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From Here to Hope
From Here to Hope is a podcast where host Eileen Walsh sits with people from all walks of life to ask four simple, powerful questions:
• What is it like to be you right now?
• What is your vision for a better future?
• What is one thing we need more of in this world to get there?
• What is one gift you already have to help us get there?
These conversations hold space for honest reflection, shared longing, and the quiet power of what’s already within us. Each episode is an invitation—to witness, to dream, and to remember that hope isn’t something far away. It begins right here.
From Here to Hope
The Burn and Bloom: Finding Hope in Life's Messiness
Host Eileen Walsh welcomes poet and author Cheryl Cantafio for an intimate exploration of grief, creativity, and finding hope in life's messiness. Through vulnerable conversation, they discover how storytelling connects us and helps us navigate both personal and collective grief.
• Cheryl describes herself as "a woman watching the world burn and bloom"
• Losing her mother sparked a creative journey that led to publishing multiple books
• Writing provided an organizing effect for processing difficult emotions
• Grief fundamentally changes us, rewriting who we are and how we move forward
• Storytelling creates connection that helps combat loneliness
• The vision for a better future requires encouraging people to share their authentic stories
• Grace has "evaporated" from society, but it's essential for our collective wellbeing
• Finding humor in difficult times can be a survival mechanism
• Friendship and connection are gifts that help us stand back up after falling
Wherever you are right now, take a breath and consider: What does it feel like to be you? Share your story—we need to hear it.
Welcome listeners. This is the From here to Hope podcast and I am your host, eileen Walsh. So this podcast is a space for honest conversations about where we are, what we're holding and what we dare to dream is still possible. It's not about fixing or forcing, but slowing down long enough to hear the truth of where we are right now, because hope isn't a destination, it's a direction. And wherever you are right now and my dear guest with me today I'm going to invite you to take a breath so we can really step into this conversation together. So, in your nose, out your mouth Welcome Today. I am so honored to welcome my incredible friend and co-host of our podcast.
Speaker 1:You Only Go Once Cheryl Cantafio. Cheryl is an IT professional by day and a poetry and children's book writer. All other hours from Norristown, pennsylvania, when she's not writing, she spends time with family, friends and her two pups, reads gothic, horror and thriller novels or binge watches movies and television series with her husband. Her book, my stay with the sisters poems, was her debut as an author and poet in may 2023. In 2024, she wrote and released a place no flowers grow, a gothic poetic tale, and she will sonnet, a folklore chat book.
Speaker 1:And barry and the big jump, which I love dearly so much, her debut children's book about a jumping spider with big dreams. I have to say sorry, I know this is not part of your bio. However, all of these books have been such a beautiful journey for me. To watch you grow on and be able to read each one of them, to feel different parts of you was so magical and special and such a privilege for me, and it's been incredible to see you in this becoming of this writer and author. So I just want to share that and that you are such an incredible human in my life and I'm so, so grateful to have you here today.
Speaker 2:Welcome Well here today. Welcome Well, shucks. Okay, hello everyone. Hi, my dear friend Eileen, how are you? That was a lovely introduction and also it really touches me that you found some connection in the books, because that's really what it's about in storytelling. So I'm really really excited and happy to be here and see you continue your journey as a storyteller as well. This is really really cool and exciting. So I am happy to be here and happy to be your first guest and, yes, it's all all wonderful and fantastic. So it is.
Speaker 1:And so this is the first real episode. I have an introduction episode for myself before, but the idea for this podcast is to really go through four questions. So Cheryl and I are going to navigate through the four questions I'll be asking every single guest and, yeah, it's a way to explore where each person is that one. I just find people amazing and interesting. I also understand that being able to create a future is going to take every single one of us and our vision for what that is, instead of sitting in the muck of all of it. Yes, how do we start creating that stuff together? How do we start envisioning what that looks like? And I want to hear from people on how they think we can do that, because that, to me, is the first real step in being able to move into that space. So so we'll navigate into that. And the first question that I'm going to ask, cheryl, but first I'm going to ask you, audience, to also consider this, to also consider this, and I'll ask you to consider it every single episode, because it's going to change. I guarantee it's going to change for you every single time you consider it.
