Morgan Rich: Episode Transcript

Morgan Rich

So I’m reading the paper out loud to the class, and John Rogers looks at me, you know, just goes, oh, isn’t that sweet? And like, you know, wiped a tear from his eye. Jokingly, and everyone laughed, and the professor laughed also.

Heather Holt

Welcome to Change Happened, Then What? If you’ve been here before, welcome back, and if this is your first episode, I’m really glad you found us. I want to take a quick moment to thank All of the new subscribers out there! I wish I could name every one of you by name, but we’d be here for a while! Just know I see you out there, and I’m so happy you’re becoming a part of this community! And if you want some behind-the-scenes views and to keep up with the pups, you can join my monthly newsletter for a little extra love in your inbox!

No junk, I promise! Just visit changehappenedpodcast.com to sign up or use the link in the show notes. Now let’s get into Morgan’s story. There’s a little piece of Morgan’s story that takes place here in Vermont, and I’ll admit that immediately made me smile. I grew up here as a kid. After years away, Vermont has become my home again. So when Morgan started talking about a tiny place at the bottom of a hill, skiing outside with his dad and watching a little black and white television, I could see it.

But Vermont is only a small piece of this story. So is hockey, and so is the fact that Morgan’s father helped start the Chicago Bulls, which was a pretty wild sentence to casually drop in the middle of a conversation. The story underneath all of that is much quieter. Morgan was a sensitive kid. He noticed people, He noticed cruelty. He noticed when something didn’t feel right. And for a long time, he couldn’t figure out why the rest of the world didn’t seem to notice the things the way he did.

Eventually, the question became bigger than belonging. It became, what happens when the world keeps treating one of the most important parts of you Early on, like, I was friends with everyone in the—

Morgan Rich

I was friends with a lot of different kids in the class, and I was well-liked by a lot of people. But internally, I was really, really struggling. Like, internally, I felt like I didn’t fit. I didn’t belong. I didn’t know where my place was. I felt really insecure from almost as long as I can remember and felt like I didn’t understand how the world— like, I kept looking out at the world and kind of going like, why are things happening the way they’re happening? Like, people are being mean to each other, people are teasing each other, and, and then, and then everyone was paying attention to grades and things like that.

And so I was a kid who had a hard time, but I had this thing going for me, which was that I was an athlete.

Heather Holt

Sports gave Morgan a place where he didn’t have to spend quite so much energy wondering where he belonged.

Morgan Rich

And even more importantly, sports gave him time Part of my athletics was this beautiful connection with my dad. He would come to my practices, that we would go and play games, and he would hit fly balls to me, and I’d go running around and diving and, and catch them. And we’d try to make it so that I saved home runs, you know, over the fence. And we were very creative and playful. And that, to me, was this beautiful connection with my dad.

Heather Holt

I just love that this is how he remembers his dad first. Not by what his father had accomplished or by the famous names attached around him. Rather, he remembers playing with him, being together, just being a kid with his dad. Only later would Morgan understand that his father had a pretty remarkable history of his own.

Morgan Rich

My dad was— had a really interesting story. He grew up in a very wealthy family. His family’s business was the Simonized Wax Company. He was raised by butlers and servants. They would take him to school. They would, uh, you know, he didn’t really have a connection with his mom and his dad. And then his mom died, I think, when he was 18 or something like that. I don’t really exactly know, but It was a pretty challenging upbringing for him, as I understand. And yet, he was made CEO of the Simon Ise Wax Company.

He had a family. He had 4 kids with his first wife. And then he becomes a bachelor in Chicago. And one of his buddies connected him with Franklin Newley, who was the owner of the Golden State Warriors. basketball team. Franklin Neely suggested to my dad that he start a professional basketball team in Chicago. And so he puts in $100,000 with 8 other guys. He’s the principal, as I understand, sort of rallier, and they started a basketball team in Chicago called the Chicago Bulls. I want to talk to him more about it.

I’m so fascinated by so many of the ups and downs of it and the reasons for it and his passion about it. And not passionate about it. And, you know, he was this massively eligible bachelor in Chicago. And through this quirky story of my aunt working for the Golden State Warriors in San Francisco, my mom substituting one day when her friend was sick, Franklin Muley wanting to hire my mom for her best friend’s position, and my mom saying, no way, I’m not going to take— I’m not going to take my friend’s job.

