I am so excited to welcome Heather MacFadyen to the show today. You likely know her from the God Centered Mom podcast. She’s been hosting that show for 5 years! If you don’t know her already, she’s a mom to 4 boys. We talk about fears that we have and how fear is the root problem to other emotions we have like anger; we talk about guilt and shame in motherhood and what to do when shame is driving your identity.
What did you enjoy about this episode? What was your takeaway. Let's continue the conversation on Instagram or Twitter or you can send me an email here.
Thank you for following along life with me. I love being apart of your day. And as always, I hope this show helps you survive a little easier.
I am so excited to share this conversation with you. Dr. Caroline Leaf sat down across the virtual kitchen table with me a few months ago. She is a is a communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist. Since the early 1980s she has researched the mind-brain connection, the nature of mental health and the formation of memory. She was one of the first in her field to study how the brain can change (neuroplasticity) with directed mind input. She has helped hundreds of thousands of students and adults learn how to use their mind to detox and grow their brain to succeed in every area of their lives, including school, university and the workplace.
Her passion is to help people see the power of the mind to change the brain, and to see the link between science and spirituality through controlling their thoughts and emotions, learning how to think and learn, and finding their sense of purpose in life.
You guys I was so nervous to talk with her because she is just so very smart. I felt like I would be out of my league, but Dr. Leaf is truly delightful. And as we talk, its evident that she has a huge heart for people to have hope and life change. Did you know that when we as Jesus followers talk about taking thoughts captive that science actually backs that up? What we talk about over the next 30 minutes is fascinating. We talk about the connection between science and faith, how you have the power to turn on your brain in order to get rid of toxins, the science behind captivating your thoughts, how to change your mind and how to help our kids learn to change their thought patterns. I loved this episode and hope you do, too.
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It’s that time again for another crossover episode with my good friend, Melanie Dale. And if you are new to the show and haven’t heard one of these episodes you are in for a treat! Each month, Melanie and I sit down and have a conversation about a topic that we are both surviving and that we could lighten up about. So one part is here and the part of the conversation is on her show, Lighten Up with Melanie Dale. So be sure to hop over there when are you are finished listening to this one.
This month, we are having a conversation about something that I tend to struggle with a lot—contentment. Does anybody else ride the struggle bus, too? We talk about the different categories of discontentment, the byproduct emotions of our discontentment, and what has helped us when we feel like we are spinning out of control with discontentment.
Listen to the other part of this conversation over at Lighten Up with Melanie Dale
What did you enjoy about this episode? What was your takeaway. Let's continue the conversation on Instagram or Twitter or you can send me an email here.
Thank you for following along life with me. I love being apart of your day. And as always, I hope this show helps you survive a little easier.
Erin Weidemann sits down with me across our virtual kitchen table. Sometimes I meet people and its like we could be real life friends if we only lived in the same area. I felt that way about Erin. She is the co-founder and creator of Bible Belles which is a publishing company whose mission is to help girls discover real beauty, God's love, and their purpose through the female heroes of the Bible. She’s also the host of the Heroes For Her Podcast which highlights positive role models for girls today.
In this conversation, we talk about how she ended up going from a middle school teacher to running a company; why she chose to create products for young girls to help them talk about beauty and identity; how to move girls from self-doubt to purpose; raising girls in the current culture climate and how we tend to put God in a box with what He could do through us. So much goodness covered in a short period.
What did you enjoy about this episode? What was your takeaway. Let's continue the conversation on Instagram or Twitter or you can send me an email here.
Thank you for following along life with me. I love being apart of your day. And as always, I hope this show helps you survive a little easier.
Amber Tysl joins me around my kitchen table. Amber is a former teacher who quit her secure job to take over a photography business (which she had no experience in) in order to stay home with her kids. Her husband is a high school basketball coach and they have 3 kids. Amber is someone who sees the beauty in the broken. That is truly a theme in her life. You see beauty that she has created in her home, by her fashion and in her photography. She loves to take was is imperfect and display it as beautiful. We talk about what its like to be a coach’s wife, how she made the decision to leave her secure teaching job, what hospitality looks like for her and how to get the most out of thrift store shopping.
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What did you enjoy about this episode? What was your takeaway. Let's continue the conversation on Instagram or Twitter or you can send me an email here.
