This episode is a reading of a paid subscriber piece I wrote about that experience — and about the pattern I’ve been watching ever since. I name names. I bring the receipts. And I try to say clearly what I think needs to be said about the difference between announcing recovery and actually funding it.

We talk about the $11 billion in public health funding rescinded in March 2025. The $2 billion in SAMHSA grants terminated on a Tuesday night with no warning. The $100 million recovery initiative announced at the same time. And what all of it tells us about where the values actually live.

This one is personal. And I think it needs to be heard.

Read the full essay — paid subscribers can access “They Pulled the Rug. I Was Standing On It.” at buildingwhatmatters.substack.com

Subscribe to Building What Matters on Substack — free and paid tiers available

Find us on YouTube — every episode is there, and video content is on the way

Building What Matters is a podcast for recovery leaders, nonprofit professionals, and people doing the hard work of building something that lasts. Hosted by Tobias Neal, Executive Director of NMSAS Recovery Center in Northern Michigan.

In this episode of Building What Matters, Tobias traces the real story — from survival mode and nervous system regulation to the ancient Hebrew rhythm of Shalom — and makes the case that rest isn't the opposite of growth. Rest is part of it. And for leaders in recovery, advocacy, and high-responsibility roles, rest isn't optional. It's strategic.

If you've been the strong one, the safe space, the silent fighter — this one is for you.

Topics covered: learning to rest after survival mode, the sacredness of Sabbath and Shalom, rest as resistance against systems that profit from your exhaustion, rest as boundary and strategy, and a closing word for the people who hold space for everyone else.

Find the full written version of this episode at tobiasneal83.substack.com. Leading a Recovery Community Organization? The Building What Matters Leadership Cohort is free, virtual, and built for leaders doing this work. Go to www.tobiasneal.me for more information.

Stay in the pocket.

If you’re in a season of waiting, wrestling, or reworking, this one is for you. You’re not behind. You’re being real. And real is exactly where you need to be.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

● Why leadership cultures that glorify momentum create real harm downstream

● What a pause point actually looks like — and what it isn’t

● The difference between a project and a calling, and what it costs to confuse the two

● What alignment actually means when it’s not a buzzword

● A question to ask yourself before your next big push

● Permission for anyone in a waiting, wrestling, or reworking season

The Building What Matters Leadership Cohort

If today’s episode resonated and you lead a Recovery Community Organization — or you’re in the middle of building one — there’s a space being built specifically for you.

The Building What Matters Leadership Cohort is a free, virtual monthly gathering for leaders doing this work. Not a course. Not a certification. A room where people who are building something in the recovery space can think out loud together, ask hard questions, and lead from a place that’s actually sustainable.

If that’s you, the link is below. Come find us.

Read the Full Essay

Every episode of Building What Matters has a companion piece on Substack — longer, more personal, the kind of writing you sit with rather than skim. The written version of this episode is there now.

Read on Substack: https://tobiasneal83.substack.com

If This Landed

Don’t mass post it. Think of one person. Someone who’s building something, leading something, or healing something and could use a voice in their ear that tells them the truth. Send it to them directly. That’s how Building What Matters finds the people it’s meant for.

And if you’re watching on YouTube — subscribe, leave a comment, hit the like button. It puts this in front of someone else who might need it. That’s how this grows.

In this episode, Tobias reflects on what it means to lead with presence inside systems that have become efficient at disconnection. Drawing from his work as executive director of a recovery organization in northern Michigan, he explores why so many helpers are burning out, why the people we serve still feel unseen, and what it actually takes to change that.

This is not about having the right words. It is about being brave enough to stay.

In this episode:

* Why systems full of help are still starving for presence

* The difference between performing care and practicing it

* Three practices of presence: Consideration, Communication, Connection

* What Tobias witnessed at MiPeers and why it gave him hope for the future of peer support

* The invitation to slow down, resist fixing, and be somebody’s safe place

Connect with Tobias:

Substack: https://tobiasneal83.substack.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tobias.neal/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BuildingWhatMattersPodcast

Join the Building What Matters Leadership Cohort — free and virtual, for leaders of emerging Recovery Community Organizations: https://www.tobiasneal.me

Stay in the pocket.

Last week I sat in a church I will never belong to again.

I was there for the funeral of my first pastor — the man who baptized me, believed in me early, and helped shape the trajectory of my life. Walking back into that building after years of distance, I didn't expect what I found.

