podcasting

Episode 22 – Into the Wilderness with Amie Carey

Welcome to Season 2 of Revealing Voices!

Amie Carey is a mother of 3 from NYC who is passionate about changing the conversation around child and adolescent mental health.  She has been an advocate for families in crisis for about 5 years. Amie wrote a blog about her family’s experience which then morphed into a podcast called “A Girl I Know” to share her story with a broader audience. 

Her oldest daughter, Violet, has struggled with behavioral challenges from a very young age.  It has changed her perspective on children, mental health, and stigma.

The decision for Violet to participate in wilderness therapy and the impact it has had on the family is the focus of the episode.

Topics include:

Describe the experience of wilderness therapy for adolescents.

How did family and friends respond to decision for Violet to participate in this form of therapy?

What changes has Amie witnessed in Violet after her wilderness experience?

Why did Amie decide to start a podcast?

How was the decision made with Violet to share the family’s story publically?

What does healing mean to you?

Shownotes:

NATSAP – National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs

Second Nature Wilderness Family Therapy

“The Journey of the Heroic Parent” book by Brady M. Reedy. One of Amie’s favorite books on parenting.

“On Writing: A Memoir on the Craft” by Stephen King. Mentioned as an excellent book about creativity

Next Episode: Kevin Moore, Director of State of Indiana’s Division of Mental Health and Addiction (DMHA)

Episode 13 – Robert Vore, Podcast Pioneer

Christianity and Mental Health’s intersection is the defining characteristic of Robert’s Vore’s podcast, CXMH. The podcast, started in January 2017, released its 45th episode this week. Robert had taken a “Podternity” leave while enjoying life as a first time father this year, but will be launching season 3 this fall.

On this episode, Robert discusses balancing the podcast with a new career in mental health counseling. He finished graduate school in July!

Some of the topics include:

What was the tipping point that led Robert to focus on mental health?

When did he decide to self disclose his own diagnosis? What impact did it have?

What vision does he have for his personal counseling career?

What is his perspective on the peer recovery movement?

What does healing mean to you?

Ways to reach Robert:

CXMH Podcast website

Robert Vote on Facebook

Robert Vore on Twitter

Donate to Robert through Patreon

  • Join Patreon to become a CXMH Facebook community member

Next Episode: Diana Starkey and Kim Grave join Tony and Eric in studio to discuss the Faithful Friends Mental Health Wellness ministry

To Edit or Not to Edit

Back in October of 2017, when Eric & I were conceiving Revealing Voices, we discussed both our dreams and visions as well as pragmatic concerns: format, length, equipment, cost. One question we raised was how frequently we would release episodes. We kicked around a number of possibilities. We discussed how much time we could invest. We looked at podcasts dealing with similar subjects and having similar budgets (none). Shows like CXMH, The Depression Files,  Waking Up Bipolar, and The Dark Place.

We knew a few things with certainty:

A steady schedule. It frustrates us as listeners to get episodes weekly then not for months.

A realistic schedule. Eric has many essential life commitments. My own mental health has comes first.

Our faithful friendship must outweigh the podcast. If the demands jeopardized this, we would cancel.

With these priorities in mind, we settled on a magical number of every other week, with the option to take a planned break as needed. My therapist recommended 20/year as a goal, so we’ve had this in our minds as we entered into our first session. To date, we have released 12 episodes in just 5 months. We even took a hiatus in July for travel, family, and work commitments.

It wasn’t easy at first, especially not for Eric, who bore the lion’s share with editing. While learning the ropes, early episodes took up to 8 hours to edit. This was put a great strain on sustaining the schedule. I wanted to help more, but had panic attacks just sitting down to help edit.

But by God’s grace, we made it through. Technique became smoother. I developed a system of logging and rating that helped Eric with technical editing. We put more interviews in the bank we could draw from. Before long we were in a groove.

With the success of two unedited episodes, we are positioned stronger than ever. Confident in our quality. Eager to schedule interviews with more local leaders and national experts.

We look forward to continuing with the show schedule and bringing you mostly edited interviews and some unedited episodes with the two of us when inevitably crunched for time.

As always, we welcome your feedback and show ideas!