Stronger Than Podcast – An Introduction

Hello beautiful humans! I’m so excited, and very nervous, that you’re here. In this episode we’re going to talk about what this podcast is all about, where it came from and why I feel like I have to do this. So without further ado, I’m Chris Sizemore and you’re listening to Stronger Than.

The idea for this podcast has been in my head for well over a year. I think in the middle of a pandemic it kind of hit me that this was something I was needing to do, but then I was also in the middle of a pandemic, so I was just freaking out with the rest of the world. It’s just been bouncing around in my brain since then at very inopportune times, sitting in my soul like a weight in my mind, and in my heart.

If you've followed me on our blog or on Instagram for any amount of time in the last five or six years you know at least a part of our story. In 2017 we lost our home, and our belongings, and our dog to house fire. My husband was asleep in the house at the time and firefighters are still unsure about how he survived.

We’ve done a lot of work since then, we’ve been in a lot of therapy. We’ve done a lot of introspection. We’ve walked hard roads through hurricane Harvey and our builder walking off the job and losing a lot of money and having to finish our house rebuild ourselves. But the thing that I’ve learned and the thing my husband, Bill has learned, is you see trauma changes you.

When you experience trauma, you have two choices. Your first choice is you can work through it, and you can dig deep, and you can go through some of the hard and trudgy stuff, and you can come out stronger.

Number two is it can overcome you.

As I wrote my heart out on our blog during our journey of the tragic, hard stuff, I kept receiving messages from others, about how reading our story helped them in their own hard trauma filled road. What was mind blowing to me was how their tragedy was vastly different than my own. We’re talking about parents who tragically lost their children, or wives who watched their husbands be defeated by disease, or PTSD after war.

I brought this up in therapy shortly after I wrote in our blog about what a panic attack feels like and our therapist, Marla, told me something that sits steadfast in my brain today. She said the cause of trauma might be different but the brain and body responses are always the same.

For a long time I had a Post-it note on my computer that read we need to stop measuring up our traumas. One is not worse or harder or more challenging than the other. We’re all walking around with trauma, everyone. We’re in different stages of our journey of dealing with it, but what I find absolutely beautiful are the stories of strength that come out of those roads and the way those stories are able to help people on similar roads.

It’s truly beauty from ashes. And that’s what this podcast is about; real people telling their stories of hard stuff, their journey, and the beauty that was birthed out of it, and how they became Stronger Than.

Thank you so much for being here, listening to my words and sharing in these stories. I hope you’ll join me in coming episodes as we hear the stories of real people and how they became Stronger Than.

If you’re excited about this podcast, would you consider leaving a rating or review or sharing a link to it on your social media? These things help Podcasters and creators so much.

Stronger Than is real stories from real people, edited and hosted by me Chris Sizemore. Original music by Rob McCathren.

Do you want to learn more about us and our story? You can find us on our blog at www.StrongerThanFire.com or on Instagram as @StrongerThanFire.