Untamed Lives

What We Keep Hidden | Untamed Lives Official Trailer

Why do we choose the paths we do? Untamed Lives is a new seasonal podcast featuring intimate, candid conversations about the diverse ways we live, love, and express ourselves. In our debut season, we follow Addison’s incredible journey through love, discovery, and a fight for her own life. It’s raw, honest, and unapologetically human. Listen to the trailer and subscribe for Season 1.

Season 1 - Addison | Untamed Lives Official Trailer

We all have secrets. We all have those chapters we’d rather keep closed. But Addison? She’s opening the book wide. This season on Untamed Lives, we’re tracing the threads of a life woven with equal parts pain and pure, unadulterated pleasure. You’ll hear about the relationships that broke her, the growth that saved her, and the moments of light that flickered in the dark. It’s messy, it’s beautiful, and it’s a little bit dangerous. Are you ready to hear what it really means to live... untamed?

Season 1 - Addison | Episode 1: Addison

This podcast features deep-dive, unfiltered conversations that often include adult themes and strong opinions. Listener discretion is strongly advised. If you want the full uncensored experience, including ad-free episodes, you can support the show and find us over on Supercast.
Welcome to Episode 1 of Untamed Lives, where Chris sits down with Addison — not her real name — a woman whose life reads like a study in contradiction: a mother who raises horses and advances human medicine in a lab, a caregiver who can be both wildly loyal and recklessly unfaithful, and a small-town daughter who learned how to survive by wearing more than one face. This is not a tidy redemption arc. It’s a raw, breathless plunge into the messy, human center of desire, grief, and survival.
From the first moments Chris narrates, you feel the geography of Addison’s life: a town where graduation classes barely hit seventy, a streetlight that was once a landmark, and the hum of gossip that watches every move. We meet Addison as she juggles early mornings in a research lab, the unglamorous grind of pandemic-era veterinary work, and the fierce love of two daughters. Yet beneath the competent, sarcastic exterior lies a person who has learned to protect herself with a mask — and sometimes with another name.
Enter Olivia: the persona that slips out in smoke-filled bars and late-night texts, the voice that says what Addison won’t, and the impulse that proves a point by taking what’s forbidden. Through vivid scenes — a torn-up week with no hot water, an EF2 tornado-lit night, a Crunchwrap Supreme in hand, and a litany of drinks where Amaretto becomes a calling card — the episode lets Olivia tell her own unapologetic stories. She brags, she beds married men, she wakes up to accusations at 5 a.m., and she goes back to sleep. It’s defiance, performance, and survival braided together.
To help make sense of the switches between Addison and Olivia, Chris invites licensed clinical social worker Erin Roepcke to translate the lived experience into context. Erin explains how Addison’s diagnosed borderline personality disorder differs from dissociative identity disorder, grounding the listener in clinical clarity while never stripping away the human texture of the story. Their conversation gives the episode a rare balance: clinical insight that honors complexity, not reduction.
We trace the roots of Addison’s behavior through the landscape of early attachments, betrayals, and the small brutalities of life: underpaid pandemic work, the weight of single parenthood, and the black-and-white thinking that can turn protection into punishment. We hear about sex as power, intimacy as a survival calculus, and the way her core values — accountability, loyalty, and family — clash with impulsive acts that hurt the people she loves. Addison admits to patterns she’s ashamed of and explains, in disarmingly plain terms, why she keeps returning to them.
And yet, there are luminous moments: her love for animals that made her study animal science, the quiet mastery of horse training, the small joys of hunting and cabin nights, and the stubborn hope that someone might meet her without trying to fix her. This episode doesn’t ask you to forgive or judge — it asks you to listen. It presents a woman who is at once fierce and fragile, ashamed yet defiant, cruel and tender.
By the end of Episode 1 you won’t have tidy answers — only the pull to keep listening. Heartbreak, rebellion, and the slow work of understanding are all on the table. Chris promises more: deeper digs into Addison’s early years, the traumas that shaped her, and the choices that followed. Buckle up: Untamed Lives has only just begun, and this first episode is a candid, unsettling invitation into the gray.

