<![CDATA[Shift Shift Bloom]]>872bb546-c911-5d8f-a3da-e438171b7085Fri, 14 Nov 2025 14:00:25 +0000Captivate.fmActuallyQuiteNice, INC and TCOM Studioshttps://artwork.captivate.fm/6469c413-5143-4ba2-bad8-945c93db763e/F_1jQ9_g-7OG3h7ZhO8B-KgV.jpgShift Shift BloomActuallyQuiteNice, INC and TCOM StudiosActuallyQuiteNice, INC and TCOM StudiosShift Shift Bloom is a podcast examining how people change, why they change, and how they sustain the changes that are most important to them in their everyday lives. Our guests consider themselves change makers, change embracers and change resistors — we’re all somewhere on that spectrum at different times in our lives, aren’t we? Conversations with host Kristen Cerelli explore the impact of mindset, personality, life circumstances, communities of support and sources of inspiration on the process of transformation. Illuminating how change can be both deeply personal and profoundly universal is the show's guiding principle. Shift Shift Bloom is produced by host Kristen Cerelli and audio engineer Timothy Fall at ActuallyQuiteNice, a full-service media studio. They develop the show in collaboration with Dr. John Lyons, Director of The Praed Foundation, which supports the development and dissemination of systems improvement strategies called Transformational Collaborative Outcomes Management, or TCOM. Online at https://praedfoundation.org, and https://tcomconversations.org. https://shiftshiftbloom.comfalseepisodicnopodcastLexington Kentucky USAEP17: You Can’t Outrun Your Sh*t: Andrea Ciannavei on Weight, Addiction and Writing Towards HealingEP17: You Can’t Outrun Your Sh*t: Andrea Ciannavei on Weight, Addiction and Writing Towards Healing📝 Shift Shift Bloom S2 EP 17 Show Notes

This is the story of a body—how it holds pain, how it hides it, and how it sometimes saves your life by refusing to keep going.

In this episode, Kristen talks with Andrea Ciannavei: writer, activist, playwright, TV producer (Mayans MC, Boots), and end-of-life doula. Andrea is also someone who spent decades navigating addiction, trauma, rage, disordered eating, and a complicated relationship with the world—and her own body.

From her early years in New Rochelle and the halls of the Actors Studio, to gastric bypass surgery, 12-step recovery, and a spiritual path paved with dogs, writing, and grief work, Andrea’s story is brutal, funny, brilliant, and deeply felt.

In this conversation, Andrea shares:

  • 🍽️ How growing up in an Italian American family shaped her earliest experiences with food, shame, and visibility
  • 🩺 Why her gastric bypass was “a suicide attempt with a side of surgery”
  • 🚬 How addiction masked deeper emotional pain—and how 12-step work cracked things open
  • ✍️ How writing helped her integrate the past and develop her voice
  • 🌈 Why she became an end-of-life doula—and how death work is deeply linked to trauma recovery
  • 🧠 How trauma isn’t just a personal wound—it radiates outward like fallout
  • 🔥 Why healing is nonlinear and sometimes angry, and why she’ll never stop fighting for her own life

There are moments in this episode that hit like a freight train, and others that feel like a hand on your shoulder. If you’ve ever struggled with body image, addiction, loss, or the long arc of becoming — this one’s for you.

🔗 Related Resources


💬 Favorite Quote


“I was the biggest I’d ever been, and I knew I was going to die. And I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live—but I didn’t know how.”


Andrea Ciannavei

is a writer, actor, teacher, producer, and political activist.

TV: Co-Executive Producer on Boots (Netflix/Sony), Mayans MC (FX Networks), The Path (Hulu), Last Men Out (National Geographic);  American Odyssey (NBC Universal), Copper (BBC America), Borgia (Canal Plus). 

Plays: The Winstons, one-act play commissioned by Hangar Theater, Deep Trees, The Hard Sell, 7 Captiva Road, and Pretty Chin Up which received a development production at LAByrinth Theater Company (Artistic Directors: Philip Seymour Hoffman and John Ortiz) at The...]]>📝 Shift Shift Bloom S2 EP 17 Show Notes

This is the story of a body—how it holds pain, how it hides it, and how it sometimes saves your life by refusing to keep going.

In this episode, Kristen talks with Andrea Ciannavei: writer, activist, playwright, TV producer (Mayans MC, Boots), and end-of-life doula. Andrea is also someone who spent decades navigating addiction, trauma, rage, disordered eating, and a complicated relationship with the world—and her own body.

From her early years in New Rochelle and the halls of the Actors Studio, to gastric bypass surgery, 12-step recovery, and a spiritual path paved with dogs, writing, and grief work, Andrea’s story is brutal, funny, brilliant, and deeply felt.

