Divorce Over 40: Michael Foglietta’s Powerful Resilience Journey || DPTSP #156 || David M. Webb

[00:00:00] Welcome to the show. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce our truly inspiring, resilient guest, Michael Foglietta. Michael is an accomplished author, motivational speaker and coach who has dedicated his life to helping individuals and caregivers transform life-altering trauma into actionable strength. His journey is nothing short of extraordinary. In 2003, Michael survived a ruptured AVM in his brain, an event that led to a flat line, a week-long coma and months of grueling recovery.

[00:00:29] Despite battling severe physical limitations, memory loss and PTSD, Michael defied the odds return to academia 2019 and graduating magna cum laude in 2022. Through his Accept, Adapt, Rebuild Life Framework, Michael empowers others to navigate sudden disruptions and rebuild their lives. As a podcast host and author of 11 book-guided journal series, he offers tactical strategies for resilience. Resilience is what we're talking about, folks.

[00:00:57] Michael's story is one of perseverance, reinvention, and hope. And I can't wait to dive into his wisdom. Hey, Michael, thanks for meeting us for that podcast and tell us about yourself. And I've got some questions for you. All right. Yeah. Thank you for having me, David. I'm Michael Foglietta. I'm 54 now. My AVM referred in 2003. I've had a few years to kind of get used to things, get used to how my body operates.

[00:01:21] I've been, I'm on, currently I'm on my third marriage. The first divorce was, it was amicable kind of thing. My, my, my latest divorce was in 2019 and it was not amicable, but I met the wife I have now and been together for about six or seven years now. So things are going great in that area. And I just started this new chapter in my life, probably beginning of the, of this year, beginning of 2026.

[00:01:48] After a serious injury, I had it work. I tried going back to work for a little while, despite my disabilities to try to find something that suited me and it didn't work. My doctors said I would never work again or learn at a high level again. So I proved them wrong on one point, the learning at a high level, but they were right about the, the working. Tell us a little bit about the Accept, Adapt, Rebuild and Live, Live protocol. How does it differ from other resilience frameworks?

[00:02:15] It's a progression. Everybody knows after traumatic events, you go through the normal five stages of grief for the YME, the being down in the dumps for years, oftentimes. And it happened to me too. I had PTSD afterwards and went through years of counseling and therapies, physical therapies, occupational therapy, and a lot of different pain therapies. Sometimes the pain therapies were more painful than the pain.

[00:02:45] And yeah, I went through a lot of that stuff. But one thing I did over the first few years was after my, my doctors all told me that I'd be back to work in three to six months, maybe a year, those deadlines flew by. So after a couple of years, and I just kind of started resigning myself to this is how I'm going to be the rest of my life. So I accepted it. And that's where the acceptance comes in.

[00:03:15] And once you accept what's happening in your life, you need to adapt to it. Like me, I can't do the things that I used to do, any kind of physical activities and stuff like that. But I had to test my abilities after acceptance because in order to adapt, you have to test yourself. What you can do, what you can't do. Like me, I can't. I used to be a test engineer. I worked on electronics and stuff on submarines. But I, my dexterity and my grips and stuff like that, I can't do it anymore.

[00:03:44] I can't hold things in my arm or my hands and I get real dizzy and nauseous and stuff like that. So there's a lot of jobs and careers that are just off the table for me. So I had to adapt what disabilities I have. For example, if I turn my head a certain way or move it back like that, I get dizzy. My head starts spinning and nauseous. So I don't move my head in those ways very often. So I don't experience that. And that's kind of what adapting is all about.

[00:04:13] And then rebuilding is just basically when your life changes overnight like mine did and is completely rearranged. After a few years, you have to kind of, you have to start finding new hobbies, new interests, because sometimes the stuff you used to do before, you're not going to be able to do again. And rebuilding is finding out what you can and can't do and adjusting your lifestyle to what you can and can't do.

[00:04:41] And then living is just the end result. You live your life, you find happiness, however you find it. For me, living is what I'm doing now. I'm married. I have my family. I'm trying to help others get through traumatic events and through coaching and speaking in the journals I created. That's what's given my life purpose. And so that's my definition of the accept, adapt, rebuild and live protocol that I came up with.

[00:05:09] It has to do a lot with me, but I found over the years and research and stuff like that and learning about disabilities and stuff like that. It's a process. Like a lot of things in life, it's a process. Definitely. People ask me, what's the best way to recover from a divorce? And I look them in the eye and say, hey, start a podcast. Look at me. I said, dude, seriously, if you start a podcast, you will heal quickly. So can you kind of relate to that since you started your media journey?

[00:05:39] Has that helped you too? Yeah, it's helped me in a few ways. Number one is helping people makes me feel good. And throughout, through this whole 20 year plus year journey, I help people out. I don't help them all out the same way. It might be just I'm tall. So sometimes a short person at the grocery store will ask me to grab something on the top shelf.