Season 1 - Addison | Episode 2: The Early Years

This podcast features deep-dive, unfiltered conversations that often include adult themes and strong opinions. Listener discretion is strongly advised. If you want the full uncensored experience, including ad-free episodes, you can support the show and find us over on Supercast. Welcome back to Untamed Lives.Before we jump into Episode 2 — The Early Years — we take a breath and look back: a girl who learned intimacy too soon, a young mother trying to hold a life together, and a voice named Olivia that surfaces when the world gets too heavy. In Episode 1 we met Addison — her work with animals, the strain and resilience of single parenthood, and the unfiltered edges of her sexuality. In Episode 2 we follow the thread back to where it all began.Hear Addison tell it in plain, sometimes raw detail — the backyard game of 'ditch' that blurred curiosity and coercion, the first secret nights at friends’ houses, and the slow dawning that those early encounters were not the normal magic she once thought. She remembers thinking you had to care about someone to want them physically, and how that belief cracked under the weight of repeated hurt. Those fractures became the map she would travel for years to come.We sit with the tenderness of first true love and the sting of leaving it: Brian, a safe place in a chaotic adolescence, and the difficult choices that led her to walk away. Then there is Cooper — the whirlwind that moved from college flings to marriage and a newborn, and the gutting moment when he chose a farm over a family. The day he packed and left, Carhartt the dog and a slammed door became symbols of a life split in two. Divorce dragged on, custody papers were vague, and a little girl learned to guard her heart from the man who should have protected it.Through legal fights, summer visits that felt like visits to a stranger’s house, and the emotional abandonment that followed her father’s new family, Addison describes the quiet erosion of trust — in men, in promises, and sometimes in herself. A moment that cuts deep: when her daughter, facing medical injections, worries more about going to Dad’s than about the diagnosis itself. That painful scene crystallizes what the early years left behind.But this episode is not only about scars. It is about reclamation. Addison opens up about exploring sex on her own terms in college, the pragmatic joy she found in release, and the complicated freedom of building identity while raising a child. She talks about open relationships, the lines she drew, and the walls she still carries — how early patterns become ruts in the road unless you fight to find a new path.Licensed clinical social worker Erin joins the conversation with compassionate clarity, helping us understand how premature sexual experiences and repeated betrayal can shape attachment, worthiness, and future choices. Together, they trace how validation-seeking became both a survival tool and a trap — and how becoming a mother, a student, and then an independent woman reshaped those instincts.Episode 2 is a raw, cinematic journey through adolescence, heartbreak, abandonment, and the small fierce decisions that build a life. It’s a story about what we inherit from the people who raised us, and what we choose to keep. Stay with us: in Episode 3 — Betrayal — the story darkens as new love, lies, and violence test everything Addison has fought to protect.I am Chris, and this is Untamed Lives. Thank you to Addison for her courage, to Erin for her expertise, to Sam for helping shape each episode, and to you, the listener, for coming along. If you want the uncensored, ad-free experience, find us on Supercast.

