Bloombase’s Sheri Fella and former executive coaching Client, Brad Swearingen and his family embark on a journey of unraveling trauma and healing.
Threads Unseen
A five-part podcast series
About Threads Unseen
This is a story of trauma - the impact it had on one family and how it rippled out through friends, family, colleagues, neighbors … those are the threads unseen. In this five-part podcast series, the Swearingen family shares their experiences of trauma and their lifetime journey of healing, almost a decade after 2-year-old Gavin suffered a traumatic brain injury. In sharing their stories, Brad and Amanda Swearingen and their daughters, Ally and Kenna, offer us a rare vantage point to what lies beneath the surface of trauma - to the threads that connect and disconnect us from each other - threads that are familiar to us all.
Episode 1
The Bubble Bursts
When your belief systems are shattered, you lose your foundation and you face a choice - to stay lost or find a way to get grounded again. That choice is different for everyone. There is no “right way” out, there is only through. In this episode, the threads of trauma begin to reveal themselves as the Swearingens are cracked open. We sit with them in the hard space of an unraveling and, in it, we see – hope and helplessness, defeat and resilience, and their resolve to do whatever it takes
Episodes
Episode 2
Shouldering the Load
In the aftermath of Gavin’s accident, the family attempts to shoulder the tremendous load they now hold. The trauma has made itself known, yet unknown to the family – it is here to stay as a part of their lives. Sisters, Ally and Kenna, share their experience of their little brother’s accident and it becomes clear they will all need more help than they currently understand.
Episode 3
The Check Engine Light Is On
As the trauma reaches deeper into their lives in unforeseen ways, each Swearingen family member finds their own path to getting help and begin to explore life after the accident. Brad’s colleagues grapple with how to hold him in his grief and bring their humanness to their work relationships, and Amanda’s network tries to help her find a new way to “captain.” We get to feel alongside the family in the messiness that occurs between the “before” and “after” of transformation.
Episode 4
It’s Part of Us Now
The weight of the trauma remains for the Swearingens, and it begins to reshape who they are as whole humans and as a family. Gavin’s story is miraculous, as is the story of this family. The integration process of the “before and after” of trauma gives each family member new perspectives and new ways of being in the world. They each show us the power of gratitude, emotional intelligence, resilience, support, and hope.
Episode 5
Tomorrow Finds Hope
Hope emerges for the Swearingens. The shouldering, captaining, grieving and hard learning over the past nine years brings them to a beautiful new reality. This is not an arrival, there is no neat bow to put on this story or this journey. But this family has proven to themselves that they can hold all that trauma delivers – the light and the dark of it. They share their greatest insights in their transformation, which is a gift to us all.
Tomorrow Finds Hope
Support Brad & Amanda’s vision of a Foundation for hope
In Episode 5, Brad and Amanda describe a vision they have - to create a Foundation to support other families in the midst of trauma.
Download the Listening Guide
The purpose of this podcast venture has been one of healing and learning.
We invite you to use this guide as a starting point in your own journey.