So, then Franklin comes to Chicago. My mom is in Chicago. Franklin brings my mom to the game, the first Bulls game ever. My dad is, of course, there and says, like, hey, who’s the— who’s that woman that you’re with there? And so, my mom and dad meet for the first time, the inaugural game of the Chicago Bulls. season and, and franchise history.

Heather Holt

Yep, you heard that right, the Chicago Bulls. And there is an entire story hiding inside Morgan’s father’s life, but that’s not what we’re doing today. Because what mattered most to Morgan wasn’t the Bulls. It was the dad who showed up at the baseball field, the dad who played with him, The dad he wanted to spend more time with.

Morgan Rich

As it goes, I was really very loved and adored by my parents, and they were both pretty absent. And so in many ways, I started to raise myself, you know, a lot of time on my own. A lot of time with caregivers. My mom was working really hard to make her career happen. My dad is supporting my mom like crazy, and just, she’s loving it.

Heather Holt

I kind of keep coming back to that sentence: loved and adored and pretty absent. Both things can be true. I think that’s one of the things adulthood eventually teaches us. Well, if we let it. 2 things can be true at the same time: the people who loved us could love us completely and still leave us carrying the things they never meant for us to carry.

Morgan Rich

When I was 2, in 1972, my dad had a big seizure. They did all the tests available in 1972. There weren’t PET scans, CAT scans. There weren’t like the All the medical technology has increased dramatically, and they didn’t really find anything going on with him at that, at that point. I didn’t know, I was 2, so I can’t say like my dad changed when that happened, but a lot of people feel like he changed. And there was, there was a pretty epic fall from grace in that owning a professional sports franchise at that point, if you didn’t have a massive amount of capital— I think that’s probably true today as well— It’s hard because back there the NBA was not the NBA of today, right?

It wasn’t like Michael Jordan yet. It wasn’t Nike. It wasn’t, you know, NBA on NBC and, you know, all the hype and all the craziness that it is today. It was, you know, it was challenging. So my dad sold them in like 1972 or around then, and he really struggled. My sense of the story Is that my dad didn’t like the life, the wealthy, crazy life of status, keeping up with all the wealthy, rich people. I don’t think that’s who he was. He was always great with my friends.

He was always this, like, sensitive, caring, present guy.

Heather Holt

Sensitive. Morgan uses that word to describe his father. But later, it becomes one of the words that helps him understand himself. There’s something about recognizing a part of yourself in someone that you love that can make you feel just a little safer, even when the rest of the world isn’t quite sure what to do with it.

Morgan Rich

Because what followed was 7 years later, he was living in Vermont in a small shed at the bottom of a hill near a creek on a property that my brother and sister owned. And so here I was in Chicago. He was now away in Vermont living in this shack with no electricity, hot belly stove for the heat. And I was really missing him. He was my buddy. He was my— he was— he would take me to my sports games. We were connected. And it wasn’t— it was just— it was, you know, pillow fights and wrestling and playfulness and all that.

Like, we would ride the train in Chicago. We’d always— he would always— I would always want to sit in the front, so we’d always sit in the front and we’d ride all the way to the end of the line and then all the way back and just go on these simple little explorations. Like, it wasn’t complicated, it wasn’t big trips around the world, it was just simply beautiful time, father and son goofing around, loving each other. So when he left, it was, it was pretty So, I’m 9, I’m 10, and I go visit him in Vermont and stay in this little shed.

And for me, a kid who grew up in Chicago, I was outdoors for the first time, or maybe not the first time, but just loved it. Remember, so just loving being cold during the day, skiing down the hill and trying to make it across the bridge on my little cross-country skis. You know, we didn’t get downhill skis, we got cross-country skis, so they weren’t exactly right, but I was adjusting them and adapting them. And he would sit at the bottom of the hill and root me on and cheer and watch me fall.

And right at that time, it was the 1980s, so the USA Olympic hockey team was playing in Lake Placid, which was A stone’s throw from where we were in Vermont. And we, I remember, went across the street to a neighbor’s house on their little black and white TV and watched—

Heather Holt

Can you believe it?

Morgan Rich

They beat Russia. And it was the Miracle on Ice. Like, I could feel it, Heather. Like, there was something about it that was really powerful as a young athlete.

Heather Holt

Morgan came to visit his dad in Vermont, and this is the place where his story brushes up against my own life. When Morgan said his dad lived in a shed, I had to smile a little. I have a couple of Vermont sheds on my own property that would definitely challenge whatever picture just popped into your head. But what really stopped me was realizing that his dad was staying less than 2 miles from where I live now, on a road I travel nearly every single day. I know those hills, those little roads, and how quiet it gets here when the snow settles over everything.

