The Life Shift | Pivotal Moments & Life Change

Matt Gilhooly
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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

  1. What Happened to You: Breaking the Cycle Sixty Years in the Making

    21H AGO ·  VIDEO

    What Happened to You: Breaking the Cycle Sixty Years in the Making

    Some of us build an entire life before we realize the foundation was made of survival, not solid ground. If you have ever pushed hard, achieved big, and still felt like something underneath you was quietly trembling, this episode is for you. Kathleen McKune grew up in a home marked by abuse, neglect, and a kind of chaos that required a five-year-old to climb up to the stove and start making dinner for her siblings. She became a high-achieving entrepreneur, a strategic facilitator, a co-founder, a mother, and an author. She did all of it with what she calls "steeled up Kathleen": walls up, eyes forward, purpose driving every step. The struggles were internal. The world only saw the results. In 2017, Kathleen was facilitating a trauma training in Kansas City when a slide went up showing the Adverse Childhood Experiences scale. She assumed most people in the room would score close to her. Most scored zero, one, or two. She had written down an eight to fib a little, knowing she was actually a nine. That moment, at 56 years old, was the first time Kathleen understood that not everyone grew up the way she did. It did not break her. It gave her language. It gave her science. And slowly, years later, it gave her permission to begin asking who she actually is underneath all the survival. What You'll Hear: How perfectionism rooted in childhood fear shaped Kathleen's entire professional identityThe moment a data slide cracked open sixty years of assumed normalcyWhat it felt like to write a book with her twin sisters and learn, in detail, what had happened to each of themThe difference between managing trauma and actually healing, and the question that finally forced her to reckon with itWhy dancing is the first piece of her authentic self she has found, and what that means for the journey aheadHow Kathleen chose the purpose that was once given to her, and what it means to finally own it About Kathleen McKune Kathleen Harnish McKune is a co-founder and CEO of Team Tech, a strategic facilitation firm, and the CEO of Remarkably Resilient, a nonprofit dedicated to trauma-informed resilience education. She co-authored the book Remarkably Resilient: Community Matters alongside her twin sisters Sharon and Karen, sharing the neuroscience of trauma and a framework for building resilience. Kathleen works with state and local governments, corrections, child welfare agencies, and incarcerated populations across Kansas, and brings both lived experience and rigorous research to her mission of helping people understand what happened to them, and how to move through it. You can find her at remarkably-resilient.com. Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/follow Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ childhood trauma recovery, adverse childhood experiences, ACEs score, breaking generational cycles, trauma-informed resilience, healing authentic self, survival perfectionism, high-functioning trauma survivor, neuroscience of trauma, what happened to you

    54 min
  2. What Survives: A Story About Loss, Resilience, and Inner Friendship

    3D AGO ·  VIDEO

    What Survives: A Story About Loss, Resilience, and Inner Friendship

    There is a kind of grief that never gets to happen out loud. It stays pressed down inside you, shaped by the people around you who couldn't hold it. Matin knows that grief. She found out her mother had died by reaching for a hand that didn't reach back. She was thirteen. And then the world she had counted on, her mother's family, her father's warmth, the permission to even cry, quietly fell away. What followed was years of building a life on her own terms. Studying in secret. Sleeping on hard surfaces just to avoid going home. Moving from Iran to Japan to finally have room to breathe. She did it without anyone telling her she could. She did it by becoming her own closest companion, the kind of friend who says, I remember when that happened, and we got through it together. Matin is a plant molecular biologist who studies mangrove trees, organisms that live between land and sea, in conditions most things can't survive. She sees herself in them. In this conversation, she shares what it took to finally reach peace, and why she believes all of us should talk about our stories, not as something brave or rare, but as something ordinary and necessary. What You'll Hear: Growing up with a father who was both deeply loving and unpredictable, and what that did to a child's sense of safetyThe moment Matin discovered her mother had died, and being told not to cryLosing her entire maternal family in the grief that followed, and the deep loneliness that set inHow she secretly studied through high school, skipped dinner for four years, and fought her way to college just to surviveBuilding an academic career across continents, including surviving a violent assault in Japan, and still choosing not to become defined by her painWhat turning forty felt like, and the inner bond she credits with getting her here Guest Bio: Matin Miryeganeh grew up in Rasht, Iran, and is now a plant molecular biologist based in Japan, where she has lived for sixteen years. She studies mangrove trees, and the connection she feels to these resilient organisms runs deeper than science. Matin is also the author of All Is Well, a memoir in which she shares her journey through loss, isolation, and the long, quiet road to peace. You can find her book on Amazon and Goodreads: https://www.amazon.com/All-Well-memoir-survival-strength/dp/B0FHH898H6 Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/follow Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ childhood grief, mother loss, growing up without support, finding inner peace, resilience, trauma healing, isolation, self-connection, immigrant journey, life transformation

