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Danielle Elliott Smith
Danielle Elliott Smith
  • What if hope isn’t “it’ll be fine,” but “I can handle what comes”? That shift changed everything for Candice Suarez. In this conversation, Candice takes us inside a whirlwind season: a misread ulcer during COVID, a tongue-cancer diagnosis, surgery removing over half her tongue, a forearm graft, and weeks of radiation and chemo. She walks us through recovery’s gritty middle—managing pain, relearning to swallow, and returning to public speaking with a voice that invites the world to lean in.

    Planning in Pencil: Candice Suarez’s Life Drafting After Tongue Cancer

  • What happens when you treat curiosity like a business plan and community like your bottom line? Maxine Clark—founder of Build-A-Bear and the force behind St. Louis’s Delmar Divine—talks about creating brands that hold people, not just products. We explore the question that keeps opening doors for her: “How can I help?” and the multiplier that guides her work—1+1=100.

    Build-A-Bear, Build-A-City: Maxine Clark on Curiosity, Business & Belonging

  • Entrepreneur and dad Richie Treadway joins me to talk about becoming a parent later in life, the moment everything fell apart—and the choice to keep going.  We don’t relive every detail; we sit with what it took to advocate, to grieve, and to try again.  Richie names the kind of love that “changes the way your heart works,” and defines hope as the resilience to not quit against all odds. 

    Against All Odds: Fatherhood, Loss, and Hope with Richie Treadway

  • When Bellamy Young’s father was diagnosed with cirrhosis in his 50s, her family thought they’d reached the end of the road. What they didn’t know then: liver disease can affect the brain. As her dad began to change—memory slips, getting lost on familiar routes—the diagnosis of hepatic encephalopathy (HE) finally named what they were living.

    Bellamy Young on Caregiving, Liver Disease & the Freedom Beyond Shame

  • “I was doing what everybody told me to do… he can make eye contact and have a conversation—he can’t be autistic.” Today, certified Master Life Coach and writer Karen Kossow gets real about the three-year journey to her son’s diagnosis—and what it means to parent neurodivergent kids while discovering your own neurodivergence. As part of the sandwich generation, Karen is supporting her children, noticing patterns in older family members, and learning herself—often all at once.

    The Language of Neurodivergence — Not What Autism “Looks Like”: Parenting, Self-Care & Community with Karen Kossow

  • What happens when a woman’s pain is dismissed at one of the most vulnerable moments of her life? For Jenny Hoffman, it nearly cost her everything. Just hours after giving birth to her daughter, Jenny hemorrhaged internally while medical staff brushed off her repeated cries for help. “I kept saying it really hurt,” she remembers, as Motrin was offered while she was losing over two liters of blood. In this raw and powerful conversation, Jenny and I uncover the haunting parallels in our own birth experiences — moments of crisis where women’s instincts were ignored until it was almost too late.

    Story of Strength: Jenny Hoffmann on Birth Trauma, Advocacy, and Transforming Pain into Purpose

  • For Brian Franklin, loss came in waves — the suicide of a childhood friend, a colon cancer scare, the discovery of a benign brain tumor, his wife’s breast cancer diagnosis, and the sudden heart attack of his closest confidant. At times, the weight of it all was nearly unbearable. Yet Brian’s story isn’t defined by tragedy. It’s defined by his remarkable capacity to reinvent.

    A Statement of Intent: Brian Franklin on Grief, Reinvention, and Finding Joy in Small Moments

  • The road through addiction and recovery is rarely straight — and for Jamie Felton, it’s been marked by both unimaginable loss and profound resilience. By age 24, Jamie had accumulated three DUIs and found herself walking home from a blackout at 3:30 AM. That was the breaking point that led her to seek help — and on November 7, 2006, she began a journey that has kept her sober for nearly 19 years.

    From Rock Bottom to Renewal: Jamie Felton on Sobriety, Loss, and Hope for Families

  • unexpected gifts? In this moving episode of Hope Comes to Visit, award-winning writer Maria de los Angeles shares how caring for her parents with Alzheimer’s taught her the very resilience, humility, and compassion she would later need to face her own esophageal cancer diagnosis.

    The Gifts Hidden in Life’s Hardest Seasons: Maria De Los Angeles on Caregiving, Cancer, and Midlife Transformation

  • Grief doesn’t end with goodbye. For many, it’s followed by a quiet, exhausting weight no one talks about — the paperwork, the phone calls, the endless “to-do’s” that come when your heart has already been broken. When Adria Ferrier lost her mother after a five-year battle with cancer, she not only faced the deep ache of missing her, but also the overwhelming burden of navigating the practical aftermath. From transferring accounts to hours on hold with companies that had no clear process, she found herself spending precious time and energy on logistics when all she wanted was space to grieve.

    A Ray of Light Through the Clouds: Adria Ferrier on Creating Elayne and Honoring Her Mother

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