Doming Out

We end season 2 of Doming Out leaning into a feeling to discuss the passing of music legend Avicii. He was a massive inspiration to our host, John Tessitore, and his dedication to the craft of composure elicited a set of feelings we hope to bring out in our listeners. We finish with a conversation on our plans for the summer and a discussion of the Doming Out mantra with editor, Mike Esposito. As always, big thanks to everyone who helped make season 2 a reality - Blair Savitsky, Chakshu Tandon, Doc Kelly, Paul Tessitore, Mateo Askiarapour, Jay Varney, Toni Banta, Paul Conte, Andrew Varney, the newest member of our team Chris 'unique cat' Hallowell, and of course, always in honor of John Cleaver Kelly, we document society’s response to mental illness. We share journeys to the dark side of mental health to understand the light we can be through recovery - all types of recovery.

7 years ago today, we tragically lost John Cleaver Kelly. “Heroes get Remembered But Legends Never Die” John - We love and miss you every day. Your warm heart and loving soul continue to inspire so many people on a daily basis. We miss you dearly but when we look around and see all the people you're affecting and helping it fills our hearts with joy. Your impact goes beyond this world and gets stronger every single day. We want to teach you about the John we all knew, and WHY so many people have rallied around him. He was the most genuine person I ever met. This episode is John’s story told by friends, family members, and acquaintances. We share their memories of him to show the world who John Kelly was and why his legacy will never die. John always said while he was alive that his goal was to end the stigma of OCD, you are doing that and so much more. People can now open up and not be afraid to be themselves because of you John. Your legacy is changing the world. Today, we honor John and we ask the listeners to sit back, relax, and enjoy learning about the legend that is John Cleaver Kelly.

April 2018 Update: Chris Hallowell, a guest on season 1 joined Doming Out as our Community Manager! Check out his episode here. Passion, perseverance, friendship - that's what we run on. But we also know our limits, and knew eventually we'd need a 3rd to help us grow John Kelly's legacy, to share the stories behind mental health, behind the walls of stigma. Yes, we consider John Kelly the 4th and yes we get tremendous help from Blair Savistsky, Chakshu Tandon, Paul Tessitore, Jay Varney, Toni Banta, Eric Beer, Andrew Varney, Paul Conte and countless others, but the 3rd person is something different. It's the glue of the community, the leader of the pack, the infallible backbone. They could run the day-to-day with a hand tied behind their back and make everyone in the room feel better about it. This is the official start of the search for that 3rd person. Naturally, we cut an episode explaining who we are inside, and more importantly outside, this cramped, hoop-d homemade studio in Brooklyn.

Joanie is Clint Malarchuk's wife. We had Clint on the podcast twice the past month and initially recorded with Joanie to color in some of our conversation with him. After we hung up with her, we knew we had to cut a full episode. Our guardians aren't always our parents. More often, down the road at least, they're a spouse, a child, maybe a friend who's looking down from above. Whoever it happens to be, our guardians help guide us through life - with signs, with words, with actions. But when someone is suffering from mental illness, that job gets confusing, especially if you don't know what you're dealing with. Joanie's first interaction with mental illness was shortly after she met Clint. He was frozen from his OCD, in a hotel room a few hundred miles from home. She helped get him back but more importantly, she got busy doing the research so she knew how to help the next time it happened. A decade later, Clint and Joanie are still in love, advocating louder than ever for mental health and continuing to use their experiences to help sufferers and their guardians navigate the waters of mental illness.

7 minute short on Joanie's introduction to mental health...and Clint. True soulmates.

Few have journeyed through the caves of trauma as Clint Malarchuk has - walking out the other end with purpose in hand. He should’ve been dead on 3 separate occasions, once under his own cognition. Truth is, each incident unlocked another door to his eventual recovery. Years of undiagnosed OCD, PTSD, Depression and Anxiety covered the road to recovery thick with thorns, but getting up and getting busy is how Clint finally got home. Topics include: formal diagnosis (4:10), NHL career and trauma (9:30), the thin veil of masculinity (15:45), relationship OCD (22:05), “the doubters disease” (35:30) and "higher purpose" (36:50)

Editor's cut of the second half of Clint's story airing this Sunday, February 4th.

