Every good story starts with things falling apart.
Every good story starts with things falling apart.
Here's mine.
Here's mine.
Although — if you consider a dumpster fire "fine," then sure. I was excelling at life.
The truth is my mental health was on life support. It was worn down by a ten-year battle with infertility, while also working full time and going to school in the evenings to earn by CPA designation to be a bean counter.
Thankfully, I earned my designation and through many IVF procedures we received three beautiful children —
I never take that for granted. But then, all three were later diagnosed with varying degrees of ADHD and ODD, which made for a very loud, and sometimes chaotic house.
I loved my life. But I was also quietly drowning in it. From the outside, still fine. Inside, waving a white flag nobody could see, praying for a lifeline.
I had no idea that lifeline was about to show up at 3am, on Amazon.
Although — if you consider a dumpster fire "fine," then sure. I was excelling at life.
The truth is my mental health was on life support. It was worn down by a ten-year battle with infertility, while also working full time and going to school in the evenings to earn by CPA designation to be a bean counter.
Thankfully, I earned my designation and through many IVF procedures we received three beautiful children —
I never take that for granted. But then, all three were later diagnosed with varying degrees of ADHD and ODD, which made for a very loud, and sometimes chaotic house.
I loved my life. But I was also quietly drowning in it. From the outside, still fine. Inside, waving a white flag nobody could see, praying for a lifeline.
I had no idea that lifeline was about to show up at 3am, on Amazon.
From the outside, I looked
From the outside, I looked
fine.
fine.
The road that brought me here.
starting
over
losing
cory
The microphone
The
pileup
telling
stories
These are the three that made it loud and chaotic. Worth every decibel and moment of chaos.
These are the three that made it loud and chaotic. Worth every decibel and moment of chaos.
"You know you're supposed to do something with this pain, right?" Those words rang in my ears as I drove home from a therapy appointment. A podcast was playing in the background. Then the thought crept in...maybe I could start a podcast? Why I thought that? Who knows! My next thought — who on earth would ever listen to me on a podcast?
That night, I found myself ordering a mic on Amazon at 3am anyway.
The Blue Yeti sat in its box for months. Because unpacking the mic meant unpacking everything else too — all the things I'd wrapped up nice and tight and tucked away in my heart. But eventually I worked up the courage, and I decided: I need to share this. I need people to know what's really going on underneath the "fine."
The first episode took me eight hours to record. Forty-five minutes of audio. Eight hours. So many bloopers, and — full disclosure — me in the fetal position under my desk the second I hit publish.
But I'd found my voice. Finally. I didn't know it yet, but it wasn't just going to help me tell my story. It was going to help me understand it.
"You know you're supposed to do something with this pain, right?" Those words rang in my ears as I drove home from a therapy appointment. A podcast was playing in the background. Then the thought crept in...maybe I could start a podcast? Why I thought that? Who knows! My next thought — who on earth would ever listen to me on a podcast?
That night, I found myself ordering a mic on Amazon at 3am anyway.
The Blue Yeti sat in its box for months. Because unpacking the mic meant unpacking everything else too — all the things I'd wrapped up nice and tight and tucked away in my heart. But eventually I worked up the courage, and I decided: I need to share this. I need people to know what's really going on underneath the "fine."
The first episode took me eight hours to record. Forty-five minutes of audio. Eight hours. So many bloopers, and — full disclosure — me in the fetal position under my desk the second I hit publish.
But I'd found my voice. Finally. I didn't know it yet, but it wasn't just going to help me tell my story. It was going to help me understand it.
The road that brought me here.
starting over
losing
cory
The microphone
The
pileup
telling stories
At 3am,
I bought a microphone.
I bought a microphone.
At 3am,
I thought my battle was hard. My big brother Cory was fighting something so much harder, and so much deeper, than mine. His was addiction — and after a long battle, he passed away tragically from a fentanyl overdose in 2021.
Somewhere in my soul, I think I always knew I'd lose him early. But knowing it and living it are two different things, and when it actually happened, I couldn't breathe. The grief has been a depth of sadness I didn't know was possible.
Tears spring to my eyes often when I think of him. But so does a smile — because he sends me signs that he's with me, and he sends them often.
