A Fresh Story

Fresh Starts
Fresh Starts
  • 4.9 (97)
  • Personal Journals
  • Updated Weekly

A Fresh Story Podcast is a top 2% personal journals podcast, hosted by sisters Olivia Dreizen Howell and Jenny Dreizen, that delves into courageous life choices, creative concepts, and fresh start stories through candid conversations. The podcast explores cultural subjects often overlooked, offering listeners a fresh perspective on various life experiences. Join the sisters and guests on a journey discussing bravery, significant decisions, and fresh starts, navigating the complexities of the human experience.

  1. 1d ago

    Fresh Reads: Normalizing Normal: Motherhood Without the Filter by Emily Feret

    There is a particular kind of loneliness that can come with becoming a mother: the moment you realize everyone warned you that you would be tired, but almost nobody warned you that you might lose pieces of yourself. Creator and author Emily Feret built her platform by saying the things mothers are often afraid to say out loud—the house is messy, the baby won’t stop crying, your body feels unfamiliar, your marriage has changed, you miss who you used to be, and sometimes motherhood is simply really, really hard. In this episode of A Fresh Story: Book Talk, Emily joins Olivia to talk about the book that grew out of that radical honesty, Normalizing Normal: Motherhood Without the Filter. Covering the terrain from pregnancy through the early years of parenting, Normalizing Normal is less a traditional parenting manual than the big sister Emily wishes someone had handed her before she became a mom. She writes about postpartum life, identity, guilt, changing bodies, relationships, friendship, overwhelm, and the strange emotional duality of loving your children fiercely while sometimes not particularly enjoying motherhood. Emily and Olivia talk about the advice mothers are given—“sleep when the baby sleeps,” “don’t blink,” “enjoy every moment”—and all the things hidden underneath those phrases. What happens when you can’t enjoy every moment? What if the baby screams in the car for eight months? What if becoming a mother changes your marriage, your friendships, your relationship with your body, and the way you recognize yourself? And why are mothers so often expected to qualify every difficult truth with an immediate reminder that they are grateful? For Emily, writing this book was also the fulfillment of a deeply personal dream. Becoming an author had lived on what she calls her “deathbed list”—the things she knew she would regret never attempting—and, fittingly, the opportunity eventually arrived through an Instagram DM she initially thought was a scam. But the heart of the book is much bigger than accomplishing a dream. It is about removing shame through recognition: the relief of discovering that another mother has thought the thought you were afraid to say, struggled with the thing you thought everyone else could handle, or needed to find herself again after becoming responsible for everyone else. Normalizing Normal makes room for two truths at once: motherhood can be beautiful, and motherhood can be extraordinarily hard. If you are becoming a parent, deep in the early years, emerging from them, or simply trying to find yourself again after life changed you, this conversation is a reminder that honesty can be its own kind of village.

    Fresh Reads: Normalizing Normal: Motherhood Without the Filter by Emily Feret

  2. Jul 12

    Fresh Reads: The Parisian Heist: A Novel by Jo Piazza

    Picture a twenty-something widow in Paris, a sick one-year-old on her hip, and an attic full of paintings nobody wants—not galleries, not critics, not even her own family. That widow was Jo van Gogh, and the paintings belonged to her late husband's brother, a mostly forgotten failure named Vincent. What she did next didn't just save a legacy. It invented one. Bestselling author Jo Piazza tells her story in The Parisian Heist, and by the end of this episode, you may never look at a Van Gogh—or a woman rebuilding her life from nothing—the same way again. The Parisian Heist moves between two timelines that mirror each other in surprising ways. In the past, we watch Jo van Gogh turn grief and financial desperation into a masterclass in reinvention—she becomes an art dealer, manipulates the market, and manufactures the myth of the "tortured genius" we still associate with Vincent today. In a second timeline set in 1996, three broke art students get pulled into a heist against a corrupt, billionaire art-dealing family, guided by a widow with her own scores to settle. Piazza calls it a "delicious beach read," but underneath the spice—and yes, there's a very spicy memorable scene in the Louvre — sit real questions about who gets to be called an artist, who gets the credit, and what a woman is capable of when she has nothing left to lose. Piazza didn't just research Jo van Gogh's story — she recognized it. As a journalist-turned-novelist raising three kids, she's candid about the balls she drops daily, the deadlines she meets with help from what she calls "an army of babysitters," and a marriage where, in her words, she "married her glass ceiling." That honesty is exactly why this book lands the way it does: it isn't really about Impressionist art. It's about what a woman builds when the life she expected falls apart, and about the quiet, radical decision to keep going anyway. For anyone standing in their own version of that attic — starting over after loss, after motherhood rearranges everything, after the version of life they planned stops making sense — Jo van Gogh's story, and Jo Piazza's telling of it, is proof that reinvention isn't just possible. It's often where the real story begins. Go pick up a copy of The Parisian Heist by Jo Piazza HERE!

