Hope Comes to Visit

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Hope Comes to Visit

Danielle Elliott Smith

37 episodes

4 days ago

Send us a text If you’re new here—welcome. If you’re back—welcome home. Today I’m sitting with my dear friend of 12+ years, Amanda Willson, a life coach and anxiety expert who has walked this road and now teaches the rest of us how to find steadier ground. This isn’t theory; it’s real tools for real life. We talk about simple practices that change the moment you’re in: 4-7-8 breathing to settle your nervous system, the 5-4-3-2-1 senses reset to get you out of your head and back into your body...

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Society & Culture

Personal Journals,

Self-Improvement

All content for Hope Comes to Visit is the property of Danielle Elliott Smith and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.

Send us a text If you’re new here—welcome. If you’re back—welcome home. Today I’m sitting with my dear friend of 12+ years, Amanda Willson, a life coach and anxiety expert who has walked this road and now teaches the rest of us how to find steadier ground. This isn’t theory; it’s real tools for real life. We talk about simple practices that change the moment you’re in: 4-7-8 breathing to settle your nervous system, the 5-4-3-2-1 senses reset to get you out of your head and back into your body...

Show more...

Society & Culture

Personal Journals,

Self-Improvement

Episodes (20/37)

Hope Comes to Visit

From Panic to Peace: Everyday Practices for Anxious Hearts with Amanda Willson

Send us a text If you’re new here—welcome. If you’re back—welcome home. Today I’m sitting with my dear friend of 12+ years, Amanda Willson, a life coach and anxiety expert who has walked this road and now teaches the rest of us how to find steadier ground. This isn’t theory; it’s real tools for real life. We talk about simple practices that change the moment you’re in: 4-7-8 breathing to settle your nervous system, the 5-4-3-2-1 senses reset to get you out of your head and back into your body...

4 days ago

25 minutes

Hope Comes to Visit

The Night Laughter Saved My Life: Ron Blake on PTSD, Community, & 522 Boards of Hope

Send us a text A gentle heads-up: In this conversation, we name some hard things — including suicide and sexual assault. If that’s tender for you today, please listen with care, skip ahead, or come back when you’re ready. If you need support in the US, call or text 988. Sometimes hope is a laugh you didn’t expect. At 10:44 PM on November 2, 2015, Ron “Blake” Blake was ready to end his life. A split-second laugh during The Late Show with Stephen Colbert interrupted the plan—and it chan...

1 week ago

41 minutes

Hope Comes to Visit

When “Try Again” Isn’t Enough: Sam Bonizzi on Missed Miscarriages, IVF & Finding Community

Send us a text Hope isn’t the absence of fear—it’s the light that keeps you moving when fear won’t leave. In this tender, no-fluff conversation, I sit with Sam Bonizzi, co-author of The Losses We Keep, as she shares how two missed miscarriages upended everything: the shock of hard news in an ultrasound room, the moment she fired a clinic that wouldn’t test her partner, and how she built a real support web—REI + acupuncture + therapy + a circle of women who “got it.” We wade through conflicti...

2 weeks ago

34 minutes

Hope Comes to Visit

From Silent Suffering to Solid Support: Lucy Rose on Healing Chronic Loneliness

Send us a text Some seasons of my life, loneliness wasn’t a passing mood—it was the air I breathed. I didn’t always call it by name, but my body did: tight chest, racing thoughts, that sense of being “with people” and still feeling alone. In this conversation, I sit down with Lucy Rose, founder of The Cost of Loneliness Project, to talk honestly about what chronic loneliness does to us—and how we can gently stitch connection back into our days. We weave together science and story: cortisol an...

3 weeks ago

45 minutes

Hope Comes to Visit

Seen at Last: Dr. Deb Muth on Women’s Health, Functional Medicine, and Finding Answers

Send us a text If you’ve ever been told “it’s normal” when you knew it wasn’t—this episode is for you. I’m joined by Dr. Deb Muth—naturopathic doctor, functional medicine expert, and founder of Serenity Health Care Center—to talk about being seen at last: how to advocate for yourself, ask better questions, and get to root causes instead of living on prescriptions that never explain the “why.” We dig into: Why women are diagnosed 4–5 years later than men for many conditions—and what to do abou...

3 weeks ago

47 minutes

Hope Comes to Visit

Who Gets a Seat at Your Table? Curating Your Life with Clarity, Care, and Courage

Send us a text Pull up a chair and take a breath—then ask the question most of us avoid: who gets a seat at your table, and why? In this solo episode, I treat your table as a living metaphor for your energy, time, and love—and names what it takes to protect that sacred space without apology. We get practical fast. You’ll hear clear, compassionate scripts for late-night crisis friendships, boundary-pushing relatives, and overflowing workloads, plus a four-part framework to sort who stays, who ...

