Turning Pain into Purpose: Liz Vasquez

Still Becoming

At nine years old, Tiffany Yu lost her father and acquired a permanent disability in the same car accident. She has spent the decades since building one of the world's most prominent disability advocacy communities — and figuring out, layer by layer, who she actually is beyond everything that happened to her.

Love After the Before and After

In this episode of Who We Become — Life Beyond Change, Amanda sits down with Abby Maslin to explore caregiving, grief, rebuilding, identity, marriage, and resilience after trauma.

Who We Become - Season One Finale

You Don't Finish Becoming. You Just Keep Doing It. A solo reflection on Season 1 — what it held, what it taught, and what it means to have built the space Amanda needed and couldn't find anywhere else.

The Diagnosis Comes With Rights You Didn't Know You Had

When a cancer diagnosis arrives, it doesn't just change your health — it changes your work, your insurance, your income, your sense of stability. Monica Bryant has spent fifteen years making sure people know they have rights in all of those areas. This conversation is about what she built, what it cost her, and why she keeps going.

Three Generations of Caregiving

In this episode of Who We Become — Life Beyond Change, Amanda sits down with her mom, Aileen Smalling, to explore caregiving across generations, identity, faith, resilience, and what it means when the strong one becomes the one who needs care. Together, they talk about watching a mother fight cancer at six years old, stepping into the role of caregiver decades later for her own daughter during the pandemic, and then facing a diagnosis herself. They explore the quiet emotional labor of caregiving, the difficulty of receiving help, and how strength evolves when life asks you to surrender instead of push through. This conversation is for anyone who has been the steady one for a long time — the caregiver, the organizer, the strong one — and is learning how to allow others to show up for them too.