Speaker 1:But what does it feel like to be you right now? Right, just take a minute, let it sit right. Just take a minute, let it sit. Maybe it's feelings in your body, maybe it's some emotions you have coming up from the day because Lordy knows, those can come up but whatever that is, wherever you are, just what does it feel like to really be you in this moment in time, in this moment in space, where you are in your life, where you are in your career, where you are in the world? Right, that's huge right now. And what does that feel like for you? And I would love to be able to hear your stories, as well as these amazing people that I'm bringing on as guests as well. So reach out and share what your thoughts are for today. So now I'm going to dive in with Cheryl, my friend. Yes, what does it feel like to be you right now?
Speaker 2:well, I gave this a lot of thought and look I a. I'm a woman in my 50s Statistically speaking, I've got more years behind me than ahead of me and really I'm a menopausal woman who's watching the world burn and bloom. That's, you know, just watching it from a, you know, from a personal perspective. You know, my mom died from pancreatic cancer after she survived a pandemic. It was also 51 days before my 50th birthday. You know, her death really altered me and it continues to alter me, and there are moments in life that define people, and losing her ignited my next chapter. So, and I will say, like, whether the main character energy I'm bringing now is better or worse remains to be seen, right, so stay tuned. You know, and for me, you had mentioned it before right, I dove, really I dove into writing to help me grapple with feeling consumed by loss, and some days it works and other days I want to go full hermit.
Speaker 2:So I'd like to share this quote from Susan David, who's a psychologist, she's an emotions researcher and she's the author of the book Emotional Agility. So she recently posted on her social media the following about grief Grief is the experience of being changed by loss, it says to us. This was a before this happened and an after this happened. I will move forward, but I will never be the same. So writing about our difficult emotions, including grief, can help us move forward in healthy ways. When we put our difficult experiences into language, research shows that it has an organizing effect. It allows us to see not only the difficult parts of the experience but what we might have learned or gained, and it helps us process it. Grief changes us. It rewrites us and we in turn, rewrite our lives with it.
Speaker 2:And I thought that was so poignant and so on point, and I think for me, writing felt like the way to go for that expression. And you know, we're also here from a world perspective. We're living in a time when the land of the free and the home of the brave is blatantly, recklessly erasing women's accomplishments, contributions and access. Yeah, um, so we're living in a time where people ban books. I don't get. I still don't get. To this day, books open worlds to readers. I mean, you know how the hell does anyone feel justified in culling imagination or history or education? I still don't get it. So we're in this really weird. Personally, for me, I'm in a world of loss.
Speaker 2:I know that others are like, and again, Susan David's called it right. This is what happened before time I think everybody's talking about, like what happened pre-pandemic versus post-pandemic in their worlds.
Speaker 2:And we're all still in this cycle of complex grief, but, that said, there's also moments of blooming. I don't know how I would have gotten through it without friends like you, family, the writing communities that I'm part of now, and also connecting with people who read the books and said, yeah, I get it, like I can see that, so, um, you know. So what does it feel like to be me right now? It feels really freaking messy.
Speaker 2:Um and that's kind of where I am. Um, you know, life is, life is great, and then sometimes life is not great and you just kind of move on and you figure out what's the best thing you can do. And for me, again, it was writing, joining writing groups, listening to other people's stories, making those connections. You know, bless us because we're all humans, and yes, we are in. You know, bless us because we're all humans and, yes, we are in. You know, we're fallible, infallible. Which one is the word?
Speaker 1:I'm a math major.
Speaker 2:I don't know I right, okay, so we'll go look that up. Um, I think it's. We're fallible, right, we're just. You know, we make mistakes, hence this whole part of the interview where I can't remember if it's infallible or fallible. But you know, it's just a messy time, yeah, and I'm really feeling the messy portion of it, and I'm also grateful that I have friends that have also embraced the messy and are trying to find the way through. So that's where I am.
