Podcast
Notes from the Edge
Hosted by Lisa Lacy · EN
Notes From the Edge is where polished stories end and the truth begins. Hosted by writer, trauma educator, executive advisor, and author Lisa Lacy, this globally ranked podcast explores survival, identity, trauma, addiction, recovery, leadership, relationships, and reinvention through raw, deeply human conversations. No scripts. No small talk. Just the stories we were taught to hide, the roles we performed to survive, and the truths that set us free. What did you perform in order to survive? Welcome to the edge. www.lisalacy.com
14episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
I Worked It. But It Didn’t Work. Why Didn’t You Tell Me?
Yesterday00:08:12Summary readyWhen doing everything “right” in recovery leaves you smaller, sicker, and further away from yourself.For two years, I did exactly what I was told.Six days a week. Sometimes two meetings a day. Inpatient rehabilitation. Outpatient rehabilitation. Sponsors. Step work. Inventories. Confessions. Amends.I stayed sober.But I was not becoming healthier.I was becoming smaller.In this deeply personal episode of Notes From the Edge, I explore what happens when a recovery model fails to recognize the person sitting in front of it, especially when that person is also carrying childhood trauma, sexual assault, domestic violence, psychiatric diagnoses, shame, and a profoundly dysregulated nervous system.This is not an attack on AA.If AA saved your life, I celebrate that. Truly. Keep going.This is a grief story about realizing that the map I had been given was never designed for the terrain I was walking.We will talk about:• The difference between staying sober and actually healing• When “sharing” becomes uncontained trauma dumping• Why powerlessness, defect language, and submission may affect traumatized women differently• The importance of nervous system regulation, boundaries, safety, and co-regulation• Modern trauma approaches such as EMDR, Internal Family Systems, and somatic therapy• The evolving science of addiction and neuroplasticity• Alternatives including SMART Recovery, Women for Sobriety, LifeRing, medication-assisted treatment, recovery coaching, therapy, purpose, community, and connection• Why informed choice should be part of every recovery conversationMy nervous system did not need another moral inventory.It needed safety.Recovery should not require abandoning your intuition or becoming less yourself. It should help you become more yourself.And if one approach is not helping you heal, that does not automatically mean you are broken.Maybe you simply need a different map.This episode reflects personal experience and is intended for education and conversation. It is not a substitute for individualized medical or mental health care.Learn more about Lisa Lacy and her work at www.lisalacy.comAnd before we leave, I want to ask you the question I ask every guest:What did you perform in order to survive?Welcome to the Edge.
SummaryYou Can't Automate Relationships with Beth Granger
2d ago00:24:28Summary readyBeth Granger on visibility, digital trust, critical conversations, and staying human in an increasingly automated worldTechnology can help us reach thousands of people, write polished messages, and build impressive networks.But it cannot create trust for us.Beth Granger is a speaker, consultant, trainer, emcee, and LinkedIn and networking strategist who helps professionals communicate more confidently, navigate critical conversations, and turn online connections into meaningful relationships.Her message is simple and increasingly urgent:You can’t automate relationships.In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Beth and Lisa explore the fear beneath professional visibility, why people hesitate to post or speak honestly online, and what separates a connection from an actual relationship.They also discuss:• How to become visible without performing a polished professional persona• The difference between listening and simply waiting to speak• What artificial intelligence can support, and what should never be outsourced• Why critical conversations either strengthen trust or quietly destroy it• How leaders, sales professionals, and teams can communicate with greater clarity and humanity• Why connection, curiosity, kindness, and community still matter in an algorithm-driven worldThis is a conversation about reputation, belonging, confidence, digital communication, and the human work required to make relationships mean something.Learn more about Beth Granger:https://www.bethgranger.comLearn more about Lisa Lacy:https://www.lisalacy.comWelcome to the edge.
