Episode 5 took two attempts and two states before I finally got it out.

This is my first real solo riff. No guest. No full script. Just something that happened this week that sent me into a much bigger conversation about love, dating, marriage, social media, sex, family, and the things we expect another person to fix in us.

I come from a family where divorce has been much closer to the rule than the exception. Somehow, I still grew up wanting forever.

I talk through the three serious relationships that helped build my philosophy, including a broken engagement, while trying very hard not to tell anyone’s story but my own. I question the institution of marriage and the timelines we inherit in rural Alabama, but I also question myself, my selfishness, my need to be chosen, and whether I have always understood the difference between loving somebody and needing what they gave me.

I still believe in love.

I am just trying to figure out how often I have actually practiced it.

Taylor McLendon joins the show from his studio at Lowe Mill for a conversation about art, identity, pain, process, and the things we carry until we are ready to let them go.

Taylor’s work is visual, which made this episode immediately interesting for an audio-only podcast. How do you talk about art people normally experience with their eyes? How do you honor the scale, texture, and feeling of someone’s work without turning the episode into a gallery tour?

That tension became part of the conversation.

We talk about Lowe Mill, creative identity, the weight inside Taylor’s work, what gets expressed, what stays hidden, and how making something can become a way of releasing something. This one also became personal for me. For a long time, I dreamed about having a studio inside Lowe Mill. I still feel that when I walk through the building. Recording there made me wrestle with what this show is, what it could become, and what I need to stay true to.

What we carry. What we release.

Question. Feel. Reach.

Episode 3 is the first guest episode of People Keep Telling Me I Look Like Jesus, and Steph Cashin was the right person to set the tone.

Steph is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker, EMDR-certified therapist, founder of Huntsville Integrative Therapy, and the brains/face/voice behind @thehuntsvilletherapist. I walked into her office with microphones & therapy cynicism, and she let me push.

We talk about therapy, self-abandonment, burnout, kids, parents, EMDR, and what happens when the life that looks right on paper stops feeling like yours.

A real therapist. A real therapist’s office. A little accidental therapy for Dylan, but hopefully a useful conversation for everyone else.

Find Steph at therapyhuntsville.com or @thehuntsvilletherapist on Instagram.

Question. Feel. Reach.