Thank you for following along life with me. I love being apart of your day. And as always, I hope this show helps you survive a little easier.
Kylie White joins me around my kitchen table. She is a wife and mother to 4 kids—2 of whom she adopted from the Congo. They operate two Chick-fil-A restaurants and are also part of the Cathy Family that founded Chick-fil-a. So you know I had to ask her for secret menu items!! Kylie is also on the Board of Directors for CARE for AIDS and loves to lift her voice for the voiceless!
We talk about finding purpose. If you have ever wondered if God is done with you or if this is all there is to life, then you are going to love this conversation. We talk about how to find that purpose and how to raise your kids to be generous, to take risks and to be adventurous.
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What did you enjoy about this episode? What was your takeaway. Let's continue the conversation on Instagram or Twitter or you can send me an email here.
Thank you for following along life with me. I love being apart of your day. And as always, I hope this show helps you survive a little easier.
It’s that time again for another crossover episode with my good friend, Melanie Dale. I hope you enjoy these episodes as much as we do. And this month, we are tackling summer. If you are in the south, summer has begun and many of us have mixed emotions about it. Before I had kids, summer was just another season. After kids, summer now carrying a mixed bag of emotions. I equally dread while looking forward to it. So in this part of the crossover episode, we talk about our feelings about summer, our no’s of summer, how we survive working from home while our people are home and screen time. And per usual, there is some slightly inappropriate dialog. Heaven help us. After you listen to this episode, be sure to jump over to Melanie’s podcast, Lighten Up with Melanie Dale, to hear the other half.
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What did you enjoy about this episode? What was your takeaway. Let's continue the conversation on Instagram or Twitter or you can send me an email here.
Thank you for following along life with me. I love being apart of your day. And as always, I hope this show helps you survive a little easier.
Natalie Brenner joins me for today’s episode. A mutual friend connected us and I knew pretty immediately that you would resonate with her story. Natalie is wife, mom, photographer and author who is passionate about justice, Jesus and digging into a life of grace. She married young and quickly decided to grow her family through adoption.
While walking through that process, she suffered a miscarriage, loss of dreams and loss of jobs. If you have ever been in a place where you experienced both sorrow and joy, then you will relate to Natalie’s story. She learned first hand what it is like for your prayers to be answered in different ways than expected. We talk about her miscarriage, her adoption, the trauma she experienced in child birth, loss of her husband’s job along with some advice for women who are currently left sitting with expectations unmet.
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What did you enjoy about this episode? What was your takeaway. Let's continue the conversation on Instagram or Twitter or you can send me an email here.
Thank you for following along life with me. I love being apart of your day. And as always, I hope this show helps you survive a little easier.
It was a privilege to welcome back to the show, Shaunti Feldhahn. She received her graduate degree from Harvard University and was an analyst on Wall Street before unexpectedly becoming a social researcher, best-selling author and popular speaker. She joined me on Episode 78 to talk about how men are wired.
But today, I asked her to come back on the show to talk about her new research. We talk about what it looks like to actually find rest. We talk about what true rest really looks like, what was surprising about her research, why women want to remain busy, how fear plays a role, and how to retrain yourself to notice the good which in turn brings you rest.
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What did you enjoy about this episode? What was your takeaway. Let's continue the conversation on Instagram or Twitter or you can send me an email here.
Thank you for following along life with me. I love being apart of your day. And as always, I hope this show helps you survive a little easier.
Author and communicator, Lynn Cowell, joins me to talk about raising girls to be both strong and nurturing women. Lynn has raised two girls who are now in their early twenties so she has a wealth of experience and knowledge to bring to the table. We talk about advice for raising girls through the tween phase, how she navigated raising girls that were different from each other, how to help girls understand that their worth comes from God, how we as moms can help foster our girls uniqueness and how to raise strong and brave women. This conversation will encourage your heart as a woman whether you have daughters or not.
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Thank you for following along life with me. I love being apart of your day. And as always, I hope this show helps you survive a little easier.
Brett Trapp, author of the Blue Babies Pink blog and podcast, joins me. His podcast was one of my top recommendations for last year. Brett has a gift of storytelling and his podcast was just that. It is a story of growing up gay and Christian in the south. Brett joins me around the table to tell his story. The conversation isn’t a theological debate. It isn’t question of whether its right or wrong. It’s simply his story. What I’ve noticed in my life is that when we hear someone’s story, empathy follows.
