A rotating blue star on Birmingham’s skyline. A nurse walking into night shift with steady hands and a pen that won’t sleep. Kathleen Fentry joins us to share how a life in emergency rooms, ambulances, and volunteer firetrucks turned into poems that honor grief, grit, and everyday grace.

We trace the path from her first EMT classes in the early 90s to the front nozzle on a training burn, where a fire chief taught her to feel the split between safety and danger with one ungloved hand. Kathleen opens up about the family she found at Caraway Hospital, why that iconic blue star became a beacon for tired night-shifters and homebound travelers, and how closing those doors reshaped a community. She reads the heart of her Caraway poem and explains why nurses aren’t just task-doers but advocates, translators, and witnesses who hold a family together when the room starts to tilt.

Kathleen also takes us behind the lines of her book, Inspired Thoughts: waking in the night to write, turning a coal miner’s lost sunlight into a prayer, and capturing a great-granddaughter “chasing mommy’s feet” across the kitchen floor. We talk about her recognition at the International Society of Poets in Las Vegas, the next poetry collection on the way, and outlines for new novels and short stories—including a nudge to help a grandson publish his own. Along the way, we explore resource gaps between hospitals, why she trained for field medicine after a head-on crash, and how first responders learn to compartmentalize without going numb.

If you care about nursing, EMS, firefighter life, Birmingham history, or how ordinary moments become timeless lines, this conversation will stay with you. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs a beacon tonight, and leave a review to help others find these stories.

A Navy uniform in a mall window set off a chain of choices that led from boot camp to med school—and then to a new kind of healing grounded in prevention, food, and steady habits. We sit down with Dr. Chi Chi to unpack how a hypertension scare, the grind of residency applications, and stories of physician burnout reshaped her approach to care and to her own life. The result is a practical playbook for anyone who’s tired of feeling overprescribed and under-supported.

We get specific about the hidden traps in modern care: rushed visits, fragmented charts, and the ease of piling on duplicate medications. Real cases—triple beta blockers from three clinics, years of NSAID use quietly harming kidneys—show why self-advocacy and medication literacy matter. From there, we shift to what works: co-created goals, tiny wins, and strength training to protect muscle as we age. Dr. Chi Chi shares how a trainer can double your perceived limits, why hydration needs to be personalized, and how to design routines that are too simple to skip.

Food takes center stage. We talk about herbs that reduce sodium dependence, the difference between fueling recovery and inflaming your system after a workout, and why the “I exercised, so I earned fast food” mindset backfires. The sugar segment is candid: craving is real, cancer cells love glucose, and vague advice to “eat whatever” during treatment can hurt more than help. We also explore her morning celery juice practice—fresh-pressed, simple, sometimes softened with green apple—and the community challenges that make it stick. Listeners will leave with clear steps, from bringing every pill bottle to appointments to trying a 7-day reset that builds momentum without overwhelm.

Want more support? Grab the free 21-day Love Your Health guide at RejuvenateInHealth.com and follow Chi Chi Health on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook for programs, tips, and the 31-day celery juice challenge. If this conversation helped, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review to help others find the show.

A quiet paragraph about a coffee pot lit the fuse. Years later, Sheila Lawrence—career programmer, minister, and lifelong Birmingham local—has turned that spark into a distinctive mix of cozy mysteries and inspirational nonfiction that entertains without grim details and still delivers a satisfying jolt of surprise. We talk through the heart of her craft: how a body can already be on the floor yet the story remains warm; why clean, puzzle-first mysteries feel urgent right now; and how flipping the classic attorney-sleuth archetype opened space for fresh representation and a strong sense of place.

Sheila walks us inside her process, from outlining “bones” to honoring the moments when characters hijack the wheel. She shares why cold cases fascinate her, how she balances believability with that essential jack-in-the-box reveal, and where her minister’s voice subtly plants seeds of hope even when the plot turns dark. The conversation turns practical as we dig into the power of community: Sisters in Crime write-ins, submission calendars, and prompts that transformed constraints into creative oxygen. You’ll hear how culinary cozies led to “killer chili” and spiced-cider mischief, how historical guidelines reframed her own memories, and how flash fiction nods from Alfred Hitchcock’s magazine built momentum.

We also explore the life around the writing: the Magic City’s arts scene, on-call programming nights, devotional projects like A Sip from the Well, and the Alabama Writers Cooperative’s upcoming Birmingham conference. Sheila’s message is simple and generous—plant good seeds, finish the draft, and let stories offer light where you can. Ready to rethink what a mystery can feel like and how your routine can actually work for you? Press play, then share your biggest takeaway, subscribe for more conversations with working writers, and leave a review to help others find the show.