Cory is the reason I started writing. It's from his passing that I finally found the words for my first book, Dancing in the Rain — the story of us. All the trauma, all the funny stuff, all the healing.
I love and miss my brother every single day. But I know his life was always meant to help others — and now, we're doing that together.
What I didn't know yet was that grief wasn't just changing what I had lost. It was changing what I could finally see.
I thought my battle was hard. My big brother Cory was fighting something so much harder, and so much deeper, than mine. His was addiction — and after a long battle, he passed away tragically from a fentanyl overdose in 2021.
Somewhere in my soul, I think I always knew I'd lose him early. But knowing it and living it are two different things, and when it actually happened, I couldn't breathe. The grief has been a depth of sadness I didn't know was possible.
Tears spring to my eyes often when I think of him. But so does a smile — because he sends me signs that he's with me, and he sends them often.
Cory is the reason I started writing. It's from his passing that I finally found the words for my first book, Dancing in the Rain — the story of us. All the trauma, all the funny stuff, all the healing.
I love and miss my brother every single day. But I know his life was always meant to help others — and now, we're doing that together.
What I didn't know yet was that grief wasn't just changing what I had lost. It was changing what I could finally see.
The road that brought me here.
starting over
losing
cory
The microphone
the
pileup
telling stories
I lost my big brother
I lost my big brother,
Cory.
Cory.
Losing Cory taught me that life was short. I knew it was time to take a hard look at my marriage. Over the years, we'd lost our connection and started living more like roommates than partners — and even a lot of counselling couldn't bring us back to each other. We separated six months after Cory died, and divorced about two years later — the start of a life I never pictured.
Starting over looked like selling our family home. Sorting through twenty years of belongings and negotiating who got the Keurig and who got the air mattress. Taking turns living in the trailer while we each found somewhere to land.
Then it looked like buying a house on my own. Moving. Landscaping it myself. Shovelling my own driveway in January, mowing my own lawn, installing a security system — because the person who used to be my protector wasn't there anymore.
Starting over is scary AF. I won't pretend otherwise. But one of the very first things I did was take my name back — that one was a no-brainer. I wanted to be Tiffany Carson again. (My kids kept their last name; I wanted mine.)
Here's the part I'm proudest of, though: their dad and I are nailing this co-parenting thing. So much so that we coach our daughter's softball team together — with only the occasional snap at each other, because we're human and it's the bottom of the sixth. Our family didn't end. It just changed shape....And on the nights the kids are with him, I'm genuinely okay on my own — as long as I've got my fur babies nearby.
Somewhere in all of it—the losing, the leaving, the starting over—I realized life had been trying to teach me something all along. The surprising part is...I almost missed it.
Losing Cory taught me that life was short. I knew it was time to take a hard look at my marriage. Over the years, we'd lost our connection and started living more like roommates than partners — and even a lot of counselling couldn't bring us back to each other. We separated six months after Cory died, and divorced about two years later — the start of a life I never pictured.
Starting over looked like selling our family home. Sorting through twenty years of belongings and negotiating who got the Keurig and who got the air mattress. Taking turns living in the trailer while we each found somewhere to land.
Then it looked like buying a house on my own. Moving. Landscaping it myself. Shovelling my own driveway in January, mowing my own lawn, installing a security system — because the person who used to be my protector wasn't there anymore.
Starting over is scary AF. I won't pretend otherwise. But one of the very first things I did was take my name back — that one was a no-brainer. I wanted to be Tiffany Carson again. (My kids kept their last name; I wanted mine.)
Here's the part I'm proudest of, though: their dad and I are nailing this co-parenting thing. So much so that we coach our daughter's softball team together — with only the occasional snap at each other, because we're human and it's the bottom of the sixth. Our family didn't end. It just changed shape....And on the nights the kids are with him, I'm genuinely okay on my own — as long as I've got my fur babies nearby.
Somewhere in all of it—the losing, the leaving, the starting over—I realized life had been trying to teach me something all along. The surprising part is...I almost missed it.
The road that brought me here.
starting
over
losing
Cory
The
microphone
The
Pileup
telling
stories
And then I had to learn to do it all
myself.
myself.
