After the Quiet is a reflective podcast about coercive control, emotional abuse, and the long aftermath of silence. Told carefully and without identifying details, it explores what control looks like from the inside—and what it means to reclaim voice, identity, and love after years of being unheard. This is not a story of blame, but of truth, resilience, and speaking when the quiet ends.
It was Thanksgiving weekend in October 2022. My family had gathered at my mom's house, and before my eldest son left, someone suggested we take a quick picture together at the front door.
It was completely spontaneous. Just a mother and her son standing side by side. In the picture, he towers over me, and I can still see the little boy I raised inside the young man standing beside me.
I had no idea it would become the last photograph I would have of just the two of us.
Approximately one month later, our relationship would dramatically change.
In Episode 106 of After the Quiet, I reflect on that ordinary Thanksgiving, the speed with which family relationships can change, and the complicated grief of looking back at a moment that only became significant in hindsight.
I also talk about something that will be important as I move into the next part of my story: my son is not the villain. He was a teenager navigating complicated family circumstances, and the pain of what happened afterward does not erase the relationship we had before it.
This episode explores family estrangement, parental alienation from my personal perspective, motherhood, grief, and the ordinary memories that can take on entirely new meaning after a relationship changes.
Because before there was estrangement, there was a relationship.
There were years of love, ordinary days, birthdays, car rides, school lunches and family holidays.
And on one Thanksgiving weekend in October 2022, there was a mother standing beside her very tall son at a front door, believing there would always be another picture.
New episodes of After the Quiet every Tuesday for now.
15 Sept 2026
The Last Birthday Bash
Labour Day weekend had always meant one thing in my family: our annual birthday celebration for all the Virgos. In September 2022, we gathered at my mom’s house to celebrate my birthday, my sons’ birthdays, and several other family birthdays. We swam, laughed, celebrated, and took countless pictures.
I had no idea it would be the last birthday I would ever celebrate with my sons.
One photograph from that day has become especially precious—a picture of me with all three of my children. It isn’t a photo where I think I look particularly good, but today, I don’t notice any of that. I only see my kids standing beside me. And we look happy.
In Episode 105 of After the Quiet, I reflect on family estrangement, parental alienation, the “lasts” we don’t recognize while we’re living them, and how photographs can become priceless reminders of the relationships and love that existed before everything changed.
Because sometimes you don't know it's the last family vacation, the last birthday, the last hug, or the last photograph together until another one never comes.
10 Sept 2026
The Summer I Thought We Were Getting Closer
The summer of 2022 gave me another reason to believe everything was going to be okay.
My middle son called me constantly asking to go to the amusement park—we went 11 times that summer. Sometimes his siblings came, sometimes friends and cousins joined us, and every trip made me believe our relationship was getting stronger. My oldest was driving, working, and becoming more independent, while my daughter spent so much time at my house with her friends that I joked I had three daughters instead of one.
From the outside, we looked connected. We were connected. That's what makes what happened next so difficult to understand.
Then, at the end of the summer, my daughter was registered for dance. I walked into a familiar dance studio simply to buy her shoes, having no idea that this place would eventually become connected to both some of the greatest sadness—and greatest happiness—of my life.
In Episode 104 of After the Quiet, I reflect on the difference between happy memories and false hope, the early stages of family estrangement, and the summer when I truly believed my relationships with my children were getting stronger.
New episodes every Tuesday and Thursday.
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