Not grief. Not tension. Not a crisis of belief.

Gratitude.

In this episode I talk about what happened when the bitterness I'd been carrying through years of deconstruction just — went quiet. What it means to leave something formative and still honor what was real in it. And why the best builders aren't the ones who burn everything down when they walk away.

Sometimes deconstruction isn't demolition. Sometimes it's renovation.

In this episode:

What it felt like to walk back into a world I'd left behind

The invisible door that kept me from returning — and what finally opened it

Why the "burn it all down" narrative in deconstruction spaces misses something important

The people who shaped you before you knew who you were becoming — and why they still matter

What recovery work and leadership have taught me about carrying the right things forward

The through line:

You don't build from nothing. Nobody does. The question isn't whether your past shaped you — it did. The question is whether you've been honest about what's worth carrying and what needs to be set down.

Deconstruction at its healthiest isn't tearing everything down and walking away with nothing. It's sifting. Keeping what was human. Letting go of what no longer fits.

Also in this episode:

A free virtual leadership cohort is forming for emerging Recovery Community Organization leaders. Details coming soon — keep your eyes on the Substack and socials.

Building What Matters is coming to YouTube. Audio is live now. Video episodes are coming. Subscribe so you're there when it launches. Building What Matters with Tobias Neal - YouTube

Connect:

Substack: Building What Matters | Tobias Neal | Substack

Stay in the pocket.

Building What Matters Podcast

Episode Summary

A year ago I was sitting in a meeting being told my department was closing. I had six weeks to wrap things up and figure out what came next.

I laughed.

Not because it didn't hurt. Because something in me already knew it was time to move. In this episode I take you inside that moment, the year that followed, and what it actually taught me about leading aligned, living parallel, and building what matters—even when the ground underneath you is shifting.

This one is personal. It's a story about recovery work, organizational leadership, a platform I was building, and the moment I was asked to lead an organization I loved from the inside out. If you are a leader navigating transition, uncertainty, or the gap between who you are and the work you've been asked to do—this episode is for you.

In This Episode

The moment my department closed and why I laughed instead of panicked. The personal story underneath the work —SUD, ministry, deconstruction, and what recovery actually cost me. How Bitter to Better was born from an ending. The second laugh—being asked to become interim director just as I was launching my own thing. The gap between a clinic and a recovery center, and why that distinction matters. What Lead Aligned, Live Parallel, and Build What Matters actually looked like in a real, hard, clarifying year of leadership.

The Three Pillars

Everything on the Building What Matters platform runs through three core ideas:

Lead Aligned — Making decisions from the inside out. Leading from your actual values, not the ones you perform under pressure.

Live Parallel — Refusing to let the dominant culture be the final word on what's possible. Doing your work inside the world as it is while building toward something truer.

Build What Matters — Playing the longer game. Being honest about what doesn't serve the mission so you can build what actually does.

Mentioned in This Episode

Bitter to Better — The newsletter and platform where this journey started. Rooted in personal story, aimed at people navigating loss, deconstruction, recovery, and the long work of becoming who you actually are. Click Here

The Pocket — A concept central to the Building What Matters framework. Referenced in the cold open. If you're new to this idea, the essay is a good place to start. Read Here

The Building What Matters Substack — The full written version of this episode's story is available now. If you're a reader as well as a listener, start there. Read Here

NMSAS — Northern Michigan Substance Abuse Services — A nonprofit recovery center serving multiple counties in northern Michigan since 2014. Federally certified, nationally accredited, and rooted in the belief that every person deserves to recover and to be welcomed without judgment. [nmsasrecoverycenter.org]

The Building What Matters Leadership Cohort

This is something I am actively building and I want the right people at the table.

The Leadership Cohort is a free virtual gathering designed for leaders in the recovery community — executive directors, program leads, founders of emerging Recovery Community Organizations, and anyone doing serious human-centered work in underfunded, underrecognized spaces.

If that's you, or if you know someone it describes, I want to hear from you.

This isn't a course. It isn't a curriculum. It's a table. A place to think alongside other leaders who understand the weight of this work and want to do it better.

Reach out directly to learn more and get on the list.