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What did you enjoy about this episode? What was your takeaway. Let's continue the conversation on Instagram or Twitter or you can send me an email here.
Thank you for following along life with me. I love being apart of your day. And as always, I hope this show helps you survive a little easier.
It’s that time again for another crossover episode with my friend, Melanie Dale. I just love getting to sit down with her and talk about life. Each month we pick a topic and have a conversation about it. Then, you get to listen to one part here on Surviving Sarah and another part over on Melanie’s podcast called Lighten Up with Melanie Dale. So don’t forget to head over to her podcast and listen to the other half.
With spring having sprung—at least for the south—we thought it would be a good time to talk about personal growth and self-care. In this part of the conversation, we talk about how we are doing on personal growth goals that we set in January, how we incorporate self-care into our week, what it looks like when we don’t take care of ourselves and how we can learn to pay attention to our bodies and minds so that we don’t crash.
What did you enjoy about this episode? What was your takeaway. Let's continue the conversation on Instagram or Twitter or you can send me an email here.
Thank you for following along life with me. I love being apart of your day. And as always, I hope this show helps you survive a little easier.
Denise James, joins me around my kitchen table. She is an expat living in a small town in Southeast Asia. She homeschools her 6 kids. In her "spare" time, she produces a podcast and co-runs a blog made for expat woman encouraging them to take root where they've been planted. After hearing that she loves Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake, I knew we would be fast friends. Denise reached out to me when she was state-side to get together and talk podcast shop. After chatting with her, I knew that I would love to be a megaphone for what she’s doing. Because I believe there are women just like her, whether they are living stateside or not, that are looking for community.
We talk about what it’s like raising her family overseas, how loneliness affects so many women, how to find friends and community, what community looks like overseas, the challenges and benefits of raising her family overseas and what God has purposed in her.
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Thank you for following along life with me. I love being apart of your day. And as always, I hope this show helps you survive a little easier.
Author, blogger and speaker Elizabeth Oates joins me for Episode 121. Her family tree was plagued with generations of divorce, addiction, abuse, abandonment and brokenness. But Elizabeth has experienced God’s redemption and restoration which is why she has such a passion for women to experience hope and healing.
We talk about what its like raising 5 kids, her passion for foster care, how the enneagram has helped her to understand her story, what it was like to experience such dysfunction growing up, what that dysfunction caused her to believe about herself and God, and how it affected her early years of marriage.
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What did you enjoy about this episode? What was your takeaway. Let's continue the conversation on Instagram or Twitter or you can send me an email here.
Thank you for following along life with me. I love being apart of your day. And as always, I hope this show helps you survive a little easier.
KariAnne Wood joins me around my virtual kitchen table. And I can’t tell you how much I wish we were able to sit around my actual kitchen table because this girl is golden. You can’t help but like her. She is such a nice person and she makes you feel so special. One thing I love about her is how great a storyteller she is. I learned in this conversation that she talks to furniture way and is a thief—you’ll want to listen to this one!
KariAnne is a home decor/life style/DIY blogger. She has authored two books—So Close To Amazing and The DIY Home Planner. We talk about what it was like to jump out of her comfort zone, how to find your decorating style, what has helped her embrace who God made her to be, and what she has learned about God through decorating.
What did you enjoy about this episode? What was your takeaway. Let's continue the conversation on Instagram or Twitter or you can send me an email here.
Thank you for following along life with me. I love being apart of your day. And as always, I hope this show helps you survive a little easier.
Today, my fun friend, Melanie Dale, joins me around the table for another Crossover Episode. Each month we pick a topic and have a conversation about it. Then, you get to listen to one part here on Surviving Sarah and another part over on Melanie’s podcast called Lighten Up with Melanie Dale.
We decided to have a little chat about marriage. We talk about how we met our husbands (spoiler alert: Melanie’s story is vaguely similar to Ross and Rachel); we talk about what we wish we had known about marriage, what to do when you don’t agree on something and what we are currently learning about marriage.
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What did you enjoy about this episode? What was your takeaway. Let's continue the conversation on Instagram or Twitter or you can send me an email here.