Speaker 1:Oh, totally, there are a couple. I mean, all of that was beautiful. I, as soon as you said burn and bloom, like that just touched me really deeply, like I just had this picture of each one of our hearts and and like it almost being this like fertile ground, right, sorry, I go to the plant stuff. I love plants, I love gardening, all of the stuff, right, but you know, just like in in forests and things like that, you have these moments of wildfires that clear things out to make way for new growth, right, and I just imagine these little pieces of our hearts that become burned and then new. These new blooms come from those, and how much we have. We hide some of that because of the, the pain of the things that come through, because of the struggle of just allowing for the, the new blooms, to start growing, right, like those are so hard and we have to pretend like we're in full bloom all the time and we're not. It's impossible, right, it's impossible to do and, yeah, I just that's just really that the imagery of it was so profound for me and, um, it's so important to know that anyone can be in the middle of both at the same time, for sure, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, whether it's in, you know you could have.
Speaker 1:Your personal life maybe is in burn right now and your professional life is happening in bloom yeah for sure, whatever that looks like. But yeah, I just one thank you for bringing that. Yeah, for sure it. But you know you brought up when your mom passed. Um, you know these, these really big moments in our lives, right there's, there's certainly like micro moments of I got, maybe I passed up on a promotion or you know, like something didn't quite go right, but there's also these really large parts that are defining. Like that. To me, that defines, right, who I become now and who I this, who I am now after this moment, and do you think that you have any definition or thoughts around the who I am now or after? That happened with your mom passing?
Speaker 2:I had to figure out who I was as an adult and it's really weird to say that because clearly I'm in my fifties I am an adult.
Speaker 1:There's rumors.
Speaker 2:There's rumors.
Speaker 2:So, but it's just you know it was just the timing of everything, right, like we were all celebrating, you know, we were finally able to get to start to see one another. The pandemic piece had kind of died down, and then her pancreatic cancer diagnosis just felt like a gut punch. And then I look at it, too, right, like I see, you know, all of our family members are dealing with it in different ways and I know for me, like I didn't have kids, so I'm child free, and sometimes it feels like I'm childless and I there are times where I really wish we could have given her grandchildren, or could have given my dad grandchildren, but that just wasn't in the cards and you know what. That's okay, yeah, um, she does have a lovely grandchild and, uh, that's a. That was a good thing and she got to experience that.
Speaker 2:But then there's all this other piece about your evolution as a woman. So I went from you know you go from you know a repeat cycle every month to like it's all gone and with that comes all the weird stuff, right, the hot flashes, the cold flashes, the brain fog. The brain fog has been astronomical and there's a part of me or actually there's a big part of me that wishes I could talk to her about that and say what did you go through? Now she had kind of prepped me and said you better be prepared for the hot flashes, because it's no joke and she was not kidding, um, but it's all the stuff afterwards, right, it's all the stuff that it's starting to get documented now in terms of, like, what happens to women during menopause.
Speaker 2:Um, just the, the emotional pieces, like physiologically, yes, like we know what happens, but then it's like all the emotional pieces that you're like, oh, I didn't see that cry. Oh, so we're going to cry at the drop of a hat. That's cool, it's all of that and it's just, you know it's missing. That part of it that kind of could say like mom, did you go through this?
Speaker 2:Or how did that feel, mom, did you go through this? Or how did that feel? That said, there's a part of me that's also glad she's not seeing the train wreck that I can be sometimes. So there's also that piece of it. So, like I said, it's messy. It's very much a feeling of messy. Um, you know, there's things I wish you were around for that that don't have anything to do with me but just have to do with our family. So there's definitely that grief, is definitely messy. It's just a messy, messy thing, and I don't think it's a unique experience to lose your mother or your or sorry, I was sympathetic and I just didn't really understand the enormity of it until it happened to me. So it's just a different vibe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, as someone who has not yet lost a parent, you know, um, I just gosh, I was, I was going to say something, but just to be in the messiness with you, but, um, I was like, oh, I hope I was there. I don't need you to, I don't need a validation that I was there for you, but like I feel I feel what, what you felt in that right Of the like I, I hear what you're saying. I can't totally relate to it and I'm, I want to be there for my, my friend, and I don't even know what it feels like to know how to show up for this person and yeah, I just it's. It's so. There's these phases in life where it's like you don't know until you know, and then you're part of this club of things you kind of wish you weren't a part of. Sometimes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And again, I know I'm I'm making this very personal with the loss of my mom, but there has been since I would probably say late 2019, early 2020, this overall overarching grief that I think we as a collective have experienced, have experienced and I do think it's wonderful, from the perspective of the Bloom perspective, to see the people who were able to come out of it from the other side flourish and you know, I've talked to so many people where they're like, yep, I'm living life, like I will, you know, I'm going to do all the things, I'm going to eat all the things. I mean, you remember, we, you know we all were like, well, we're in this pandemic, I'm making sourdough bread.