But these are Morgan’s memories, a little boy getting time with his dad he missed. And what I love is how ordinary so much of it was. Of course Morgan noticed the hockey, but the detail that stays with me isn’t the miracle on ice. It’s his dad at the bottom of the hill cheering him on. We rarely know which moments will matter while we’re living in them. Years pass, and somehow those are the ones that we can still see.

Morgan Rich

I remember leaving. I remember him, you know, taking me to the airport, and, uh, back in the day before TSA when you could go to the gate. You know, this has been like such a Like a meaningful week of time with him and time feeling alive. You know, I didn’t feel alive in Chicago. I didn’t feel connected. I just felt lost and lonely and scared and insecure and unsure of myself. And it wasn’t— things weren’t easy. And I didn’t really know how to articulate it or I probably couldn’t have even said it at that point.

And I remember him standing in the window, you know, and him crying when I left. And he, you know, I think as meaningful as it was for me, I think it was equally as meaningful for him. You know, we were really connected. We were buddies and we really missed each other. I think, you know, it was super hard for him and he was— I don’t know what he was dealing with. I wish I could know. I wish I could know what his story was.

Heather Holt

That last part— I wish I knew what his story was. There are questions about people we love that sometimes don’t occur to us until we can’t ask them anymore. I have some of those questions too. Things I would ask differently now because I’m not the same person I was then. Morgan didn’t know yet how many questions he would eventually carry about his dad. For a while, though, something happened that gave them a little more time together.

Morgan Rich

My brother’s house burned down not long after that. It might have been, I don’t know, 6 months or a year after that. My brother’s house burned down in kind of a crazy— like, it caught on fire. The fire department came, they put it out. So that was super devastating. For whatever reason, I don’t know the story, my dad then moved back to Chicago. For me, that was a great outcome. I got my dad back.

Heather Holt

I don’t think there’s any clean way to hold that. Something devastating happens to one part of his family, and inside that same event, Morgan gets something he desperately wanted— his dad comes back home. I got my dad back. And with him came hockey.

Morgan Rich

So then there I am in Chicago playing hockey, trying to pursue this dream, but not playing on very good teams. I said to my parents, I really want to play in Deerfield. And they made the incredible commitment, just unbelievable commitment, to drive me out to practice 3 days a week and games twice a week. That year we were 31-1 and went to the state tournament and just blasted through the state tournament. And like, my dad is in town, it’s, you know, 7th grade, we’re winning 5-2 with 4 minutes left in the, in the state finals of the state tournament game, and we lost.

You know, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat.

Heather Holt

He wanted to win. Of course he did. But listening to Morgan now, the hockey almost felt like it was the container. Inside it was all that time with his dad. Practices, games, car rides, showing up together. I think we do a lot of this in life. We believe we’re chasing one thing and only later realize something else was happening alongside it.

Morgan Rich

And then I said to my parents, like, hey, I’m going to play in the Olympics. I said, I want to go to boarding school. I go off to boarding school my sophomore year of high school with this dream to play professionally, you know, play in the Olympics. And I had my hotshot jersey on, and, like, I got this cool jersey with my name on the back. And, you know, I show up at practice, and the first day, the very first day of dry land training, Like training.

It’s not even on the ice. And I walk into the gym and almost immediately I could feel the air go out of my dream like a balloon. There were a lot of dudes in the room who were way bigger than I was, who were stronger than I was, who I could tell were great athletes and were hockey players. You know, I don’t know, you can feel it. Like, oh man, wow, I don’t know what I just walked into. After that day, went back to my room, put away the jersey deep in the closet, and the next day put on a t-shirt and shorts and showed up ready to get to work.

Heather Holt

I really like this part of Morgan’s story because It isn’t one of those shiny resilience moments where somebody gets knocked down and immediately knows exactly what they’re to do next. He went back to his room, he put away his jersey, and the next morning he showed up. That feels much closer to the resilience I can recognize. Most of the time, it doesn’t feel heroic while you’re doing it. You just get up and do the next thing because the next thing is sitting there waiting for you.

And that’s what Morgan did.

