This Is Healing

Joe Strecker Productions

https://sarahlheringer.substack.com/ Wife. Witness. Writer. Survivor. Reluctant activist. Relentless truth-teller .I did not ask for this. But I will not look away. On June 4, 2025, my husband Patrick was murdered in our home while protecting me from a man who should never have been free. A man with a violent record, with open warrants, with a past the city ignored—and a blade in his hand. Patrick died in my arms.There are no metaphors for that. Only blood, memory, and silence.What followed was the unraveling of everything I thought was safe.What I write here is not for spectacle. It is not curated grief. It is not a campaign. It is a reckoning. With systems. With silence. With myself. I write because I need somewhere to put it.The grief. The fury. The facts. The failures.I write about public safety because no one else will say the quiet part out loud: that our leaders are protecting power, not people. That our systems are engineered to delay, distract, and discard the victims. That negligence is not a policy—it’s a pattern.I write about trauma in real time. I record podcasts from the dead center of it. Not once I’ve healed, but while I’m trying to.You’ll hear my voice shake. You’ll hear me try to laugh. You’ll hear a woman unlearning how to be agreeable and learning instead how to be impossible.Because being impossible might be the only way anything changes. This publication is a record.A record of a woman fighting for her own life after the one she loved was taken. A record of a broken city pretending it’s functioning. A record of truth-telling in a landscape built on press releases and public amnesia.There is poetry here. Not the pretty kind. The kind found at the bottom of grief, where language turns feral and light only filters in when you stop pretending you’re okay.There is politics here. But not in the way you’ve seen it. This is not partisan. It’s personal. This is about justice that was promised and never delivered.This is about what needs to be said, what needs to be burned down, and what must be rebuilt in its place. If you're here, I hope it’s because you’re willing to look.Not just at the facts, but at the fractures. Not just at the grief, but at what it demands of us.Because I am not a victim. I am what comes after. And I’m not writing this to be understood. I’m writing it so no one can say they didn’t know.Welcome to the fight. Welcome to the fire.

  1. May 27

    This is Healing — Keep Your Heart Open

    What does it actually mean to keep your heart open after the worst thing? Not as a platitude. As a survival strategy. This episode goes there. I just got back from a writer's retreat in the mountains of Colorado. I went to write. I came back with something I didn't expect — a realization I could no longer avoid. This episode covers what I learned about grief, wavelengths, the nervous system, why you don't need more discipline, why you need connection, and what it actually means to keep your heart open when every instinct you have is telling you to close it. We also get into talking to dead people, widow's fire, Patrick, the book I'm writing, and the avoidance that showed up the minute I claimed I was going to write it. An hour of the real thing.

    1h 45m

  2. May 8

    This is Healing — The Backlash of Feeling Alive Again

    I finally felt something good again—and then it hit me. In this episode, I talk about the emotional backlash that follows moments of feeling alive, how my relationships are changing, and what Patrick’s birthday actually felt like. This is an honest look at grief, the body, and continuing to live after everything changes.

    1h 6m

  3. Apr 8

    This is Healing — How Do You Cope?

    How do you cope with a timeline you want no part of? It's the question everyone asks and nobody answers with any honesty. In this episode of This Is Healing, I go deep into what grief actually is — not a problem to be solved, not a stage to move through, but an ocean you learn to live beside. I talk about the difference between coping and building capacity, why the five stages of grief fail the moments that matter most, what the nervous system is still reaching for when the person is gone, and what it means to continue moving through life when the person you loved is not. This is not a recovery story. There is no resolution here. There is only the truth of where I am — in time and space — and an invitation to anyone carrying something to recognize themselves in it. If this episode finds you at the right moment, send it to one person who needs to hear it.

    1h 4m

  4. Apr 1

    This is Healing — Liminal Timeline

    I went to turn on music before hitting record and it logged into Patrick's account. Not mine. His. And I just sat there — because that is exactly how grief works. Not in the dramatic moments. In the quiet ones that slip in without warning and take everything for a second. This episode is called Liminal Timeline because that is where I am. The in-between. Not who I was and not yet whoever comes next. This week I flew to Cincinnati for the second hearing of the Reagan Tokes Patrick Heringer Act — the legislation that carries Patrick's name — and then drove twelve and a half hours to Omaha with no space in between. By Friday I had nothing left. My nervous system was done. I couldn't show up for Rae the way I wanted to. I couldn't fake being okay. And I stopped trying. In this episode I talk about what it actually costs to be functional in rooms that require it. I talk about walking back into Cincinnati — a city that holds the version of my life that no longer exists — and not being able to cry there. I talk about the jaguar mask I got tattooed on my body in Omaha, what the shaman heals first, and why that mask has been living in my mind since Patrick and I went to Costa Rica together. I talk about how grief has changed my sacral authority in Human Design, why hotels will never feel the same, what MDMA opened on a Wednesday when I was looking for relief, and what came through when it did: love yourself the way that Patrick loved you. And I talk about spring arriving early in the Colorado mountains — the most beautiful spring I can remember — and how beauty doesn't soften grief. It sharpens it. Every beautiful thing is a reminder of what exists. And who isn't here to see it. "Still being here isn't the same as being okay. It's just still being here. And sometimes that's enough." This Is Healing is my real-time account of navigating grief and loss. I am not the gold standard. I am not doing this right. I am learning the shape of it by impact. If you have been putting words to something you've been carrying for a long time — I think that thing might be grief. This episode is for you. Subscribe. Leave a comment. Send questions — I'm answering them in the descriptions. #grief #healing #thisishealing #liminalspace #grieving #widowsfire #humandesign #mentalhealthpodcast #loss #podcast

    1h 6m

  5. Mar 23

    This is Healing — How Not to Disappear

    What grief does to the body and how we build the capacity to stay alive inside a life we never chose. Have you ever wondered what grief actually does to the body?Nine months ago my husband was murdered in our home. This morning I finished the CrossFit Open ranked in the top ninety four percent in the world. Which raises a strange question.How do you keep living after everything changes? In this episode I talk about trauma, grief, nervous system capacity, rage, recovery, and rebuilding a life after catastrophic loss. It is about learning how not to disappear.