[00:05:59] But it's stuff like that I enjoy doing and helping people and kind of telling my story, giving them advice about what I went through. It makes me feel better. And it makes me learn because every person is different. And one thing I learned because I was in the Navy before and I got to travel a lot is getting different perspectives from different people, different cultures. Different disabilities are they're all different.

[00:06:29] Divorce is different, especially for everyone. So it just helps me adjust to my life. And I've made it and I did this on purpose, but I don't get angry anymore. I get a little grumpy, but I don't get angry anymore. And I found that since I don't get angry, it helps my mental state a lot more. That helped get me through like the divorce in the last 20 years. Well, I think the last time I got really angry was when I was married.

[00:06:58] The second time? Yeah, the second time. Okay. So one of the things I did coping mechanisms back when I was in my divorce recovery early into it, you have to figure out how to control the anger and how to control the hurt. So one of the things I did, and it probably wasn't the best thing to do, but it worked for me. I had to go from the standpoint that people were basically stupid until proven otherwise.

[00:07:23] So my expectations were so low, like it was so low, but that six months, nine months got me through that. And then I eventually let that go. But sometimes you have to jump off the deep end in order to survive. Yeah. What are some of the most common misconceptions that people have about resilience and how would you address it? You think? A lot of things that I've seen over the years is people think that the disabled community are seen as weak.

[00:07:53] There's something wrong with us. So we have to, there's got to be, we're just a weak person. And I think the biggest misconception about being weak is we're not weak. Every day, I live in pain 24-7, dizziness, nausea, all that stuff. And for a normal person, they would be in the hospital every day for what I go through on a daily basis. So I don't like to consider the disabled community weak. And it doesn't matter what disability it is or any kind of problem, traumatic event you're going through.

[00:08:23] It's just a, I can't, I can't explain it sometimes. When you go through stuff, can you ask the question again? I lost my train of thought there. Yeah. Hold on. Here we go. What's the most common misconceptions that people have about resilience or even the disabled community? That's where we were going. Okay. Yeah, I remember now. Sorry about that. That's fine. Like I was saying, it's seen as a weakness.

[00:08:49] Even people that get divorced, they're seen as weak because they can't keep a marriage together. So there's got to be something wrong with them. And most of the time, there's not. It's just two people that get together and they're happy for a while and then life happens and you just split apart. And I think that's the main thing. It's not a sign of weakness. It's a sign of recovery, basically. You're trying to get out of a bad situation. Yeah.

[00:09:18] What was the most challenging aspect of writing your 11 book guided journal ecosystem? Looking back, what was some of the challenging aspects of writing that? Coming up with the prompts. Each journal has a different prompt and it's a prompt for each part of your life after it happens. Like B, after my thing, my brain ruptured and stuff. I had to get used to not working because I wasn't able to work.

[00:09:46] There's financial stress, trying to people grieve their past selves. And I go from that when it happened all the way to rebuilding a new life, redefining success, having goals, new goals and stuff like that. And I have 11 journals and one e-book. Okay. And journals are Sudden Disability, Adapting to Sudden Disability, Adapting to PTSD.

[00:10:16] I have a Cerebral Palsy Series, an Autism Series. And each journal has a caregiver edition that goes along with it. Because nobody goes through anything alone, even divorced people. And with disabled people, there's always a caregiver. And say your spouse, she gets paralyzed in a car accident.

[00:10:39] The husband now has to take over the whole house, redo the whole house and make it accessible, stuff like that. So there's a whole new dynamic involved with caregiving. I'm not talking about paid caregivers that come to the house or going into an institution. I'm talking about spouses, friends, family, those kind of caregivers.

[00:11:04] It's a whole different ballgame for caregivers than it is for the actual person, a disabled person or the divorced person. And even divorced people can get PTSD and stuff like that. I liken it more to journeys. And like with the cerebral palsy journals, I start at adolescent journal all the way up to the caregiver. Same with the autism one. I start with the adolescence and goes up to caregiver.

[00:11:31] So does the caregiver go side by side with the journal? Are there two journals or is it all one? It pretty much goes with it. Okay. There's a few different aspects to caregiving, like I said. But for the most part, it's the same journey. Just two different perspectives. Gotcha. Wow. So when you do a motivational speaker engagement, what are some of the positive people come up to you at the end?

[00:12:00] What are some of the positive things that you hear that keeps you going? People always tell me how resilient I am and how my story is inspirational and stuff like that. And what I'm trying to, I'm trying to get across the inspirational and motivational part, of course. But the biggest part of it is structure, I think, to what I'm trying to do. So one of the biggest things I do is try to offload cognitive.