Season 1 - Addison | Episode 3: Betrayal

This podcast features deep-dive, unfiltered conversations that often include adult themes and strong opinions. Listener discretion is strongly advised. If you want the full uncensored experience, including ad-free episodes, you can support the show and find us over on Supercast.
Episode 3 — "Betrayal" pulls you into a world where the ordinary rhythms of life—barn chores at dawn, late nights studying, and the accidental joys of young motherhood—are upended by secrets, lies, and a kind of love that corrodes from the inside out. Through Addison’s voice we move from the candid confessions of her youth to the fraught decisions of her adult life: who she trusted, who left, and how the youngest version of herself learned to navigate intimacy and independence.
The episode unfolds like a slow-burning confession. We follow Addison through short-lived romance and the steady, comforting presence of Brian, a college-love she left and later missed. We live the turbulence of her marriage to Cooper—abandonment, a drawn-out divorce, and the heavy cost of a father’s absence on a child’s heart. Then comes the surprising light of a second pregnancy with Elliot: hope, excitement, and the terror of preeclampsia that threatens both mother and child before giving way to a tentative joy.
But joy proves fragile. Small betrayals—texts, hidden accounts, the missing block of cheese—accumulate until trust unravels. Addison narrates the slow erosion of certainty as infidelity is uncovered not with a dramatic reveal, but in fragments and messages she watches in real time. What follows is a move into a relationship that begins with familiarity and ends with a darkness she could not have foreseen.
Enter David: charming at first, then controlling, gaslighting, and ultimately violent. The episode does not shy from the shock of manipulation—how a person who seemed known and safe finds ways to worm past defenses and rewrite reality. We hear about the mental and physical assaults that pushed Addison to the brink, the hospital stays, the moments of shame and confusion, and the gutting realization that the cycle of abuse is both systematic and intimate.
Interwoven with the personal narrative is clinical perspective, helping listeners understand how attachment wounds and personality disorders can make two fractured people collide in destructive patterns. Listeners are guided through the painful anatomy of narcissistic abuse—love-bombing, betrayal, gaslighting, and the cruel choreography of breaking someone down and building them up again—until escape becomes the only path to survival.
By the episode’s close, Addison emerges not as a finished story, but as someone rebuilding: raw, honest, and telling the hard parts so others might recognize the signs sooner. "Betrayal" is a visceral, unflinching chapter in Untamed Lives—an intimate portrait of how trust is stolen, how mothers fight to protect their children, and how reclaiming oneself is both a messy and miraculous act.
Listen through to the end for a preview of Episode 4, and if you haven’t yet, go back to Episodes 1 and 2 to catch the full arc—Addison’s journey only grows more revealing from here.

Season 1 - Addison | Episode 4: Textbook Narcissist — Part 1

This podcast features deep-dive, unfiltered conversations that often include adult themes and strong opinions. Listener discretion is strongly advised. If you want the full uncensored experience, including ad-free episodes, you can support the show and find us over on Supercast.Welcome to Untamed Lives, Episode 4: Textbook Narcissist, Part 1. In this episode we follow Addison into the eye of a quiet storm — a relationship that starts with late-night laughs and travel, then accelerates into moving in together, tangled histories, and a love triangle that never felt like one. What begins as chemistry and convenience becomes a claustrophobic life where choices are reduced and the truth is hidden in the glow of a phone screen.We hear the slow, insidious unravelling: secret messages from exes, the discovery of two women with nearly identical names, and the gut-punch moment of realizing you have given up more than you ever intended. Addison’s attempts to protect herself become traps — therapy is weaponized, medication mocked, and caring friends flood in at the exact moment she needs space. Her coping becomes evidence in a relationship built on control, not care.There are intimate scenes you won’t forget: the parking-lot realization, a late-night confrontation, the quiet of a couch where two people cry and walk away, the small betrayals saved in text logs, and the chilling moment of finding an IUD missing and facing an unexpected pregnancy alone. Through each scene, we sit with the sharp ache of betrayal and the confusing mercy of the person she calls “Bridge” — the refuge who comforts but won’t claim responsibility when it matters most.Addison’s story is told with raw detail and professional perspective: Erin, our licensed clinical social worker, helps unpack the patterns — the fear of abandonment, the narcotic pull of approval, and the unique cruelty of psychological abuse that leaves no bruises but does lasting damage. This episode is a study in manipulation, the modern complications of smartphones and privacy, and the very human effort to reclaim agency.Listen if you want a deeply human narrative that doesn’t shy away from darkness. Part 1 leaves you standing on the edge — understanding how someone can be trained to believe they are the problem, and why leaving is never simple. Stay with us for Part 2 to watch Addison attempt to rebuild, confront the fallout, and find the truth beneath the playbook.