    1h 8m

  6. Mar 23

    This is Healing — Grief Lives in the Minutes

    Most of our culture talks about grief as if it lives on a calendar. People say things like “it’s been a year” or “time heals.” But when I heard a line in the film Hamnet, something in me recognized a deeper truth. Grief does not live in years. It lives in seconds. It lives in minutes. It lives in heartbeats. In this episode I talk about what it means to survive grief, and why surviving can sometimes feel more disorienting than the loss itself. I also explore the parts of grief people rarely admit out loud. The moments when you laugh and feel guilty. The moments when envy rises because you are witnessing the life you thought you would still be living. The anger when people say “you and Patrick had something most people never get.” And the quiet realization that sometimes what sounds like a compliment is actually someone else’s grief showing up sideways. Finally, I step into something larger. The ancient idea of samsara, the wheel of human experience, where love and loss are not mistakes but part of the same turning. Because grief eventually forces a question most of us spend our lives avoiding: Is the goal to avoid suffering, or is the point to love fully even though it will burn?

    58 min

  7. Mar 23

    This is Healing — Sex MDMA and Sovereignty

    This episode might sound like it’s about sex, drugs, and rock and roll. In some ways, it is. But not in the way people expect. This is a ten-day window into what grief actually looks like inside a body. The watching. The wanting. The ego. The collapse. The seventy dollars of DoorDash. The prison sentence feeling. The nervous system spiral. The choice to interrupt it. I talk about being watched by men again and what that wakes up in me. I talk about widow sexuality without sanitizing it. I talk about oxytocin and PTSD and the reality that sometimes being touched is not indulgence — it’s regulation.  walk you through the day I chose MDMA — not as escapism, not as performance, but as medicine. I talk about why Patrick and I used it in our marriage, how secure attachment is built and not won, and what happened in the shower when the grief reorganized instead of disappeared. I talk about the queen image that has followed me since my twenties. I talk about sovereignty. I talk about the moment the sentence shifted from “this is a prison” to “this is a conduit.” I talk about Shabbat at another widow’s table. About Jewish grief rituals and how communal mourning holds people differently than American resilience culture. And I talk about this: I am not done loving.There will be another king. There will be another love. And that does not erase the first.This is not a neat lesson episode. This is process. This is oscillation. This is what it looks like to stay.

    1h 1m

  8. Mar 23

    This is Healing — How I'm Carrying It

    It’s been eight months since my husband, Patrick, died. In this episode, I talk about what grief actually asks of me. Not emotionally. Socially. Physically. Relationally. Grief doesn’t just live in my heart. It lives in my body. It lives in my relationships. And it lives in how I move through the world with other people. I share what has helped, what hasn’t, how masking my grief shows up in my nervous system, and what I’m learning about telling the truth without managing other people’s comfort. This episode is about learning that grief isn’t something I get over. It’s something I learn how to carry. A poem by Mary Oliver became the interruption I didn’t know I needed and helped me see this week’s lesson more clearly.

    46 min
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About

https://sarahlheringer.substack.com/ Wife. Witness. Writer. Survivor. Reluctant activist. Relentless truth-teller .I did not ask for this. But I will not look away. On June 4, 2025, my husband Patrick was murdered in our home while protecting me from a man who should never have been free. A man with a violent record, with open warrants, with a past the city ignored—and a blade in his hand. Patrick died in my arms.There are no metaphors for that. Only blood, memory, and silence.What followed was the unraveling of everything I thought was safe.What I write here is not for spectacle. It is not curated grief. It is not a campaign. It is a reckoning. With systems. With silence. With myself. I write because I need somewhere to put it.The grief. The fury. The facts. The failures.I write about public safety because no one else will say the quiet part out loud: that our leaders are protecting power, not people. That our systems are engineered to delay, distract, and discard the victims. That negligence is not a policy—it’s a pattern.I write about trauma in real time. I record podcasts from the dead center of it. Not once I’ve healed, but while I’m trying to.You’ll hear my voice shake. You’ll hear me try to laugh. You’ll hear a woman unlearning how to be agreeable and learning instead how to be impossible.Because being impossible might be the only way anything changes. This publication is a record.A record of a woman fighting for her own life after the one she loved was taken. A record of a broken city pretending it’s functioning. A record of truth-telling in a landscape built on press releases and public amnesia.There is poetry here. Not the pretty kind. The kind found at the bottom of grief, where language turns feral and light only filters in when you stop pretending you’re okay.There is politics here. But not in the way you’ve seen it. This is not partisan. It’s personal. This is about justice that was promised and never delivered.This is about what needs to be said, what needs to be burned down, and what must be rebuilt in its place. If you're here, I hope it’s because you’re willing to look.Not just at the facts, but at the fractures. Not just at the grief, but at what it demands of us.Because I am not a victim. I am what comes after. And I’m not writing this to be understood. I’m writing it so no one can say they didn’t know.Welcome to the fight. Welcome to the fire.

Information

  • Creator
    Joe Strecker Productions
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    45
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright Joe Strecker Productions
  • Show Website
    This Is Healing