[00:12:24] When somebody has too much stuff going on up here, like an example I like to give is you have to remember your whole entire day. Like each appointment, stuff like that. And instead of your brain doing that, everyone has calendars. But we all look at calendars all day to see what we have. So if you take stuff out of your brain and put it on paper or somewhere else, your brain's not doing it. So it saves you. I call it the cognitive battery.

[00:12:55] Gotcha. Especially like with disabled people, the cognitive battery drains real fast. Yep. Excuse me. That's almost like a curse. We talked about or I've talked about with other people about being creative. You're creative. I'm creative. And you can't explain to other people that are not creative. And offloading your brain, that's an awesome thing. I'm going to start doing that because my brain thinks of stuff all the time. It doesn't stop.

[00:13:26] Yeah, mine too. That's why I write stuff down a lot or I try to. My brain doesn't work like most people's anymore. The blood that went all over my brain pretty much wiped out 90% of my life, all my memories. And still to this day, I lose memories every day. But what I think I came up with was my brain's always trying to take things away from me, my memories and stuff like that. And every day I'm trying to put stuff back. Gotcha.

[00:13:54] I don't know what's going to get through or not, but that's what I try to do. But I accepted that a long time ago and it doesn't really bug me anymore, but that's basically what it's all about. Can you explain rebooting after rupture? What is that about? I was talking about the Accept, Adapt, Rebuild, and Live protocol. It's basically you're rebooting yourself.

[00:14:19] You're starting from scratch because you probably can't do most of the stuff you did prior to the accident or the rupture. And so you just have to reboot, turn the computer off and turn it back on. It's almost like a hard wipe. Yep. Yeah. My phone camera is now my memory. And my wife and my kids, they're my memory. How do you approach coaching survivors and coaching caregivers differently? Survivors have to worry about recovery and healing for themselves.

[00:14:50] Caregivers have to worry about recovering for not only the disabled person, their loved one. If they have kids, they have to worry about the kids. But they also have to worry about themselves because there's a thing called caregiver burnout. And if you're spending 24-7 trying to take care of somebody, but you're not taking time to take care of yourself, you're not going to last very long. You're going to be exhausted and you need to find ways to take little breaks.

[00:15:19] Even like a five-minute go outside. If you smoke, go have a smoke. Just go do something, a hobby, take 10 minutes and stuff like that. That's kind of what the difference is. Yep. I can tell people, like with co-parenting, self-care is huge. And a lot of guys or women practice that. And it's almost you can't take care of your kids. You don't take care of yourself.

[00:15:43] So it's almost like when the plane's going down and the O2 mask come out the top, you put yours on first and then put your kids on. You got to take care of yourself. And people don't realize that. And then they burn themselves out. So another thing, too, that I've heard because I did the week on, week off. So I had them for a week and they were gone for a week. That's what I'm doing. But that week they were gone. And I was like, what was that? Pop goes a weasel. Oh, yeah. I was in that little box for a week and then they come back and I pop out of the box.

[00:16:13] And so I had to get I had to stop that in order to take care of myself. So how tell the man out there how important self-care is. And say I like to use this example, but say you have a job or a career, but you hate it. You never stop doing it, though. You don't change. And you never stop doing this job for 40 years. And so you go 40 years hating your job. When you're done with your job. That's your life. So you have to start something new. And sorry.

[00:16:43] Sorry again, David. I'm going to ask the question again. Sorry. It's a pop goes a weasel that you've been the job for 40 years. And then all of a sudden you got to figure out something else because you haven't done anything different. Yeah. It's just a it's a way to save yourself from years of misery. And let's say the difference is you work that job you hate 24 hours a day. You might hate caregiving. You might hate getting divorced.

[00:17:11] But if you make yourself bitter about it for 10 years, 15, 20 years, however long, you're not going to be a happy person. And one thing I learned over my years of recovery is nobody wants to hang around with a grumpy person that's just grumpy, has a bad attitude all the time. And nobody wants to be a part of that. I had to learn that for myself, too. What are some of the daily habits or routines that have helped you maintain your progress and resilience?

[00:17:42] What keeps you going forward? Some of the small things, daily habits. The small things are, for me, it's structure. I have a process for almost everything. And that helps me keep my brain clear. I have a process for taking a shower. I have a process for brushing my teeth, getting dressed, for making the bed. Eating, I have to, my days, I have to adjust between laying down and sitting up for my brain to adjust.

[00:18:11] And whatever my body says, I have to listen to it. And it's a lot of, like I said, there's a lot of processes and structures. Because if I forget how to do something, I have to start over again. And that's why I have the structure. It was funny, this morning, I forgot how to take a shower because I have the process. But I forgot the process, so I had to start over again. And then I forgot to brush my teeth. So I had to go back and brush my teeth.

