Dying Out Loud Podcast

To My Gs: The Healing Power of Showing Up

Kris Saim shares a letter he originally planned to hold onto until he entered hospice care. It is a letter of boundless gratitude written to his "Gs,” his community of nearly 800 colleagues at Gale. Instead of saving his final words for the end, Kris is choosing to speak them out loud today, while the people who earned them can actually hear them.   Kris opens up about the first six months following his stage four cancer diagnosis, a period of profound darkness and depression where he wasn't sure he could go on. He shares the unexpected lifeline that pulled him back: returning to work.   In this episode, Kris explores: * The Medicine of Meaning: Why work wasn't a distraction, but a human-centered reason to keep showing up and contributing. * The Power of Presence: How the Gale community created psychological safety by treating him as a full human being, holding space for him on his hardest days. * The Illusion of "Later": Why we need to stop saving our deepest gratitude for goodbyes and start saying the true thing today. * The Unsent Letter: Kris reads his heartfelt tribute to the colleagues who gave him the best, most meaningful years of his professional life. This episode is a testament to what happens when a workplace becomes a true community. It leaves us with one simple, life-changing ask: think of someone who might be carrying something heavy, reach out, and tell them you see them.

Breaking the Silence: Survival, Shame, and the Courage to Tell the Truth

Welcome to Dying Out Loud. Today’s episode is unlike any we have ever recorded. There is no guest, no interview, and no holding back. Today, host Kris Saim reads a letter to his younger self—the boy who carried a secret so heavy he felt like the world had agreed to look away. For the first time in a public space, Kris is telling the whole truth about who he is and where he came from. In this profoundly vulnerable episode, Kris breaks a silence he has kept for nearly his entire life. He shares his story of surviving childhood sexual abuse from the age of four, the terror of growing up in a church that told him his identity was a sin, and the exhausting performance of living an unauthentic life until he finally came out at 31 years old. This episode explores: * The Weight of Silence: How the secrets we keep to survive eventually become the walls that isolate us. * Reframing Resilience: Why resilience isn't the absence of damage, but the stubborn decision to keep going anyway. * The Danger of "Moving On": Why forward motion without acknowledgement is just running—and why your younger self deserves to be seen. * The Unsent Letter: Kris shares his raw, heartbreaking, and ultimately empowering letter to the boy who bent, but did not break. This episode is for anyone who has ever felt like the truest version of themselves had to stay hidden. You are not broken. You are not damned. And you are not alone. (Please Note: This episode contains frank discussions of childhood sexual abuse, religious trauma, and body dysmorphia. Please prioritize your well-being and listen with care.)

To The Friend Who Left: The Letter I Never Sent

In this profound solo episode, Kris Saim reads a letter to someone who was once his closest friend. She was there for the best chapters of his life—from meeting at a swim-up bar in Cancun to wandering the streets of Paris and Amsterdam—but was absent when he received his terminal cancer diagnosis. For years, Kris held onto the pain of that quiet drift. It wasn't until he learned she had lost her father to the exact same disease shortly after they stopped speaking that the silence finally made a heartbreaking kind of sense. Sitting in a hospital infusion chair with nowhere to hide, Kris finally asked himself the only question that matters: What is holding onto this costing me?.

The 10 Questions You're Afraid to Ask Me

Today’s episode is a little different. There is no guest and no co-host—just Kris and a microphone, pulling back the curtain on what it really looks like to live and eventually die with stage four colon cancer. We are trained our whole lives to avoid talking about death, treating it like a taboo subject. We talk about the weather, we talk about test results, but we rarely touch on the real fears sitting in the silence between us. In this episode, Kris takes 10 of the most common "forbidden" questions people want to ask someone who is dying, but don't.

The Sanctuary of the Stage: Reconnecting with Mrs. McCormally

Every once in a lifetime, if you are lucky, you encounter a teacher who doesn't just teach a subject—they teach you who you are. For Kris, that teacher was Kathie McCormally. Entering a tight-knit rural high school as a freshman trying to figure himself out, Kris found a safe haven in Mrs. McCormally's drama class. In this profoundly moving episode, Kris sits down with his favorite teacher to say the "thank you" he has held onto for over three decades. In this episode, Kris and Kathie explore: * The Sanctuary of the Stage: How the drama classroom became a safe space for an outsider to find his voice, build confidence, and learn to exist authentically. * Seeing the Unseen: How a great teacher can spot your potential and your true self long before you have the language to understand it yourself. * A Legacy of Empathy: Kris shares how the lessons learned in Mrs. McCormally's class directly influenced his career, his parenting, and his recent company-wide recognition for how he shows up for others. * The Letter: Grab a tissue as Kris reads a beautifully raw letter to Mrs. McCormally, thanking her for planting the seeds of authenticity that would bloom decades later. If there is a teacher who changed the trajectory of your life, let this episode be the catalyst that encourages you to reach out and tell them.