Thank you for following along life with me. I love being apart of your day. And as always, I hope this show helps you survive a little easier.
Kathleen McCarthy Goff Weber joins me around the kitchen table where we get to talk about fashion. You guys know that I love fashion—I love getting dressed. Its like a creative outlet for me. Kathleen owns a boutique in Nashville called K. McCarthy. She has an background of both fashion and counseling. You don’t meet many people with those twos boxes checked on their resume. Listening to her, you’ll see how uniquely wired she is to combine those two passions—fashion and helping people. We talk about what that looks like for her, how she came to own a boutique store, advice on how to love the you that you are, spring trends and trends that are dying.
What did you enjoy about this episode? What was your takeaway. Let's continue the conversation on Instagram or Twitter or you can send me an email here.
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Thank you for following along life with me. I love being apart of your day. And as always, I hope this show helps you survive a little easier.
My friend, Mo Isom, joins me again around my kitchen table. She sat around my table over a year ago where we talked about her story and book, Wreck My Life. You can listen to that on Episode 34. Mo is a married to Jeremiah and they now have 2 little girls. She is a New York Times bestselling author and communicator. There is something about Mo that is contagious—and I’m not talking about germs here. Her energy, excitement and passion for Jesus, life and others is truly contagious.
Her latest book, Sex, Jesus and the Conversations the Church Forget, was released last week. We had a candid conversation about it. We talk about why she felt called to be the voice to speak about sex and Jesus, how sexual sin speaks to our identity, why we struggle to know how to talk about sex, why the “how far is too far” question is the wrong question, false sex-pectations and what true love really is. There is a lot of great truth packed into this conversation. And side note, if you have a teenager this would be a great episode for them to listen to.
What did you enjoy about this episode? What was your takeaway. Let's continue the conversation on Instagram or Twitter or you can send me an email here.
Thank you for following along life with me. I love being apart of your day. And as always, I hope this show helps you survive a little easier.
Sandra Stanley joins me again around my kitchen table. She was on the show awhile back—Episode 23—and it has since been one of my most popular conversations with listeners. Sandra is a mother to grown kids, wife to megachurch pastor, Andy Stanley, author, communicator and a woman who is passionate about foster care and coming alongside young mothers.
Sandra recently released a devotional called Breathing Room. Do you ever feel like you can’t enjoy anything because you are doing everything? Do you sometimes feel like your pace in life is causing exhaustion? Well, you aren’t alone. In this episode, we talk about what steals our breathing room, how we trade our peace for progress and what role fear plays in it all along with some practical ways to create breathing room in your life today.
What did you enjoy about this episode? What was your takeaway. Let's continue the conversation on Instagram or Twitter or you can send me an email here.
Be sure check out the show notes for all of my takeaways from our conversation, links to anything we talk about and ways to connect with Sandra.
Thank you for following along life with me. I love being apart of your day. And as always, I hope this show helps you survive a little easier.
It’s time again for our special crossover episode with Melanie Dale and her show, Lighten Up with Melanie Dale. And today, we tackle the topic of body image—because that isn’t relatable to anyone. When I was in my early twenties, I truly thought that women in their 40’s didn’t deal with this struggle. That is was just a adolescence or twenty-something problem. But news flash, I still want to be attractive. I still struggle to base my worth on something that changes. And that’s why we felt like it was a topic worth talking about. We talk about what shaped our view of bodies in elementary school, triggers for the struggle, what helps us to maintain a healthy view of ourselves, how we feel about our bodies at 40 and how our past affects who we raise our daughters.
Be sure to check out Melanie's podcast to hear the other part to our conversation.
What did you enjoy about this episode? What was your takeaway. Let's continue the conversation on Instagram or Twitter or you can send me an email here.
Thank you for following along life with me. I love being apart of your day. And as always, I hope this show helps you survive a little easier.
My friend Clay Scroggins joins me around the table. He married to Jenny (who is a faithful Surviving Sarah listener) and they have 5 kids. Clay is the lead pastor for North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, GA. Many of you may have heard of that church because Andy Stanley started it.