Speaker 2:I mean we yeah, yeah, I'm eating. I'm eating the carbs, kids, um, and you know, from that we learned. I would like to say we learned empathy. I would really like to say we learned empathy. I would like to say we learned about personal space. I would like to say we learned about humanity, and I think to a certain extent we have.
Speaker 2:And then there's this other part, right, where we just see that I just think we need a little more grace in the world. I'm probably skipping ahead on your questions, but yeah, yeah, it would be lovely to see some of that grace and I have. I am really grateful to my friends who have exhibited grace, because I was a hot mess and I still have my moments where I kind of just spiral and squirrel and everybody's like come on back, kid, come on back, it's fine, you'll be fine, come on back, it's fine, you'll be fine, and I'm grateful for that. So if there's anything I can recommend to people, count your blessings, count your friendships, count your family, because it is. We don't get out of this without having those communities and connections, without having those communities and connections.
Speaker 1:Definitely. It's also interesting too in that you know, you say that or what you were kind of talking about was like you're even still going off and having these things. These are normal feelings to have, right. Yes, to have loss is heartbreaking. To have grief is soul-wrenching, like to then have to. To me, it's unnatural to pretend like they didn't happen and I'm just supposed to be in some natural not even natural but like I'm supposed to just get back and do my shit, right. Yep, that, to me, is the unnatural part.
Speaker 2:And it's really funny because we've been operating so long in this ability to compartmentalize and again, and especially particularly like you look at just the way that we work it's somebody passed away. We're sorry for your loss. Here's anywhere between three and seven days. We're good, right? Okay, welcome back, let's move forward. And I get it. I think there's a fine line between moving on and moving forward, and I don't know if we always get it right. And again it goes back to we're human, we're still trying to figure this whole thing out, and also that people process grief in so many different ways in so many different ways. There are people that love the compartmentalization right. They're like okay.
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, yeah. And it's to them. It's like okay, I, I need this to survive, so I am going to do this, I'm going to grieve and then I'm going to move forward, and that's great for them. There are other people who need a little bit more, and I think we need that grace, like we. We need to provide the grace and we need to give the grace to ourselves. So there's all part of that too. Like I said, super messy, super messy that's the beauty I mean to me.
Speaker 1:That is, I always really love like impressionist art and stuff because I like the messy, like I am drawn to the messy. That's like a whole other conversation, but it just makes it so beautiful also at the same time, and I can't imagine it any different.
Speaker 2:It's so funny because I appreciate that you like the messy, I do not like the messy. Messy breaks me like messy. I'm like, and you know, if you saw my house you'd be like, are you sure?
Speaker 1:about that.
Speaker 2:Are you sure? But you know, even prepping for this, like I like to be organized, I like to like, okay, this is happening, this is happening, this is happening. Um years ago, when I used to do dinners, I would have pages of this is going to happen at this time, this time, this time, and the internal meltdown that I would feel if that went off the rails. Um, it was not pretty, uh. But again, I think there's a part of that too where, again, if you look at my house, it's messy as hell. Not even going to lie about it, I live with somebody who has everything, has its place and there's a place for everything, and I just kind of go, that's a construct and I'm just going to leave my shoes here and that's okay. So, again, just messy. But there have been some things that I've had to, for my own sake, have had to compartmentalize and organize, and I think that's how I got into writing. Is writing felt both freeing and also organized in that? Okay, you know, when I started looking poetry which if you had told me, if you had told my younger self, guess what, you're going to write a poetry book and you're going to publish it, I would have been like okay, yeah, but that for me, poems have so many different constructs and so many different flavors, and I picked ones that appealed to me, read them, saw the formats that they were, and I thought, okay, well, I can compartmentalize my own thoughts and feelings into these different formats, and that was a beautiful thing. And that's the part where it didn't feel like it was burning anymore. It felt like okay, like there's a there's, because it brought in the introduction of not just grief, but it brought in gratitude. So the title of that book my Stay with the Sisters the sisters are grief and gratitude and they're basically reimagined as sisters and I really I found solace in them in particular, just because it felt like it was okay to rage and then it was okay to just reminisce, it was okay to feel like you just wanted to be in bed all day and then it felt okay being out, spending time with people to connect.
