Podcast
Even Tacos Fall Apart
Hosted by MommaFoxFire · EN
The "Even Tacos Fall Apart" talk show includes interviews with actual mental health professionals and conversations where real people talk about the messy side of mental illness, disabilities, wellness and life in general. My goal is to normalize mental health conversations and reduce the stigma around illnesses. We all struggle at different times in our lives, but that doesn't mean we're unlovable - after all, Tacos Fall Apart and WE STILL LOVE THOSE!
mommafoxfire is a MH advocate and variety gaming streamer on Twitch: twitch.tv/mommafoxfire
tacosfallapart.com
41episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
The MAP-LAMP Framework: A Practical Guide to Rising Again + A Journey of Purpose, Pain & Possibility with Dr. Oluwole Babatunde
2w ago01:29:25Tap to summarizeThis one's for anyone who's had to rebuild a life from nothing and wants a real framework instead of another empty pep talk.More info, resources & ways to connect - https://www.tacosfallapart.com/podcast-live-show/podcast-guests/dr-oluwole-babatundeDr. Oluwole Babatunde lost his mother at seven and his father at thirteen. He grew up largely on his own, sneaking between the homes of people willing to take him in, finishing high school with almost no stable ground under him. Today he's a physician, a PhD in epidemiology, the author of over 60 published papers and an NIH fellow wrapping up his psychiatry residency in South Carolina. This episode is the story of how he got from one point to the other and the framework he built along the way to help other people do the same.That framework is called MAP LAMP and it comes straight out of his book Adapt in Advance. Meaning making, Action, Plan, Learn, Alliance formation, Mission statement and Prayers. Wole walks through each piece with real stories from his own life, not just theory. He talks about the mentor who wrote him letters every week when he had nobody else checking in on him. He talks about waking up at 1am to study during his hardest year of medical school in Nigeria. He talks about the moment in his fourth year of med school when he made the decision that his story would not define him in a negative way and how that single choice changed the direction of everything after it.We get into how he uses Viktor Frankl's work on meaning to process his own losses, why he calls therapy, medication and lifestyle the three legs of the same stool, and why he thinks people wildly underestimate what small daily actions can do for mental health. He walks 10,000 steps a day, listens to a book a week during his commute and still makes time to write inside the pages of physical books when something hits him hard enough. None of it is complicated. All of it adds up.This conversation is for anyone who has been handed a rough start and wondered what to do with it. Wole doesn't offer easy answers or pretend the hard years didn't hurt. He talks openly about grief, about the seasons in his own life that looked a lot like major depression, and about what it actually takes to build a life on the other side of loss without pretending the loss never happened.If you are in a season where things feel shattered, or you love someone who is, this episode gives you language and a framework for rising again that doesn't require you to have it all figured out first.Connect with Dr. Wole Babatunde and grab a copy of Adapt in Advance through the links in the show notes.
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Music as Somatic Release & Emotional Processing with SSIREN
3w ago01:49:15Tap to summarizeThis one's for anyone who's ever cried to a song and had no clue why, and wants to stop being weirded out by it.More info, resources & ways to connect - https://www.tacosfallapart.com/podcast-live-show/podcast-guests/ssirenSebastian Siren is a DJ, producer and creative director out of New York who blends house, indie dance and trance into what he calls techno temple ritual. He joined MommaFoxFire on Even Tacos Fall Apart to talk about music as somatic release and emotional processing, and the conversation went way past the decks.Sebastian started sharing his story after a bad breakup sent him into therapy in 2019, which led him down a rabbit hole of books on mindfulness and interpersonal relationships that eventually became part of his brand. He talks openly about researching sound healing and metaphysics, and about how electronic music is genuinely primal, built on frequency and beats per minute that sync with the human body. He points out that house music sits around 128 BPM, close to an elevated heart rate, and that when a room full of people move to the same rhythm their brain waves start to sync up too.The two dig into how Sebastian builds a set as an emotional journey, opening either hard and fast or slow and ethereal, moving through waves of energy, and always ending on something euphoric so nobody leaves in what he calls the underworld. He explains why he wants people crying, laughing or feeling something real by the end of a night, and shares a story about eight straight hours of dancing curing six months of lower back pain.They also get into the parts of the scene people don't always talk about honestly. Sebastian speaks candidly about drug use in the rave community, the difference between intentional occasional use and losing yourself in it, and why balance matters more than the reputation the scene gets. He talks about burnout, about being an elder millennial figuring out who he is as an artist now versus who he was ten years ago, and about learning to just be, something his first therapist asked him that he says cracked his brain wide open.MommaFoxFire shares her own experience with music and depression, including a moment her therapist helped her understand about crying to songs as a sign of moving out of emotional numbness. Sebastian gives practical advice too, like building a music toolbox for hard days, when headphones help you go deep versus when a speaker filling the room does more, and why intention matters more than genre.This episode is honest, funny and grounded, covering everything from vampire novels to psychedelic therapy to what it actually means to let a song move through your body instead of just listening to it. Sebastian leaves listeners with a reminder that mental health doesn't always look loud, and that the people who seem like they have it together are often working through just as much as everyone else.