Connect With Tobias

Substack Building What Maters | Tobias Neal | Substack

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/tobias.neal/

Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/tobias.neal.5

LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobiasneal/

Website — https://tobiasneal.me/

If This Episode Landed

Think of one leader in your life who needs to hear this. Not a vague share. One specific person. Send it to them with a note. That kind of thing matters more than algorithms.

And if you're finding the Building What Matters podcast for the first time — welcome. Subscribe wherever you listen so you don't miss what's coming next.

Building What Matters is hosted by Tobias Neal. New episodes explore the intersection of recovery, leadership, faith deconstruction, and the work of building something honest in a complicated world.

About This Episode

This one started with two words.

Convenience kills.

My guest said it to me in passing during one of our many conversations and I have not been able to stop thinking about it since. It felt like it fit perfectly inside everything I have been building on this podcast — and this conversation proved it.

For this episode I brought on my first ever guest, Jay Mertes. Jay is a longtime friend, a small farmer, and an ER nurse who sees the consequences of convenience culture up close every single day. We have ministered together, deconstructed together, and had more late-night conversations than either of us can count. He is one of the most grounded and honest thinkers I know. And what he is doing on his homestead and what he is witnessing in the ER gives him a perspective on how we live and what it is costing us that I think you genuinely need to hear.

This conversation goes deep and wide. We covered a lot of ground. Consider this your invitation to drink from the fire hose.

In This Episode

How a small farmer and ER nurse ended up in the same person and what those two worlds have taught him

What he is seeing in the ER that most people are not paying attention to—including cancer diagnoses coming younger and younger

The pattern he notices in patients who are in their 80s and 90s and still thriving—and what they all have in common

How the food system got here—from the Great Depression to World War II to Operation Paperclip to the standard American diet

Why convenience is never free—there is always a price, it is just when and how you want to pay it

Investing in people versus investing in profit—and how that framework applies to everything from church to food to community

The gut health connection—how what we eat affects our mental health, our serotonin, and our capacity for contentment

What regenerative agriculture actually means and why it matters

The algae bloom illustration—what happens when a system gets out of balance and why nature always restores itself one way or another

Why he has never felt more connected than when he walks out to his garden barefoot

How social media gives you the illusion of community without the reality of it

The convenience test—if you can make it quickly it is probably not good for you

What the entry point looks like for someone who wants to start living differently but feels overwhelmed

Why local investment in food and people is always the answer

His dream for a local food hub where community dollars stay local and people put faces to their food

What real food actually means.

Quotes Worth Sitting With

"There is always a price for what we have, what we do, what we consume. We have to determine what price we want it to be."

"You are in a relationship with your body. You get out what you put in."

"Invest locally in people and food. Not in profit and not in convenience."

"If you can eat it quickly it is probably not good for you."

"We have created a world where very sick people live a very long time. Quantity is not always quality."

"I went into ministry to be a servant and ended up a slave."

"I have never felt more connected than when I walk out to the garden and smell the soil."

The Three Lanes of Convenience Kills

As you listen you will hear this conversation move through three distinct areas where convenience is costing us something real:

Connection to food and land — what we eat, where it comes from, what we have lost by outsourcing our nourishment to systems built for profit rather than people.

Community — how social media gives us the illusion of connection without the reality of it, and what genuine community actually requires.

Contentment — what happens when we replace silence, slowness, and presence with distraction and entertainment, and what it costs us chemically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Practical Entry Points From This Episode

If something stirred in you during this conversation here are the starting points our guest suggested:

Start small. Get some pots and grow tomatoes on your porch. You do not need 40 acres.

Consider edible landscaping. Goji berries, figs, fruit trees — things that are both beautiful and useful.

Try making sourdough bread. Three ingredients. Time. Presence. Connection.

Go berry picking. Go fishing. Look for mushrooms. Get outside and touch something that is alive.

Find like-minded people. The conversation itself is part of the medicine.

Think about what you eat and how it makes you feel when you eat it. Start paying attention.

Consider your local farmers market or a CSA — put faces to your food and keep dollars in your community.

Resources and References Mentioned

Kiss the Ground — documentary on regenerative agriculture

Back to Eden — documentary on natural growing methods and working with rather than against the land

Seventh Day Adventist dietary and lifestyle practices — research-backed, faith-rooted, worth exploring regardless of religious affiliation

Gut health and the gut-brain connection — the science behind why what we eat affects our mental health and emotional wellbeing

The Question This Episode Leaves You With

If what you eat, how you eat, and where it comes from is built for profit —

who is actually paying the price?