    1h 1m
  3. Grief and Fatherhood: The Song That Changed Everything

    MAY 20 ·  VIDEO

    Grief and Fatherhood: The Song That Changed Everything

    Maybe you grew up loving someone who was always somewhere else. Always present in the house but somehow out of reach. If that landed in a part of you that still carries it, this episode might feel like a long exhale. Matt Fogelson grew up wanting more of his father than his father knew how to give. When his dad died unexpectedly during Matt's college years, the grief that followed wasn't just about loss. It was about all the conversations they never had, the closeness that always felt one step away. Matt went to law school, followed the family blueprint, wore his father's suits to work, and spent years trying to fill a hole that kept its shape. Then he brought his own son home for the first time. The baby wouldn't stop crying. The dog was barking. Nothing was working. And without thinking about it at all, Matt started singing. What came out was a Grateful Dead song. It wasn't logical. It was just true. And that small, strange, middle-of-the-night moment quietly became the beginning of something he'd been waiting his whole life to start. What You'll Hear: The specific moment of grief that intensified when Matt became a father himselfWhy music became a bridge to a part of himself he'd put awayHow singing the same song to his son for 14 years shaped their connectionThe bar mitzvah moment that made him realize he was repeating his father's patternsWhat writing a memoir taught him about understanding and forgiving a man he never fully knewThe advice his aunt gave him after his father died, the advice he rolled his eyes at, and why he wishes he'd heard it sooner Matt Fogelson is an author, former attorney, and lifelong music obsessive who spent decades navigating the emotional distance passed down through generations of his family. His memoir, Restrung: Fatherhood in a Different Key, traces the journey from grief to presence through the language of music. He lives with his family and can be found at mattfogelson.com. Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/follow Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ father son relationship, grief after losing a parent, emotional distance in families, fatherhood and identity, music as healing, inherited trauma, becoming a present parent, memoir writing as grief, breaking family patterns, unresolved loss

    53 min
  4. Honesty Over Comfort: The Confession That Changed Everything

    MAY 17 ·  VIDEO

    Honesty Over Comfort: The Confession That Changed Everything

    Maybe you've done something you're not proud of. Maybe you've done it more than once. And maybe the hardest part wasn't the doing, it was the sitting with what it said about you. Nick Gomez grew up moving fast, through friendships, through relationships, through versions of himself he wasn't sure he believed in. Raised in Cancun with a lot of freedom and very little guidance, he learned early that if no one found out, it didn't really happen. That belief followed him into adulthood, into relationship after relationship, until one moment changed the math entirely. This is a conversation about what it actually takes to tell the truth when you know it's going to cost you. About the patterns we carry from childhood without realizing it. About grief, writing, the strange relief of finally saying the thing out loud, and what it looks like to slowly, imperfectly become someone you actually respect. What You'll Hear: Why Nick kept repeating the same pattern across three relationships, and what finally broke itThe three months he spent deciding whether to confess, and what helped him find the courageHow writing a memoir in 30 days helped him process what he'd done and understand whyThe role his father's death played in reshaping who he wanted to beWhat honesty looks like now, in dating, in friendships, in how he shows up for himselfWhy grief so often goes unspoken, and what it actually looks like to support someone who's losing someone Guest Bio: Nick Gomez is an author, filmmaker, and coach based in the United States. Originally from Cancun, Mexico, Nick has written multiple memoirs exploring identity, honesty, and the messier parts of being human. Two of his books are available as free audiobooks on YouTube. He approaches his work, and his life, with a commitment to authenticity that took years to build and that he keeps rebuilding every day. You can find him at https://www.realnicholasgomez.com/ Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/follow Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ self-sabotage, relationship patterns, emotional honesty, cheating and confession, childhood neglect, self-worth, identity, memoir writing, psychedelic therapy, grief, father loss, authenticity, codependency, personal transformation