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How Employee Well-being Programs Pay for Themselves with Mark DeCarlo
4w ago01:13:53Tap to summarizeAnyone who's ever clocked out mentally while still clocking in physically, managed a team running on fumes, or wondered whether investing in people actually moves the needle needs to hear this conversation.More info, resource & ways to connect - https://www.tacosfallapart.com/podcast-live-show/podcast-guests/mark-decarloWhat does improv comedy have to do with your employee wellness program? More than you'd think. In this episode of Even Tacos Fall Apart, MommaFoxFire sits down with Mark DeCarlo, comedian, TV host, author and corporate speaker, to talk about why investing in your people isn't just the right thing to do. It's the smart business move.Mark has spent decades in entertainment and now brings that energy into the corporate world, helping companies build cultures where people actually want to show up. His argument is simple and backed by data: employee wellbeing programs improve productivity. Full stop. So even if you're the most hard-nosed, bottom-line-focused executive in the room, the numbers still make the case for you. There's no tradeoff between caring for your people and running a profitable business. Those two things move in the same direction.The conversation takes a sharp turn into creativity, and this is where it gets good. Mark makes the case that creativity is a teachable skill, not something you're born with or without. Improvisation is his gateway. When you practice improv, you train your brain to stop flinching, stop second-guessing and start generating. But here's the catch: your brain needs room to work, and most of us aren't giving it any. We're buried in our phones, glued to our headphones and never actually bored. Mark argues that unplugged time isn't a luxury. It's a prerequisite for any kind of original thinking.MommaFoxFire backs this up with something her 12-year-old absolutely does not want to hear: boredom is good for you. Research supports it. When your brain has nothing to react to, it starts creating, connecting dots it never had time to connect before. Chores, dog walks without earbuds, sitting in a waiting room without scrolling, these aren't wasted time. They're where ideas come from.Mark also gets real about high-stress professions, the ER nurses, the NICU teams, the first responders who love what they do but are burning out anyway. Wellness programs aren't just for cushy office jobs. For people in inherently stressful roles, having outlets matters even more. Release valves, as Mark puts it. Ways to shake off the weight of the work so they can come back the next day and do it again.His life hack ties it all together: make every decision, big and small, based on whether it moves you toward happiness or away from it. Find your thing, orient your life around it and be honest enough with yourself to keep checking in as that thing evolves.If you've ever wondered whether your company's wellness initiatives are worth the investment, or whether creativity is actually a skill you can build, this episode has your answer.
