Not Alone Media has closed. Find Meg at MegStressEatsWell.com
Writer · Speaker · Opinionated Survivor
I'm not great
at small talk.
But I'm excellent
at the worst things
that have ever
happened to you.
If you want to talk about the diagnosis, the family, the trauma, the thing you've never said out loud — I'm your girl.
I write about it. I speak about it. I will absolutely make you laugh about it. Because what else are we going to do.
| "At least you haven't almost pooped yourself to death lately. Like I have. Twice."
// THE HARD STUFF
CIDP diagnosis at age 10. Religious trauma. Family chaos. Relationship chaos. Chronic illness. Near-death experiences. People-pleasing as a full-time job.
// THE SURPRISING PART
It's actually pretty funny at this point. Not in a "haha nothing matters" way. In a "I survived it and I have things to say about it" way.
// The Point
You're not alone in the worst thing that's happened to you. And the moment someone says it out loud — really out loud — is when things start to shift.
// The Promise
You'll leave knowing more about trauma, resilience, and how to use humor to get through the hard stuff. And you'll have laughed. Possibly at something you thought you couldn't.
"Dark humor isn't how we avoid the pain. It's how we walk directly into it — and come out the other side still standing."
// Who Is Meg Shike
I survived everything.
Then I got opinionated
about it.
I was 10 years old when I was diagnosed with CIDP, a rare neurological disease with a name nobody can say on the first try and a prognosis that, at the time, nobody wanted to give me straight. Doctors hedged. Adults went quiet. I learned the only survival skill anyone actually taught me: silence.
Silence kept me alive. It also kept me small, compliant, and dedicated to the full-time career of making sure nobody around me was uncomfortable, which is a terrible career path, by the way. Zero growth opportunities. No benefits.
Real healing started when I stopped being polite about what happened to me and started being honest about it. And then, somewhere in the middle of all that honesty, I realized something kind of incredible: the worst things that happened to me are also, objectively, some of the funniest stories I've ever told.
Not because they weren't hard. They were. But because humor is how humans process the unprocessable. It's not avoidance, it's how we survive, connect, and find each other in the dark.
I have a Master's in English literature, a memoir in progress, a Substack, a keynote, a podcast launching soon, and a carry-on bag that is 40% meds and anxiety calming techniques and 60% snacks I can actually eat. I travel the world with a chronic illness and I have opinions about all of it.
🔥 WHY THIS EXISTS
I got a rare neurological disease (CIDP) at 10.
Doctors didn’t know what to do.
Adults didn’t know what to say.
So I learned silence —
and silence cost me years of my life.
Real healing began when I finally spoke —
not politely, not performatively,
but truthfully.
You don’t have to tell the internet everything.
You don’t need to trauma-dump or bleed publicly.
But you DO need to speak — somewhere —
if you want to reclaim your life.
Because trauma isn’t emotional —
it’s systemic.
It rewires your brain, your body, your relationships,
your nervous system, and your identity.
When we talk, we learn:
✔ Why we act the way we act
✔ Why our bodies respond like alarms
✔ Why we sleep like we’re being hunted
✔ Why our brains rerun the past like surveillance footage
✔ That we’re not crazy
✔ That we were conditioned
✔ That we were silenced
✔ That we are not alone, and never were
Talking about trauma isn’t catharsis —
it’s an act of reconstruction.
Welcome to This Is a Controlled Burn™.
We’re burning the scripts that harmed us
and building something worth living in.
🔥 THE PODCAST
This Is a Controlled Burn
Truth with teeth. No-bullshit trauma stories. Cultural combustion.
You don’t heal by pretending it didn’t happen.
You heal when your story lands somewhere that can hold it —
without minimizing, spiritual bypassing, or gaslighting.
This Is a Controlled Burn™ is a podcast where:
survivors stop whispering
systems get called out
dark humor is allowed
voices get their oxygen back
This isn’t trauma tourism.
It’s revolt with empathy.
We talk to:
✔ trauma survivors and thrivers
✔ rare disease and chronic illness warriors
✔ people living with PTSD & CPTSD
✔ mental health professionals
✔ medical trauma survivors
✔ humans who survived what they never should have had to
We expose:
🔥 how trauma hijacks your daily life
🔥 why your body reacts like it does
🔥 the invisible ways systems fail you
🔥 why silence protects the abuser, not the wounded
🔥 how dark humor is actually resistance
🔥 the exact moment someone realized they weren’t alone
It’s honest.
It’s raw.
It’s sometimes funny.
It’s always trauma-literate.
And it exists so you don’t disappear inside your own story.
Launching soon — want the first spark?
👇 Get notified when the debut drops.
Available on Apple, Spotify, and everywhere you burn shit down while healing.