[00:18:38] So there's still parts of the process that screw me up and I forget sometimes. But that's why I have the structure, so it's easier for me to remember. Gotcha. What role has storytelling played in your healing and coaching journey? More like a, I look at it like a learning experience. Like, I don't want to say research, but it's letting me learn more about myself, too. And learning about others.

[00:19:05] And that's what I'm trying to do is learn about people as much as I can. I can't help somebody if I don't know what's going on. And that's why we have discussions and talks about, like, what's actually going on. My biggest thing is people need to be honest with themselves. If you go to a therapist and you lie to your therapist, they only hurt you because you can't fix what you don't say is broken. And it's mostly an honesty deal.

[00:19:33] And if you say, okay, I can go play baseball. Your doctor says you can't, but you say you can. You go play baseball. You get seriously injured playing in your weekly softball match or basketball game. And then you say, I can't do that. Like with me, I can't play baseball with my son. I can't play catch with him. I can do it, but there's a very big chance that I'll miss catching the ball and it'll hit me in the face or something. So I just don't do it.

[00:20:00] And just kind of have to, I don't want to say prepare for the worst possible outcome, but things can happen. And that's why I adjust everything I do to what I can and can't do basically. Doesn't storytelling kind of provide like a framework or a strategy gives you a chance to figure that out through a story sometime? Yeah. Storytelling is, it helps me with figuring things out.

[00:20:29] Like storylines, stuff like that. Learning about people, you have to get more and more information to. Make everything kind of coherent instead of just guessing about stuff. And that's, go ahead. Bye. What's a good way for men to accept their new identity? Because you have a hell of a change in identity when you get divorced. You go from us to me. And that identity change is huge. How can men accept that better?

[00:20:58] Or like what, eating an elephant is easy, just small bite, whatever, something like that. How can men help themselves? I found that it's just, it's okay to grieve. It's okay to be angry. It's okay to be however you feel is the right feeling. You're not imagining things. And I think the biggest part of it is accepting that how you feel is valid. And it's different for everyone.

[00:21:25] Some of my kids are the happiest they've ever been in their life within the first couple days. But for others, it can take a little longer. And I think a lot of times it's not going to happen overnight. But they need to just accept what happened and adjust to the new life. It's tough to do. I know. Because adjusting to a new life is extremely difficult. And if you're struggling with it, talk to people. You don't have to have conversations.

[00:21:53] Just somebody listening is a big help. And I know I didn't really have that after my divorce because I was here by myself. And my son at the time was only two or three years old. So I couldn't really talk to him. Yeah, definitely. But just, you just have to find new, like, same with the disability, hobbies and new interests and stuff like that. Because what you did before, you did as a couple. Now you have to do it by yourself. Yeah. And your identity changed.

[00:22:23] How do you envision the future of your work? And what's next up for you? I've still been in the beginning works of everything. And hopefully sometime soon, things will just be kind of self-explanatory. I won't have to do as much kind of legwork. Because right now I have to, I do a lot of research and stuff like that. And trying to get my stuff down pat to where I don't have to go back and look every time I need to do something becomes more, like, habitual.

[00:22:53] Workflip. Yeah. Yeah, workflow. I learned a lot of things in the past couple of years. Yeah. What final message, words of encouragement would you like to leave with my audience today? Getting a divorce is not a sign of weakness. It's more a sign of strength. Because sometimes you just can't force something to be perfect. Because it's not going to be. And if you think you'll be better off divorce, then there's no reason not to. It sucks, of course.

[00:23:24] But life after a divorce might be better than life when you were married. If you have kids and stuff, your relationship will change with your kids. They'll have to go to two Thanksgivings, two Christmases, all the two birthdays and all that. And it's fine. The kids, I think the important part is kids adapt really easily. Yep. Yeah. So, but you have to have your happiness too.

[00:23:52] And after my divorce, I couldn't move back to California. For one, I can't afford it. And number two, I wanted to stay near my son. But the life I have now is a good life. I love my life. And it happens. It's not overnight, of course. But you will end up being happier. I know that. All right, Michael. Where can my men find you on the internet? And I'll have the links at the bottom of the show notes. Okay.

[00:24:20] My author website, my coaching and speaking website is mfolietta.com. It's my first initial and my last name dot com. I'm on YouTube at mfolietta1 on Facebook and Instagram. That's mfolietta1, I think, on Instagram and TikTok too. So, but that's how you can find me. All right. Michael, I appreciate this, man. This was interesting. Very interesting. The resilient piece is huge.

[00:24:46] And that, I think that's where it's going to ring true with most of my men that listen to the podcast. Yeah, I didn't, I haven't done this angle, like I said before. And it's pretty similar to the disability angle and how we process everything and stuff like that. So, there's a lot of commonalities in it that I didn't realize. Yeah. Yep. And you did great, man. So, hold on. Thank you.