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Schizophrenia & Stigma with Dale Walsh
Jul 701:09:24Tap to summarizeAnyone who has ever watched someone they love struggle with mental illness and felt completely helpless, or anyone living with a diagnosis that the world keeps trying to define for them, needs to hear this conversation.More info, resources & ways to connect - https://www.tacosfallapart.com/podcast-live-show/podcast-guests/dale-walshDale Walsh has been living with schizophrenia for over 50 years, and he has a lot to say about it. Not in the way you might expect, not with polished talking points or a tidy recovery arc, but with the kind of raw, layered honesty that only comes from someone who has actually been through it. This episode of Even Tacos Fall Apart is one of the more complex conversations we've had on the show, and that's exactly why it's worth your time.Dale was removed from Dartmouth College in 1975 following a mental health crisis, hospitalized nine times over five years, and eventually rebuilt his life from the ground up. He graduated magna cum laude from Fairleigh Dickinson University, has been psychosis-free for 34 years, and now coaches families of people diagnosed with schizophrenia through his Live Love program, an eight-step framework built around the belief that recovery is always an option. His work focuses specifically on caregivers and family members, a population he says the mental health system has largely abandoned, and he brings both professional insight and deeply personal experience to that work.But this conversation goes beyond the recovery story. Dale is someone who is still very much on his journey, openly navigating questions about identity, medication, and what it means to live a full life after a diagnosis that the world has spent decades trying to shrink people down into. He talks candidly about the stigma he's faced, including the moment a doctor told him he had "broken his brain" the same way someone breaks a leg, a comment that stayed with him for 35 years. He shares what he believes families get wrong in the early days of a loved one's psychosis, why he thinks codependency between patients and the psychiatric system does more harm than good, and what it actually felt like to spend decades building a life that nobody around him thought was possible.He also brings up something that deserves to be said plainly: at the time of this recording, Dale had stopped taking his psychiatric medication six days prior. He mentioned it himself, matter of factly, as part of a larger shift he was experiencing in how he understood himself and his diagnosis. He is continuing to work with his doctors. We are not here to editorialize that decision, but we are not going to pretend it wasn't part of the conversation either.What you'll find in this episode is a man who defies easy categorization. He is insightful and funny and occasionally hard to follow, and all of that is part of who he is. If you have a loved one with schizophrenia, if you work in mental health, or if you've ever wondered what it looks like when someone refuses to let a diagnosis be the last word on their life, this episode has something real to offer you.Recovery looks different for everyone. Dale is proof of that.
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Eating & Mood Disorders with Mental Health Meg
Jun 3001:17:23Tap to summarizeThis episode is built for anyone who's ever used food, control, or a perfect Instagram grid to cope with something they couldn't quite name.More info, resources & ways to connect - https://www.tacosfallapart.com/podcast-live-show/podcast-guests/mental-health-megThis episode of Even Tacos Fall Apart dives into eating and mood disorders with mental health counselor Meg, also known online as Mental Health Meg. Meg works with clients of all ages, from five year olds to adults, covering everything from anxiety and trauma to eating disorders and identity. She brought real clinical insight and a willingness to get personal about her own relationship with self-care and mental health.The conversation opens with what pulled Meg into counseling in the first place, including her time on the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and the long road through grad school rejections before landing in outpatient therapy work. From there the talk turns practical: journaling, mood tracking, getting outside, and why Zoom hangouts can be more draining than face to face ones, all useful tools during a stretch when everyone was stuck looking for ways to cope at home.The heart of the episode is eating disorders. Meg breaks down some of the biggest misconceptions, starting with the idea that eating disorders are about vanity or chasing a certain look. In reality they are often about control and frequently tied to trauma. She also pushes back hard on the myth that you have to be underweight to have an eating disorder, pointing out how that idea erases binge eating and other restrictive patterns that do not fit the stereotype. The numbers get real too: eating disorders carry the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, something most people, including the host, had no idea about going in.Meg and MommaFoxFire also get into body image and the pressure social media puts on young girls especially, talking through the gap between curated Instagram bodies and what actual healthy bodies look like. They talk about choosing accountability partners carefully, since the wrong influence (even a well meaning one) can blur the line between fitness focus and disordered eating.The episode closes on resources. Meg shares where to find crisis hotlines and text lines, a CBT based workbook she uses with clients, and why eating disorder recovery specifically is some of the hardest work to support from a weekly therapy session, since so much of it plays out day to day around meals.Along the way there is plenty of the usual mix that makes this show what it is: true crime tangents, work culture rants, and a few laughs about journaling pens and broken ankles. But the core of the episode is a clear eyed, compassionate look at how eating and mood disorders actually show up in people's lives, and how to support yourself or someone you love through them.If you or someone you know is struggling, reach out to a crisis line or text line, or talk to a licensed professional. You are not alone in this.