Clint Malarchuk personifies the values that Doming Out stands for. Honesty, culpability, grit, collaboration, confidence - he's got it all. He's also got OCD. Clint and our host, John Tessitore, built a strong bond the few months after they first met and the recording of this 2 part series. John wrote him a passionate email, which we read in the episode, the night before he gave a talk in John's hometown. Clint ended up dedicating the talk to John, and here we are. We get real about the pain and stigma of OCD early on in Part 1. It applies the filter in which Clint and John see the purpose of their stories. The conversation drifts to Clint's childhood - an alocholic father and a hyper-emotional, co-dependent relationship with his mother. Their life on a farm in Canada, his love for animals and a sedated stay in a hospital. Clint opens up, and expands on in part 2, the idea of Love OCD - a unique take on relationships, anxiety and love for sufferers and non-sufferers alike. Part 2, airing February 4th (whattup SuperBowl), is the Clint Malarchuk that the world knows - the Cowboy Goalie. His NHL career, his infamous injury while playing for the Buffalo Sabres in 1989, his suicide attempt, his brawler spirit. But more importantly, we get to know Clint, the mental health advocate. We get to know how it felt to be formally diagnosed with OCD, Depression and Anxiety after a full NHL career at the age of 30 and a childhood spent battling dark thoughts. We get to know why it's so painful to have the world know you one way and your loved ones another. Clint said this was "the best interview I've ever done." Keep on keeping on, Clint.

We’re tackling the topic of depression this week. Erica Michanek has been traveling South America and Cuba for the last 5 years but before that, she spent more than 10 years at different psychologists, on different medications, searching for the answer to her depression. She had small wins over the years but her mindset needed a shock. She eventually quit her job in Sweden, moved to Peru to work in a school and hasn’t taken depression medication since. Erica sought out a different mindset and convinced herself that she had the strength to take it on. Cheers to her, we’re happy for you Erica!

Editor's cut of this Sunday's episode with Erica Michanek. Guest Narrator: Toni Banta

Part 1: 0m-28m The Team at Doming Out talk about everything from how they all met, how they got involved and what their motivations were for creating this platform. We share our ideology on guest lineups, share guest highlights from the second half of Season 2 and announce our Holiday break (we’ll pick back up January 7th). It’s a great chance to meet the team that makes the train run on time, including Social Media Director, Blair Savitsky and Analytics Guru, Chakshu Tandon. We also found out that we all have slightly different definitions of the term Doming Out! Part 2: 28m-74m Doming Out’s Editor, Mike Esposito, shares his own mental health journey from his near death experience as a 6-week old, his Father’s depression and his struggles with alcohol as a frumpy Investment Banking Analyst. His Mom makes a guest appearance.

Our host, John Tessitore, met guest Kenny Wallach at a mental health awareness event last March. They were both sharing their journeys with OCD in front of the entire audience. Editor, Mike Esposito, walked in prior to the start. He’s known Kenny since high school. An episode of Doming Out was born. Kenny’s story unfolds into three parts. His childhood, where his sister battled cancer and Kenny developed a fear of sleeping away from home that turned into deeper compulsive thoughts and eventually a formal OCD diagnosis. After graduating college, an entrepreneurial spirit drove him to reconnect with Sajeeb Saha, professionally known as Producer and DJ, Jai Wolf. Kenny ended up managing Sajeeb up until last August when he moved to Jerusalem to chase a spiritual journey that called him to study at Machon Yaakov Yeshiva in Jerusalem. Kenny is the quintessential example of how to flip mental illness on it’s head - into a strength, into your strength.

Doming out turned 28 a few days ago! Well at least our host, John Tessitore did. Like many of you know, John has OCD. John had a mentor named John Kelly who also suffered from OCD. It’s confusing what John we’re talking about in some episodes. Trust me, we get it. OCD took John Kelly’s life a week before his 25th birthday. John Tessitore never thought he’d make it to his 25th birthday. When he did, he vowed to celebrate properly each year going forward. John uses this opportunity to tell both those stories alongside editor, Mike Esposito. Some banter of weekend shenanigans and Mike’s attempts to avoid celebrating his own birthday.

Dominicc Delzompo is a recent UCLA grad from Murietta, California. The son of a Marine and a talented musician his entire life, he landed at UCLA to study under Julie Gondek in the Voice and Opera program. He’s got pipes for sure but he also produces music under the moniker intrnet boyfriend and formerly wrote and performed his own original music as one member of the musical duo RoboPope, which released a debut EP Nocturnes & Daydreams independently, last September. Dom talks candidly about the early roots of his depression and how reflecting on that later in life has been comforting and even comical. John dives into how important the role of a ‘guardian’ is for someone who’s suffering. A ‘guardian’ being a permanent fixture in your life who has your best emotional interest in mind - in Dom’s case, the role was filled by his mother. For our host, it was always and is always, John Cleaver Kelly. They both reflect on what it’s like to be in a relationship while you’re going through tough times upstairs and how the post-college blues are a very real thing for most of us.

Mary’s journey to finish all 26.2 miles of the New York City Marathon for the JCK Foundation was a true inspiration. John and Mary have been friends for years, they chat about her motivation to run for the JCK Foundation, her childhood growing up with deaf parents and a deaf brother and whether they consider mental illness a disability akin to deafness. Mary describes the day of the marathon - running through all five boroughs with 50,000 other people. John imagines what John Kelly would have thought of November 5th 2017.