Holding It Together (Kinda) | Podcast Guru

Details

Holding It Together (Kinda) is for people who look like they have it handled on the outside while knowing damn well it’s messier underneath. Host Michael Mackniak has honest conversations with caregivers, clinicians, advocates, experts, authors, and people who have learned something worth sharing by actually living through it. We talk about caregiving, mental health, illness, loss, relationships, broken systems, difficult choices, and those moments when you find yourself wondering: What the hell do I do now? The conversations are direct, curious, occasionally irreverent, and willing to go beyond the polished advice and easy answers. No pretending everything happens for a reason. No seven easy steps to fixing your life. Just real conversations about the things that happen to us, the choices we make, what we can control, what we can’t—and what comes next. Because most of us are holding it together. Kinda.

Recent Episodes

The Kidz Are Alright (Kinda) with My Kids

Send us Fan Mail The kids are not confused about what they need. They’re tired of performing, tired of being reduced to a checklist, and tired of pretending the pressure isn’t real when the “social mirror” lives in their pockets 24/7. We sit down with five young people spanning ages 13 to 23 and ask the questions adults usually dodge: Do you feel watched at school? What kind of support actually helps? Is a mental health app enough when your chest is tight and your brain won’t shut off? You’l...

53 MIN

#8 Companion Caregiver Myths, Real Limits

Send us Fan Mail The fastest way to get stuck as a caregiver is to cling to “simple” legal lines that feel protective but turn out to be misleading. We are taking a short midweek pause to unpack a past conversation on caregiver misconceptions and to give you a practical tool you can use right away: a companion worksheet built for real life, not perfect timelines. We zoom back in on the big myths that routinely derail families, including misunderstandings about HIPAA, guardianship, capa...

4 MIN

Nesh Pillay: Be Kind To Little Man

Send us Fan Mail A brain injury can steal your past without touching your personality, and that gap is where so many families get lost. I sit down with Nesh Pillay, known from Amazon Prime’s 50,000 First Dates, to talk about what amnesia and traumatic brain injury actually feel like from the inside, including the strange reality of knowing facts about your life while lacking the “video playback” most people assume memory is. We dig into Nesh’s “little man in the basement” analogy for memory ...

61 MIN

#7 Companion Caregiver Burnout Is Information

Send us Fan Mail Dementia doesn’t just change memory. It changes family roles, daily math, and the emotional weather in your house. On this midweek unpack, I step back into one of our most downloaded conversations, the Daughter’s Guide to Dementia and Caregiver Burnout Recovery, and pull out the parts that land hardest for so many of us: the moment you realize you’ve become the coordinator, the financial helper, and the safety planner for the parent who once did that for you. I also share so...

4 MIN

Claude Racine: Postpartum Is Not The Baby Blues

Send us Fan Mail The postpartum period can look normal from the outside while it feels like a full-body emergency on the inside. After the headlines around the Lindsay Clancy case, I wanted a real conversation about what postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety can actually feel like, why people minimize it, and how fast a new parent can lose their sense of self. Claude Racine joins me with raw honesty. She’s a former professional dancer and choreographer turned wellness advocate, and sh...

62 MIN