Sometimes the biggest adventures begin after life falls apart.
This week on Here’s What We Know, our host, Gary Scott Thomas, sits down with author Teri M Brown about surviving emotional abuse, rebuilding self-worth, and riding a tandem bicycle across America with her husband.
Their 3,102-mile journey became more than a cycling trip. It became a story about resilience, relationships, fear, kindness, and discovering what’s possible when you stop letting your past define you.
This conversation is funny, vulnerable, deeply human, and exactly the kind of unexpected story that reminds us how powerful connection can be.
Listen now and discover why Teri says adventure can restore your faith in humanity.
This episode is sponsored by:
(Be sure to tell them Gary sent you!)
In this episode:
- How Teri rebuilt confidence after emotional abuse
- What riding across America taught her about resilience
- Why tandem bicycles are called “divorce machines”
- What cross-country travel revealed about humanity
- How adventure changes relationships and identity
- Why most people are far kinder than the internet makes us believe
Quotations:
“You can’t educate people who don’t want to be educated.” – Teri M Brown
“I stay away from the news because generally, all the news is doing is making everybody hate one another. And the truth is that we don’t hate one another if we will just get out and say hello to people. Generally, people are very nice.” – Teri M Brown
“Don’t quit on a bad day.” – Teri M Brown
“Learn to enjoy the downhills.” – Teri M Brown
Bio:
Born in Athens, Greece as an Air Force brat, Teri M Brown graduated from UNC Greensboro. She began her writing career helping small businesses with content creation and published five nonfiction self-help books dealing with real estate and finance, receiving multiple awards.
In 2017, after winning the First Annual Anita Bloom Ornoff Award for Inspirational Short Story, she began writing fiction in earnest, and published her debut novel in 2022, Sunflowers Beneath the Snow, a historical fiction set in Ukraine. Her second novel published in 2023, An Enemy Like Me, takes place during WWII. Her third novel, Daughters of Green Mountain Gap, a generational story about Appalachian healers came out in January 2024. 10 Little Rules for a Double-Butted Adventure (Feb 2025), is an inspirational look at the life lessons she learned riding across the United States on a tandem bicycle. Little Lola and Her Big Dream, is a children’s picture book helping children realize that it is okay to have big dreams even in the face of opposition. Her newest work, Peg, Unhinged (April 2026), is a humorous contemporary women’s fiction looking at menopause.
Teri is a wife, mother, grandmother, and author who loves word games, reading, bumming on the beach, taking photos, singing in the shower, hunting for bargains, ballroom dancing, playing bridge, and mentoring others.
Guest Contact Info:
Website: https://www.terimbrown.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terimbrown/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TeriMBrownAuthor/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terimbrown_author