Morgan Rich

I, you know, figured out how to get to work. I figured out how to show up every single day and just, you know, these guys are lifting big weights, you know, they’re bench pressing and squatting and doing, you know, running and doing all these things. And I’m like, you know, with my little tiny weights in the corner, you know, like But, you know, just consistently humbling, having to just deal with feeling not enough. And, uh, miracle of miracles, I made the team. I was— there were 55 dudes who made the team.

I was 55. The first tournament that we’re playing, which is November of the year I go away, is in Chicago, my hometown. You know, there’s only a certain number of positions on the bench for players, and number 55 doesn’t get a seat on the bench. I think we won the tournament. So, I kept showing up.

Heather Holt

Wow.

Morgan Rich

And so, I started to carve out a niche for myself of getting a little bit more playing time, a little bit more playing time. So, a couple guys got hurt, I started playing better, and Bob, Bebop, really started to notice. And I remember one day at practice, he just said, there’s this dude on this team who just scored this really big goal for us. And, you know, he, he started this year at not even, not even dressing, didn’t complain, didn’t make noise, didn’t ask for more ice time, just kept showing up, kept working hard.

And now he’s one of the biggest contributors on the team. Like, I didn’t really know who he was talking about until he said my name.

Heather Holt

The kid who spent so much time wondering whether anyone really saw him had been seen.

Morgan Rich

Quietly.

Heather Holt

Not because he demanded attention. Because someone had been paying attention. And then, just as Morgan was beginning to find his footing, his family finally got an answer to a question that had been hanging over them since he was 2.

Morgan Rich

I got back to school and I got a phone call like 3 days later that he had fallen. My brother called and said that he had a brain tumor. So I proceeded to get 19 straight hits in baseball. I was 19 for 19. And I went back home to see him after his surgery, and he hadn’t moved the left side of his body since the surgery. And I walked in the room and he raised up his left hand and got a big smile on his face.

And it turns out that the seizure that he had had when I was 2, that that had been the start of the brain tumor. That this was a really slow-growing, slow-growing tumor.

Heather Holt

Suddenly, things that had never quite made sense had an explanation. The seizure, the changes people had noticed, The years between. But an explanation isn’t the same thing as good news. Morgan was about to lose the person who had been woven through so much of the life he was trying to build.

Morgan Rich

So there I am, my, like, senior year. Your dad has a brain tumor. Right before my dad died, I was a big, strong guy, right? I had been training all these years for hockey. great shape, like I was strong. So I took his hands and I, and I, and I just, you know, like I just said to him, please take any of the energy that, that I have, like anything you need, and please just stay alive. Like, please.

Heather Holt

There are some moments in these interviews where I know anything I say next will be smaller than what we just heard. This is one of them. So we’re gonna leave Morgan there for just a moment with his dad. We’ll be right back. One of the things that keeps showing up in Morgan’s story is how much we need connection. To be seen, to have spaces where we don’t have to pretend we’re doing better than we are. That’s one of the reasons I’m so grateful to have Pure Energy Apothecary supporting this season.

They’ve created a place centered around wellness, community, and connection, because sometimes taking care of ourselves starts was simply finding the right place to land. And because you’re a part of this community, you can visit pureenergyvt.com and use code PURECHANGE at checkout for 20% off your order. That’s code PURECHANGE for 20% off. And now back to Morgan.

Morgan Rich

And what it feels like is it feels like my strategy boomeranged, meaning that I was supposed to give him energy, but it seems like he gave me— like he gave me this— like his death, that’s what was— it was a huge gift, a huge gift to me. I mean, it was Really, really challenging, really dark, really, you know, years of loneliness again.

Heather Holt

Don’t Don’t misunderstand when Morgan uses the word gift. He isn’t saying losing his father was good. He isn’t erasing what it cost him. He’s describing what he can now see when he looks back at what grew alongside the grief. I understand that distinction all too well. Like Morgan, would rather have his father alive, I too would take my brother back. But calling something transformative doesn’t mean we wanted it. It means we’re being honest about what happened afterwards.

Morgan Rich

So then I went away to Hobart William Smith in upstate New York, you know, just grieving, grieving, grieving, grieving, grieving, like missing my dad so much, just being again you know, still in that place of not being certain of myself, being, you know, insecure and so lonely, you know, just so— I didn’t want to drink and didn’t fall into addiction, didn’t use substances to numb it. I, for whatever reason, somehow stayed in the dark, in the difficulty, in the amazing Transformational cauldron. You know, and death is— you know, I got to really be in that.