He wrote a book last year called How To Lead When You’re Not In Charge. And let’s be honest, so many of us are leading somewhere—in our home, in our work, in our church, in our schools. Each one of us has the ability to leverage influence yet many of us are stuck waiting to be given the authority to lead rather than tapping into the influence that we have. So we talk about the difference between authority and influence, the challenges that keep us from tapping into our influence, how to survive working for someone you don’t respect, what to do when you crave more influence, and how understanding our identity is crucial in cultivating influence.
What did you enjoy about this episode? What was your takeaway. Let's continue the conversation on Instagram or Twitter or you can send me an email here.
Thank you for following along life with me. I love being apart of your day. And as always, I hope this show helps you survive a little easier.
Hannah Brencher joins me. She is a TED speaker, author and online educator with a heart for building leaders. She is passionate about helping others live good and full lives. You may know her for the social movement she created in 2011 called More Love Letters where she wrote love letters for strangers. That small act on her part has spread to over 70 countries, all 50 states, and over 100 college campuses.
I enjoyed this conversation so much. And you won’t be surprised to hear us talk about the enneagram and how her unique wiring is connected to what does. We talk about what it looks like to be in process, how to stay focused on the process rather than getting caught up in what’s next and what helped her walk through a season of depression.
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What did you enjoy about this episode? What was your takeaway. Let's continue the conversation on Instagram or Twitter or you can send me an email here.
Thank you for following along life with me. I love being apart of your day. And as always, I hope this show helps you survive a little easier.
Today, Josh Shipp joins me for a really amazing conversation. This was one of those conversations where I just got lost and forgot that thousands of you would be listening. This is a conversation between two parents who both work or have worked with teenagers for many years and have seen the power of another caring adult in a kid’s life.
Josh is an author, global youth empowerment expert, and acclaimed speaker. A former at-risk foster kid turned youth advocate is renowned for his documentary TV series by A&E that followed his ground-breaking work with teenagers. I have been wanting to have a conversation with Josh about teenagers since I launched the podcast so I was thrilled when this day arrived.
We start by talking about the personalities of our kids. And I’ve been thinking so much how important it is that we understand our kids’ wiring so that we can figure out how to communicate with them—especially if they are teenagers. We talk about doing the hard work of parenting, why kids need a caring adult in their lives, and how to better understand teenagers. If you have teenagers or work with teenagers or have kids who will eventually be teenagers, then you will certainly enjoy this conversation. We talk about moving from an air traffic controller in the early years to a coach in the adolescence years.
What did you enjoy about this episode? What was your takeaway. Let's continue the conversation on Instagram or Twitter or you can send me an email here.
Thank you for following along life with me. I love being apart of your day. And as always, I hope this show helps you survive a little easier.
If you’ve been listening to the show for awhile, then you know that Melanie Dale and I are good pals. After being guests on each others shows, we wondered how we could hang out more because we simply laugh together. So that’s when this idea was born. We decided to do some crossover episodes for you guys. So every month, you will hear us talk about a different topic. But here’s the fun part: One part will be on her show, Lighten Up with Melanie Dale and the other part will be on my show, Surviving Sarah. We will pick a topic and talk about how we need to lighten up about it and then how we are surviving it.
And today’s episode is all about friendships. We talk about on Surviving Sarah how we can survive friendships--finding them, keeping them and what to do if we lose them. And head over to Melanie's site to listen to ways we can lighten up about friendship.
What did you enjoy about this episode? What was your takeaway. Let's continue the conversation on Instagram or Twitter or you can send me an email here.
Thank you for following along life with me. I love being apart of your day. And as always, I hope this show helps you survive a little easier.
I was happy to welcome Ashleigh Slater back to join me around my kitchen table. She was my second guest 2 years ago. We have a conversation about braving sorrow. We talk about loss—loss of jobs, houses, dreams, control, and even life. Loss can make for a hard season that we sometimes end up walking through alone. We sometimes don’t feel like we have the permission to grieve losses. We compare our losses and feel like ours isn’t worth grieving.
She talks about her “weeping years” where she walked through a number of losses in a couple of years. And what she shares what she learned about herself, her community and her God because of it.
What did you enjoy about this episode? What was your takeaway. Let's continue the conversation on Instagram or Twitter or you can send me an email here.
Thank you for following along life with me. I love being apart of your day. And as always, I hope this show helps you survive a little easier.