Some endings arrive slowly. Ours did not.

In this final episode of Season 1, my sisters and I share the most personal part of our story—the goodbye. After years of surviving our mom’s untreated mental illness and addiction, and then finding our way back to her during her recovery, we were finally in a good place. A healthy place. A place where laughter came easy and trust was being rebuilt. And then, in 2017, we lost her.

Diagnosed with terminal lung cancer just two months before she passed, our mom’s final chapter was fast, devastating, and unexpectedly filled with grace. Two weeks after her diagnosis, our beloved Aunt Terry was diagnosed with the same illness. And within ten months, our dad passed away too, leaving us grappling with wave after wave of loss.

This episode is about those final months with our mom. The hospital visits and hospice care. The late-night humor that kept us going when there were no more answers left to find. The tension between wanting to save her and learning, finally, how to just be with her. It’s about what it means to love someone fiercely—even when that love was hard-won and complicated.

And it’s also about the legacy she left behind. About the strength we found in each other, and how grief shaped us into something softer, stronger, and more honest.

All season long, we’ve been pulling back the curtain on what it means to grow up in the shadow of mental illness and addiction—and how, even in the aftermath, healing is possible. This final chapter closes that story for now, but it also opens the door to what comes next.

Thank you for walking with us through the messy middle of our lives. Thank you for holding space for these conversations. And thank you for reminding us that even in the hardest endings, love remains.

Host & Producer: Jenn St John
Editor: Andrew Schiller
Website: www.jennstjohn.ca
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This week on The Shadows We Cast, my sisters, Kate and Teresa, and I return for Part 3 of our story — the chapter where things began to change. After years of boundaries, heartbreak, and distance, our mom started to seek real, consistent help. It wasn’t a sudden transformation. It was slow, uneven, and at times, fragile. But it was the beginning of something new.

In this conversation, we talk about the earliest signs of her recovery and what it looked like to slowly let her back in — not just into our lives, but into our trust. We share moments that felt healing, moments that tested us, and how her role as a grandmother became the unlikely bridge back to connection.

There’s grief here — for what never was — but also so much beauty in what we found when we stopped trying to hold everything together and started meeting her where she was. We weren’t trying to fix her — we were simply hoping she’d choose help. And when she finally did, something in all of us shifted, too.

Host & Producer: Jenn St John
Editor: Andrew Schiller
Website: www.jennstjohn.ca
Follow along:
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TikTok: @jenn.st.john
LinkedIn: Jenn St John
BlueSky: @jennstjohn.bsky.social

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What if becoming a mother wasn’t just a life event — but a radical transformation of self?

This week on The Shadows We Cast, Jenn sits down with Jessie Harrold — doula, coach, author, and founder of Imaginalia — to explore the complex and rarely named process of matrescence. Like adolescence, matrescence is a profound identity shift that touches every layer of our being: emotional, physical, spiritual, and cultural. And yet… we’re barely talking about it.

Together, they unpack:

· What matrescence actually is — and why we all need language for it

· Why radical change often begins with grief

· How to “mythologize” your story rather than pathologize your pain

· What Jessie calls the “gooey middle” — the messy, necessary in-between of identity transformation

· Why small practices, like Jessie’s “Five Things” check-in, can become lifelines through transition

This episode touches on the thresholds we all cross: motherhood, menopause, grief, healing, and the quiet reckoning of asking, Who am I now? Whether you’re navigating change yourself or supporting someone who is, this conversation offers insight, compassion, and the reminder: you’re not broken. You’re becoming.

Learn more about Jessie and her work at www.jessieharrold.com, and follow her on Instagram @jessie.es.harrold.

Host & Producer: Jenn St John
Editor: Andrew Schiller
Website: www.jennstjohn.ca
Follow along:
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TikTok: @jenn.st.john
LinkedIn: Jenn St John
BlueSky: @jennstjohn.bsky.social

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CONTENT WARNING: This episode includes candid discussion of depression, burnout, and suicidal ideation. Please listen with care and prioritize your well-being.

What does it mean to truly feel alive after you’ve nearly lost yourself? This week, I’m joined by Rachel Molenda — DJ, entrepreneur, and founder of Reunion, a women’s dance party movement rooted in joy, community, and remembering who you are.

But before Rachel was creating space for others to heal and dance, she was navigating a deep, disorienting depression that brought her to the brink. In this conversation, she speaks honestly about what it was like to be in that place — when even getting through the day felt impossible — and how music, movement, and community slowly helped her find her way back to herself.

We talk about:

• What it feels like when your light starts to go out
• The role of dance and movement in emotional regulation
• The pressure to “heal” before feeling joy again — and why that’s backwards
• The link between nervous system health and our capacity to experience joy
• How creativity, connection, and radical honesty became Rachel’s way through

Rachel's courage in sharing her story is a powerful reminder that joy and sorrow aren’t opposites — they’re companions. That remembering who you are sometimes begins when everything else has fallen away. And that healing doesn’t always happen in stillness — sometimes it happens in motion.