And be angry and break, you know, throw sticks and break, try to break things, you know, break rocks and throw rocks. And I’m never wanting to destroy any, anyone or anything, you know, but like relying sort of on the natural world to thrash in the water, to scream into, to break, you know, sticks against trees, to, you know, Yeah, just look at the moon and think my dad can see the same moon that I can see. I don’t know where you are, but— and just so desperately wanting to be seen, wanting to be discovered, wanting to be held, wanting to be, you know, just not going to be alone.

Right.

Heather Holt

That image of the moon— oh, I get that. Because grief can make us reach for strange little points of connection. A song, a place, a smell, or the moon. Anything that lets us imagine the person we miss isn’t quite as unreachable as they feel. Morgan was grieving his dad, But underneath that grief was something that had been there much longer. He wanted to be seen. He wanted somebody to meet him where he actually was.

Morgan Rich

And, and it sort of worked and it sort of didn’t work. But, but I mean, in the sense of I had some friends, but, but no one met me in that grief. And so I, I And didn’t have any— you know, I had a lot of people who were just telling me, like, come on, just go see this therapist. Or, you know, so I’d go see the therapist and the therapist would say, you know, one thing that would make it easier is if you just, you know, stop resisting the game so much.

Like, stop— like, just play along with what everyone is doing. I’m like, I’m not going to play along with what everyone’s doing. Everyone, like, they’re just drinking and partying and not, you know, just like not being kind to each other.

Heather Holt

Even grieving, Morgan was still doing what he had done as a kid. Looking around, noticing, questioning. Why are we doing this? Why are people treating each other this way? Why does fitting in require me to ignore something I can clearly see? He didn’t have the answers yet, but he was becoming less willing to pretend he didn’t have the questions either.

Morgan Rich

I ran for president of student government my sophomore year. I didn’t really know what I was doing. I was just like, you know, following the next breadcrumb. For whatever reason, went to a student government meeting, showed up, not like the meeting is a complete mess. No one is like, like there’s no order to the meeting. No one is really Nothing really is happening except guys are sitting around talking. So I show up at the meeting as the representative for the Hobart Student Association, and everyone stops.

There hasn’t been someone from Hobart at this meeting in like 3 years. And it turns out that the guys running the student government were doing it because it looked good on their resume. They weren’t following any rules. They weren’t running the government, the student government. They weren’t showing up to committee meetings. They weren’t They weren’t— they were just doing it because that’s what looked good on a resume. That just like did not vibe with me very well. There was this game being played of like the old boys network of, you know, let’s just go and do what you’re supposed to do.

Study hard, get good grades, go to the best college, you know, graduate, make a lot of money. I was like, yeah, that doesn’t— one, I’m not very good at that game. And two, like, I don’t see that. I actually don’t— when I look out at the world, I don’t see a lot of people, like, thriving and really happy. What I see is a lot of people kind of miserable, you know, like my dad, who had had everything and it didn’t work for him.

Heather Holt

There. There’s the shift. For years, Morgan had assumed the problem might be him. But maybe he wasn’t too sensitive, too uncomfortable, or too willing to play along. He was now beginning to wonder whether some of the things he had been told to adapt to weren’t worth adapting to. And that— Well, That’s a very different question.

Morgan Rich

So there was this thing coming alive in me about understanding that there was a different way of being in the world that was much more about love and connection. And so I wrote a paper about it my senior year about friendship and love.

Heather Holt

After all those years of questioning himself, Morgan had finally found language for what mattered to him— friendship, love, connection— and he wrote it down. Then he stood in front of a room to read it out loud. Which brings us back to where we started.

Morgan Rich

Yeah, write this paper about friendship and love. And I’m reading the paper— the way that it was going was we each read our papers out loud. So I’m reading the paper out loud to the class, and John Rogers looks at me and mock, you know, just goes, oh, isn’t that sweet? And like, you know, wiped a tear from his eye. Jokingly, and everyone laughed, and the professor laughed also. So here I am, like, finally finding some, some space in myself to speak up and to say, like, I’m connected.

I’m, like, through the death of my dad, through the pursuing of my dreams, through— like, I’m connected to something that is— that feels beautiful and feels meaningful and feels like this is the way that I think life wants to be. So I write this paper and I get laughed at.

Heather Holt

This is the part that hurts, not simply because they laughed. Morgan had finally taken something tender and true out of himself and put it where other people could see it. And they laughed. I think most of us know some version of that feeling. Maybe you learned to stop crying or stop talking about something you loved. Maybe you made yourself smaller, quieter, or tougher because that seemed easier than letting people see the thing They had already told you was way too much. But Morgan did something pretty extraordinary, at least in my mind.