    59 min
  5. Grief, Ancestors & Cuba: Finding Your Mother Again

    MAY 13 ·  VIDEO

    Grief, Ancestors & Cuba: Finding Your Mother Again

    Maybe you know this feeling. Someone died and you kept going, because that was what you were supposed to do. You stayed busy, you stayed capable, and somewhere along the way you convinced yourself that you had handled it. Rebe Huntman lost her mother to cancer at 19. The grief counselors told her to move forward. So she did, with discipline and determination and a full, successful life. But 30 years later, on the edge of turning 50, she realized she had never actually let herself miss her. Not really. This episode follows Rebe's pilgrimage to Cuba, a country where the dead are not gone, where ancestors are spoken to daily and the veil between worlds is treated as thin and navigable. What she found there, in the dances, in the drumming, in the quiet workroom of a spiritist in El Cobre, was not magic for its own sake. It was permission. Permission to stop moving past her grief and start staying in it. What You'll Hear: How Rebe mastered the art of moving forward and the cost it quietly carriedThe moment in Cuba when her understanding of death, grief, and ancestry completely shiftedWhat it felt like to reimagine the hospital room scene she had been carrying for 30 yearsHow a country with a different relationship to death gave her a new way to love her motherThe small, daily rituals she brought home from Cuba and what they have meant for her healingWhy showing up fully as yourself can become a quiet gift to everyone around you Guest Bio: Rebe Huntman is a writer, former Latin dancer, and choreographer who has spent her career at the intersection of movement, storytelling, and spirit. She spent decades running a professional dance company and teaching college and high school before turning her full attention to writing. She splits her time between Delaware, Ohio and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Her debut memoir, My Mother in Havana: A Memoir of Magic and Miracle, was published in 2025 and chronicles her transformative pilgrimage to Cuba in search of her mother and herself. Find her at rebehuntman.com and on Instagram @rebehuntman. Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/follow Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ grief after mother's death, ancestral healing, Afro-Cuban spirituality, pilgrimage and transformation, learning to talk to the dead, disenfranchised grief, mother loss, life after 50 identity, Santeria and healing, memoir of magic and grief

    56 min
  6. Living With MS: Finding Strength From the Inside Out

    MAY 10

    Living With MS: Finding Strength From the Inside Out

    Maybe you have had a moment where your body tried to tell you something and you looked the other way. A small signal, easy to explain away. This episode is for anyone who has ever dismissed a whisper, and then had to reckon with what that whisper was trying to say. Shruti grew up as a working mom in Melbourne, living a normal, full life, when tingling in her feet gradually became something she could no longer ignore. Over years, that quiet signal grew into a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, a progression from walker to wheelchair, and a complete reshaping of her career, her home life, and her sense of self. What she found on the other side was not what most people might expect. She found strength, not the performed kind, not the kind someone else told her she had to have, but a deep, steady resilience that rose out of the hardest circumstances of her life. This is a conversation about what it means to carry an invisible illness through a world that cannot see it. It is about traveling alone to Kerala to try Ayurvedic therapy on nothing but hope. It is about reliving your hardest moments to write a memoir, and about looking back at all the worry you carried before, and finally letting it go. What You'll Hear: How Shruti's MS symptoms progressed over nearly a decade before a turning point shifted her entire lifeWhat it felt like to lose her job, her mobility, and her previous identity, and how she moved through thatThe solo trip to Kerala for Ayurvedic treatment, and what she found there beyond the therapy itselfHow writing her memoir, My Invisible Battles, helped her discover a version of herself she had never met beforeThe connection between stress, chronic illness, and finally releasing the need to overthink everythingWhy she believes strength is not something anyone can teach you, and where it actually comes from Guest Bio: Shruti Ghate is an author and mother of two based in Melbourne, Australia. After years of living with multiple sclerosis, she published her memoir, My Invisible Battles, to offer guidance and solidarity to others navigating an invisible autoimmune illness. Her work is grounded in the belief that sharing our stories can reach farther than we imagine. Find Shruti and her book at www.shrutighate.com, and on Amazon Kindle worldwide. Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/follow Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ living with multiple sclerosis, invisible illness, chronic illness resilience, autoimmune disease journey, progressive MS, finding strength, wellness memoir, identity after diagnosis, invisible battles, caregiver support MS

    44 min
  7. Part of Me Died That Day: Learning to Live After the Worst Day of Your Life