Speaker 2:So there were all these different things that were coming about from that um, and then the punch came where I had been vulnerable and I shared a few poems with people just because I was like this is, you know, this is kind of how this was working and and also, to be candid, I had signed up for a writing competition that I found out wasn't really on the up and up. So here I was with 15 poems, going like, okay, I've got 15 poems, and in a moment of vulnerability I gave them to friends and my best friend, julie, came back and said I think this will help people. Then I set a goal and I went up writing like 110 poems and I think that's what you see and I was genuinely excited. This was like her first big thing. I was like cool, this was a fun exercise and I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:And then, you know, friends kicked me in the butt and said what are you waiting for? Like get it done. And I got it done and I threw it out there and I held my breath and what I found was people were saying, yeah, I get this. Yeah, this is my favorite part of the book because of X, y and Z. And I was really stunned and I think there is magic in storytelling. I think there's magic in um sharing stories, even when it feels scary to do it, and there's magic in having the conversations as a result of those, uh, of those shared stories yeah, oh, absolutely, um, so it's where I'm gonna go kind of into question two because of this.
Speaker 1:So, um, I've just seen so, in this evolution for you, like there has been so much that has come from this writing journey that has shared a part of your soul that I don't know if you were anticipating or knowing, right that to to share with other people and that was touching. I just I find this about art so beautifully that it's like, whether it's writing, whether it's a painting, whether it's music, like we are sharing a piece of our soul in the art that we create and express into the world, and getting chills right now, but just like seeing those things come from you, hearing and reading those things that have come from you have just been such a beautiful addition into this world. Right, that didn't exist and we don't have to go down the AI path, but like your experience of all of that could only ever have been written by you, because it was what you felt and saw and understood and found so much validity and authenticity and being able to bring in that. That is why I feel like so many other people connect and see that, that light and that humanity and that connection, and I just we need so much more of that in this world and to support that and what that can look like right Like is is this whole idea of what is.
Speaker 1:What is your vision Like? I'm seeing you on this amazing creator journey for you, when you think of a future vision that is a better space place, the way we have relationships, the way we talk to each other, whatever that is. What does that look like from what you've done and seen and become and are becoming? What does that look like? What do you think that looks like? What does that look like? What do?
Speaker 2:you think that looks like I mean I don't know. My vision for a better future is really simple. I want people to share their stories so that others can learn, obtain perspective, embrace joy, have their eyes open, feel a connection to others, and I want those storytellers to continue world building Like I just think all of that is really important, because you never know Again and I said this right, like that's my vision is to continue to tell our stories, because along with grief comes a little bit of loneliness, and we're seeing a lot of that now. We're seeing people saying they're either feeling alone or they're lonely, and what I've seen from the book community is that people are diving into things like fantasy, romance, like oh my goodness, the romance Books have just blown up. People are opening up bookstores that are specifically for romance stories.
Speaker 1:How cool is that right?
Speaker 2:Because we want that connection and we want that man. I would love to see this continue. Let's give. I mean, how beautiful is it that, in a time where you still have individuals who want to ban books, you have this whole other community that says hold my beer, and here's another great story, and people are connecting and they're going like, we love this, like this is the thing that gives me joy. Books also lead to movies and television. Books also lead to discussions and communities. I just love it. I love this. This is the part of my next chapter that I'm really excited about because I think working with and especially in the local author communities that I'm in, you get to see the spark of.
