Listening To 2022

2022 has been an outstanding and occasionally excruciating year. Through it all, I’ve found an abundance of hope and healing in my community of friends and neighbors.

I began the year committed to publishing our show once a week to crowdsource and share life wisdom from my vast network of actual friends and neighbors across the arts, media and civics — friends like NYT Editor Michael Slackman, Author Michael Tyler, and Delaware State Senator, Sarah McBride.

Along the way, inspired in no small part by Sarah, and Music Therapist (and Iowan!) Kelli Rae Powell, I found the courage to share my own story of recognition, diagnosis, and healing from complex PTSD.

In March, I realized that friends and neighbors was more than a podcast, it was a book and a movie and maybe even a movement. By April, I was shooting my first documentary interview in Chicago.

In October, I released Constellations, my tenth studio album, which chronicles the road towards recovery.

As 2022 ends, I am grateful that my consultancy is bustling, my tenth studio album is spinning in the world, there are 24 new hours of Friends & Neighbors podcast, I have a memoir in the works and am in post-production on my second doc.

And as it ends, I am above all grateful to my friends and neighbors behind the mic and between the speakers for all of the hope shared and healing generated.

On this week’s Friends & Neigbors, we make sense of the year that was, and propel ourselves into 2023 with hope and optimism with guidance from Alberto B Mendoza, Jamie Leonhart, Kirtan Smith, Samantha Weiss Critchell, Matthew Tousignant, Kelli Rae Powell, Kim Thai, Tim Madigan, Sarah McBride and more.

Listen to the Friends & Neighbors podcast on Apple (apple.co/3LNpe0C), Spotify (bit.ly/3BQ1ENo) or wherever you find your podcasts.

And may your days be merry and bright.