Groove with Portia

About Groove with Portia

Welcome, friend. I’m Portia Booker, storyteller, producer, and host of Groove with Portia. Groove with Portia is a storytelling podcast centered on one powerful question: how did you find your groove through adversity? If you’re here, chances are you’ve experienced grief. The loss of a loved one, a dream, or the version of yourself you once knew. Maybe you pivoted from corporate life into entrepreneurship, or maybe everything you worked for was suddenly stripped away. Every Thursday, I sit down with everyday people, leaders, creatives, and visionaries who share how they turned pain into purpose, obstacles into opportunities, and grief into growth. These conversations are honest, soulful, and healing. Groove with Portia is recognized as a top 10 percent global podcast, reflecting a growing community that believes in the power of storytelling to guide, teach, and restore. If you’re navigating loss, faith, mental wellness, or a major life transition, you’re in the right place. Welcome to the groove.

Publisher

Portia Booker

Category

health & fitness · religion & spirituality · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

Yes

First episode

10 Jan 2021

Latest episode

15 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

280 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   15 Oct 2026

   What If Resilience Isn’t About Being Strong?

   What if resilience isn't about staying strong, pushing through and pretending nothing hurts? Kat Konkoli once believed resilience meant developing a tough exterior and refusing to let life's losses affect her. After losing her father as a child, her first love at 18 and, more recently, her mother, that definition of strength eventually stopped working. In this episode of Groove with Portia, Kat and I have an honest conversation about grief, identity and what it really means to be resilient when life keeps changing. Kat shares how years of powering through eventually led her to a point where she could no longer ignore what she was carrying. Her healing journey challenged her to redefine resilience as something much different: giving herself compassion, allowing herself to feel and recognizing that being human sometimes means not being okay. We also explore the identity changes that can follow the death of someone we love. Who are we when part of our identity was connected to someone who is no longer physically here? Our conversation also turns to another kind of hidden struggle: the student who appears successful on paper while quietly falling apart. Kat reflects on being a first-generation college student, working three jobs and navigating life without a roadmap while still showing up, smiling and achieving. Today, that experience informs her work through Rising Resilience Collective and her belief that schools need to pay attention to student wellbeing alongside academic performance. We also discuss nervous system regulation, self-identity, the importance of expressing rather than repressing difficult emotions and why vulnerability can sometimes help create safer spaces for other people. After everything she has experienced, Kat's definition of finding her groove has changed too. Following the death of her mother, she is thinking differently about how limited our time really is and what it means to reconnect with the person she was before limiting beliefs and society's expectations began shaping her. This isn't a conversation about becoming tougher. It's about discovering another way to be resilient. Connect with Kat: https://www.katkonkoli.com/

2. 

   13 Oct 2026

   What If Your Calling Doesn’t Look the Way You Expected?

   What happens when the life you thought you were supposed to live no longer fits the person you're becoming? Kirsten Rudberg earned her Master of Divinity believing she was following a calling. But her path didn't lead to a traditional pulpit. After graduating during the pandemic, facing uncertainty about what came next and reconnecting with a creative side she had pushed down for decades, Kirsten began discovering that ministry could take a very different form. In this episode of Groove with Portia, Kirsten and I talk about identity, faith, creativity and the grief that can accompany changing direction in life. She shares why traditional ministry wasn't the right fit for her, how podcasting became a form of ministry and why listening to other people's transformative experiences through her podcast, Byte Sized Blessings, continues to shape the way she sees the world. We also explore what loss can open within us, the connections people experience after someone they love dies and the vulnerability involved in trusting someone else with your story. Near the end of our conversation, Kirsten shares another piece of her story: growing up as the oldest of three children in a challenging home and taking on responsibilities that left little room for childhood. Today, creativity, silliness and play have become part of how she is reclaiming something she didn't get to fully experience when she was young. Sometimes finding your groove isn't about discovering an entirely new person. It may be about finally giving yourself permission to embrace the parts of you that have been waiting for room to exist. Connect with Kirsten: https://bytesizedblessings.com/

3. 

   8 Oct 2026

   Good Intentions Can Still Hurt at the End of Life

   What if the things we do with the best intentions at the end of someone's life aren't actually what they want? Lisa Pahl has spent years working in hospice and helping families navigate death, dying and difficult end-of-life conversations. She is also the co-founder and current owner of The Death Deck, a tool designed to make conversations about mortality a little easier. But professional experience didn't completely prepare Lisa for what happened when she became a caregiver herself. On this episode of Groove with Portia, Lisa opens up about caring for her mother-in-law, Kay, after she was diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer in 2020. Lisa entered the experience with years of hospice knowledge and plenty of ideas. She wanted to create legacy videos, document memories and use the resources she knew could someday help the family with their grief. There was just one problem. That wasn't necessarily what Kay wanted. Lisa shares how that experience humbled her and forced her to confront an important truth about end-of-life care: even when our intentions are good, the dying person's final chapter belongs to them. We talk about the pressure caregivers and end-of-life professionals can unintentionally place on people, why passion can sometimes blind us to what someone is actually communicating, and the importance of listening instead of assuming we know what a “good death” should look like. Our conversation also takes an unexpected turn into Lisa's volunteer work supporting women through the Humane Prison Hospice Project. Lisa shares what she has witnessed among incarcerated women confronting illness, grief and mortality, including women creating memorials, making flowers from tissue paper and documenting memories of people who have died behind prison walls. That raises an even bigger question: Who gets to have their life remembered as more than the worst thing they've ever done? We also discuss why families often wait until someone is dying to ask important questions about their life, final wishes, estate, accounts and personal history. Lisa challenges another common assumption along the way: people don't necessarily hate talking about death. They may simply need a way into the conversation. From bringing The Death Deck into breweries to watching strangers spend 15 minutes discussing questions about mortality, Lisa has seen what can happen when we make death conversations less intimidating and more human. This episode is about death, but it's also about agency, dignity, caregiving, legacy, grief and the conversations that can make an incredibly difficult season a little less complicated for the people we love. Because talking about death doesn't make it happen. Sometimes it simply helps us prepare for life. Connect with Lisa Pahl and learn more about The Death Deck: https://thedeathdeck.com/

Who has been a guest on Groove with Portia

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Helen Fernald
• Lynn Lewis
• Matt Rogers
• Larissa Steffen
• Alexis Albro

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

3,868

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

13 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

5 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 70 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

97

Social presence

0

YouTube

74

Engagement

32

Contact Groove with Portia

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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