Laura Lynch grew up in Virginia with a tight knit Christian upbringing. When her parents decided to build a home, Laura got ahold of the blueprints and found them fascinating. As she tells her story, she talks about being interested in blueprints and drawing homes in her youth.

There was time in the U.S. Air Force, college, a home purchase that went poorly but which set her on a path to pursue the interests of her youth.

Laura is the founder of The Tiny House Adviser. She is a financial planner, podcast host, and tiny house enthusiast. With her personal experience and passion for tiny living, she is dedicated to helping others find financial autonomy and make an impact through tiny living.

Laura's podcast: Less House More Moola

Richard Deming discovered music at an early age. He played drums. Like many, he thought it would be great to be in a band and play music for a living. Today Richard teaches at Yale where he also directs the creative writing program. Sometimes in life, you must take the other fork.

The fact that Richards dream of playing drums for a living didn’t pan out doesn’t mean that he didn’t excel in music, and he did play in a band, a really good band. As Richard tells his story, his interest in music is discussed, and he also talks about why he switched from music to writing. (We do discuss various music interests which is always fun.)

Richard discusses loneliness and talks about being lonely at times himself. We discuss his latest book, This Exquisite Loneliness and look at loneliness a bit differently than one might expect.

At an unprecedented rate, loneliness is moving around the globe—from self-isolating technology and political division to community decay and social fragmentation—and yet it is not a feeling to which we readily admit. It is stigmatized, freighted with shame and fear, and easy to dismiss as mere emotional neediness. But what if instead of shying away from loneliness, we embraced it as something we can learn from and as something that will draw us closer to one another? We talk about this as well.

Book: This Exquisite Loneliness https://a.co/d/bUO3tLM

Website: https://www.richarddemingbooks.com/

Often as I sit and talk story with my guest, I have such a fun, therapeutic experience that before I know it twenty, or thirty minutes have flown by. This is how it was as I visited with Utkarsh Narang.

Today, Utkarsh is a happiness coach but as he tells his story, he recalls just how his life path took him from New Delhi, India to Melbourne, Australia with a detour or two along the way.

When I say Utkarsh is a happiness coach I should say that he feels everyone needs a little happiness in life and he's just around to provide the necessary nudge to get folks on their journey.

He's a fan of the following quote from Mahatma Gandhi which I too fully embrace, "Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”


https://www.facebook.com/ignitedneurons

Zoey Rana grew up in Southeast England in the community of Crawley. As a Muslim, she was raised with strict parents, especially a strict father. Her parents had her life all mapped out but from an early age, Zoey wasn’t interested in the life they had planned.

It took moving to another country to free herself of the religious oppression she felt in Crawley.

Zoey also has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder which she openly discusses as she tells her story. She feels she has benefitted greatly from the podcast, From Borderline to Beautiful: Hope and Help for BPD with Rose Skeeters.

Patricia Malanga was born in Africa more specifically, in Zaire which is now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was not a safe place and her family wanted to leave. They spent six years in a refugee camp hoping to relocate to a country that would provide a better opportunity for her parents and siblings.

As I visited with Patricia, she talked about those difficult first thirteen years of life in Africa. She talked about the culture shock it was when her family arrived in the United States and how she adjusted to her families settling in Utah with its one percent black population and Mormon majority.

Edward Di Gangi was adopted at birth in New York City. An only child, he made no effort to explore his heredity until, at age 69, a visit to a cemetery where members of his adoptive mother's family were buried stirred his interest.

The above paragraph from Edward’s website speaks to what Edward has been up to these past five or six years. We talk quite a bit about his search, and about his discoveries along the way.

Website: digangiauthor.com

Jacia Kornwise has a life story unlike any told here on NKYS. Before listening, I want to issue a trigger warning for those who may be affected by sexual assault.

Jacia is a Master Embodied Soul Coach, Transformational Experience Facilitator, and TEDxSpeaker, with an impressive 31-year career dedicated to helping individuals, couples, and groups transform their stuck points into resilience and embodied resourcefulness. She has also taught at festivals as well as led retreats and corporate events with her skillsets. As a multiple trauma and grief survivor, Jacia has inspired her students, clients, friends, and loved ones for decades.

As we talked a bit prior to our interview and even more after, Jacia explained that she has had sensitivity and practice working with anxiety, grief, loss, trauma, health, body image, creativity, self-esteem, and motherhood, as well as being an explorer of consciousness. She specializes in somatic, trauma-informed embodied mindfulness coaching, conscious dance, 5 Rhythms and movement facilitation, breathwork, and shadow work to create life-altering experiences.

This past November, Jacia became an author and her book, The Love Ball Game: Embracing Yourself and Embodying Your Soul has already won a number of awards.

https://linktr.ee/jaciakornwise?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR3F1EqrjRpUJfkCMW3-gKbkeH6sPlB4yn9dWc-dnQO0piV2vFo-5MZ0WEQ_aem_AX9jEfhIQDRGUfiWqMGfZBWGLVMglzaFxBvcA08vohKjEgQ604IOSyTbIyfP1RX9y0SIgYz0Wh6azZ1hjPzCrUw9

James Phelps was the first guest to appear on Nobody Knows Your Story. In this episode we find out what has changed in James life over the past four years. (It's a lot!) We also asked James wife Jolene to sit in and share her story.

In the April 28, 2020 episode with James he talked about leaving Mormonism. Lots of folks are doing that these days but unlike most; James and Jolene have found religion to still be an important part of their lives. So important in fact that they are making a big move to the St George, UT area to...
You'll need to listen to their episode to hear; the rest of the story. (Yeah, I always liked listening to Paul Harvey.)

Jolene has a book on Amazon you may wish to check out; especially after hearing her tell her story.

Into God's Arms
https://a.co/d/366bi0F

James website: https://www.askldsquestions.com/