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EFT & Tapping with Amy Vincze
Jun 2301:26:39Tap to summarizeTwo hands, fourteen pressure points and the guts to say the hard thing out loud.More info, resources & ways to connect - https://www.tacosfallapart.com/podcast-live-show/podcast-guests/amy-vinczeAmy Vincze got a breast cancer diagnosis 25 years ago with zero family history of the disease, and instead of accepting it as bad luck, she started asking why. That question sent her down a path through Tony Robbins seminars, certified coaching training and eventually founding the Soar with Tapping app, all built around one tool that changed her life: EFT tapping.On this episode of Even Tacos Fall Apart, Amy breaks down what tapping actually is and why it works. It blends acupressure points, talk therapy and somatic release into one practice you can do anywhere with no needles involved. She walks through the science behind it too. Tapping clears cortisol from your body 43 percent faster than doing nothing, lowers heart rate and blood pressure and calms the amygdala so your brain can think clearly instead of staying stuck in fight or flight.We get into the real stuff here. Amy explains the difference between big T trauma, a single major event like an assault or accident, and little t trauma, the slow buildup of stress from things like growing up with an angry parent. Both respond well to tapping but they take different approaches and different timelines. She also shares a study on wartime veterans where 30 days of daily tapping sessions reduced PTSD symptoms so much that participants no longer met the clinical criteria for the diagnosis.Amy gets personal about her own healing too, tracing her chronic anxiety and worthiness struggles back to her father leaving when she was a kid and the false story she built around it. Tapping into that root cause is what finally gave her lasting relief, after years of band aid fixes that kept wearing off.We cover what a typical tapping session looks like, how fast people start feeling results (often inside 10 to 15 minutes), why some folks feel wiped out afterward and what that actually means, and how tapping helps with phobias, anxiety, procrastination and kids working through big emotions. Amy also breaks down how tapping compares to EMDR and why over 300 peer reviewed studies now back this work. She even walks through a live tapping sequence on the show, hitting every point from the karate chop spot to the crown of the head, so you can follow along and try it yourself in real time.If you want to try tapping yourself, Amy's Soar with Tapping app offers a 14 day free trial with access to over 160 guided scripts. There is plenty of free tapping content scattered across YouTube too if you are working with a tighter budget, though Amy recommends starting somewhere solid so you are not led down the wrong path.This conversation covers cancer, grief, trauma, parenting, meditation and the strange comfort of watching near death experience videos on YouTube. Whether you are brand new to tapping or already sold on it, this episode hands you real tools for the next time anxiety, stress or an old wound shows up uninvited.
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Rebuilding Life with Clarity & Purpose with James Brett
Jun 1601:28:13Tap to summarizeFor anyone who has hit a wall, whether that's a diagnosis, a burnout or just the quiet feeling that something has to change, this conversation with James Brett is the one to queue up.More info, resources & ways to connect - https://www.tacosfallapart.com/podcast-live-show/podcast-guests/james-brettJames Brett has lived a life most people only read about. He led high-stakes sales teams across Australia, Singapore and Europe, won multimillion-dollar contracts and collected the kind of corporate success that looks great from the outside. Then he got a stage three kidney cancer diagnosis, had a ten-centimeter tumor removed along with his right kidney, and nearly died from a bowel obstruction in the week that followed. What came next wasn't just survival. It was a complete rebuilding of who he is and how he lives.In this episode of Even Tacos Fall Apart, James sits down to talk about the cost of running too fast for too long, and what it actually looks like to come back from rock bottom with more clarity than you had before. He's honest about the fear that comes with a cancer diagnosis, the identity crisis that follows when the career you built your life around disappears, and the quiet grief of having a parent with dementia on the other side of the world while you're fighting for your own life.James now runs a boutique retreat space on the mid-north coast of Australia with his partner Lisa and works with coaching clients around the world. His approach pulls from Eastern practices like Qigong and Taoist energy work, neuroscience, non-duality and what he calls the inside-out understanding of the mind. The core of everything he teaches comes down to one shift: we don't experience life like a camera pointed at the world. We create our experience from the inside through thought, and when you really see that, everything changes.We talk about the concept of radical wholeness, which includes waking up, growing up, cleaning up and showing up, and why doing just one of those without the others will only get you so far. We get into gratitude practices, how moods are contagious and what to do about it, why playfulness is seriously underrated in adult life, and how nature showed up for James in the most unexpected ways during his recovery.James also shares his life hack for deeper connection in relationships, the eye-gazing practice he does with his partner every night before sleep, and the moment he saw a wedge-tailed eagle circle above him coming out of the hospital and just completely fell apart in the best way.If you are a caregiver who has put yourself last so long you've forgotten what your own needs even feel like, if you are rebuilding after something that broke you wide open, or if you just have a nagging sense that there has to be more to life than the pace you've been running at, this one is for you.
