Something Is Coming. Announcing Let Us Play — Thriving With & Beyond Adversity, A Lee Lee's Life Lessons Podcast - Coming as Soon as Possible
It started with a question. For a long time, I have been asking a question that I could not quite shake. Not in a restless, anxious way. More like the way you feel a song you cannot name — something humming underneath everything, waiting for you to finally listen. The question was this: What does it actually look like to thrive — not after adversity is over, but right in the middle of it? I am not talking about performing strength. I am not talking about silver linings or toxic positivity. I am talking about the real, messy, sacred, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking process of finding your way back to yourself — to joy, to meaning, to play — even when everything has changed. I have lived that question. And so has almost every person I love.
I am so thrilled — and honestly, a little tender — to share this with you: Let Us Play — Thriving With & Beyond Adversity, A Lee Lee's Life Lessons Podcast is coming soon. This podcast is a series of honest, heart-centered conversations with people who have lived through something that changed them — and who have chosen, even in the hardest seasons, to keep finding their way back to life. Back to joy. Back to play. Back to themselves. Each episode, I will sit down with a guest whose story holds both the weight of adversity and the unmistakable evidence of someone who is, as I like to say, still becoming. We will talk about what it really looks like to survive, or as the caretaker of someone in survival mode. And then — what it looks like to thrive.
Who will you hear? The voices coming to this podcast are extraordinary. You will hear from cancer survivors who found creativity, advocacy, and purpose on the other side of diagnosis. From caregivers who gave everything and are now learning to receive. From healers, nurses, coaches, teachers, researchers, and storytellers who bring both lived experience and deep professional wisdom to the question of what it means to thrive. You will hear from neurodivergent voices who are redefining what strength and identity can look like. From people rebuilding after burnout, loss, and life transitions that no one warned them about. And from the quietly courageous — the ones who never stopped showing up, even when showing up was the hardest thing they did all day. These are not stories of perfect recovery. They are stories of real people, in real seasons, choosing real joy — again and again and again.
Why a podcast? Why now. Because the conversation that happens in our programs, our retreats, our reflection circles — that conversation deserves a bigger room. Because there are people out there right now who are navigating something hard and feeling utterly alone in it. Those who have not yet found their community. Who has not yet heard someone say, out loud, I know what this feels like, and there is still joy ahead of you. This podcast is for them. It is also for you — if you have ever wondered whether the life you had before is the only life available to you. (It is not. I promise you, it is not.)
The pathway underneath it all. This podcast is grounded in the EPIC Pathway to Joy After Adversity — developed through our work at PlayveraCo — and it represents a beautiful convergence of two distinct contributions. Let Us Play was developed by me, Lisa Caughman, rooted in my own lived experience with cancer and in decades of working alongside people navigating adversity, loss, and the long journey of survivorship. It began as a question: What if joy did not have to wait? It grew into a program, a community, and a philosophy grounded in Positive Psychology — the science of human flourishing, of what helps people not just survive, but truly thrive. Every conversation in this podcast is informed by that science: by what research tells us about positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. Not as a formula. As a lens. The EPIC structure — Express, Play, Integrate, Carry Forward — was developed by my daughter, Shelby Caughman. Shelby brought her background in ecological research and systems thinking, along with her lived experience of rebuilding identity after neurodivergence and burnout. She gave Let Us Play its pathway — the shape, the progression, the sense that there is somewhere intentional to go. Together, what we built became something neither of us could have created alone. First, you express — you give voice to what happened, what you felt, what was hard. Then you find your way back to play — not as a distraction, but as medicine, as permission, as remembering who you are. Then you integrate — you begin to weave meaning from the experience, to understand what it taught you. And finally, you carry forward — you take what you have learned and let it become part of how you live. That is the journey of this podcast. Every episode is an invitation to walk it together.
Here is what I am asking of you. Stay close. We are launching as soon as possible, with platform details to follow. Tell someone. If you know a cancer survivor, a caregiver, someone navigating neurodivergence, loss, burnout, or any of the thousand ways life asks us to start over — tell them this podcast is coming. Tell them there is a seat for them here. And if you have a story — if you have lived something that changed you, and you have found your way (or are still finding your way) back to thriving — I would love to hear from you. Reach out at leeleeslifelessons.org/contact. Every voice matters here.
I have been sitting with this dream for a long time. And I am so ready to share it with you. Let us play. Heart and hugs, Lisa Caughman, Founder, Lee Lee's Life Lessons | Co-Founder, PlayveraCo