Season 1 - Addison | Episode 5: Textbook Narcissist — Part 2

Content warning: This episode contains discussions of emotional abuse, manipulation, self-harm, and other deeply sensitive topics. This podcast features deep-dive, unfiltered conversations that often include adult themes and strong opinions. Listener discretion is strongly advised. If you want the full uncensored experience, including ad-free episodes, you can support the show and find us on Supercast.
In the middle of a relationship unraveling, Addison pulls us into the immediate chaos of heartbreak, betrayal, and the small brutalities that stack until they become unbearable. What begins as a night at a bar and a sudden breakup spirals into a relentless cycle of lies, infidelity, and retaliation — moments of furious defiance followed by the soft, private shame of a woman who still tries to protect the man who hurts her.
Through raw, unfiltered recollection we follow Addison from smashed glass and sleepless drives to the edge of a decision she thought would end everything. She tells us how she researched survival and death with cold practicality, how the first attempt landed her in emergency rooms and behavioral units, and how the fog of medication, diagnosis, and quarantine blurred memory and made the everyday feel like a stranger’s life.
Interwoven in the chaos are the people who refused to let her go: an anxious daughter who ran across a cul-de-sac to check on her mother, family members who sat through long nights in hospital waiting rooms, and the complicated, sometimes infuriating network of loved ones who both smothered and saved her. We see the surrealness of hallucinations, the indignity of being misread by professionals, and the crushing humiliation of a system that sometimes assumes the worst before it listens.
But this is also a story about gaslighting and cunning manipulation. Addison reveals how she was convinced she was the problem, how he twisted her pain into proof of her instability, and how that lie kept her tethered. It isn’t until his hands cross an unforgivable boundary that she finally picks a side — hers — and begins the painful work of walking away.
This episode leaves listeners in a heavy, honest place: witness to both the abyss and the first step back from it. It’s a portrait of survival that refuses simplification — of a woman who is broken and brilliant, harmed and heroic. Listen to the end for a sneak peek at Episode 6, A Better Life Chosen, where Addison takes the next steps toward healing and reclaiming the life she deserves.

Season 1 - Addison | Episode 6: A Better Life Chosen

This podcast features deep-dive, unfiltered conversations that often include adult themes and strong opinions. Listener discretion is strongly advised. If you want the full uncensored experience, including ad-free episodes, you can support the show and find us over on Supercast.
Hello listeners, and welcome back to Untamed Lives. This is the final episode of Addison's Story, Episode 6, A Better Life Chosen. In this chapter we cut straight into the chaos and the courage — the night she walked away and the long, stubborn path that followed.
Imagine a blistering summer evening: a crowded side-by-side run, a man who will not respect boundaries, and a woman trying to keep the peace because peace felt like safety. When the ride ends, he forces his way into her life again, smashing the one lifeline she still clings to — her phone — and trapping her between beer cans and fury. She drives away, heart pounding, and for the first time the animals she loves become bargaining chips in his game. She gets them back. That act alone begins the unraveling of what he thinks he controls.
Back at the house she thought would be sanctuary, she finally draws a line. He barges in, he throws a microwave and a vacuum at her, and with the slam of the locked door she makes the call that had been too hard to make before: the police. The scene that follows — statements taken, bar-side denials, a dismissed restraining order — shows how twisted the system can feel for someone in the middle of survival. Yet this is not the end of her story; it is the beginning of evidence taking its own slow, righteous course.
Three days later the district attorney picks up the thread the court commissioner dropped. Charges are filed. In a courtroom charged with an almost cinematic contempt, the judge looks at the abuser and calls him out — a moment of validation so intense it feels like sunlight breaking through months of storm clouds. He is forced to face what he has done in front of a room that has heard the truth at last.
But justice is messy. The initial restraining order was denied. He still walks among people who believe his false narrative. He finds ways to spin the story, to recruit allies, to silence the facts — until the court cannot ignore them. A later hearing yields a four-year domestic abuse restraining order, but not the full protections she wants, and she remains keenly aware of how easily safety can be incomplete.
Through it all, Addison grapples with diagnosis and identity. The label of BPD was used against her, twisted into ammunition by someone who wanted her erased. She confronts the overlap between trauma and diagnosis, reclaiming the parts of herself she once thought broken and deciding which pieces to keep. She steps into a new life with a fierce devotion to her daughters, who bear witness, learn compassion, and help shape her recovery.
By episode's end we do not find a fairy-tale resolution — we find something truer: a woman who chooses herself, who rebuilds her life marker by marker, promotion by promotion, house-hunting by house-hunting, determined that she will never again be trapped in a story that belongs to someone else. Her journey through betrayal, near-destruction, and the slow arc of justice becomes a testament to resilience, the messy bravery of survival, and the quiet ferocity of starting over.
This final chapter of Addison's Story is raw and unfiltered, full of hard truths and small triumphs. It is an invitation to listen closely and witness a life reclaimed — because some stories don't end with darkness; they end with someone who refuses to stay there.