At the age of 40, Kristen Brokaw was told by her doctor that she could potentially lose her vision when she found out that she had unknowingly exposed herself to toxic mold. With permanent scarring and vision loss, she didn’t just learn to see the world differently–she also found her mission. After her diagnosis, Kristen used her decades of experience in nutraceutical medicine sales to launch Elite Masters of Medicine - a mastermind where she helps clinicians design their ideal practices. She he...
Dec 15, 2020•44 min•Ep. 20
When she was 23 years old, Fahren Johnson learned that she was born of rape to a mother who was institutionalized with severe paranoid schizophrenia. Her mother’s condition resulted in Fahren being a ward to the state with no contact to her biological family. From there, she bounced from home to home in the foster care system which eventually led to her being molested at a young age. Years later, as she put the pieces together of her own story, Fahren learned that her adoptive mother Helen - who...
Dec 08, 2020•46 min•Ep. 19
In 2009, when the Becker’s 4-year-old cat, Lewis, was attacked leaving him with a broken jaw, the entire family faced a very difficult decision; find a way to fund a $5,000 bill in the midst of the greatest financial difficulty of their lives and with no guarantees, or put him to sleep. The commitment and determination of their 12-year-old led the way to the seemingly irrational decision to go ahead with surgery. But Lewis wasn’t just a cat, he was the connection to a life ended prematurely from...
Dec 01, 2020•26 min•Ep. 18
One day around the age of seven, an extended family member told Jen Du Plessis, “You're going to be just like your father, you're going to be worthless, you're going to be poor, you're going to be an alcoholic...you'll really basically amount to nothing.” And just two short year later, she walked in the house as her dad held a shotgun to her mom’s head, cocked, loaded, ready to go. And it wouldn't be the first time and it certainly wouldn't be the last, but that is the day Jen declared she would...
Nov 24, 2020•49 min•Ep. 17
After growing up with an alcoholic father, Debbie Page was told in college "If you have alcoholism in your family, you're going to be attracted to that in a partner.” Being a very level-headed woman, whose father got sober when she was 16, she thought that was ridiculous, until she met her gregarious, fun-loving future husband in her early 20s. That began nearly 20 years of justification, lies, shame, rehab, financial infidelity and eventually divorce. An eventual understanding of the term codep...
Nov 17, 2020•54 min•Ep. 16
Marcella Allison was told that a “glorified bookkeeper with an English degree” does not become a venture capitalist after she enthusiastically approached the guest speaker in her MBA class. He continued to tell her that since she didn’t get her MBA from Harvard, didn’t have a 4.0, wasn’t captain of the lacrosse team, this was never going to happen. Everything of this stereotypical profile she didn’t fit. But she refused to let some arrogant man determine her path or worth. Through tenacity, grit...
Nov 10, 2020•45 min•Ep. 15
Randy’s youth was forever changed when his mom was diagnosed with progressive Multiple Sclerosis when she was just 26. It was the accident that she experienced early in her diagnosis that permanently relinquished her to a wheelchair and thrust him into a place of caregiver while he was still in elementary school. Yet it was her consistent faith that left a lasting mark on his life. Randy is a retirement planning professional, an author, and the founder and co-owner of Becker Retirement Group. He...
Nov 03, 2020•40 min•Ep. 14
It’s one thing to lose your parent, it is another to lose your mom, dad and father-in-law in a span of 2 years, while dealing with your own health challenge. Megan Jones found herself fighting through the fallout of her mom’s dementia diagnosis, and her father’s hidden battle with metastasized lung cancer, the same cancer that would take her father-in-law just a few months later, all while struggling through the war raging within her own body. This was a fight unlike anything she had ever faced ...
Oct 27, 2020•44 min•Ep. 13
For many years, performer and singer Kerstin O’Shields found herself privately dealing with abuse at home, all the while living a very public life. About five years into the marriage, when she asked for help from family, the message was disheartening, “You're married, you need to go fix your marriage. It's not about you.” Even law enforcement believed the lies that her ex-husband was telling them. Questions would mount; when do I count? How am I not part of that equation? Why is my safety not be...
Oct 20, 2020•50 min•Ep. 12
After 24-year-old Jessica Conness told her then-husband that rent was three months behind, he picked her up and threw her through the glass dining room table. When child protective services arrived later that day, they told her that the next time the police were called, they would take custody of her infant daughter. She knew at that moment, for her daughter’s sake, she had to break the cycle of domestic abuse she had been suffering for years. In her first marriage, Jessica suffered verbal and p...
