Tested Love Documentary On Faith And CHD Trauma

(00:00:00) Welcome!
(00:02:06) A Heart Dad Chooses Hope
(00:04:14) Demi's Miracle Through Music
(00:08:23) Coping with Trauma Through Faith
(00:11:48) Why Men's Mental Health Matters
(00:15:11) CHD Resources and Listener Email
(00:16:02) Community Questions on Resilience
(00:18:58) Parenting From Across the Country
(00:26:04) Gratitude Survivor Guilt Therapy
(00:31:15) How to Support "Tested Love"
(00:34:20) Panel Reactions from CHD Community
(00:41:37) Siblings and the Hidden Grief
(00:48:45) Connection as the Core Takeaway
(00:53:59) Closing and Where to Find Us

Three days to live is the kind of sentence that splits life into before and after. Heart dad Danny Espinoza takes us back to the fear of an in utero diagnosis, the pressure to give up, and the choice to keep going anyway. Fifteen years later, his daughter Demi is still here after tetralogy of Fallot, pulmonary atresia, MAPCAs, 13 open heart surgeries, ECMO, and a level of medical trauma that most families can barely imagine.

Filmmaker Sara-Jane Walsh joins us to share why she’s making Tested Love, a short documentary that focuses on fatherhood, faith, and mental health in the congenital heart disease community. We talk about how music can become a lifeline, how community support turns isolation into connection, and why honest storytelling can reach far beyond the hospital walls.

We also name what often stays unspoken: depression, anxiety, PTSD, survivor’s guilt, and the stigma around men seeking help. Danny shares what therapy changed for him, how he learned to advocate by asking hard medical questions, and what it means to show your kids that it’s okay to cry while still refusing to quit.

If you’ve ever lived through the cardiac ICU, supported someone with CHD, or wondered how families rebuild after crisis, this conversation is for you. Subscribe for more congenital heart conversations, share this with a heart family who needs it, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

Link to Here's Heart Hope Project: https://bit.ly/47Kf7q0

Here's Hope Project Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/hereshopeproject

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-chc-podcast-congenital-heart-chronicles--5779157/support.