Amy Julia Becker
34 episodes listed below
Careful conversations for disability family life.
Take the Next Step with Amy Julia Becker treats disability as part of ordinary family and community life, not as a problem to solve or a sentimental story to polish. Its conversations bring parents, researchers, therapists, and advocates into patient dialogue about care, grief, behavior, siblings, churches, and mutual need.
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Take the Next Step with Amy Julia Becker is a thoughtful interview series about disability, caregiving, family life, faith, and belonging. It is quiet rather than showy. The show returns again and again to the same humane question: what helps families affected by disability live with more support, honesty, and shared life around them? Its best conversations resist simple categories. Disability is not treated only as hardship, and it is not turned into an inspirational object lesson. A conversation with Meghan Burke, PhD looks closely at siblings, including the ways they may experience disruption, responsibility, empathy, and long-term influence. Emily Longino brings a behavior analyst's lens to moments parents may be tempted to label as misbehavior, asking instead what a child may be trying to communicate. Rebecca Wall presses churches and faith communities beyond the idea that separate programming alone equals welcome. The emphasis is belonging, not just accommodation. Juli Henderson speaks from the painful and practical terrain of parenting, caregiving, grief, boundaries, and accepting help. Matthew Mooney offers a theological and relational critique of pity, triumphalism, and the habit of seeing disability from the outside. Erik Carter's work on belonging gives the show language for what communities owe one another. Kevan Chandler's story and work around peer-to-peer caregiving make need feel less like failure and more like a doorway into mutual care. Across the episodes, the pace is patient. The interviews leave room for complexity without losing sight of ordinary family logistics. Parents hear about insurance, church mornings, sibling dynamics, exhaustion, respite, friendship, and the social imagination required for real inclusion. The show is especially strong when it names false choices and looks for a truer both/and. It can be tender. It can also be direct. Its center of gravity is dignity, relationship, and the slow work of building communities where disabled people and their families are not treated as exceptions.
Made for: For parents, caregivers, family members, church leaders, and community builders navigating disability in everyday life. It especially suits listeners looking for grounded language rather than slogans.
What sets it apart: The show blends lived experience, research, caregiving practice, and faith-community questions without flattening disability into tragedy or inspiration. Its interviews stay close to family realities while asking what genuine belonging requires.
Parenting a child with a disability can feel overwhelming and isolating—but you don’t have to journey this road alone. Take the Next Step offers practical insights to help you create a thriving future for your whole family. Join Amy Julia every Wednesday for honest conversations that offer simple next steps to build connection, belonging, and delight—at home and in community.
Based on 4 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Amy Julia Becker makes disability-family life clearer through lived experience, research, practical questions, and a steady insistence on belonging.
Amy Julia Becker treats disability as a family and community question, using focused guest conversations to connect daily caregiving with the structures around it.
This is where disability leaves the tragedy-or-triumph script and meets your family calendar.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A careful look at how disability reshapes sibling life, family responsibility, and long-term care.
Amy Julia Becker's conversation with Megan Burke offers a clear look at sibling life in families touched by disability. Burke brings together research on advocacy, family life, and disability policy with lived experience as a sibling and as a parent, which gives the discussion a…
A clear look at how churches can offer belonging, support, and less exhaustion for families affected by disability.
Rebecca Wall joins Amy Julia Becker in a careful conversation about what churches can offer families affected by disability: belonging, practical support, and a place where parents do not leave more exhausted than they arrived.
Caregiving for a disabled child is shown as a shared family responsibility, with help from children and community.
Amy Julia Becker and Julie Henderson center the many roles parents of children with disabilities often hold at once: parent, caregiver, and steady organizer of daily life.
A thoughtful challenge to pity, easy triumph, and the simplistic stories disability families are often handed.
Amy Julia Becker's conversation with Matt Mooney gives the episode its clearest focus: disability is not best understood through the usual frames of tragedy or triumph, but through shared humanity, vulnerability, and real relationship.
Patient conversations about communication, care, and courage.
Disability news with lived-in clarity.
Assistive tech, disability advocacy, and a cowbell.
Business advice with a community-service backbone.
Disability arts, access, and care in conversation.
Serious lives, Scottish humour, honest turns.
Amy Julia Becker interviews Mike Erre, father of 17-year-old Seth, about how Down syndrome changed his ideas of normalcy, success, and belonging.
Amy Julia Becker interviews Sheli Reynolds, Associate Director at the UMKC Institute for Human Development, about the Charting the Life Course framework, which Reynolds calls "a mindset" and compares to putting on 3D glasses.
Amy Julia Becker talks with Megan Burke about siblings in families experiencing disability.
Amy Julia Becker interviews psychiatrist Kurt Thompson about navigating complicated emotions like grief and fear as a parent of a child with a disability.
Amy Julia Becker interviews behavior analyst Emily Longino about understanding children's behavior as communication, especially for kids with disabilities.
Amy Julia Becker introduces Take the Next Step for families experiencing disability.
Amy Julia Becker talks with Julie Henderson about what it means to be both a parent and a caregiver for a child with disabilities.
Amy Julia Becker opens by naming Take the Next Step as a podcast for families experiencing disability.
Amy Julia Becker interviews Professor Erik Carter about the 10 Dimensions of Belonging and how families can foster inclusive communities for people with disabilities.
Amy Julia Becker interviews Kevin Chandler about his nonprofit We Carry Kevin and the concept of interdependence and community care for families experiencing disability.