In this conversation, Andrea shares:

  • 🍽️ How growing up in an Italian American family shaped her earliest experiences with food, shame, and visibility
  • 🩺 Why her gastric bypass was “a suicide attempt with a side of surgery”
  • 🚬 How addiction masked deeper emotional pain—and how 12-step work cracked things open
  • ✍️ How writing helped her integrate the past and develop her voice
  • 🌈 Why she became an end-of-life doula—and how death work is deeply linked to trauma recovery
  • 🧠 How trauma isn’t just a personal wound—it radiates outward like fallout
  • 🔥 Why healing is nonlinear and sometimes angry, and why she’ll never stop fighting for her own life

There are moments in this episode that hit like a freight train, and others that feel like a hand on your shoulder. If you’ve ever struggled with body image, addiction, loss, or the long arc of becoming — this one’s for you.

🔗 Related Resources


💬 Favorite Quote


“I was the biggest I’d ever been, and I knew I was going to die. And I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live—but I didn’t know how.”


Andrea Ciannavei

is a writer, actor, teacher, producer, and political activist.

TV: Co-Executive Producer on Boots (Netflix/Sony), Mayans MC (FX Networks), The Path (Hulu), Last Men Out (National Geographic);  American Odyssey (NBC Universal), Copper (BBC America), Borgia (Canal Plus). 

Plays: The Winstons, one-act play commissioned by Hangar Theater, Deep Trees, The Hard Sell, 7 Captiva Road, and Pretty Chin Up which received a development production at LAByrinth Theater Company (Artistic Directors: Philip Seymour Hoffman and John Ortiz) at The Public Theater. 

Publications: Pretty Chin Up (Playscripts, Inc.) She has also been published in DAME Magazine.

For a decade, Andrea produced the Helen Deutsch Writing Workshops (aka Veterans Writing Project): free writing workshops for wounded warriors returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan (as well as their family caregivers) in Colorado, Minnesota, Ohio, Texas, New York, Los Angeles, and the American Military Hospital in Landstuhl, Germany. Sponsored by the Writers’ Guild Initiative and in partnership with Wounded Warrior Project. This workshop has expanded to include Witness to Innocence which advocates for death row exonerees. 

In addition to teaching privately since 2005, Andrea has taught master classes and been a guest lecturer at Carnegie Mellon, Chapman University, Snow College and UC San Diego. She has been teaching writers how to work with beats and outlines exclusively to prepare them for working in writers’ rooms professionally since 2015.

Education: NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts’ Dramatic Writing Program and went on to Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Playwriting Fellowship 2008-2010. 

Proud member of WGA.

Proud board member of Writers Guild Initiative (https://writersguildinitiative.org/) and

Empower Survivors Now (https://www.empowersurvivorsnow.org/).


🎧 Previous Episodes to Pair With This One


  • EP15: I Raised Myself — Mary Grace Lim on immigration, family wounds, and forgiveness
  • EP14: Hold On Tight — Richie Barlow on trauma, dogs, and healing through care


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]]>688ba1e6-99ba-4b34-ab8e-2ee2171c5467Fri, 14 Nov 2025 09:00:00 -050001:04:24falsefull217172EP16: Run Towards Something: Mexican Immigrant "Abrahan" on Illegal Crossings and the Path to CitizenshipEP16: Run Towards Something: Mexican Immigrant "Abrahan" on Illegal Crossings and the Path to CitizenshipAt five years old, he crossed the U.S.-Mexico border with his mother, hidden on a bus. At twelve, he crossed again—this time on foot, in the cold, through a desert canyon. Years later, Abrahan served in the United States Marine Corps, completed two deployments in the Middle East, and earned his U.S. citizenship.

In this extraordinary episode, Abrahan sits down with Kristen Cerelli to share a story rarely told with such clarity, humor, and humility:

  • 🇲🇽 What it meant to be “illegal” at five—and why he thought his whole family was in trouble
  • 🧭 The emotional and physical toll of two border crossings before the age of 13
  • 🎒 What 12 schools in 12 grades taught him about adaptability and empathy
  • 🎖️ Why he enlisted in the U.S. military—and how it shaped, strained, and ultimately stretched him
  • 🎭 How acting, self-reflection, and solitude became his path back to joy
  • ❤️ The promise he made to his mother as a child—and how it still drives him today

This is a conversation about immigration—but also about what it means to belong, and how we carry the legacy of our family, culture, and trauma into every new identity we forge.

🔗 Related Resources


💬 Favorite Quote

“For the first time in my life, I don’t feel like I have to take care of anyone else. I can take care of myself. And it’s beautiful.”

🎧 If You Liked This Episode…


Additional Resources


Credits