At the Brink with Erica Brinker

Erika Gabriel was seven years old when she started telling her parents about a little boy she could sense in their new house. They assumed it was an imaginary friend. Then they found out a child had actually drowned on the property.For years Erika tried to outrun what she was. She studied theater, moved to Los Angeles, searched through every religion she could find. Then came a dark night of the soul that forced her to stop running and turn around. She has now been working as a professional spiritual medium for nearly two decades, with thousands of readings behind her and features in The New York Times, Forbes, Goop and InStyle.In this conversation, Erika explains what actually happens during a reading, why she calls herself “just a straw,” how spirit guides work on their own timeline (not ours), what she has learned about grief from sitting with hundreds of grieving parents, and why she will never tell someone that everything happens for a reason.She also talks about religion and mediumship, the celebrities who won’t let her use their names, the reading that led a woman to her mom’s neighbor and a job, and what she would tell her terrified seven-year-old self.Follow At the Brink: Instagram @at.the.brink.media | YouTube @AtTheBrinkPodcastFollow Erika Gabriel: Instagram @spiritualmediumerika | Podcast: You Are Not AloneExecutive producer: Sara Glassman www.atthebrinkmedia.com | hello@atthebrinkmedia.com

Every episode of At the Brink begins with someone else’s story. This one is different. This is the story behind the show.Erica Brinker lost her four-month-old son Luca to SIDS in December 2015. In the aftermath, the people closest to her went quiet. Friends stopped calling. Her own mother never said Luca’s name, afraid it would ruin a good day. And Erica, who had spent her career performing capability in boardrooms and on stages, found herself in a kind of silence she’d never experienced.So she did something unexpected. She threw a party. Every year on the anniversary of his death, she asked people to do a good deed in Luca’s name and bring canned goods for a food pantry. She launched a blog called Inspired by Luca. She started building a platform for honesty in a world that kept looking away.In this conversation, Erica talks about who she was before Luca, what grief actually felt like, the five-year infertility journey that followed, the birth of her son Sayers, and why she walked away from a decades-long corporate career to create At the Brink.Interviewed by executive producer Sara Glassman.Follow At the Brink: @atthebrinkmediaFollow Erica: Instagram @official.erica.brinker | LinkedIn: Erica Brinkerwww.atthebrinkmedia.com | hello@atthebrinkmedia.com

Jennifer Vollmann gave up a career running a global education nonprofit to become a stay-at-home mom. She loved her daughter. She also had no idea who she was anymore. The play dates, the dinner parties where everyone talked about their jobs, the loneliness — she was disappearing into a life she’d never wanted.Then she signed up for a triathlon at 35. She won her age group. Eight years later, she’s competed at four Ironman World Championships and became one of the first three women to make the time cutoff at the Himalayan Triathlon. She also got divorced, started over with everything she owned in two trucks and built a coaching business from scratch.Plus: the mindset framework she teaches every client, the Mother’s Day note from her daughter that says it all and a toast to freedom.

When Hilary Simon was 14, her parents sent her to an all-girls boarding school in the Berkshires to keep her safe. Instead, she was groomed and abused by a history teacher who had been doing it for over a decade before she arrived — and would continue for years after. The school knew. Other students reported it. A girl was expelled for speaking up. Nothing changed.In this episode, Hilary sits down with Erica Brinker to tell the full story — the grooming, the silence, the fawning response that shaped her survival, the therapist who abused her when she finally tried to get help, and the phone call 20 years later that changed everything. She and fellow survivor Melissa Ferris brought criminal charges, went public in Vanity Fair and are now fighting to close a legal loophole in Massachusetts that still allows teachers to claim a student consented.Plus: what the courtroom felt like, the trauma response nobody talks about, and a toast to burning it all down.If you or someone you know needs support: RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Call or Text 988

Ashlie Molstad went from a corporate desk at Nike to becoming the #1 Beachbody coach in the world — twice. She went viral in 2016 for a body-positive photo that landed her in People magazine and on CNN. But at the top of her game, she felt empty. The goals she’d spent her whole life chasing stopped meaning anything.In this episode, Ashlie sits down with Erica Brinker to talk about living with depression while performing success, walking away from a seven-figure career that no longer aligned with who she was, and what life coaching taught her about the difference between being driven and being free.Plus: Taylor Swift as a life philosophy, what she hopes her kids say about their childhood, and a toast you’ll want to steal.Ashlie Molstad🔗 https://ashliemolstad.com📸 @ashliemolstad

Tari Thomas spent 15 years building a real estate portfolio while working in corporate America at Fortune 100 companies. She bought her first house at 24, scaled to multiple properties across states, survived the Great Recession and built a co-living business from scratch. Then she walked into a conference and discovered that an entire world of investing — private funds, syndications, commercial assets — had existed all along. No one had ever pointed her toward it.In this episode, Tari sits down with Erica Brinker to talk about what it felt like to realize access had been withheld, the year that nearly broke her — an assault, the recession, losing $50K and totaling two cars — and how faith carried her through all of it. Today she manages over $40 million in real estate assets and as the founder of Passive Investment Flight Club, making sure women and people of color don’t stay in the dark the way she did.Plus: why asking for help is harder than building a portfolio, what her grandmother would think of all this, and a toast to the season she’s in now.

The moments that change everything.At the Brink is a premium podcast hosted by Erica Brinker about the inflection points that define a life. The decisions made under pressure. The pivots no one saw coming. The stories we rarely tell out loud.Leaders, founders, executives, artists, parents, advocates. They have built companies, broken barriers, survived the unthinkable and reinvented themselves on the other side of it. At the Brink brings you into those conversations — the ones that go past the resume and into the room where the real decision happened.New episodes every Wednesday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.🔗 Website: www.atthebrinkmedia.com📧 hello@atthebrinkmedia.com📸 Instagram: @at.the.brink.media