Broghan’s Story: Clubfoot, NICU Days, and Finding Grace in the Unknown
Release Date: 11/10/2025
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Mariangel’s Story: Clubfoot, Community, and Creating What Was Missing
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Rebecca’s Story (Part 2): Choosing a Different Path After Juvenile Arthritis
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When the standard treatment plan doesn’t feel right, what happens next? In Part 2 of Rebecca’s three-part story, we continue her family’s journey after her daughter’s devastating diagnosis of severe juvenile idiopathic arthritis. This episode explores what happened when Rebecca chose to step outside conventional care and pursue a radically different approach. An approach rooted in nutrition, detoxification, gut health, and environmental changes. Rebecca shares the emotional weight of making high-stakes decisions for her child, the isolation that can come with choosing a nontraditional...
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Rebecca’s Story (Part 1): When Juvenile Arthritis Hides in Plain Sight
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What if your child looks healthy, happy, and pain-free, but their body is quietly fighting a war you can’t see? In Part 1 of this three-part series, Johanna and Peter sit down with Rebecca Hunter, mom of three and holistic medical mama, to share the beginning of her youngest daughter’s journey with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA), one of the most severe cases her doctors had ever seen. What started as a ballet teacher noticing limited ankle movement slowly unraveled into a diagnosis that would change everything. Rebecca walks us through years of subtle signs, dismissed concerns,...
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Dr. Kim Tran’s Story (Part 2): Healing Eczema From the Inside Out
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What if healing your child doesn’t mean doing more, but understanding why their body is responding the way it is? In the second part of Dr. Kim Tran’s story, Johanna and Peter continue the conversation about severe childhood eczema, gut health, and the long road from desperation to empowerment. This episode goes deeper into the science and the emotional reality of parenting a child whose symptoms don’t respond to conventional care, and the guilt parents carry when they’re told they “did everything right.” Dr. Tran explains why eczema is not a skin problem, how gut health and the...
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Dr. Kim Tran’s Story (Part 1): When Baby Eczema Is More Than Skin Deep
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What if the thing you’re told is “just skin” is actually your child’s immune system crying out for help? In this powerful episode of Born For This Stories, Johanna and Peter sit down with Dr. Kim Tran, a pregnancy and pediatric chiropractor and functional medicine provider, to share her family’s journey through severe infant eczema. What began after a “beautiful, picture perfect home birth” quickly spiraled into sleepless nights, bleeding skin, and a medical system offering only temporary fixes. Dr. Tran walks us through what it’s like to be a holistic provider who suddenly...
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Some stories don’t resolve quickly. Some live in the space between crisis and hope. Day after day. Month after month. In the emotional conclusion to this two-part series, Johanna and Peter continue their conversation with Suzie, whose son Zayn continues to battle hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) and a complex web of GI complications, strokes, feeding struggles, and life-altering medical decisions. Part 2 is a raw look at what happens after the first surgeries, after discharge, after everyone assumes you’re “in the clear.” Suzie shares the moments no parent forgets—the bloody...
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Susie & Zayn (Part 1): A Mother’s Fight Through Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome
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Some parents walk into a diagnosis. Others are thrown into it without warning. In this powerful two-part story, Johanna and Peter sit down with Susie, mom of three and mother to Zayn — her brave “heart warrior” born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS). Part 1 walks listeners through the moment everything changed: an unsettling 18-week ultrasound, a devastating phone call during their gender reveal, and the first terrifying weeks inside the walls of Boston Children’s Hospital. Susie shares what it was like to navigate pregnancy in the height of the pandemic, advocate alone for...
info_outlineWhat happens when your first ultrasound becomes the moment everything changes?
In this heartfelt episode, Johanna and Peter sit down with Broghan, a pediatric nurse and mom of three whose oldest son, Theo, was diagnosed in utero with bilateral clubfoot during the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic. What followed was a NICU stay, weeks of early-morning castings, and a terrifying post-surgical complication that nearly turned tragic. Through tears, humor, and hard-earned perspective, Broghan shares what it’s like to live both sides of the medical system as the caregiver and as the mom.
She opens up about the guilt, fear, and resilience that shaped her journey, and why she now tells other parents, “Whatever pops into your head, ask it. It’s not stupid.”
This episode is an honest reminder that whether your child’s diagnosis is rare or common, the emotional toll and the love are universal.
In this episode:
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The 20-week ultrasound that revealed Theo’s clubfoot diagnosis
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Navigating a NICU stay as a first-time mom
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The day a simple tendon surgery took a turn for the worse
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How motherhood changed her empathy as a nurse
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The moment she found peace through the poem Welcome to Holland
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The advice she wants every parent to hear: “Don't be afraid to ask the question. Don't be afraid to sound dumb. You're not wasting anybody's time. This is your kid. This is your ability to understand and best advocate."
💬 “It wasn’t shame and it wasn’t embarrassment, it was an uncomfortability of the unknown.”
Resources from this episode:
Welcome to Holland by Emily Peril Kingsley
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