    Fresh Reads: The Parisian Heist: A Novel by Jo Piazza

  3. Jun 26

    Simple Tips to Support Yourself: What Can I Do to Be Gentle With Myself In Hard Seasons?

    In this episode of A Fresh Story: Simple Tips to Support Yourself, Olivia Howell sits down with Rachel Lovitt, a holistic movement coach and Reiki practitioner who helps people reconnect with their bodies, rediscover childlike curiosity, and feel like themselves again. Rachel’s specialty is making self-care radically simple — a refreshing counter to the wellness “noise” around biohacking, optimization, and rigid routines that can leave you feeling like you’re already failing. For anyone navigating overwhelm, caregiving demands, or a major life transition, this conversation is a practical guide to building emotional resilience through small, sustainable actions rather than all-or-nothing effort. Throughout the episode, Rachel reframes rest and slowing down not as indulgence but as a foundation for endurance — pausing now is what allows you to keep going through big life transitions later. Her approach is especially supportive for busy parents, caregivers in the “sandwich generation,” and anyone rebuilding routines after a season of change, offering ways to quiet self-judgment and tune out the pressure to perform wellness “correctly.” If you’ve been craving a more compassionate, genuinely doable approach to your mental and physical well-being, this Simple Tips to Support Yourself episode delivers expert-backed, actionable guidance for caring for yourself one small, joyful step at a time.

    Simple Tips to Support Yourself: What Can I Do to Be Gentle With Myself In Hard Seasons?

  4. Jun 22

    Simple Tips to Support Yourself: How Can I Start Over After Divorce?

    In this episode of A Fresh Story: Simple Tips to Support Yourself, host Olivia Howell sits down with Ron Platt, co-founder of the National Association for Single and Divorced Families (NASDF) — the only national organization built to surround divorcing parents and single-family households with practical products, services, and support in one place. Ron brings a rare combination of insider expertise and lived experience: a background in insurance product development, hands-on advocacy work in foster care, and his own journey through a difficult relationship and financial hardship. Listeners looking for grounded divorce recovery tips will come away understanding how to stop piecing together help from a dozen scattered sources and instead build a real support system as they navigate starting over after divorce. The conversation turns quickly to actionable strategies. Ron breaks down the concrete resources families can tap during a transition: vetted referrals for attorneys, mediators, divorce coaches, and financial planners; free and discounted mental health care sessions; real estate support that can offset closing costs by thousands of dollars; and career services designed to help at-home parents re-enter the workforce and close resume gaps with confidence. He also explains Support Insured, a first-of-its-kind insurance product that guarantees child support and alimony payments continue if the paying parent dies, becomes disabled, or involuntarily loses their job — a safety net that speaks directly to the financial anxiety at the heart of single parenting advice and effective co-parenting strategies. Beyond the logistics, Ron offers honest, expert-backed guidance on emotional resilience during life's hardest seasons. Drawing on his own experience working with a coach through crisis, he shares simple daily practices anyone can start today: journaling your thoughts, writing down goals and reviewing them regularly, clarifying your “why,” and anchoring each morning with movement, affirmations, and gratitude. His core message — “get comfortable being uncomfortable” — reframes discomfort as the doorway to growth. Whether you're newly separated, deep in co-parenting logistics, or simply feeling wobbly, this episode delivers clear, supportive tools to help you move forward with clarity and strength.