For a long time, my anthem was "why me?" Why is this happening to me? I had a full-blown victim mentality, and honestly, I'd earned it — the losses kept coming and I couldn't find the point of any of it.
And then something shifted. Call it an awakening, call it finally paying attention — but I started to understand that none of it was happening to me. It was happening for me. That I chose to be here, now, to learn these exact lessons. We all did. We're in earth school, every single one of us, and the hard stuff isn't a punishment — it's the curriculum.
Does that make the hard days easier? Not always. Some days it's still just hard. But when I can meet the lessons with love and a little gratitude instead of "why me," I move through them with a lot more grace. And it cracked something open in me: compassion. For my own hard beautiful journey, and for everyone else's too.
That's why I do this. Why I tell my stories, and why I love nothing more than hearing yours. Because sharing what we've walked through — the grief, the joy, the ridiculous, the holy — that's earth school too. That's the whole assignment. We're not meant to do it alone, quietly, pretending we're fine.
So this is me, not pretending anymore. Telling the truth, finding the funny, and learning as I go — 130-some episodes, one book, and a lifetime of lessons in.
Come as you are. Bring your story. I'll bring mine. We'll figure this hard beautiful journey out together.
For a long time, my anthem was "why me?" Why is this happening to me? I had a full-blown victim mentality, and honestly, I'd earned it — the losses kept coming and I couldn't find the point of any of it.
And then something shifted. Call it an awakening, call it finally paying attention — but I started to understand that none of it was happening to me. It was happening for me. That I chose to be here, now, to learn these exact lessons. We all did. We're in earth school, every single one of us, and the hard stuff isn't a punishment — it's the curriculum.
Does that make the hard days easier? Not always. Some days it's still just hard. But when I can meet the lessons with love and a little gratitude instead of "why me," I move through them with a lot more grace. And it cracked something open in me: compassion. For my own hard beautiful journey, and for everyone else's too.
That's why I do this. Why I tell my stories, and why I love nothing more than hearing yours. Because sharing what we've walked through — the grief, the joy, the ridiculous, the holy — that's earth school too. That's the whole assignment. We're not meant to do it alone, quietly, pretending we're fine.
So this is me, not pretending anymore. Telling the truth, finding the funny, and learning as I go — 130-some episodes, one book, and a lifetime of lessons in.
Come as you are. Bring your story. I'll bring mine. We'll figure this hard beautiful journey out together.
The road that brought me here.
starting
over
losing
Cory
The microphone
The
pileup
telling
stories
The
lesson
I almost missed.
"I was meant to learn from this -
every heartbreak, every loss, every silent year
- so that I could help others who are living it too."
"I was meant to learn from this - every heartbreak, every loss, every silent year - so that I could help other's who are living it too."
A few other things you may want to know about me.
I cannot - and will not - begin my day without coffee. Trust me, everyone in my orbit is much safer with this arrangement.
I cannot - and will not - begin my day without coffee. Trust me, everyone in my orbit is much safer with this arrangement.
Dog Mom to Ella and cat mom to Puss. One greets me with full on body snuggles every single morning. The other judges me silently (or not so silently) from across the room. I love them both equally.
Reading is one of my greatest joys. Give me a good book and I am gone. Fully, completely, unapologetically gone. There's cereal in the pantry. I'll resurface eventually.
Car rides with me are a full blown concert. I am the opening act, the headliner and the encore. Prepare thyself.
I'm a highschool softball coach - showing up for young athletes on and off the field is one of my favorite things to do.
Momma bear to 3 cubs — always their Mom 100% of the time, even when they're not under my roof. They're my whole heart, and also the reason I laugh, cry, and occasionally hide in the pantry.
you've read my story
If you saw yourself anywhere in this story — the holding, the 'I'm fine,' the grief nobody brought casseroles for — I want you to know something: you don't have to carry it quietly, and you don't have to carry it alone. That's what the podcast is. It's where we say the true things out loud, together. Come sit with us.
If you saw yourself anywhere in this story — the holding, the 'I'm fine,' the grief nobody brought casseroles for — I want you to know something: you don't have to carry it quietly, and you don't have to carry it alone. That's what the podcast is. It's where we say the true things out loud, together. Come sit with us.
Now let's talk about
Yours.
Now let's talk about
yours.