Speaker 2:I just talked to somebody last week or the week before that was talking about her research into a historical fiction that she's writing and I was captivated because she went to different local museums and this one character just kept on coming out to her, who was a real person that she's going to build it based on it, and I thought isn't that cool, like isn't that the neatest thing that they went back into history and said look at all these untold, important and people are going to reflect on these now and in the future and go, man, what a ride, what an absolute ride. Their worlds must have been right. I know people kind of poo-poo social media, right, because it's. You know, I'd seen memes years ago where it's like we've invented this and then, you know, then it comes up with a social media thing that says word. We have a thing called, you know, named after a bird, the sound that the bird makes, and it's like, really Like we went from this to this. And no harm, no foul, because I also think there's value in that too, in communicating and telling stories.
Speaker 2:But I just think there's so much to learn from this time period. Again, it has been an absolute wild ride. We're going to see the kids that were graduating high school and college and go, and they're just going to be like, yeah, this, like our experience was not your experience. Here's why and here's what we learned from it and here's how we rose from it. And I'm super proud of this future generation, or this upcoming junior I shouldn't say future generation, but of this upcoming of these upcoming generations. Like you've got, you know, the Gen Z, the alpha. Is it Beta now? Are we up to Beta? We're up to Beta, aren't we?
Speaker 1:I don't even know, maybe.
Speaker 2:Right, but they're learning so much and they're looking back and going like y'all had it easy, like this is, and I feel like every generation does that right, like you don't even know you don't even know like we had this. I would say our generation we've seen well, sorry, my generation we've we've seen the technological advances in science and technology and communication is just staggering and at the pace that it's been thrown at us. There are some times where you're just like all right, like can I just?
Speaker 2:I'm just going to go and write in a journal at this point because I'm tired of the screens and all that other stuff, right, but that's the whole point, that's the whole beauty of this. So my vision for a better future is that we continue to encourage people to tell their stories and then encourage the storytellers. So, for example, you're a storyteller, you're helping other people tell stories. Let's continue to do that, and I just I don't know, I'm just and again, for me, the future is as bright as the stories we tell and the truth that we provide and the perspectives that we give, so that people feel less alone in the universe and they feel like, ok, well, I had this connection and I maybe didn't have before, or I feel less lonely because this person did have this perspective.
Speaker 2:Again, you know, I could say this a thousand times I'm not the only one in the universe who lost my mom, right, but every person's story is different. Like everyone who loses a parent, they have a different perspective. And again, that's where storytelling comes in, right, because I think people are always like nervous about it, right, they they talk about. Well, I don't know if people will care, and the thing is, people do care because they want to. They want that connection. So, yeah that's.
Speaker 2:That's where. That's where the secret sauce is is in the storytelling.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I mean, I couldn't agree more. I'd also say, just to piggyback onto that point, that even if your first step is to write it for yourself's, okay at first, right, yes, and and the sharing of that is a whole different way to connect with other humans. It's hard, it's look, it's hard. You know you and I have talked about this before, the writing a book versus becoming a published author are two very different things 100% and and also everyone's first draft is garbage Okay.
Speaker 2:You write it and you're like and and that's that's the turning point is you look at it and you're like well, that's not seeing the light of day. Give yourself a breather and give yourself some grace in that and continue. You know, again and I talk about books there are people that write songs. There are people that you know write movie scripts. There are people that you know they write obituaries, they write greeting cards. All of that is part of who we are. And, again, words give connection. So, yeah, so I get it. Yeah, eileen, you and I have talked about that for sure, where it's one thing to write a book and it's definitely another thing to put it out there in the universe. And it is not for the faint of heart, for sure.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, it's not. But the other thing that I want to add to that too is you kind of you tapped into this right is that you're not the only one that's lost your mom? Yeah Right, um, I also had this conversation with my mom recently, in frustration about being a parent. Sometimes you're like I have told you this so many times.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Now, this person over here said it and somehow you heard it right you know it, but sometimes it is the right person at the right time with the right person, or not right. It's not the right word, but the the perspective you needed to hear at that moment that clicked for you. And so just because someone else has written about stuff, or someone else has painted something about whatever, or someone's written a song about this, the way that you only you specifically can bring that into the world could be a life changer for somebody else 100%.
Speaker 2:I mean, look, we've talked to a couple of authors, right, like, look at Lang Rickers, right, she talked about sibling loss and her book was stunning and it was such a beautiful gift to the universe and she still shares that. We've talked to Jenny Lisk, who lost her husband at an early age and what she's done with her story is phenomenal. I'm going to point out two other people. Yeah, both women. One is Jessica Jocelyn, and she's a poet of her mother and um several other different losses in a way that is just heart-wrenching and glorious all at the same time.
