Three Days?

    What happens when grief doesn't give you enough time to grieve? Kellye Thunder Davis spent decades teaching meditation, mindfulness and stress management. But after experiencing the deaths of four people close to her, including her mother and her sweetheart Chris, the teacher suddenly became the student. On this episode of Groove with Portia, Kellye joins me to talk about the experiences behind her book, The Nature Codes: Healing Grief Through Nature's Energy & Reclaiming Joy, and what happened when the practices she had spent years teaching others met her own grief. Kellye opens up about cumulative loss and the reality of continuing to function while emotionally overwhelmed. As one death followed another, she found herself putting grief aside because there was always something or someone else requiring her attention. Her realization was simple but powerful: every person's passing requires a pause. We talk about anticipatory grief, the losses we postpone processing, and why reclaiming joy doesn't mean forgetting the people we've lost. Kellye also shares how meditation eventually led her to an unexpected message: “Go be in nature.” That call took her deeper into nature, where silence became one of her teachers. We explore why nature doesn't operate according to the timelines humans try to place on grief and what might change if we treated grief as sacred time instead of something we're expected to quickly overcome. Our conversation also challenges a larger contradiction: If we truly believe grief has no timeline, why do workplaces and institutions often give grieving people only a few days before expecting them to return to business as usual? We also explore the meaning behind The Nature Codes, which Kellye describes as energy in nature reflected back to the grieving heart. One of those encounters involved a mourning cloak butterfly Kellye initially believed was dead. Moments later, it flew into the air and landed on a plant above her. The experience made her think about her mother, transformation and an even bigger question: What really dies? This conversation is about cumulative grief, nature, spirituality, transformation and learning to hold sadness and joy at the same time. Because reclaiming joy doesn't mean the grief disappeared. It means we're learning how to carry both. Connect with Kellye Thunder Davis: https://kellyedavis.com/

  6. Oct 1

    Why “Holding It Together” Can Feel Like Abandonment in Grief

    What happens when everything you know professionally about grief suddenly becomes personal? Dr. Patricia Timerman had worked in suicide prevention, intervention and postvention. She had studied suicide grief and facilitated groups for people who had lost someone to suicide. Then her dear friend Scott died by suicide. Suddenly, Patricia wasn’t simply the clinician facilitating the conversation. She was grieving too. Despite everything she knew professionally, she found herself minimizing her own loss because Scott wasn’t her spouse, child or parent. It was the members of her own grief group who reminded her that the relationship label didn’t determine whether her grief mattered. On this episode of Groove with Portia, I sit down with Dr. Patricia Timerman, psychotherapist, author and founder of Advocate2Create, for an honest conversation about suicide loss, grief, guilt, identity and what happens when professional expertise meets lived experience. We also explore something that doesn’t get talked about enough: What happens after the first year of grief? Patricia shares how the first year after a loss can feel surreal, while the second year may bring the painful realization that you’re living in a reality you never chose. We also talk about the complicated experience of finding yourself laughing again while another part of you wonders how laughter is even possible. Our conversation then turns to relationships. Using her IAP model, Intention, Action and Perception, Patricia explains why two people can love and grieve the same person while experiencing one another completely differently. One person may believe they’re “holding it together” to protect someone they love, while the other person experiences that strength as emotional absence. We also discuss the guilt and unanswered questions that can accompany suicide loss, why survivors may replay the days leading up to a death searching for answers, and how that search can sometimes turn into blame or self-blame. Finally, I ask Patricia what finding her groove means after grief, immigration, losing her voice, professional reinvention and everything life has asked her to navigate. This conversation is about more than surviving grief. It’s about learning how to communicate through it, making room for different expressions of loss, and allowing grief to become part of our story without allowing it to become the entirety of who we are. Connect with Dr. Patricia Timerman: https://www.advocate2create.com/

  7. Sep 29

    How Do You Forgive the Person You Used to Be?

    What happens when you stop using drugs, but the pain that led you there is still waiting for you? On this episode of Groove with Portia, I sit down with Nikki Mammano, author of Breaking Good: A Memoir, for an honest conversation about addiction, childhood trauma, homelessness, recovery, shame, identity and learning to love the person you used to be. Nikki's life has included identities most people would never imagine existing within one story. She has experienced addiction, homelessness and incarceration, and today she is a mother, author, speaker and advocate. But our conversation isn't simply about who Nikki used to be. It's about what happens after survival. Nikki describes addiction as rooted, in her experience, in trauma and disconnection. She explains that putting down the drugs didn't automatically mean putting down everything that had brought her to addiction in the first place. She still had to confront the pain, grief and experiences she had carried with her. We also talk about something that can be difficult to reconcile in recovery: acknowledging that you were harmed while also accepting responsibility for harm you may have caused others. Nikki shares that learning to forgive and love herself despite choices she made during addiction has been one of the hardest parts of her journey. Her memoir required another level of vulnerability. Nikki spent years reconstructing her story, recording memories, speaking with people from her past and trying to tell what happened as honestly and fairly as she could. Writing the book was cathartic and painful—but she says realizing those words were actually going to be published was an entirely different battle. And then I asked Nikki a question I hadn't heard anyone ask her: Does she ever miss the woman she used to be? Her answer surprised me. Nikki doesn't miss those versions of herself. She's learned to love them. Instead of erasing the addict, the homeless woman or the woman who made painful choices, she's taken the best parts of those versions of herself forward as she's continued to grow. Today, Nikki says finding her groove means finding love within herself, extending it to others and transforming the pain she's experienced into connection, service and giving back. Connect with Nikki Mammano and learn more about Breaking Good: A Memoir: https://www.nikkimammano.com/

  8. Sep 24

    She Left Her Abuser, But the Trauma Followed Her

    Leaving an abusive relationship doesn't always mean you immediately feel free. On this episode of Groove with Portia, I sit down with Lori Carter, domestic violence survivor, advocate and founder of The Beautiful Movement, for an honest conversation about a part of survival we don't discuss enough: the aftermath. Lori shares that healing from domestic violence has been a lifelong journey. Years after leaving her abusive relationship, something as ordinary as raindrops hitting her face unexpectedly transported her back to a traumatic moment from her past. With the help of someone she trusted, Lori was finally able to recognize the trigger, release emotions she hadn't been able to express at the time and begin reclaiming something as simple as enjoying the rain. We talk about the grief that can exist after abuse, including grieving the woman you were before the relationship. Lori admits that although she had gone through therapy and poured herself into helping other women, she eventually realized there was another layer of healing she hadn't addressed: she had never grieved the woman she lost. Lori also opens up about rebuilding trust in herself before attempting to trust another person. She shares how therapy, journaling and learning to recognize warning signs became part of rebuilding the woman she remembered herself being. We also challenge one of the most common questions survivors hear: “Why didn't you just leave?” Lori explains how threats, fear and manipulation can make leaving far more complicated than outsiders understand. When her opportunity to leave finally came, Lori walked away with her child and a diaper bag. Today, Lori uses her experience to advocate for other survivors through The Beautiful Movement. This year, she was also recognized with a domestic violence survivor award, an honor that took her emotionally back to one of the darkest moments of her life and reminded her just how far she had come. And what does finding her groove mean today? For Lori, it's waking up without fear, loving herself and recognizing that she no longer has to look over her shoulder. After eight years of what she described as “breathing somebody else's air,” she can finally breathe her own. Connect with Lori Carter and learn more about The Beautiful Movement: https://www.thebeautifulmovement.com/

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5
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13 Ratings

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
    281
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Portia The Producer
  • Show Website
    Groove with Portia