Content Warning: This episode discusses addiction, suicide, grief, child abuse, and neglect.

Long before Daria Burke was a high-powered marketing executive with major brands, before she was the best-selling author of her memoir Of My Own Making, Daria was a kid living a rough life in Detroit. Her mother had severe drug addiction issues and was abusive to Daria and her sister and their dad wasn’t around, dealing with drug issues of his own. Daria’s home often lacked heat, electricity, and running water and Daria, at a very young age, was taking the bus to the grocery store and shoplifting bags full of food in order to eat. Eventually, Daria graduated from college at 20 years old and went on to get an MBA at NYU. But her parents weren’t at the graduation because Daria cut them both out of her life long ago. She says that if her parents were willing to take an honest look at the years of abuse and neglect, that could be the groundwork to more of a relationship. But that hasn’t happened and she doesn’t expect it to.

Content Warning: This episode discusses grief, loss, suicide, and bipolar disorder.

As a kid, Marisa Renee Lee, author of the best-selling books, Grief is Love: Living with Loss and Waiting for Dawn: Living with Uncertainty, sat in the front row in class. She was driven to achieve, got straight A’s, and worked hard. Then Marisa’s mom got sick with multiple sclerosis and that, combined with her sister’s bipolar disorder, meant taking on the very stressful role of caregiver at age 13. She ended up at Harvard, traveling between campus and the family home in upstate New York to provide care. After her mom died, when Marisa was 26, she experienced the full weight of grief and carried that with her through work on Wall Street and as an adviser to President Obama. Later, Marisa and her husband had a long struggle with fertility and Marisa contracted long covid, which she still must manage today. Mere determination can’t fix these situations and denial, of course, is no help either. Marisa explains the lessons of grief and uncertainty and of giving yourself grace and patience.

Content Warning: This episode discusses suicide, depression, and substance use disorder.

Behind the scenes at In This Family, is our program’s producer, John Moe. Outside of the show, John hosts his own mental health podcast, Depresh Mode with John Moe, and is the author of the best-selling memoir, The Hilarious World of Depression. John shares his earliest experiences with major depressive disorder, years before he understood that this condition was actually very common and had a name. Mental health wasn’t talked about much in the culture in general when John was growing up or in his household in particular, where John connects his late father’s substance use disorder with alcohol to a traumatic childhood, spent under Nazi occupation in Norway. John also talks about the still echoing effects of his older brother’s death by suicide and the approach he takes to the subject of mental health with his own children.