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Veterans, PTSD, Burnout & Identity Loss with Omar Ritter
Jun 901:17:41Tap to summarizeVeterans, corporate burnout survivors and anyone who has ever confused suffering in silence with being strong will find something worth hearing in this one. This episode is for the people who are fine, totally fine, definitely fine... and haven't slept properly in three months.More info, resources & ways to connect - https://www.tacosfallapart.com/podcast-live-show/podcast-guests/omar-ritterOmar Ritter has lived more than most people will ever face in a lifetime. West Point graduate, Bronze Star recipient, combat veteran from Iraq and Kosovo, twenty-year Wall Street executive, brain tumor survivor. He's also someone who spent years hiding the fact that he was falling apart on the inside while everything looked great from the outside. In this episode of Even Tacos Fall Apart, Omar sits down to talk honestly about PTSD, burnout, identity loss and what it actually took to get better.Omar's breaking point didn't come on a battlefield. It came in boardrooms, in sleepless nights at JP Morgan, in a moment when he left his wife home alone with their week-old baby to go deliver documents to his boss at 3am. He was the guy who always got things done, no matter what it cost him. And that identity, the guy who never cracks, is exactly what nearly killed him.He opens up about his gunner from Iraq, a man who appeared fine on Facebook, who was chatting and checking in, and who then took his own life and the lives of his children after an untreated mental health crisis hijacked everything he was. Omar doesn't sugarcoat it. He calls PTSD what he believes it is: a hijacker in the cockpit of your brain, making you do things the real you never would.The conversation covers what burnout actually looks like versus just being tired or stressed, and why veterans in particular are so reluctant to get help. Omar is blunt about the stigma, but he's equally blunt about the excuses. TriCare covers treatment. Corporate benefits packages cover therapy. You can schedule a session on your lunch break and nobody needs to know. The resources exist. The harder part is deciding you're worth using them.One of the most powerful threads in this episode is the difference between powering through and real resilience. Omar held a gun to his own temple while powering through a job he hated in a city he never wanted to live in. He knows the difference from the inside. Resilience, he says, is bouncing back. Powering through with an untreated mental health condition is just damage accumulating until your body or your brain forces the issue.He also talks about the identity crisis that hits veterans when they leave service and walk into corporate America leading with their rank and their medals, only to find out nobody in the room knows what a combat action badge is or why it should matter to them. The reframe he had to learn was painful but necessary.Omar now teaches accounting and finance at UNC Charlotte, sits on veteran entrepreneur boards, and wrote the book West Point to Wall Street: My Journey to Mental Wellness. His audiobook just dropped. His message is simple: raise your hand, make the call, and deal with the rest once you're healthy. Everything else can wait.