Speaker 2:And then one of my, one of my favorite poets is nishi patel, and nishi and I met through um, a poetry group, and um, she wrote, she wrote a book about the loss of her father and then the after she wrote a like, almost like a sequel to that in poetry format. Both are poetry books about what it's been like seven years later and the impact of that is so significant. Yeah, um, I also have another friend who's written about the loss of her grandmother and what that meant, and her name is cassandra vilchis. And um, you know, just powerful world words and powerful stories. They all didn't pass away the same way, um, but the connections to the story and to the loss um is very palpable and I am so proud of all of them for putting their stories out there, because again you have people that are come, you know, coming out of the boardwalk saying, yeah, I felt that way too. Yeah, I completely understand that.
Speaker 1:So yeah, anyway. Anyway vision for the future I'm telling your stories yeah, yep, and so I think you've touched on this, but I'm gonna just reiterate, just to make sure folks know what is the one thing of the many um that we need to give people grace.
Speaker 2:I think we need to allow grace for ourselves. We need to be better active listeners. Right now, we're in a time and again. I know that there are going to be listeners, probably from international. I would say that we are in. Everybody just wants to stick it to one another, and what you have are people that just want to live. Yeah, they just want to be, you know. They want to work, they want to be contributing members to society. Yeah, um, they want to be able to afford things for their kids. They want to be able to just exist, and grace is something that I feel has evaporated and we need to get to that place.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, that's how I feel about things. Is that that's how I feel about things? Is that I think we need to find that we need to return to a place of grace and allow that for everybody and figure out.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's pull ourselves up and let's see what works best for people. Yeah, for people, um, yeah, yeah, I, I mean even in, you know, when you're talking about the storytelling. Grace for yourself in that your first draft is going to be crap. Grace in yourself that your story matters. Grace in others and that their story matters. Right, like to say that I can control who can share and who cannot, because of my belief in whatever. It is Right To me is absurd. Right, like. Every story matters when we live as a community, when we live as a social species. Yeah, other people's story matters, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there is no default in humanity, period, there is no default in humanity. It just we are. The beauty of people all on this planet is just a gorgeous thing, and there are so many different perspectives and elements and things that maybe we just didn't consider. Yeah, we're that grace is evaporating to say, oh, I didn't think of that. I just want to be right. Everybody wants to be right and guess what? None of us are going to be right soon enough. So, you know, we all want to be.
Speaker 2:You know, and we've all met that person right, the person that always wants to win, like no matter what they could even think, like, nah, this, I could be a little bit wrong, but I don't care, because I'm going to win. We have lost that empathetic element of grace and I would love to see that more. And I'll be the first one to raise my hand and say sometimes I have not had grace for people and I've. I've had to kind of go sit in a corner and think about what I've done and reflect on. You know, how do I become a better person? Um, and I'm not talking about toxic positivity, right? I'm not talking about like oh we have to be happy.
Speaker 2:Damn it. No, sometimes you can be really pissed off. Yes, and we still have to be active listeners. Yeah, and we still have to have those moments of grace for people. All that goes out the window. We've lost our humanity. We're gonna lose ourselves in it.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's so true. It's so true. And to even put yourself in the perspective that you have to be perfect all the time and know all the things, that's impossible, it's exhausting.
Speaker 2:It's exhausting. It's exhausting. You look at the people who are the people pleasers, the parent pleasers, the perfectionists, dear, the overachievers. You got to be exhausted, kids. And then there are people that are, you know, they feel entitled, they feel, you know, this is the way it always was. That's got to be exhausting because the world's changing. And again, that place of grace where you acknowledge, yes, the world's changing and things are going to go bump in the night and we just have to allow for that grace, and not just for other people but for ourselves, yep.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Yeah, oh, I love iteryl. All right, my dear friend, we have one last question. Go for it. What is one gift that you already have to get us there?
