EP17: 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
* 📘 Andrea’s Play: Pretty Chin Up Published by Playscripts, Inc. [https://www.playscripts.com/play/2173]
* 🎤 Andrea Ciannavei – IMDb [https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0161859/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_1_nm_7_in_0_q_andrea%2520cinna]
* 📚 It Didn’t Start With You by Mark Wolynn – Book link [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/531653/it-didnt-start-with-you-by-mark-wolynn/]
* 💀 National End-of-Life Doula Alliance [https://www.nedalliance.org/] – Certification and resources
* 🧰 The RISE Framework [https://tcomconversations.org/2023/03/29/rise-a-framework-for-trauma-informed-care/] – A trauma-informed approach from TCOM
* 🧭 TCOM (Transformational Collaborative Outcomes Management) [https://tcomconversations.org] – Healing-centered strategies for helpers and systems
💬 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/ [https://writersguildinitiative.org]) and
Empower Survivors Now (https://www.empowersurvivorsnow.org/ [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
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
* TCOM [https://tcomconversations.org ]
* The Praed Foundation [https://praedfoundation.org]
CREDITS
* Hosted by Kristen Cerelli [https://kristencerelli.com/]
* Cover art by @jacksonfall [https://twitter.com/jacksonfall]
* Theme Music by Kristen Cerelli [https://open.spotify.com/artist/3tfRX0xkGOXY7AnwjHYmnI]. Additional music by Ray Wyssman [https://www.youtube.com/user/hokeyproductions] and The Simoleons [https://soundcloud.com/the-simoleons]
* Podcast production by Timothy Fall [https://TimothyFall.com]
All content Copyright ActuallyQuiteNice, Inc & TCOM Studios, 2022-2025
