Episode 202: How to Create Your Own "Order of Things" with Author Sarah Gormley
Release Date: 07/30/2024
How to Manage--and Change!--Chronic Pain with Pain Reprocessing Therapy and Patty Tashiro
Brilliantly Resilient
"Acute and chronic pain are processed in different parts of the brain. If you aren't healing and are still in pain, it's possible that your brain has established learned neural pathways that can continue to cause pain, which becomes chronic." Patty Tashiro ~ Is your brain keeping you in pain? The emotional responses we have to trauma--which often stay with us--can trigger the brain to continue to send a physical pain response in our bodies. Huh? Isn't pain caused by a physical issue in the body? Well, yes. Unless it isn't. Patty Tashiro experienced a mother's nightmare when her daughter and...
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Episode 213: How to Expand Diversity and Inclusion to Include Everyone, with Toby Mildon
Brilliantly Resilient
"There is diversity within diversity itself. Even people with shared disabilities have different experiences. We are all diverse. Diversity includes everyone." ~ Toby Mildon, Author of Inclusive Growth: Future-proof Your Business by Creating a Diverse Workspace, and Building Inclusivity: Making Your Workplace Equitable, Diverse and Inclusive How many people in the world are exactly like you? EXACTLY like you, no differences. The answer is no one. Every single person, because of countless factors including genetics, personal experiences, education, inherent skills--the list is...
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Episode 212: Advocating for Kids Without "a Voice," with TeamChild's Christina Sorenson
Brilliantly Resilient
The Maasai tribe of Africa greets one another by saying "How are the children?" We have to recognize that all the children in our community are our children. Christina Sorenson Attorney and Advocate for Foster Children at Christina Sorenson was in 15 different foster care homes from ages five to fifteen. Separated from her sister and eventually adopted at age fifteen, Christina has made it her life's work to provide legal and supportive aid for children and young adults in foster care. An attorney at in Seattle, WA, Christina has thoughtfully incorporated her own life experiences into...
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Episode 211: How to Live with a "Pilgrim's Heart" with Christine Eberle
Brilliantly Resilient
"Be where you are on the way to where you want to be going." ~ Christine Eberle, Author: "Be where you are on the way to where you want to be going." Um...huh? The above sounds like a riddle, doesn't it? Then again, isn't life a kind of riddle we try to figure out every day? Christine Eberle, author of , decided to seek clarity in answering life's riddle by undertaking a journey--literally and figuratively--as she and her husband walked the Camino of St. Ignatius Loyola in 2022. For the uninitiated, the Camino (there are two--one of St. James and one of St. Ignatius), is a...
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Episode 210: How to "Be Better" in 2025, with Mary Fran Bontempo
Brilliantly Resilient
I came down to those two words. Be better. I think if we can boil it down to something, 'Be better' might be the most that we should be asking of ourselves. ~ Mary Fran Bontempo, Author It's 2025. How are you feeling about that? I find the time right after Christmas to be a bit challenging. After a month of being jolly buying, planning, decorating, eating, drinking, visiting with family and friends, suddenly it's over. And sure, New Year's Eve is fun, but it's also accompanied by that feeling of 'Oh my God, now I have to improve myself again.' Enter the dreaded New Year's...
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Episode 209: Mindfulness and Honoring the Pause with Shawnta Hooks
Brilliantly Resilient
"I needed to embark on a journey to reclaim my connection, both personally and professionally." Shawnta Hooks ~ Leading Belonging and Mindfulness Speaker. Shawnta Hooks was never a believer in meditation or mindfulness. Working in accounting and corporate compliance during her 20 year corporate career, Shawnta found herself in a toxic work environment after a company reorganization, feeling completely disconnected, unseen and unheard. Her first instinct was to lay blame on the company, until she realized it wasn't entirely her work environment that was causing her challenges....
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Episode 208: New Book! From Broken to Brilliant: How to Live a Brilliantly Resilient Life, with Mary Fran Bontempo
Brilliantly Resilient
You have everything in you already to live a Brilliantly Resilient life. You have Resilience and you have your own personal Brilliance. It's already there. You were born with both of those things. ~ Mary Fran Bontempo, Author, From Broken to Brilliant: How to Live a Brilliantly Resilient Life Have you uncovered your Resilience yet? Since Covid, we’ve been reminded constantly about the need for resilience, as though every day, we must gird for battle before we wander into the unknown terrors of the world. Truthfully, that scenario doesn’t seem that far-fetched anymore. If you’ve...