Speaker 2:um, I will say, of the four questions you gave me, this was the toughest one. Good, and she's like I don't know. I don't know what that gift is and I'm hoping that you know for me. I think sometimes it's my whacked out sense of humor.
Speaker 1:That's a good one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, that's a gift for sure. And then just that, you know these, I don't know, I didn't know what I was going to say, but let's just, let's just leave it at sense of humor, I think, because that that is the part where um we, we can recognize that there's um humanity in that um yeah yeah, um, I'm gonna offer to ask you to take some grace for yourself while I um fill your cup a little bit, okay. Go ahead, let me go get my cup. Hold on Go for it.
Speaker 1:I so, cheryl I mean, if you've listened to our other podcast, you'll know this.
Speaker 1:Cheryl and I have known each other for over a decade at this point and, uh, has been with me through some of the most and I'm getting emotional for anyone that can't see that, and I'm okay with it has been with me for some of the most difficult moments of my entire life.
Speaker 1:You consistently show up, you validate the humanity in me.
Speaker 1:You have shown me what deep, true friendship can look like over space, over time, and your fierceness in being there for those that you love and care about is beyond anything that I've ever seen or known, and I am so grateful for that and that your relationship, my relationship with you, has given me so much hope to continue standing up after everything, after every piece that's fallen out from underneath me.
Speaker 1:You have been someone that has allowed me to stand back up, and I can only imagine what that would do if someone had a friend like you for their lives, to continue standing back up, to continue finding their voice, to continue sharing their stories with the world. You have been instrumental in who I have learned to become, because I know that you are there by my side. So you are a part of making this world. The vision that you've been talking about, because of everything I know about you, have felt about you, have seen and am so grateful to continue to have to this day- I appreciate what you've said and thank you so much and that was really, I think, incredibly kind and generous.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I I appreciate all the words that you've said and you are stronger than you think you are, and I would also say that I wish I could be that way for everybody Understood, and I've faltered several times.
Speaker 1:Oh, we all make mistakes in it Sure, sure.
Speaker 2:But any hoodle. I appreciate what you've said and again, I think we all have, or I would like to think, or I hope. My hope is that people have the strongest of friendships and powerful, long-lasting relationships with their grownups. We know this isn't always the case, right, but as long as you and, to quote Grey's Anatomy, as long as you have your person, hold on to that person tight because it's really important. Yeah, but, thank you, that was very kind of happened over the past few years.
Speaker 2:Eileen, my friends Julie and Tammy, my friends Belinda and Courtney have been the and there are others have been the models for, for the sister gratitude, and that's very cool. I love that. They're like, I love that gratitude is kind of amalgam of the people that have really had such a positive impact on my life. Grief is just a hot mess, like girlfriend is just, she just shows up, she's. You know, I'm here, I'm here, I brought Doritos, what do you want? So, and oh, oh, you're in the middle of a meeting. I'm sorry, like here's a tissue. Um, yeah, I guess that one, that one gift that we all have, is finding really that connection for me. I do it it through humor because otherwise I would just be, you know, a puddle of tears all the damn time. So fair enough.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:No, I get it. Oh, cheryl, I just we don't get to see each other that often and I'm just so grateful to one be able to be in this space with you now again. And I just want to thank you for showing up today for me in this sort of new thing and we're going to post this also on you Only Go Once, I think. So sharing in that world as well, um, but you know, I want to one give you the opportunity we're going to share where people can find you for your books and all of that, and um, yeah, I don't. If you have any last, just words or anything you want to share with folks before we close out, I want to give space for that, and if not, that's also okay too.
Speaker 2:I love the name of your podcast and that it's from hope to here or from here to hope right, we all have to have a starting point and wherever here is is okay, Hope for better for yourselves and share your damn stories, because we need to hear them.
Speaker 2:That's what I got, kid. I love it. I love it. Thanks, I was honored to be your guest on this and I can't wait to hear the other stories that come from this, and thank you for being at the helm of something really important to help us to continue to tell our stories important to help us to continue to tell our stories.
Speaker 1:Most grateful, my friend, thank you, thank you, thank you. So again. Thank you, cheryl, I appreciate that also, and we will close out this first episode, full episode of From here to Hope in the messiness, the magic and the meaning of what it is to be fully human. See you next time.
