What happens when the life you’ve worked so hard to build no longer feels like the life you’re meant to live?

In this episode of Notes From the Edge, host Lisa Lacy sits down with Luke Mickelson, founder of Sleep in Heavenly Peace, to explore purpose-driven leadership, community service, personal identity, vulnerability, and how one small act of kindness can grow into a movement that changes hundreds of thousands of lives.

Luke had everything he thought success was supposed to look like. A six-figure career, financial stability, a family, and a comfortable life. But something was missing.

Then a simple project to build a bunk bed for children sleeping on the floor changed everything.

Luke shares the unforgettable story of Haley, a six-year-old girl who had been sleeping on her school clothes because she didn’t have a bed. When she received her very first bed, she wrapped her arms around it and kissed it.

That moment transformed Luke’s understanding of success, service, and what it means to make a difference.

What began as a small community project became Sleep in Heavenly Peace, an international nonprofit dedicated to ensuring that no child has to sleep on the floor.

But this conversation goes far beyond building beds.

Lisa and Luke explore the loneliness that can exist behind professional success, the unexpected fulfillment that comes from helping others, and the personal cost of believing that leadership means always having the answers.

Luke also opens up about letting go of pride, ego, and the identity he spent years performing, discovering that vulnerability may be one of the greatest strengths a leader can develop.

In this episode:

• Success vs. Fulfillment: Why achieving everything society calls success can still leave us questioning our purpose.
• One Bed, Thousands of Lives: How Haley’s story helped ignite a community movement addressing childhood bedlessness.
• The Five Steps to Finding Purpose: Luke’s approach to meaningful action: see it, feel it, act on it, repeat it, and share it.
• Community Service and Human Connection: How volunteering creates belonging, shifts our perspective, and reminds us that we’re not meant to navigate life alone.
• Leadership, Identity, and Vulnerability: Why letting go of the need to be strong, have every answer, and perform for others can be profoundly freeing.

This is a conversation about ordinary people doing extraordinary things, not because they have all the resources or answers, but because they decide to act.

And perhaps the most powerful reminder is that you don’t have to change the entire world to change someone’s world.

Connect with Luke Mickelson

Learn about Sleep in Heavenly Peace, find a local chapter, volunteer to build or deliver beds, donate, or start a chapter in your community.

https://shpbeds.org/

Connect with Lisa | INSIDE THE EDGE

Go beyond the public conversations with exclusive solo episodes, deeper discussions, and monthly live experiences.

https://www.lisalacy.com/inside-the-edge

What did you perform in order to survive?

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In this Edge Note solo episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy gets personal about Bipolar I, trauma, uncertainty, and the exhausting need to control outcomes when your nervous system learned early that powerlessness could be dangerous.

This is not another “just let it go” conversation. Lisa explores what control actually looks like when you live with mental illness, why uncertainty can feel threatening even when you are clinically supported and properly medicated, and how to separate what requires action from what simply requires us to tolerate not knowing yet.

In this episode:

• Why trauma and mental illness can make uncertainty feel like danger
• The difference between taking responsible action and trying to control an outcome
• How hypervigilance can disguise itself as preparation, responsibility, and problem-solving
• How to separate facts from catastrophic predictions when your mind is activated
• Practical tools for grounding, shrinking time, regulating your body, and deciding what actually needs your attention right now

If you have ever done everything you could and still found yourself obsessing over what happens next, this conversation is for you.

The goal is not to stop caring about outcomes.

It is to trust yourself enough to know that you can survive the uncertainty between action and outcome.

Connect with Lisa Lacy Inside the Edge:

https://www.lisalacy.com/inside-the-edge

What did you perform in order to survive?

Welcome to the Edge.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You can understand your patterns. You can know where they came from. You can spend years learning the language of trauma and healing, and still find your body reacting as if the danger never ended.

In this Edge Note episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy sits down with registered somatic movement therapist and educator Katy Slany for a conversation about somatic therapy, nervous system regulation, embodied healing, and why insight alone does not always create lasting change.

Katy explains why trauma is a whole-body experience, what people actually mean when they talk about “regulating the nervous system,” and how learning to tolerate and understand our physical sensations can change the way we respond to anxiety, fear, relationships, and the world around us. She also shares her own healing journey and how survival, illness, isolation, and the fear of connection became deeply intertwined.

This conversation is ultimately about something bigger than regulation. It is about recovering choice, autonomy, and the ability to listen to the wisdom of your own body.

In this episode:

• Why understanding trauma intellectually may not change the body’s response

• What nervous system regulation actually means and why it is often oversimplified

• How somatic work can help us reconnect with sensations we have learned to avoid

• Why healing is not a destination, but a changing relationship with our experiences

• How inherited beliefs, survival patterns, and conditioning can disconnect us from our autonomy and power

Connect with Katy Slany:

Katy Slany | Transformative Somatic Education

Connect with Lisa Lacy Inside the Edge:

https://www.lisalacy.com/inside-the-edge

What did you perform in order to survive?

Welcome to the Edge.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.