Oct 13, 2020•38 min•Ep. 11
It’s one thing to quit when things just get hard. It's another to surrender when things become cruel and abusive. Through Arwen’s experience playing Division 1 volleyball, she realized firsthand that surrendering is different than quitting. It's about self-respect. It's about having people treat one the way that one truly ought to be treated. Arwen gave up her scholarships to follow a boy who was playing baseball at the University of Washington, where she watched her teammates’ bodies collapse u...
Oct 06, 2020•33 min•Ep. 10
“You’ll never amount to anything” were the words spoken over Judy Hoberman throughout her youth. After telling her dad that she wanted to go to medical school to become a doctor, he took that information and instead enrolled her into a beauty contest, telling her “You have to win because all you are is pretty and you'll never amount to anything else.” Over the course of her career, Arwen was constantly striving to fit in with the boys - including her husband. She would ask herself “Am I not good...
Sep 29, 2020•39 min•Ep. 9
After five girls beat her up and dozens of others just stood in observation, 16-year-old Amber Vilhauer knew something in her life had to change and ultimately, she was the one responsible for saving herself. Everyone can learn and grow from challenge and difficulty, but that growth simply has to come from within and Amber understands this all too well. Amber knows what it feels like to be victimized and to play a role in one’s victimization. Today, Amber joins the podcast to share the story of ...
Sep 22, 2020•39 min•Ep. 8
Getting through the darkest and most difficult emotions in life isn’t always about sheer force or brute strength. It’s about reassurance, confidence, grace, and learning to use that darkness as a source of power. After having her second child and surviving two miscarriages, Cordelia Gaffar felt less like herself than ever before. Rather than go on antidepressants while nursing her daughter, she dove headfirst into nutrition, fitness, and spiritual practice on a journey to unload the weight of he...
Sep 15, 2020•30 min•Ep. 7
Being fired from her dream job ushered in the beginning of the end of Arwen’s first marriage. Major confusion ensued as all she knew was unexpectedly and forcefully ripped away. From the time she was five, Arwen desired to work with wild animals and by the age of 20, that dream came true. She ran a wildlife care facility in charge of 300+ animals a day, one being a 110lb cougar named Sasha. Today, Arwen is sharing the story of how she found (and lost) her dream job - and how this loss both ended...
Sep 08, 2020•29 min•Ep. 6
Through divorce, Sheryl Hickerson learned the hard way that a man is not a financial plan. After 25 years of marriage, and standing outside a Michael’s Craft store, with her two grandson’s hands in her own, her husband called to tell her the big news, “I don't want to be married to you anymore.” Sheryl is the founder of Females & Finance, a 3000-strong private membership dedicated to fostering recruitment, training, and advancement of women in financial services and financial technology role...
Sep 01, 2020•29 min•Ep. 5
Even the strongest, most confident, and most capable people in your life aren’t invincible. In fact, many women spend hours of their lives convincing people that they’ve got it all together when life is falling apart. Within the same month, Abby Havermann found herself facing her father’s diagnosis with esophageal cancer and her seven-year-old son was diagnosis with a degenerative neuromuscular disorder, Charcot-Marie-Tooth. Today, Abby joins the podcast to talk about self-care in the midst of h...
Aug 25, 2020•37 min•Ep. 4
Growing up largely invisible to her parents, Alayne Reesberg learned autonomy at a very young age. Yet at home she was constantly surrounded by books, which filled much of the void she felt with information and knowledge of the world at large. She discovered very early on that this insatiable curiosity she had to learn would provide her much of the direction and insight she would need as she faced significant moments of change in her life – change that would eventually lead her to reinvent herse...
Aug 18, 2020•37 min•Ep. 3
When life is collapsing in on you, yet your personal and professional lives are intertwined, how do you persevere? After 17 years of working together, Arwen and her husband made the decision to sell half of their business and she was going to work for someone else. Arwen saw the sale as an opportunity to lift a huge financial burden off her shoulders, but the impact on their lives, their kids, and their employees was simply too much for her to bear. At the last possible minute, she backed out of...
Aug 18, 2020•36 min•Ep. 2
Welcome to the She Handled It with Arwen Becker. In this podcast, Arwen highlights women from different areas of study, ethnicities and backgrounds, who openly share with her one of the worst moments in their life. They go back to that rock-bottom moment, how it was overcome, what she learned and how beauty was brought forth from those ashes. When others crumbled, she persisted. Women are experts at handling adversity and severe challenges. When her back is against the wall and all reasonable op...
Aug 12, 2020•13 min•Ep. 1