    Simple Tips to Support Yourself: How Can I Start Over After Divorce?

  5. Jun 22

    Simple Tips to Support Yourself: How Can I Ask Better Questions to Be Heard More Clearly?

    Gina Pellettieri is a trained divorce mediator and matrimonial attorney based in Suffolk County on Long Island, New York, and in this episode she reframes mediation as a life skill rather than a legal formality. At its core, mediation is a structured form of negotiation: a neutral third party helps two people facilitate an agreement they can both live with. Where Gina’s expertise really shines is in communication — understanding what people actually want, and helping them say it clearly. Listeners looking for grounded divorce recovery tips and a calmer path through conflict will come away with a framework they can use far beyond the divorce table. Gina also shares practical communication tools listeners can apply immediately. One favorite: before responding to someone who’s venting, ask whether they want to be “heard, helped, or hugged” — a quick way to meet people where they are instead of solving a problem they didn’t ask you to solve. She breaks down the psychology of negotiation (why a little back-and-forth helps both sides feel they arrived at a fair outcome) and shows how the same skills apply to everything from co-parenting logistics to deciding what’s for dinner. Her closing insight ties it together with the show’s themes of emotional resilience and starting over after divorce: don’t lie to yourself. Ask the honest questions, write down your answers, and you’ll be far better equipped to ask them of anyone else. It’s practical, expert-led single parenting advice and self-advocacy in one accessible package. Learn more about Gina: https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/resourceguide/law-office-of-gina-m-pellettieri-pllc

    Simple Tips to Support Yourself: How Can I Ask Better Questions to Be Heard More Clearly?

  6. Jun 17

    Fresh Reads: Are We Friends Yet? How to Deepen Your Relationships and Create the Community You Need by Alex Alexander

    At some point, most of us have stood on the edge of a new chapter — a divorce, a move, a loss, a reinvention — and felt the quiet, aching realization that we have no one to call. Not no one, exactly. But no one close enough. No one present. No one who really knows the texture of your everyday life. That loneliness isn't weakness. And according to author Alex Alexander, it isn't permanent either. But fixing it requires unlearning almost everything society has told us about what friendship is supposed to look like. In this episode of A Fresh Story: Book Talk, Olivia sits down with her longtime friend and fellow community-builder Alex Alexander to celebrate the release of Alex's debut book, Are We Friends Yet? How to Deepen Your Relationships and Create the Community You Need. Alex didn't set out to write a book — she set out to write 40 pages. What she discovered in the process were two foundational frameworks that had been quietly shaping her entire life's work: the idea that we aren't looking for one perfect person to fill every role, but a whole constellation of people, each showing up in the specific way that only they can. Alex's own origin story is woven into every page. She was the kid who desperately needed more adults in her corner, who felt the weight of having no one to turn to — and who eventually, through rock bottom moments and radical openness, built herself a family out of friends. What makes this conversation — and this book — so essential for anyone navigating a life transition is how radically it reframes what it means to belong. Alex dismantles the myth of scarcity that runs through so much of how we talk about adult friendship ("finding a good friend is like finding a four-leaf clover"). She makes space for the online friend, the long-distance friend, the friend who shows up at 10 p.m. with a crisis script for a devastating text. She talks about the "do less list" — a permission slip to stop performing friendship in ways that drain you, and start showing up in the ways that actually fit your life. If you've ever wondered whether you'll ever really find your people, this book will convince you that you already have more than you know — and show you exactly how to build more.