And when?

Continue the Conversation

This episode connects directly to Episode 4 — Back to Eden — where I trace the pattern of empire psychology from ancient civilizations to the modern food system and what it means to re-embed in something real. If this conversation stirred something in you, that episode is your next stop.

Read More on Substack

The ideas in this episode go even deeper in writing at Building What Matters on Substack. Subscribe at tobiasneal83.substack.com and get notified every time a new post or episode drops.

Connect and Subscribe

If this episode resonated with you I would love to hear from you. Find me on Substack where the conversation continues.

Listen on your favorite platform: 🎙 Apple Podcasts 🎙 Spotify 🎙 iHeartRadio

If this episode meant something to you please leave a review on your listening app. I am building this from the ground up and every review helps more people find it. It means more than you know.

Building What Matters is for leaders who are done building for optics and ready to build for real. Dignity first. Values rooted. Honest about what it costs. New episodes every week. Subscribe so you don't miss what's next.

Stay in the pocket.

Not politics. Not religion. Not even morality.

Orientation.

This episode traces that question through human history, through the story of Eden, through the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible, and through my own experience of watching empire psychology show up in churches, businesses, and leadership rooms I have sat in. And it lands somewhere practical, because understanding the pattern is only the beginning. What matters is what we do about it.

This is the episode that sits underneath everything else we talk about on Building What Matters.

In This Episode

* The pattern that runs through every collapsed civilization, and why nobody teaches it

* What Cahokia and pre-contact North American societies reveal about our definition of progress

* Why dispersal and decentralization might be wisdom rather than failure

* The real meaning of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and why it is not primarily about morality

* How humans became self-authorizing and what that has cost us

* What empire actually is - not just politically but psychologically

* How empire psychology showed up in a church budget meeting I sat in

* The slow drift from people to profit in every institution I have led

* What Ecclesiastes and Job are actually trying to break in us

* What re-embedding looks like in practical leadership

* The prophet’s posture explained, as well as what it costs and what it gives back

* Why “you are not the measure of everything” might be the most important word for leaders

Voices and Resources Referenced

This episode draws on the work of several writers and thinkers who have shaped how I think about these questions. If something in this episode stirred something in you, these are your next steps:

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, which focuses on reciprocity, gratitude, and right relationship with the living world

Native Nations by Kathleen DuVal, who writes on Native peoples as agents, builders, and nations in their own right, and what that reveals about our empire-shaped definitions of success

Journey to Eloheh by Randy and Edith Woodley, a wonderful work on harmony, balance, responsibility, and a way of belonging that is rooted in well-being rather than domination

The Lost World of Genesis One by John Walton, who espouses reading ancient biblical texts with ancient eyes rather than modern Western assumptions

What Is the Bible? and Jesus Wants to Save Christians by Rob Bell, my rabbi, who focuses on scripture as an ancient human library of wrestling, memory, warning, and liberation

The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann, who shares how the biblical tradition stands over and against the dominant consciousness of empire and what it means to lead and speak from outside that framework

The Question This Episode Leaves You With

Where in your leadership, your organization, your family or your own interior life have you started living like the limits do not apply to you?

Where have you mistaken control for wisdom?

And what would it look like to re-embed?

Read the companion essay on Substack

This episode has a full companion essay — Back to Eden: But Not the Way You Think — published on the Building What Matters Substack. It goes even deeper, with jumping off points for those who want to explore the biblical, historical, and Indigenous wisdom traditions referenced in this episode.

Read it, sit with it, and share it with someone who needs it. Subscribe so you never miss what comes next.

Connect and Subscribe

If this episode resonated with you I would love to hear from you. Find me on Substack where the conversation continues.

Listen on your favorite platform: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or others.

If this episode meant something to you please leave a review on your listening app. I am building this from the ground up and every review helps more people find it. It means more than you know.

Building What Matters is for leaders who want to operate inside empire without being shaped by it. Dignity first. Values rooted. Honest about what it costs. New episodes dropping regularly. Subscribe so you don’t miss what’s next.

We cover all three pieces together in one conversation:

* Part One - I’m Not Interested in Being Impressive Anymore: How I got pulled off center, what the drift looked like practically, and the quiet decision that changed things.