1 month ago

14 minutes

Hope Comes to Visit

Back to School: Dr. Gina Barreca on Hope, Grief and How Laughter Gives Us the Mic

Send us a text Humor doesn’t just make us laugh—it hands us the mic. In this episode, Dr. Gina Barreca—award-winning professor, cultural critic, and bestselling author of Gina School—shows how wit turns grief into agency and outsiderhood into belonging. From losing her mother young to pioneering gender-and-humor studies, Gina traces the path where jokes become bridges and stories transform shame into connection. We dig into how many women use humor differently—not as a weapon, but as an invit...

1 month ago

49 minutes

Hope Comes to Visit

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

Send us a text Content note: candid discussion of cancer diagnosis, surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and recovery. 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—manag...

1 month ago

33 minutes

Hope Comes to Visit

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

Send us a text 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. We don’t run the play-by-play; we sit with the pivots: listening to children, translating insight into action, a...

1 month ago

1 hour 2 minutes

Hope Comes to Visit

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

Send us a text Content note: pregnancy loss and medical trauma. 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. If you’re somewhere betw...

1 month ago

40 minutes

Hope Comes to Visit

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

Send us a text Actress Bellamy Young, from the hit TV shows Scandal and Brilliant Minds, joins Danielle to share the story behind her advocacy for liver disease—and the caregiving journey with her dad that began when he was diagnosed with cirrhosis and later hepatic encephalopathy (HE). Bellamy speaks candidly about shame, stigma, and the moment everything changed: realizing liver disease can affect the brain, memory, personality, and daily life. Together, we talk about the hypervigilance of ...

1 month ago

22 minutes

Hope Comes to Visit

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

Send us a text “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 on...

1 month ago

47 minutes

Hope Comes to Visit

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

Send us a text 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 ...

1 month ago

40 minutes

Hope Comes to Visit

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

Send us a text 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. Music became his therapy, his guitar a lifeline when words failed. A bowling league offered unexpected s...

1 month ago

51 minutes

Hope Comes to Visit

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

Send us a text 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. But sobriety didn’t shield her from heartbreak. Jamie’s sons, Jack and Sam, both s...

2 months ago

39 minutes

Hope Comes to Visit

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

Send us a text What if the most difficult chapters of your life were actually preparing you for 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. Maria speaks candidly about the sacred and heartbreaking realities of caregiving — from changing her parents’ diapers to...

2 months ago

50 minutes

Hope Comes to Visit

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

Send us a text 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...

2 months ago

45 minutes

Hope Comes to Visit

One Day at a Time: Martha Sharkey on Hope, Loss, and Building “Today is a Good Day” - Episode 19

Send us a text “Hope has to evolve and change.” These powerful words shaped the extraordinary journey of Martha Sharkey, Founder & CEO of Today is a Good Day — a nonprofit creating a lifeline for families navigating the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). When Martha and her husband, Paul, welcomed identical twin daughters at just 23 weeks, their world turned upside down. Claire weighed barely over a pound. Mary, only slightly more. Two weeks later, they faced the devastating loss of Mar...

2 months ago

37 minutes

Hope Comes to Visit

86,400 Seconds of Hope: Donald Dowridge Jr. on Choosing Purpose Every Day

Send us a text What would your life look like if you used every single second with intention? This week on Hope Comes to Visit, I’m joined by Donald L. Dowridge Jr., a man who embodies resilience, purpose, and what it truly means to live with hope. Donald’s early childhood was filled with pain most couldn’t imagine — abuse, neglect, and words no child should ever hear. But instead of allowing his past to define him, Donald chose to carve out a future rooted in service, courage, and determinat...

2 months ago

48 minutes

Hope Comes to Visit

Trauma to Triumph: Valerie Rowekamp on Choosing Audacity and Becoming “Hope Personified”

Send us a text What if the darkest moments of your life were actually preparing you for your greatest transformation? In this week’s episode of Hope Comes to Visit, I sit down with Valerie Rowekamp, whose story is a breathtaking testament to resilience, audacity, and the power of refusing to give up on hope. Valerie’s journey began in crisis: at just 22 weeks pregnant, her water broke, and doctors offered little optimism for her son, Rex, who was also facing multiple heart defects. Against al...

2 months ago

50 minutes