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A Contagious Smile Podcast
Stop surviving and start thriving. A Contagious Smile is a globally ranked podcast providing a safe haven for abuse survivors and special needs families navigating the journey of trauma recovery. Whether you are healing from domestic violence, narcissistic abuse, childhood trauma, or the daily challenges of disability advocacy, our mission is to turn your pain into power.
Each episode features raw, authentic conversations with survivors, mental health experts, and advocates who share actionable resources for PTSD healing, resilience building, and emotional wellness. We go beyond the struggle to highlight the triumphs of the special needs community, offering support for caregivers and individuals with disabilities who are rewriting their own narratives.
Hosted by Victoria Cuore, an award-winning trauma advocate and survivor, this podcast delivers the "blueprints" for recovery—not just Band-Aids. Join our community to find hope, humor, and the unstoppable spirit needed to rekindle your inner light.
Episodes
379 episodes
A Mother Remembers Her Son And Rebuilds Life After Opioid Loss with Katie Rizzo
One phone call, one prescription, one quiet apartment, and a life splits into before and after. We sit down with Katie Rizzo, a former high school anatomy and AP biology teacher, to talk about the loss of her firstborn son Nicholas to opioid ad...
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Ripple Retreat with guest JJ Holley, A Veteran who lives to pay it forward
A quiet town in Maine. A historic 1830s farmhouse and barn. A veteran with seven years of sobriety and a plan that flips the usual “tourism takes from locals” story on its head. We brought back our friend JJ Holly to do something different: a w...
A New Partnership For Trauma-Informed Mental Health Support with Michael Mackniak
The scariest part of a mental health crisis isn’t always the symptoms. It’s the moment you realise nobody is talking to each other and your loved one is getting treated like a problem instead of a person. We sit down with veteran attorney and c...
Leaving An Abusive Relationship Starts With A Safety Plan
“Why don’t you just leave?” gets thrown at survivors like it’s a simple fix, so we slow it down and tell the truth. We’re Stucco, Rusty, Sexy Victoria, and Michael, and we talk through what actually keeps people in abusive relationships: isolat...
TikTok Toilets And A Very Bad Diastat Day
One phone call can flip your whole world. We start with real life and real laughs, then move into the kind of story that makes your stomach drop: what happens when a school says your child had a medical emergency, but the timeline and the paper...
What If Overworking Is A Trauma Reflex
Burnout does not always look like falling apart. Sometimes it looks like answering messages at midnight, working seven days a week, and telling yourself you will rest after the next task. We get honest about what happens when your life becomes ...
Five Packs Of Grits And A Side Of Reality
A blood test can be louder than any argument, and we start there: Michael’s A1C comes back at a 9, and suddenly “I’ll deal with it later” is not an option. We talk candidly about diabetes, cravings, and the awkward first days of a lifestyle cha...
Friending: A Real-World Cure For Loneliness
Loneliness doesn’t always look like sadness. Sometimes it looks like a full contact list, nonstop group chats, and a Friday night with nobody to actually meet. We sit down with Gaborg, co-founder of Friending, to talk about why modern life is p...
The Man Behind the Badge joins us with special guest Eric Robinson
A lot of people want the wild FBI stories. We wanted the part that lingers after the story ends, what the work does to your nervous system, your faith, your marriage, and your view of other people. Former FBI agent Eric Robinson joins us with z...
Coffee Beans, Misheard Words, And A Very Honest Marriage
A Broadway-directing Hollywood powerhouse drops in, tells Michael he’s flat-out wrong about being “bad at podcasting,” and then takes it further by reading Faith’s poem on air. That single moment cracks the whole night open. We talk about what ...
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How Narcissistic Parents Lose Control When You Heal
Some people don’t hate you because of what you did. They hate you because you healed, and now they can’t control you. Tonight we get honest about narcissistic parents, the scapegoat role, and that gut-punch realisation Victoria shares: “She doe...
You Can Rebuild Safety With Small Daily Steps with Guest Joshua Hess
Somebody can be sitting in an urgent care exam room with bruises, fear, and an abuser answering every question and still have no clear way to say, “I’m not safe.” We go there, plainly and practically, with our guest Joshua Hess, a physician ass...
We Tried To Help His Dad And Uncovered A Nightmare
He’s supposed to be “Dad” and he’s supposed to be safe. Then one phone call turns into months of ambulance rides, doctor appointments, opioid red flags, and a home that slowly stops feeling like home. We share what happened when we took in Mich...
Teaching Responsibility Without Shame
Responsibility sounds like a boring word until life makes it personal. We kick things off with a question we’ve all wrestled with: how do you actually teach responsibility, especially to teens, without turning your house into a battleground? Fr...
How A Couple Protects Joy From Outside Drama
People love our chemistry and our laughter, but we don’t pretend life is perfect. We keep our home “drama trauma-free” by choice, even when outsiders try to pull us into mess, guilt, or old family patterns. That simple rule sparks a bigger conv...
From A Scare To A Smile With Lessons On Health Love And Healing
A Sunday lands us in the emergency room, and somehow it starts with a “gunshot wound” joke and ends with one of our most honest conversations yet. We walk you through what happened, what helped, and why a simple decision to get checked out can ...
From Picture Books To Magazine Covers With A Survivor Advocate
A lot can happen in one night at our house: a hurting back, a clean bedroom victory, a few laughs we didn’t plan on, and the kind of deep parenting truth that only shows up when you stop pretending life is tidy. We start with something simple a...
What If Healing Is Control You Take Back
The jokes land fast, but the truth lands harder. We pull back the curtain on how narcissism doesn’t end with parents—grandparents can cross lines too, using children’s stories or medical needs to win attention, favors, even faster restaurant ta...
What Protects A Victim When Power Looks The Other Way
A toga on the cover and a chiropractor who sends Michael flying might sound like pure chaos, but the laughter is only the doorway. We use that breath of humor to step into what really matters: building a trauma‑informed academy that protects su...
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A Near-Miss At The Range Sparks A Candid Conversation About Parenting, Predators, And Protecting Kids
A ricochet at the range, a Hello Kitty bandage, and a house full of laughter set the stage for a deeper conversation about how families build real-world safety. We start with humor, then move into the practical: what range safety taught us abou...
Inside Our Fight Against Abuse, Cover-Ups, And Silence
What if a simple “I love you” could steady someone on their hardest day? We open our hearts and our home to talk about building safety from the ground up—personally funding 480 academy scholarships, writing a child’s-eye-view book for noisy and...