Growing up in a family tied to the legacies of Crayola Crayons, Putnam Publishing, and aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart, Miriam Putnam learned early on to challenge the status quo but it was personal tragedy that taught her the deeper lesson: wealth, influence, and access don't guarantee wellbeing. After losing her mother following years of mental health struggles, Miriam, a certified wellness coach and holistic mental health advocate, turned heartbreak into more than 25 years of advocacy, building an approach to care that treats body, mind, and soul as inseparable parts of the same whole.

In this conversation, Miriam and Dr. Dan dig into what it really means to advocate for yourself inside a healthcare system that often moves faster than patients can process... asking better questions, listening to the body's signals, and staying curious about physical contributors to emotional distress. They explore how stress hides in plain sight, showing up as disrupted sleep, a shorter fuse, or quiet disconnection from the people closest to you. Miriam also introduces two ideas at the center of her work: "soul health," the practice of living in alignment with purpose, and the Mind Muscle Exercise, a sensory technique for interrupting stress by deliberately returning to a memory of genuine happiness.