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Traumatic Brain Injuries, Gamification & Rebuilding with Dan MacQueen
Jun 201:16:20Tap to summarizeThis episode is equal parts gut punch and practical toolkit, built for people who are tired of being told to just stay positive.More info, resources & ways to connect - https://www.tacosfallapart.com/podcast-live-show/podcast-guests/dan-macqueenDan MacQueen was 28 years old when an optometrist appointment changed everything. What started as persistent headaches and a terrifying moment of blindness on a London tube platform ended with an emergency brain surgery, a massive hemorrhage, four weeks in a coma and months of relearning how to walk, talk and smile. In this episode of Even Tacos Fall Apart, Dan sits down to talk about what it really took to rebuild his life and the framework he now uses to help others do the same.Dan is quick to point out that he is not some extraordinary person. His brain scans came back average after two emergency surgeries, and he took that as a good sign. His whole approach to recovery and resilience is built on the idea that anyone can do this. You do not need to be exceptional. You need to be willing to try, fail, and try again.A huge part of how Dan made it through was gamifying his recovery. From timing how long it took to get into a wheelchair and shaving five minutes off each week, to tracking his swim laps in a notes app going back years, he turned the grind of rehab into something he could measure, compete against and win. He talks about the Monopoly strategy he pulled on his family, the icebreaker hack he developed for walking through crowded London streets and how Mario Kart taught him more about navigating life patterns than he expected.Dan also gets into the three things that drove him forward: proving people wrong, proving people right and being of service to others. His nurse planted the seed of that first one when she pointed across a park and told him the kids over there did not think he was good enough to talk. He yelled back across that park loud enough for everyone to hear. Spite works. So does love. Ride whatever wave shows up.One of the most practical tools Dan shares is his decision-a-day framework. Every morning you decide that today you are going to fight. Tomorrow you decide again. You do not have to commit to the whole mountain, just the next step. Pair that with his aim small, miss small approach to building habits and you have a system that is genuinely hard to argue with. He went from two minutes of morning meditation to twenty. One block of walking to a full route. Five minutes in the pool to over a hundred laps.This episode covers traumatic brain injury recovery, stoicism, gamification, resilience, motivation and what it actually means to be better than yesterday. Dan is still in the thick of it, still having eye surgeries, still stumbling through the back streets, and still showing up. That is exactly what makes this conversation worth your time.
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Anxiety Disorder & Treatment with Tyler Coates
May 2601:17:22Tap to summarizeIf you've ever lain awake at midnight rehearsing a conversation that hasn't happened yet, planned out every possible response before a difficult talk with your boss, or felt your heart pound before a presentation for days in advance... you're not broken. You might just be really good at anxiety.More info, resources & ways to connect - https://www.tacosfallapart.com/podcast-live-show/podcast-guests/tyler-coatesIn this episode of Even Tacos Fall Apart, we sat down with Tyler Coates of The Composed Mind, a mindset coach based in Melbourne, Australia who spent years struggling with anxiety before he even recognized what it was. His story will sound familiar: he wasn't spiraling in an obvious way. He was just playing out conversations on a loop, needing certainty before he could feel safe, and quietly running on stress he didn't have a name for.Tyler breaks down what anxiety actually is... a strategy. The brain's attempt to manufacture certainty and control when things feel unpredictable. And once you understand that, the whole experience starts to look different.We talked about the difference between feeling anxious and having an anxiety disorder, and why that distinction matters more than most people realize. We got into the physical symptoms (the racing heart, the sweaty palms, the full-body heat) and why Tyler compares them to a brutal workout without the endorphins. We also talked about the stuff that tends to fly under the radar: over-rehearsing conversations, avoiding social situations, sticking to the same restaurant order every single time because at least you know it's going to be good.One of the most interesting threads in this conversation is the idea that anxiety lives almost entirely in the future. It's built on worst-case possibilities, not probabilities. Tyler makes the point that even someone who experiences anxiety constantly can't conjure genuine panic about being on Mars in two hours... because the brain won't buy what it can't conceptualize as real. That same principle, turned around, is actually the beginning of how anxiety gets treated.We covered treatment options honestly and without pushing any single approach... medication, CBT, journaling, exercise, nutrition and the deeper belief-level work that Tyler specializes in, which involves identifying the core story someone is running underneath the anxiety. For Tyler, that story was "I'm not good enough." Once that belief dissolved, the anxiety stopped having anything to attach to.We also talked about why anxiety is likely underreported in men, the role judgment plays in keeping people stuck, why having one person in your life you can say the quiet part out loud to is genuinely one of the most powerful things available to anyone, and how the stigma around mental health quietly costs people years they didn't have to lose.This is a real, honest, funny conversation between two people who have both been in the thick of it. No fluff, no toxic positivity. Just a clearer picture of what anxiety is, where it comes from and what it looks like when it stops running your life.
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