* Part Two - What’s Yours Is Worth Protecting: What alignment actually looks like as a daily practice. What I do when something feels off and how I find my way back.

* Part Three - Living Parallel to Empire: The worldview underneath all of it. What it means to walk a quieter path alongside the noise without pretending the noise isn’t there.

In This Episode

* Why you can build an impressive life that doesn’t actually feel like yours

* The moment I realized I was drifting from the center of myself

* Why I moved to Substack and stripped everything back to a one-pager

* What alignment feels like in practice, and what I do when it slips

* How security changes the way you show up in relationships

* The practice of pausing, getting curious, and going back

* What “living parallel to empire” actually means day to day

* The prophet’s posture—witnessing, naming, and creating space

* Why I’m more dysregulated engaging in the noise and more aligned walking alongside it

Read the Full Series on Substack

These three pieces are published in full at Building What Matters on Substack. Read them, sit with them, share them with someone who needs them.

* Part One: I’m Not Interested in Being Impressive Anymore

* Part Two: What’s Yours Is Worth Protecting

* Part Three: Living Parallel to Empire

Subscribe at Substack to get notified when new posts and episodes drop.

Connect & Subscribe

If this episode resonated with you I’d love to hear from you. Find me on Substack where the conversation continues.

Listen on your favorite platform: 🎙 Apple Podcasts 🎙 Podcast on Spotify

If this episode meant something to you, please leave a review on your listening app. I’m building this from the ground up and every review helps more people find it. It means more than you know.

New episodes dropping regularly. Subscribe so you don’t miss what’s next.

He explores Isabel Wilkerson's concept of caste as architecture rather than prejudice, the historical figure of Jesus navigating the Roman Empire from the bottom of the hierarchy, and why the most compelling responses to ranked human worth throughout history haven't come from people seizing power - but from people quietly building something beside it.

This one is honest, a little personal, and hopefully useful wherever you are in your own journey.

In this episode:

Why every society develops a way of ranking human worth, and why it eventually feels natural

The difference between race and caste, and why that distinction matters

What Jesus actually said about power and why it nearly got lost in deconstruction

What living parallel looks like in concrete, practical terms today

Why communities grounded in dignity tend to outlast the empires around them

Mentioned in this episode:

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents — Isabel Wilkerson

Full article: Empire, Caste, and the Quiet Work of Living Parallel — [insert Substack link]

Connect with Tobias:

Building What Maters | Tobias Neal | Substack

Instagram

Facebook

Lead Aligned. Live Parallel. Build What Matters.

Welcome to the very first episode of Build What Matters—and thank you for being here from the beginning. That means something.

This episode is the origin story. I share how I lost my marriage and my ministry, how I spent years blaming someone else's struggle with substance use disorder rather than looking honestly at myself, and how I eventually found my way into recovery work, the very community I once scorned, and fell in absolute love with it. I became the director of a 21-county recovery center in northern Michigan. I went, literally, from bitter to better.

This episode also introduces the framework that drives everything I write and talk about: Lead Aligned. Live Parallel. Build What Matters. and what each of those means to me, and why they came out of the journey, not a classroom.

A note on the recording:

This is my first ever podcast episode, and I want to be honest with you about what you're hearing. Substack allows you to record audio and video directly in the platform, but it doesn't have an editing feature. So, what you're getting here is the real, unpolished second take. No cuts. No cleanup. Just me, the story, and whatever the microphone picked up.

I'll likely continue using Substack's recording tools for now until I find something with editing capability. But honestly, for a podcast built around truth-telling over performance, maybe a raw recording is the right place to start.

In this episode:

Why this podcast exists and where it comes from

The confession - bitterness, loss, and what I blamed it on

The turn - how my theology, my understanding of SUD, and my life started to shift

The recovery community that welcomed me back when I didn't deserve it

The framework: Lead Aligned · Live Parallel · Build What Matters

Who this podcast is for and what you can expect going forward

Subscribe to the newsletter: Build What Matters lives on Substack - where I write about dignity-first leadership, healing, recovery, faith deconstruction, and the hard work of building something real. Subscribe here Tobias Neal | Substack

Follow along: Instagram · Facebook · LinkedIn

If this episode meant something to you - share it with someone who needs it. Leave a review if your app allows it. And come back next week. We're just getting started.

Lead Aligned. Live Parallel. Build What Matters.