The Other Side

Nadine Hogan

"Nadine sure likes to talk" - every report card she brought home Nadine has been talking for 47 years, and en route to pickleball can be overheard asking "So, what's your deepest wound?" Not known for her subtleties, she's a born story-collector and learned storyteller who decided to mic-up and take you along for the ride.  Listen in as Nadine chats with folks about their lives, zeroing in on those messy parts as we get ourselves from one point to another. Covering things like friendships, careers, deaths, and divorces. There's nothing she won't ask in hopes that other people's experiences can help you through your own.  We're not experts; we're just humans having a human experience we think you can learn from. Or relate to. Or laugh at. Or cry over.  So hit download, dive in, and hear how folks found themselves on THE OTHER SIDE.  nh x

  1. APR 29

    TOS of Being Mortal by Atul Gawande w/ Mom & Sis

    They're backkkkkkkk. The last Wednesday of the month means mom and sis join Nadine for a conversation that starts with a laundry disagreement and ends with all three of them in tears. This one is special 3 It began with a simple idea, a book club of sorts. All three of them agreed to read Being Mortal by Atul Gawande but when they hopped on to chat about it, it turned into something unexpected and deeply personal. Turns out the book, which examines how medicine handles aging, terminal illness, and end of life, lands differently when you've lived it. And this family has lived it. Listen in as Nadine, Danielle, and Lorraine open up about losing their dad/husband, Ed, to stage four lung cancer in April 2020, right in the thick of COVID. They talk about the brutal treatments that no one told him to stop, the fact that only once, and while in crisis, did anyone ask about his end of life wishes, and the friend and GP who finally had the conversation that the system never could. They wrestle with the tension between fighting and letting go, and how hard it is to honour someone's autonomy when all you want is more time with them. Lorraine reflects on Ed's unshakable will to live and his refusal to hear a prognosis. Danielle connects the book to her daily work in addictions and occupational therapy, where she fights for the same things Gawande writes about - choice, dignity, and a life worth living. And Nadine reckons with a memory she can't shake: calling her dad from Ottawa, telling him to go to the hospital, unable to accept that he was dying. They also talk about what the book gets so right; the loneliness, boredom, and helplessness of institutional care, the couple who built their own aging community, the man who came back to life when someone put a bird in his room, and the music teacher who spent her final days doing the only thing she ever wanted to do - teach. This one is heavy and beautiful and important. It's about how we treat the people we love at the end, and whether we're brave enough to ask them what they actually want. It's also about screaming into the void at Cape Spear, which according to this family, is excellent therapy. Read it. Seriously. Read this book. @the_otherside_pod

    1h 27m
  2. APR 22

    TOS of Real Estate with GoodStory

    Jen Alvarenga was 18 years old when she left Honduras for Ottawa with a plan - get an education, go back home and work for the family business. That was over two decades ago and well, she's still here and she's shaping her adopted city with as much love and care as if she were born and raised in it. Jen is the co-founder of GoodStory, a real estate team in Ottawa that has quietly become one of the most trusted in the city - not by chasing sales, but by helping people through every single step of their real estate journey, even if that means telling them it's not the right time to buy or sell. They offer the kind of advice that doesn't so much make them money that day, but it definitely makes them your agent and confidante for life. On this week's episode Nadine sits down with Jen to talk about everything from acting as her father's translator during government tenders in Honduras at just 12 years old, to fearing having to leave Canada after missing the fine print on her immigration paperwork. She shares how she built GoodStory alongside her partner and husband, Leo, what Copenhagen can teach Ottawa about joy, and all about her beloved mentor who recently passed away - the one who looked at her skepticism about this industry and said, "You could be the light in the dark space." Though we talk a lot about real estate, this conversation is actually about what it looks like to build something from scratch in a place that wasn't supposed to be home. It's about the fire you inherit from parents who started with nothing, and what can happen when you start to see your city from a lens that takes into account walkability, community design and emotional architecture. Grab a coffee — from somewhere local — and settle in. This one is truly a good story. @the_otherside_pod

    1h 18m
  3. APR 15

    TOS of Becoming a Mother at 40

    What happens when the woman who spent years telling her partner that having kids was a 'dealbreaker' suddenly finds herself in her mid-30s wanting the exact thing she'd been against her entire life? Meet Brittany Gordon, a holistic nutritionist, founder of Healing Ginger, sister, daughter, friend, and now mom to two-year old Lillian.  This week our conversation is focused around the experience of becoming a mother on the other side of 40, including the unexpected identity earthquake that Brittany had, the specific loneliness of being the oldest mom at playgroup, and the particular grief of looking at your toddler and realizing she's going to be fairly young when you die.  Brittany is equal parts funny and raw, with a dash of quiet radical, as she explains what it was like to go from successful entrepreneur to mom to somehow finding a rhythm between both when she went back to work at just three months postpartum because ... small business owner!  Join us as she also shares the unexpected gifts of becoming a later-in-life mother - the steadiness, the self-knowledge, the friendships that have already survived their hardest tests along with the ability to slow down and actually appreciate the slowing.  This conversation is really about identity, how we build it, how we lose it, and how we piece it back together when life hands us something we didn't see coming.  Grab yourself a salty-snack and settle in. This one's a keeper.  @the_otherside_pod

    1h 17m

About

"Nadine sure likes to talk" - every report card she brought home Nadine has been talking for 47 years, and en route to pickleball can be overheard asking "So, what's your deepest wound?" Not known for her subtleties, she's a born story-collector and learned storyteller who decided to mic-up and take you along for the ride.  Listen in as Nadine chats with folks about their lives, zeroing in on those messy parts as we get ourselves from one point to another. Covering things like friendships, careers, deaths, and divorces. There's nothing she won't ask in hopes that other people's experiences can help you through your own.  We're not experts; we're just humans having a human experience we think you can learn from. Or relate to. Or laugh at. Or cry over.  So hit download, dive in, and hear how folks found themselves on THE OTHER SIDE.  nh x

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