SummaryHow Chronic Devaluation Shapes Confidence, Relationships, and Ambition
2d ago00:23:44Summary readyWhat happens when nothing you accomplish ever seems to be enough?In this solo episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy explores the long-term impact of chronic devaluation, especially when it begins in childhood. She shares personal stories of earning straight A’s, leading teams, serving on committees, excelling in performance, and still feeling as though the finish line kept moving.When you are told to go left and then criticized for not going right, you may stop trusting your own direction. Over time, that confusion can shape your confidence, your relationships, your ambition, and your ability to fully receive your own success.This conversation explores:Why devaluation can create overachievement and overfunctioningHow moving standards teach children to distrust themselvesWhy accomplished adults may still struggle to feel successfulHow early devaluation can affect romantic and professional relationshipsThe difference between creating from self-expression and performing for approvalHow to receive feedback without turning it into a verdict on your worthDevaluation did not stop Lisa from becoming a leader, performer, entrepreneur, writer, and creator.She accomplished it anyway.But the deeper work is learning to accomplish without still carrying the need to prove that she deserves to be valued.What have you spent your life accomplishing in the hope that someone would finally recognize your value?And what might you create next if you no longer needed their permission?Welcome to the Edge.www.lisalacy.com
SummaryPeople Were More Comfortable With My Suffering When I Carried It Quietly
3d ago00:26:41Summary readyFemale Anger, Menopause, and What Happens When the Manageable Woman DisappearsPeople celebrate strong women until those women get angry, set boundaries, stop apologizing, or remove access.In this episode of Midnight Menopausal Meanderings, Lisa Lacy explores female anger, menopause, nervous-system overload, and what happens when the emotionally manageable woman begins to disappear. Menopause may not create a new, irrational woman. It may reveal the woman who spent decades swallowing betrayal, exhaustion, grief, emotional labor, and uncomfortable truths to keep everyone else comfortable.This conversation also holds the harder truth: anger can carry important information, but justified rage can still cause harm. Trauma explains behavior. It does not excuse it. Healing is not about silencing anger or worshipping it. It is about learning to hold truth without destruction, boundaries without cruelty, and power without abandoning our humanity.This episode draws from Lisa’s upcoming book, Notes of a Certified Madwoman, an exploration of trauma, survival, identity, nervous-system adaptation, and the women we became in order to survive.Who benefited from the version of you who carried her suffering quietly?Welcome to the edge.www,lisalacy.com
SummaryThe Last Rocketman: Fear Is Information Not Instruction with Dan Schlund
3d ago00:44:59Summary readyWhat happens when the thing that made you feel most alive nearly kills you?“Rocketman” Dan Schlund is one of the last professionally trained Rocketbelt pilots in the world. For a decade, he flew jet packs at events across 25 countries and six continents, performing hundreds of flights without a parachute and with only seconds of fuel strapped to his back.But Dan’s most extraordinary story began after the spectacle ended.Following devastating burns, extensive skin-graft surgeries, and a crash that left him with a broken neck, Dan lost far more than his ability to fly. He lost his income, his marriage, and the identity he had built around being the Rocketman. He also became dependent on pain medication and had to rebuild his life from the ground up.Dan eventually founded National Set Medics, growing it into a multimillion-dollar company that provides medical professionals for film and television productions nationwide. Ten years after his final flight, he purchased the Rocketbelt and training hangar and returned to the air one more time for his memoir and documentary, The Last Rocketman.In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy and Dan explore:• What happens when your identity disappears overnight• The difference between courage and fearlessness• How the nervous system responds after catastrophic injury• Addiction, recovery, and the invisible work behind a comeback• Calculated risk and decision-making under pressure• Why Dan believes fear is information, not instruction• What it took to strap the Rocketbelt on one final timeDan’s message is not that we should become fearless. It is that courage can be practiced, preparation can change our relationship with fear, and our worst experience does not have to become our final one.Learn more about Dan, his book, and the documentary:https://rocketman.tv/Learn more about Lisa Lacy and Notes From the Edge:https://www.lisalacy.com/Welcome to the Edge.
SummaryWhen Your Diagnosis Enters the Room Before You Do
5d ago00:23:58Summary readyPsychiatric labels, medical dismissal, and what happens when a human being becomes paperworkWhat happens when a provider sees your psychiatric history before they truly see you?In this deeply personal solo episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy explores the dangerous gap between being treated as a medically complex human being and being reduced to “the psychiatric patient.”Drawing from her lived experience inside mental health facilities, jail, addiction recovery, emergency rooms, and repeated life-threatening medical crises, Lisa examines how quickly dignity, autonomy, and credibility can disappear once a diagnosis enters the room.This episode explores institutionalization, medical gaslighting, hospital trauma, psychiatric bias, and the devastating consequences of being labeled emotional instead of symptomatic, anxious instead of endangered, and crazy instead of sick.It also offers an early look into Lisa’s forthcoming memoir, Notes From a Certified Madwoman, releasing in October. Part memoir, part cultural critique, and part nervous-system conversation, the book asks a question that could change how we understand trauma and mental illness:What if the diagnosis was sometimes describing survival?Mental illness should never cancel physical illness.A psychiatric record should never erase a patient’s credibility.Institutionalization should never require the surrender of human dignity.Learn more about Lisa, the podcast, and her upcoming work at:https://lisa-lacy.comNotes From a Certified Madwoman releases in October.See you at the edge.
SummaryWhat the Hell is Love?
5d ago00:22:58Summary readyWhat happens when you grow up without hearing “I love you,” without being held, and without learning what safe, enduring affection feels like?In this deeply personal solo episode of Midnight Menopausal Meanderings, I explore the difference between loving someone and knowing how to experience love.My parents never told me they loved me. My father wrote the words in letters I would not open until decades later, after he died. My mother never said them. I learned touch through violation rather than comfort, and when I became a mother, I had to consciously teach myself how to hug my daughter and say, “I love you.”For years, I believed love meant providing. I became the financial provider, the problem-solver, the rescuer, and eventually a workaholic driven by survival.Now, with the help of transformational coach Steve Barton, I am exploring a different idea:Love can be wisdom.Love can be trust.And love can simply be love.We also talk about menopause, the disappearing bullshit filter, and the challenge of setting boundaries that are loving, direct, and final. Because you can love someone, understand them, forgive them, and still decide they no longer have access to you.This next chapter is not about performing love.It is about finally learning what love feels like when it does not require self-abandonment.What did you perform in order to survive?Learn more at lisalacy.comSee you at the edge.