    Fresh Reads: Are We Friends Yet? How to Deepen Your Relationships and Create the Community You Need by Alex Alexander

  7. Jun 5

    Fresh Reads: Divorce By Design: How building a divorce team can help you get divorced efficiently (without going broke!) by Melissa Murphy Pavone

    Divorce is the intersection of the biggest trauma of your life and the biggest financial decisions of your life — happening at the exact same moment. And yet most people navigate it alone, armed with a lawyer's phone number, a group chat of well-meaning friends, and advice that was never really meant for them. Melissa Murphy Pavone grew up watching what happens when someone has to make those decisions without the right team in their corner. Her mother was that person. And it shaped everything that came after. In this episode of A Fresh Story: Book Talk, Olivia sits down with certified financial planner, certified divorce financial analyst, and founder of Mindful Divorce Partners, Melissa Murphy Pavone, to discuss her book Divorce by Design. Melissa's origin story is one of the most quietly powerful in the Fresh Starts community: she became a CDFA because she watched her mother make decisions with her heart instead of her head during divorce — decisions whose consequences still ripple forward today. Every client she now sits across from, she sees her mom. That depth of personal mission infuses every page of this book. Written to be accessible and even — yes — occasionally funny, Divorce by Design dismantles the myths and misinformation that swirl around divorce, and replaces them with something far more useful: clarity, a framework, and a team. At the heart of the book is a simple but radical idea: you don't need one person to guide you through divorce, you need a whole team — emotional support first, financial expertise second, legal strategy third. Melissa argues that most people get this order completely backwards, lawyering up before they've regulated enough to make sound decisions — and paying for it for years afterward. Whether you're in the middle of a divorce, supporting someone who is, or simply want to understand the landscape before you ever need it, Divorce by Design is the book Melissa's mother never had. And now everyone can. 🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry: The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/ 📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry 🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/ 📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

    Fresh Reads: Divorce By Design: How building a divorce team can help you get divorced efficiently (without going broke!) by Melissa Murphy Pavone

  8. Jun 5

    Fresh Reads: Fallout by Jordan Rosenfeld

    Some writers come to the page to escape. Jordan Rosenfeld has been doing it since she was seven years old — filling journal after journal, reaching for fiction the way a child who's seen hard things reaches for anything that helps make sense of the world. That instinct never left her. It deepened. And after more than twenty years as a novelist, a writing teacher, and a freelance journalist, she's still doing the same thing she did as a little girl: taking what she cannot control, and making something true out of it. Jordan is the author of the eco-thriller Fallout, a novel that crackles with urgency, danger, and the kind of moral complexity that only comes from a writer paying close attention to the real world. The story follows a journalist — a new mother — who gets pulled into a collective of eco-anarchist women on a mission to take down a dirty energy company that has poisoned both people and the earth. But beneath the thriller framework, Fallout is really a book about grief: what we do when the world as we knew it starts to fall away, whether we close ourselves off or rise up and fight for what's right. Jordan wrote it in the years she was first becoming a mother, watching parched California hills in January and feeling something she could only call grief. By the time she finished, a second character had emerged — a woman in her fifties navigating perimenopause — and Jordan recognized herself in her too. That's how she writes: gathering the mosaic, piece by piece, until the picture becomes clear. Jordan has also written seven books on the craft of writing — including her newest, The Sound of Story, a deep dive into developing voice and tone — and she brings that same care and precision to everything she makes. This episode is for the writer who has a story inside them and doesn't know where to begin. It's for the reader who wants a thriller that leaves them thinking long after the last page. And it's for anyone who has ever sat with something heavy — grief, rage, helplessness — and wondered what to do with it. Jordan's answer, the one she's lived since childhood, is this: write it down. Turn it into art. There is always someone out there who needs to hear exactly what you have to say.

    Fresh Reads: Fallout by Jordan Rosenfeld
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4.9
out of 5
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About

A Fresh Story Podcast is a top 2% personal journals podcast, hosted by sisters Olivia Dreizen Howell and Jenny Dreizen, that delves into courageous life choices, creative concepts, and fresh start stories through candid conversations. The podcast explores cultural subjects often overlooked, offering listeners a fresh perspective on various life experiences. Join the sisters and guests on a journey discussing bravery, significant decisions, and fresh starts, navigating the complexities of the human experience.

Information

  • Channel
    Fresh Starts
  • Creator
    Fresh Starts
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    297
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Fresh Starts Registry
  • Show Website
    A Fresh Story

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