Learn more about Rachel and her work:

• Follow @rachelmmolenda on Instagram
• Join the @thereuniondanceparty movement
• Visit her website at rachelmmolenda.com

Host & Producer: Jenn St John
Editor: Andrew Schiller
Website: www.jennstjohn.ca
Follow along:
Instagram: @jenn_stjohn
TikTok: @jenn.st.john
LinkedIn: Jenn St John
BlueSky: @jennstjohn.bsky.social

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What if the way you love, fight, avoid, or people-please wasn’t a personality flaw—but a survival blueprint?

In this episode, I sit down with trauma-informed therapist Laura Fess, founder of VOX Mental Health, for a powerful conversation about what really happens to our nervous system when we grow up in survival mode—and how those early patterns shape our adult relationships, attachment styles, and mental health.

We explore:
• How survival mode wires the brain for hypervigilance
• What anxious, avoidant, and disorganized attachment really look like in adulthood
• The neuroscience behind healing, storytelling, and post-traumatic growth
• Why unlearning old patterns isn’t failure—it’s neuroplasticity
• The quiet, resilient power of hope—and how to let it drive

I also share a journal entry from when I was 15, written during a pivotal turning point in my family’s story. It’s conflicted and searching, filled with the kind of quiet hope that surfaces when you're desperate for change but not sure it will come.

It’s vulnerable, reflective, and the perfect opening to this layered conversation about pain, healing, and how we can slowly carve new paths—machete in hand—toward something different.

If your story includes trauma, survival mode, or the long journey of trying to feel safe again, this one is for you.

🔗 Connect with VOX Mental Health:
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Facebook

Host & Producer: Jenn St John
Editor: Andrew Schiller
Website: www.jennstjohn.ca
Follow along:
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LinkedIn: Jenn St John
BlueSky: @jennstjohn.bsky.social

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In this final chapter of our second sister series, my sisters Kate, Teresa, and I reflect on the slow, complicated shift—the one that happened in our mother’s final years, and the one we had to make in ourselves to survive and heal.

We talk about what it was like to be adults with a mother still deep in the storm of untreated mental illness and addiction, and how we eventually found our way to firmer ground. We explore the boundaries we had to set, the pain of waiting for change, and the quiet hope that crept in when she finally began to seek help. She didn’t become someone new—but she did begin to come home to herself.

This episode is about recognizing the moments when something begins to shift—internally and externally. It’s about separating a person from their illness. About forgiving without an apology. And about choosing to heal, even when the past still echoes.

If you’ve ever loved someone who struggled, or if you’ve felt stuck in a story that wasn’t changing, this conversation is for you.

Host & Producer: Jenn St John
Editor: Andrew Schiller
Website: www.jennstjohn.ca
Follow along:
Instagram: @jenn_stjohn
TikTok: @jenn.st.john
LinkedIn: Jenn St John
BlueSky: @jennstjohn.bsky.social

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In this powerful follow-up to last week’s episode, we continue our sister series exploring early adulthood after growing up with a parent facing untreated mental illness and addiction. This chapter focuses on the emotional impact of setting boundaries with our mother—while becoming parents ourselves.

I’m joined by my sisters, Kate and Teresa, as we share personal stories of trauma, family estrangement, childhood emotional neglect, and the moment each of us realized we couldn’t protect our mother and protect our children at the same time. We talk about the ripple effects of living with someone who struggled with mental illness, substance use, and unresolved trauma—and how we each made the painful but necessary choice to break the cycle.

We also explore how those early experiences shaped our mental health journeys and led us into careers in social work, child protection, and community-based care. This conversation touches on trauma-informed parenting, mother-daughter boundaries, family systems, and healing from generational dysfunction.

It’s an honest, emotional, and ultimately empowering episode about reclaiming agency, redefining family, and choosing something healthier—one decision at a time.

Host & Producer: Jenn St John
Editor: Andrew Schiller
Website: www.jennstjohn.ca
Follow along:
Instagram: @jenn_stjohn
TikTok: @jenn.st.john
LinkedIn: Jenn St John
BlueSky: @jennstjohn.bsky.social

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This is the first of a three-part series exploring the messy, complicated years of early adulthood—when my sisters, Kate and Teresa, and I began to navigate the emotional weight of our mom’s mental illness and addiction in a new way.

We weren’t estranged yet. But the tether was fraying.

In this episode, we reflect on the years after leaving home—when we were starting careers, becoming parents, and building lives of our own. We were still trying to stay close to our mom through letters, phone calls, and hope. But we were also beginning to feel the cost of that closeness: the resentment, the confusion, and the exhaustion of trying to stay connected to someone whose pain kept spilling over.

We talk about what it meant to set boundaries before we really knew how, how our relationships were impacted, and how we slowly came to realize that love alone wasn’t enough to hold it all together.

This conversation is raw and real—and a reminder that sometimes the hardest part of growing up is learning how to stop breaking yourself to keep someone else whole.

Host & Producer: Jenn St John
Editor: Andrew Schiller
Website: www.jennstjohn.ca
Follow along:
Instagram: @jenn_stjohn
TikTok: @jenn.st.john
LinkedIn: Jenn St John
BlueSky: @jennstjohn.bsky.social

If this episode spoke to you, share it with someone who might need to hear it too.

Subscribe, leave a review, or just send a little love—your support helps these conversations reach the people who need them most.