SummaryThe Competence Trap with Loren Silverman
5d ago00:37:23Summary readyBurnout, Boundaries, and Why the Most Capable Person in the Room May Be Closest to the EdgeWhat happens when competence becomes a survival strategy?In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with life coach and former technology leader Loren Silverman for an honest conversation about burnout, overthinking, boundaries, self-abandonment, and the hidden cost of always being the capable one.After nearly two decades working in technology, program management, and digital transformation, Loren realized that the part of his career that mattered most was not the technology. It was helping the people behind it.He also recognized a difficult truth: persistence can look admirable from the outside while quietly costing us our satisfaction, health, and connection to ourselves.Today, Loren is the founder of Silverman Coach and the creator of Life Reboot: Nerd Edition, a coaching experience for nerds, geeks, overthinkers, and overwhelmed professionals who are ready to trade chaos for clarity, build meaningful boundaries, and finally follow through on what matters.Together, Lisa and Loren explore why the most capable person in the room may also be the person closest to the edge, how competence becomes a performance, and why real transformation is often built through small, repeatable choices rather than dramatic overhauls.They also discuss the difference between persistence and self-abandonment, the role values play in decision-making, and what it takes to stop treating yourself like a problem that needs to be optimized.Learn more about Loren Silverman and Silverman Coach:http://silverman.coachLearn more about Lisa Lacy and Notes From the Edge:https://www.lisalacy.comWelcome to the edge.
SummaryBefore the First Hit with Dave Kopeny
5d ago00:53:06Summary readyHow Parents Can Recognize Risk, Interrupt Addiction, and Become Their Child’s Strongest Protective ForceEvery parent wants to believe their child will know how to recognize danger, make the right decision, and walk away when drugs enter the picture.But today’s drug landscape is more accessible, potent, and aggressively marketed than many families realize. By the time a parent knows something is wrong, the problem may already be much larger than anyone understood.In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with author, educator, private investigator, and addiction prevention advocate Dave Kopeny.Dave grew up in a home consumed by addiction. He was given LSD at eight years old, knew how to roll a joint by nine, and later lost his father, brother, and sister-in-law to alcohol and drug use.Those experiences became the foundation for more than 30 years of work with adolescents, young adults, and families navigating addiction and other high-risk behaviors. Throughout his career, Dave has served as a school counselor, teacher, probation officer, law enforcement officer, gang investigator, and private investigator specializing in teen addiction and intervention.Together, Lisa and Dave explore:• Why the “war on drugs” failed• How parents can recognize the early warning signs of substance use• The difference between healthy supervision and destructive surveillance• How social media and modern drug markets target young people• What parents should do when they suspect their child is using drugs• How families can replace fear and helplessness with awareness, action, and hopeDave is the author of Tip of the Spear: How to Educate, Supervise, and Monitor Your Child in a World of Increasing Drug Abuse and Addiction and the founder of ASAP Community, where he provides parents with practical tools to protect and support their children.Connect with Dave Kopeny:https://asapcommunity.orgConnect with Lisa Lacy:https://www.lisalacy.comWelcome to the edge.
SummaryWho Got You Here Won't Get You There
5d ago00:46:03Tap to summarizeJim Hughes on Identity, Fear, Self-Judgment, and Becoming the Person Beneath the PerformanceThe person who got you here may have been exactly who you needed to become.The achiever. The problem-solver. The founder who never stops moving. The leader who learned how to carry the pressure, meet the expectations, and become whatever the moment required.But what happens when that identity begins keeping you from where you want to go next?In this episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with coach, author, speaker, and Untamed founder Jim Hughes for a conversation about the stories, fears, and deeply rooted beliefs that quietly shape who we become.Jim has lived in 12 countries, built and led a multimillion-dollar engineering business in Australia, explored an extraordinary range of careers, and even skied the world’s longest giant slalom race wearing only a G-string. For the past decade, he has helped high-achieving founders and leaders stop living as the people they believe they should be and begin becoming the people they genuinely want to be.Together, Lisa and Jim explore:• The hidden ways founders and high performers waste energy• Why motivation may be overrated• How fear disguises itself as ambition and growth• Why changing what you do is not enough without examining who is doing it• The role self-judgment plays in keeping people stuck• How voices from our past continue influencing decisions they are no longer entitled to make• What it takes to release the identity that helped you surviveThis is a conversation about success, identity, performance, and the courage required to stop obeying the person you once needed to be.Connect with Jim Hughes and Untamed:https://www.becomeuntamed.comConnect with Lisa Lacy:https://www.lisalacy.comNotes From the Edge is where we explore trauma, identity, recovery, reinvention, and the deeply human stories underneath the roles we perform.Welcome to the edge.
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