Last week I told you how I got sober. Today I'm telling you what happened next. Five years without a drink. And here's what nobody tells you: I lost friends. People stopped inviting me to things - mom trips involved wine, get-togethers felt weird when I wasn't drinking. I realized I couldn't relate to people anymore. The conversations all felt surface level. People repeat themselves after a few drinks and don't even notice. I had to completely rewire my life. No beer after skiing....

I woke up one morning and couldn't remember if I had bathed my kids the night before. That was the lowest moment of my motherhood. And the moment everything changed. Drinking had always been part of my life. Sorority in college. Living abroad and trying local wines. Corporate recruitment culture with boozy lunches and happy hours. Marriage, where a cheese platter and a bottle of wine became our only reprieve. It never felt like a problem. Until it did. In March 2020, I won International C...

"When Staying Is the Wrong Kind of Brave" - A Follow-Up to The Marriage That Was Killing Me After Episode 6 aired, my inbox exploded. Hundreds of messages from women saying, "It's like you were describing my life." So this episode is for you. The one who's dying inside while everyone thinks you're fine. The one who stopped caring because caring hurts too much. The one who's staying out of fear, not love. In this episode, I answer the questions you've been afraid to ask: 💜 How do you know ...

I used to make $29,000 a year. Twenty-nine thousand dollars as a nonprofit director with a master's degree, barely able to keep the lights on. But the real problem wasn't the salary. It was my money story. I believed men create wealth. Women support. So I stayed small, underpaid, and dependent—waiting for someone else to save me financially. Then cancer woke me up. Lying in that hospital bed, I realized: I'm the only one who can secure my children's future. Not my husband. Not anyone els...

Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is let go. For years, I tried to make it work with someone on a completely different path. I craved depth and soul-level connection. He wanted surface and safety. Two unhealed hearts drinking away the disconnection, traveling to avoid the truth. The breaking point: my son said he was shocked that married people sleep in the same bed. We'd been in separate rooms so long he thought that was normal. So I chose me. In this episode, I share what bloss...

You know you're in trouble when you stop caring. When you shut down emotionally just to survive. I stopped singing. Stopped dancing. Stopped laughing. Started drinking just to tolerate being in the same room with my spouse. From the outside, my marriage looked perfect. Inside, I was dying. In the first few years, I tried. I begged for couples therapy for years. Got silence. We slept in separate rooms. No intimacy. Just surface conversations about logistics. I knew it was over. But I could...

September 2016. I'm staring at myself in the bathroom mirror at work, and I just know something is wrong. Not a lump. Not a symptom. Just... knowing. Six weeks later, I'm pulling off the freeway into a Panda Express parking lot, my doctor's words ringing in my ears: "You were right. This is cancer." Kidney cancer. At 36. A 3-inch mass that my body had been screaming at me about for months. But this isn't a sad cancer story. This is the story of how my body gave me an ultimatum I couldn't ...

What if you traveled to 50 countries, had a massive awakening about your purpose, came back KNOWING what you were meant to do... and then completely ignored it because everyone told you it wasn't realistic? At 29, I quit my six-figure corporate job, backpacked through India, Southeast Asia, China, and spent 6 months camping through 18 countries in Africa. On that journey, I discovered life coaching and knew – KNEW – that's what I was meant to do. But everyone said: "That's not a real job." ...

What happens when you take all your childhood trauma, perfectionism, and people-pleasing... and aim it at climbing the corporate ladder? In this episode, I'm getting real about my years in corporate America, where I was praised for the exact same behaviors that were destroying me. Where "dedication" was code for ignoring my body's warning signals. Where I was building someone else's empire while slowly dying inside. I worked 60-70 hour weeks. Got the promotions. Earned the raises. Looked su...

What happens when perfectionism finds a new target: your body? In this deeply personal episode, I'm taking you back to college, where I first encountered eating disorder culture disguised as "health" and "discipline." Surrounded by sorority girls throwing up in bathrooms, taking laxatives, and dating a bodybuilder boyfriend, I learned that controlling my body felt like the one thing I could control in a chaotic world. But here's the thing about eating disorders: they promise control while a...

What if the beliefs running your life aren’t even yours? What if they were programmed into you before you could even name them? In this raw and vulnerable first episode, I’m taking you back to where it all started: childhood. The little girl in New Mexico who learned that safety meant being perfect, that emotions were dangerous, and that wealth was something only men could create. I’m sharing the patterns that shaped everything from my eating disorder to my million-dollar business collapse,...

Welcome to Mess to Millions — the podcast where we turn breakdowns into breakthroughs, trauma into triumph, and pain into serious profit. In this short trailer episode, host Erica Carrico shares the story behind the show: how a cancer diagnosis launched her into what she calls her “life explosion era,” and how the wreckage of that season became the foundation of a multimillion-dollar, soul-led business. This isn’t about perfection. It’s about purpose. If your life has ever looked more like a ...