Episode 17

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Published on:

3rd Nov 2025

No Longer Leading with Your Wounds with Hilary Momberger-Powers (Part 1)

Hilary Momberger-Powers—best known as the original voice of Sally Brown in the Peanuts cartoons—shares the raw truth of what came after childhood fame: trauma, addiction, and ultimately recovery. In this first part of our conversation, Hilary and host Sacha Holder unpack what it means to stop leading with your wounds, how childhood survival roles become adult identities, and why stability starts with the simplest acts of self-care.

In this episode:

  • The cost of perfection and people-pleasing
  • How trauma scripts shape our adult choices
  • Recognizing the “trauma character” we build to survive
  • Stabilizing with HALT — Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired
  • Moving from survival mode into belonging

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Key Takeaways

  • We build “trauma characters” that mask pain until we face the wound.
  • Stabilization is spiritual: eat, rest, connect, breathe.
  • Freedom starts when you own your part without self-blame.
  • You don’t erase the past—you befriend it.

Pull Quotes

  • “I wasn’t broken—I was fractured. And fractures heal stronger.”
  • “Your wound can’t drive if you stop handing it the keys.”
  • “Little-by-little beats ‘all of a sudden.’ Every time.”

⚠️ Content Note

This episode includes discussion of childhood trauma, sexual abuse, addiction, and recovery in the context of healing and resilience. Listener discretion is advised. If these topics are tender for you, please take care of yourself as you listen, pause when needed, and reach out for support if anything resonates too closely.

Connect:

Where to find Hilary:

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Keywords

Hilary Momberger-Powers, Sally Brown, Peanuts, trauma healing, recovery, resilience, self-worth, stability, HALT, mind-body connection, inner child work

🎧 Next time, Hilary opens up about reinvention as a calling — not a midlife crisis. She’ll share how a spontaneous trip to Australia taught her to “do it scared,” why changing “I have to” into “I get to” shifts everything, and how service and community help us heal what spotlight never could. Part 2 drops next week — make sure you’re subscribed!

👉 Make sure you’re subscribed to The High-Functioning Disaster so you don’t miss this next chapter.

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About the Podcast

The High-Functioning Disaster
High-functioning on the outside. Hot mess on the inside.
You’ve got the color-coded calendar, the competent job persona, the “I’m fine!” mask down to an art—and a mental load heavy enough to throw out your back. Meanwhile, life? That's a hot mess express—total chaos with zero chill and a full tank of emotional baggage. And what makes it even worse? Nearly no one’s talking about it.

Welcome to The High-Functioning Disaster, a podcast for people who are doing their best to hold it together while navigating burnout, grief, trauma, anxiety, caretaking duties, family drama, body image issues, and a to-do list that never quits.

Host Sacha Holder isn’t the disaster (neither are you!)—life is. And this show is about making space for that truth and giving ourselves permission to say it out loud. Every week, Sacha explores what it means to be deeply human in a world that keeps demanding more. Sometimes she’s flying solo, sometimes she brings along guests and friends—but the vibe is always real, raw, unfiltered, and grounded in radical self-acceptance and permission to be human.

We talk boundaries. Body image. Mental health. Emotional labor. The moments where everything feels like too much—and the ones where we catch our breath and keep going.

This isn’t a self-help podcast. It’s a self-permission podcast.
Permission to be exhausted.
To not have it together.
To be honest about what’s hard—without needing to package it as a “lesson.”

Because you don’t need fixing.
You need space to fall apart—and still be seen.
Because some of us are just trying to make it through the day.
And here? That’s more than enough.
New episodes every Monday. Come as you are. Seriously.
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About your host

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Sacha Holder

Sacha Holder is a project manager, podcast host, and bariatric patient who’s not here to pretend it’s all perfect. With over a decade of professional experience and a whole lot of lived experience, she creates podcasts that tell the truth about what it means to live, heal, and grow — through chaos, and curveballs, while keeping it together (mostly).

She’s the voice behind Life in the Bari Lane, a bite-sized bariatric podcast for real people navigating post-op life, and The High-Functioning Disaster, a show about showing up even when everything feels like too much. Through humor, honesty, and zero judgment, Sacha builds community through conversation — because no one should have to figure it out alone.