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Episode 207: Finding the Brilliance and Resilience in Generational Relationships with "Gentelligence" Author, Dr. Megan Gerhardt
Brilliantly Resilient
Let's have smarter intergenerational conversations. Let's be OK and not threatened by the fact that you see this differently than me. Let's figure out why and how that could actually be helpful and beneficial. Dr. Megan Gerhardt Author of Do you work with people of different generations? Do you live with people of different generations? Do you have public contact with people of different generations? Unless you live alone on an island, the answer to at least one, if not all, of these questions is yes. And in your interactions with those of different generations, it’s almost...
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Episode 206: How to Mourn the Loss of a Sibling with Annie Orenstein, Author of Always a Sibling: The Forgotten Mourners Guide to Grief
Brilliantly Resilient
No one checks in on them, right? They often delay their own grief, put off their own mourning in order to support their parents and step up. But then? They remain there and they never really get a turn to express their own grief, or to be the mourner in the room. Annie Orenstein ~ Author of Do you have a sibling? Most of us do. And according to author, Annie Orenstein, as children, we often spend more time with our siblings than with our parents. Yet as we grow, our sibling relationships are pushed to the background as we form other adult relationships in our lives. So...
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Episode 205: Empowering Those Who Stutter, with Nolan Stuttering Foundation President, Brian Nolan
Brilliantly Resilient
“I'm trying to open stutter more. Because I I've reached a level of of acceptance that I'm proud of, but I'm nowhere near where I need to be. I interview people on podcasts who openly stutter, and I'm so proud of them because they do it without shame and that's the real issue. The real issue is shame, every day, when you stutter.” Brian Nolan President and Co-founder, Have you ever heard someone stutter? If you don’t stutter, it can be uncomfortable to know how to react. Do you try and finish the person’s sentence? Do you look away? Do you simply wait? While a...
info_outlineSarah Gormley
Author of The Order of Things
Have you ever done something not because you wanted to, but because you thought you were “supposed” to?
From the time we’re young, we learn what we’re “supposed” to do. Behave, answer the test questions correctly, make the right choices. But what if the “right” choices are wrong for us? What if we do what we’re “supposed” to do but don’t get the result we’ve been promised?
By all outward standards, Sarah Gormley did what she was supposed to do. She had a great career in corporate America, lived in New York and was highly successful. But she didn’t feel successful, or happy. It wasn’t until Sarah’s mother received a devastating health diagnosis that Sarah began to reevaluate her life and her choices.
In her poignant, humor-filled new book, The Order of Things, Sarah tells how a return to her childhood home on a farm in Ohio made her reevaluate her choices as a “gold star chaser.” A believer in both therapy and self-reflection, Sarah describes The Order of Things as a “self-hope” book, offering a true story that reminds the reader it’s never too late to live the life you are meant to live and to discover joy.
Here at Brilliantly Resilient, we’ve seen how easy it is to get lost in what the world says we should want and do to make us happy. It often takes a sucker punch or train wreck that, while initially devastating, can be the push we need to make decisions that are right for us, not the rest of the world. It takes courage, intention and a willingness to be vulnerable, but as Sarah confirms, it's oh so worth it.
For updates on The Order of Things, check out Sarah on Instagram at @scgormley. Order your copy of The Order of Things here, and tune into the podcast for these additional bits of Brilliance from Sarah:
- If I go do the “things,” I’ll catch up. I’ll start to feel better because I’m doing the “things.”
- That’s what I thought the order was…go do these things and life will be fulfilling. I thought there was an equation. Well guess what? There’s no equation.
- One of the best things about therapy was that it helped me to understand things. What helped me recalibrate was understanding my childhood differently. If you understand things differently, a lot of anger and pain evaporate.
- Why is it so terrifying to be our most genuine selves?
- I love the term ‘recalibraiton.’ It’s about making little changes.
- Sometimes nothing is more unexpected than joy.
Let’s be Brilliantly Resilient together!
XO,
Mary Fran