Morgan Rich

And so I kept going. I, I, you know, just felt totally rejected but kept going, you know, kept reading. Read the next part about, you know, I think I did friendship first and then I did love. And John again is like, oh, isn’t that sweet? That just, that just brings a tear to my eye again.

Heather Holt

He kept reading. That may be one of my favorite parts of his entire story. They laughed and he kept reading.

Morgan Rich

Like, I didn’t have— I just had therapists telling me to comply. And like, everyone was just like, can you please calm down and stop making so much noise? You know, just play along. And I was like, sorry, I, I don’t do that. I can’t do that.

Heather Holt

For most of his life, Morgan had been asking why he couldn’t be more comfortable in the world everyone else seemed to be willing to accept. Now another possibility was emerging. Maybe discomfort wasn’t proof that something was wrong with him. Maybe some of it was telling him what mattered to him.

Morgan Rich

You know, then, then kind of wander out into the world with this really strong sense of, I don’t know exactly what I’m doing, but I know that I really care about people, and I’m really good at listening. And I’m really good at being in hard places. And there’s, you know, some different way of being in the world that feels really meaningful that I think we gotta find our way back to.

Heather Holt

There it is. The thing Morgan spent years wondering whether he needed to get rid of was becoming useful. Not because sensitivity suddenly stops being difficult, not because everyone finally understood him, but because he began to understand it differently. And eventually, that changed the work he chose to do.

Morgan Rich

I call it training for the unknown. So in my work with men, in my work with young people, what we do Hmm. Is like hone in on that place in them that knows the way forward. It’s an invitation into our hearts. It’s the invitation of all the beautiful men in the world who are deeply caring, deeply thoughtful, have connection to their heart to say like, let’s like, come on. If we each step courageously and bring the gift that we are born to give, whatever that might be, that it shifts dramatically.

Heather Holt

Morgan didn’t end up teaching people how to become tougher versions of themselves. He began helping them find their way back to the parts they had learned to hide. And I think that distinction matters, because becoming doesn’t always mean adding something new. Sometimes it means finally trusting something that was there all along. Morgan started this story as a little boy wondering why the world felt so different to him. He spent years trying to understand where he belonged. Maybe belonging was never supposed to require becoming less of himself.

Maybe The work was learning that sensitivity and strength were never opposites in the first place. And that understanding doesn’t stay inside Morgan’s own story. It became part of the work he does now, helping men live more honestly and find their way back to themselves. He’s carried those ideas into his writings You can find more about Morgan’s books, his work, and ways to connect with him in today’s show notes and under Season 4 Guests at changehappenpodcast.com. Before we leave Morgan today, I asked him, after everything we’ve talked about, what keeps you smiling today?

Morgan Rich

You know, just having a connection like this. something that is really deeply meaningful. Hearing the call of a bird, feeling— I woke up this morning and felt the sun shining through my window and my beautiful partner, her hand in mine, and appreciating so much sort of the miracle of all of this, of being part of this wild adventure.

Heather Holt

And when I asked what words of wisdom he would leave with someone listening, his answer was wonderfully simple.

Morgan Rich

Love yourself. Learn to love yourself.

Heather Holt

Morgan, thank you for trusting me with your story and for letting us sit with you through all the different versions of you that were brought here today. And thank you for listening and being here with us.

Morgan Rich

Yeah, love yourself. Learn to love yourself.

Heather Holt

If Morgan’s story made you think of somebody who has spent too much of their life believing they were too sensitive, too emotional, or simply too much, send them As we’ve seen in this episode, sometimes hearing somebody else put words around something we’ve carried quietly is enough to make us feel a little less alone. And before we go, I have one question for you. What part of yourself did you once believe you needed to change in order to belong? Go to changehappen.org podcast.com to share your answer.

When you do, you’ll also be entered to win some Change Happened Then What merch. And next Tuesday, we continue with Alexi Tracy. Alexi’s story takes us somewhere very different, but it leaves us asking the same question we’ve been asking all along. After After life changes us, then what? Today’s episode was written, edited, and produced by me, Heather Holt, with supervision from the keepers of the smiles and multiple interruptions, Waylon and Dalton.

Morgan Rich

Woof, woof.

Heather Holt

Next week, change happened, then what?