    MAY 6

    Part of Me Died That Day: Learning to Live After the Worst Day of Your Life

    There is a particular kind of grief that does not announce itself. It arrives in the middle of an ordinary drive, through a phone ringing on a Sunday afternoon, in the voice of a stranger delivering news your brain simply refuses to hold. If you have ever felt the world keep moving while you were standing completely still, this episode will find you. Stephen Panus lost his 16-year-old son Jake in August 2020, on a weekend trip that started with a peace sign from the driveway and ended in a parking lot, screaming to the sky. What followed was not a clean journey through stages. It was survival. One hour, then one day. The weight of holding a family together when you could barely hold yourself. The rage that comes when someone else’s carelessness takes everything. And the strange, hard-won realization that forgiveness was not about letting anyone off the hook. It was about releasing himself. In this conversation, Stephen talks about what grief actually does to a body, a marriage, a family. How his wife and son experienced the same loss and walked entirely different paths through it. How the Jake Panus Walk On Scholarship grew from a house full of flowers into something that keeps his son’s name alive in the world. And what it means to show up for someone in pain, when there are no right words and showing up is the only thing that matters. What You’ll Hear: The moment Stephen received the phone call that changed everything, and what happened in the minutes afterThe complexity of grief when anger, self-blame, and love are all happening at the same timeWhy the second year of grief was harder than the first, and the role of therapy in keeping his family togetherHow the Jake Panus Walk On Scholarship grew from an impulse to honor a son into a living legacyThe difference between knowing you lost someone and actually accepting itWhat Stephen would say to anyone who doesn’t know what to do when someone they love is suffering Guest Bio: Stephen Panus spent his career as a sports marketing executive, building brands behind the scenes. In August 2020, his 16-year-old son Jake was killed in a car accident on Block Island, Rhode Island. In the years since, Stephen has become a speaker, an author, and the creator of the Jake Panus Walk On Scholarship, a series of three scholarships honoring Jake’s spirit of compassion and lifting others. His book, Walk On, is available now and all proceeds support the scholarships. Stephen lives in Connecticut with his wife Kelly and son Liam. https://www.stephenpanus.com/ Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/follow Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ Keywords: child loss grief, father losing a son, grief and forgiveness, sudden loss, grief guilt shame, surviving the loss of a child, grief therapy, learning to live after loss, grieving father, walk on scholarship

    56 min
  8. Coma at 14: Learning to Walk, Talk, and Trust Yourself Again

    APR 28

    Coma at 14: Learning to Walk, Talk, and Trust Yourself Again

    There's a moment in Nick Prefontaine's story where the doctors step outside the hospital room to deliver news they don't think he can hear. His mom stops them. She knows better. Even in a coma, she believes her son is taking things in. That one act of belief, quiet and firm and unwilling to accept the ceiling others had set, shaped everything that came after. Nick was fourteen when a snowboarding accident put him in a coma for three weeks and rewrote the map his future was supposed to follow. The doctors said he might never walk, talk, or eat on his own again. What they didn't know was that Nick was already setting a different goal. Before he could even form words, he was mouthing them. He was going to run out of that hospital. This episode is about what it looks like to recover not just a body, but a sense of self, a purpose, and a calling. Nick shares the four-part framework he unknowingly used at fourteen and has spent decades refining. It's not a system built for winners. It's built for people in the middle of the worst thing that's ever happened to them. What You'll Hear: The snowboarding accident that changed everything and the series of unlikely moments that kept Nick aliveWhat his mother did in the hospital room that set the tone for his entire recoveryThe internal voice Nick heard before he could speak, and how he's learned to trust it as an adultThe STEP system: Support, Trust, Energy, Persistence, and how Nick applied it without knowing itThe long quiet after the fanfare faded, and what it felt like when regular life resumedHow Nick finally said yes to the calling he'd been putting off for years and what happened when he did Guest Bio: Nick Prefontaine is a speaker, coach, and founder of Common Goal. At fourteen, a snowboarding accident left him in a coma with injuries so severe that doctors doubted he'd walk again. He did. He ran. And eighteen months later he was door-knocking in neighborhoods, beginning a career in real estate that would eventually make room for the work he was always meant to do. Today, Nick works one-on-one with trauma survivors, accident victims, and people in the middle of life crises, sharing the STEP system he used to recover and helping others find their next step when they can't see it yet. You can find him and download the full STEP system at nickprefontaine.com/step. Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/follow Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/

    57 min
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About

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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