One Morning Changed Everything | Rachel Barkley | Episode 418
The Speakeasy
The Girl Named Blake
4.8 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 17 June 2026
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this powerful episode, I sit down with Rachel Barkley to discuss disability, suffering, identity, resilience, and what it means to trust God when life changes overnight. What began as a conversation about disability quickly became a deeper discussion about hope, purpose, and finding God's goodness in the middle of unexpected circumstances.
Rachel shares her profound story of becoming paralyzed just two weeks after giving birth to her first child. After experiencing worsening symptoms during pregnancy, she woke up one morning unable to move her legs. Doctors eventually discovered a large tumor growing inside her spinal cord, leading to emergency surgery and a long road of recovery.
Sponsor
CrowdHealth
Looking for an alternative to traditional health insurance?
CrowdHealth offers:
- Lower-cost prescriptions and labs
- Access to vetted doctors
- Bill negotiation support
- Community-centered healthcare solutions
Get started for $99 for your first three months using code SPEAKEASY at joincrowdhealth.com.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the Speakeasy podcast. Today's conversation was supposed to pretty exclusively be about disability. My guest today, Rachel Barkley, is part of the able American program. She also has her own absolutely insane story of becoming disabled almost overnight. |
| 0:21.8 | I'm not going to get into it. |
| 0:23.0 | I'm going to let her tell you. But that was where we set off from. |
| 0:27.0 | And then as I have a tendency to do and God has a tendency to do, |
| 0:31.5 | it really branched out into a larger conversation about capacity, |
| 0:37.1 | about value, identity, dignity, suffering, all things that, |
| 0:43.4 | even if you haven't woken up one day with a really crazy medical thing having transpired, |
| 0:50.5 | we have all encountered. |
| 0:51.6 | We have all encountered all of those things. |
| 0:54.1 | And Rachel just talks about |
| 0:56.2 | her story and about what she's experienced with such joy and without sugarcoding the hard |
| 1:02.4 | parts of it and being very clear that she suffered and she ran and she struggled, but with the |
| 1:09.5 | outcome of even if, even if this doesn't go the way that I thought |
| 1:15.3 | I would, God is still good. And you hear us say that a lot throughout the episode. And so this isn't |
| 1:19.8 | just about disability. We even get into like some of her policy work and the politics of it. |
| 1:24.5 | I put my politic hat on for like, I think, a whole 10 minutes. |
| 1:28.2 | But at the end of the day, what the takeaway, I think, for me, from sitting with her was, |
| 1:33.3 | is perspective and that God really does use everything together for the good of those who love him, |
| 1:39.0 | even if. |
| 1:49.0 | Rachel, welcome for the speakeasy. I'm so glad to be with you, Blake. Thanks for having me on. |
| 1:52.0 | We had to reschedule, and this was one of those where I was not, I don't mean this in a guilty way, but I was bombed. |
| 1:59.0 | There are some interviews, I'm not going to lie. |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 19 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Girl Named Blake, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Girl Named Blake and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.