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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—managing pain, relearning to swallow, and returning to public speaking with a voice that invites the world to lean in.

Out of that crucible came Life Drafting—a practical, compassionate framework for navigating change by planning in pencil. Candice shares the four buckets she uses with clients and in her own life—health, connection, contribution, and play—and shows how small, honest edits compound into momentum. We talk agency under uncertainty, why identity can survive (and even grow) through loss, and how to build routines and relationships that make resilience a skill, not a slogan.

Candice also introduces Draft You, her six-month journal for young adults, and the Draft Lab coaching community that supports students and grownups in the “no longer, not yet” spaces of life.

You’ll learn:

• A grounded definition of hope that doesn’t hinge on perfect outcomes
• How to “plan in pencil” with the four Life Drafting buckets
• Weekly audits + micro-commitments that actually stick
• Ways identity grows through loss—and how to practice agency under uncertainty
• Why edits aren’t failures; they’re craft

If you’re staring down a transition—or helping someone you love through one—this episode offers tools you can use today.

Connect with Candice on her website and learn more LifeDrafting.

And her new book is out! - get it here: Draft You.

If this conversation and episode resonated: please follow the show, share with a friend who needs it, and leave a review to help more people find these stories of hope, strength and renewal.

Thank you for listening to Hope Comes to Visit. If this episode resonated with you, please follow, rate, and share the show — it helps others find their way to these conversations.

New episodes drop every Monday and Friday, so you can begin and end your week with a little light and a lot of hope.

For more stories, reflections, and ways to connect, visit www.DanielleElliottSmith.com or follow along on Instagram @daniellesmithtv and @HopeComestoVisit

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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, and building places where families can access programs, housing, and services. The Build-A-Bear founder followed her curiosity into community transformation—asking better questions, listening to kids, and building spaces where opportunity lives. She also teases a new project, Trick or Tree STL—a Halloween donation-box drive inviting kids to help replant tornado-lost trees. If you care about entrepreneurship with a human heartbeat, this one’s for you.

Learn more about the work Maxine is doing, her projects and connect with her here:

Maxine Clark on LinkedIn

Trick or Tree STL - This Halloween, kids across St. Louis will collect cash donations to help replant thousands of trees lost in the May 16, 2025
tornado. Trick or Tree teaches kids ecology, philanthropy, and community
pride while restoring our region’s green canopy. As they grow, so will the trees,creating a legacy in their own hometown.

BluePrint4 - Our vision is to ensure St. Louis families have easy access to information about high-quality learning opportunities and the support necessary for their children to attend.

Delmar Divine - Delmar DivINe maximizes the efficiency, effectiveness, and impact of the nonprofit sector in the St. Louis region, especially among health, education and human service organizations, while simultaneously being a catalyst for the transformation of neighborhoods in North St. Louis City.

Clark Fox Family Foundation - Founded in 2004, the Clark-Fox Family Foundation supports the growth and prosperity of the St. Louis metropolitan region through research, program development and investments in PK-12, higher education, public health, immigration, social justice and racial equity, community leadership, and entrepreneurship. The Foundation prioritizes programs and investments that empower the end user and leverage each other for broader access and greater impact for our children and community.

Thank you for listening to Hope Comes to Visit. If this episode resonated with you, please follow, rate, and share the show — it helps others find their way to these conversations.

New episodes drop every Monday and Friday, so you can begin and end your week with a little light and a lot of hope.

For more stories, reflections, and ways to connect, visit www.DanielleElliottSmith.com or follow along on Instagram @daniellesmithtv and @HopeComestoVisit

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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 between heartbreak and possibility, this one’s for you.

Connect with Richie here on his own website.

Thank you for listening to Hope Comes to Visit. If this episode resonated with you, please follow, rate, and share the show — it helps others find their way to these conversations.

New episodes drop every Monday and Friday, so you can begin and end your week with a little light and a lot of hope.

For more stories, reflections, and ways to connect, visit www.DanielleElliottSmith.com or follow along on Instagram @daniellesmithtv and @HopeComestoVisit

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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 caregiving, why community matters as much as treatment, and the essential practice of asking for help before burnout. Bellamy also shares what’s changed in HE care, how speaking her story healed the 15-year-old inside her, and where caregivers can find practical support.

You’ll hear:

• What HE is—and the signs families often miss
• The toll of caregiver hypervigilance (and realistic ways to refill your tank)
• Why shame isolates—and how truth + community set us free
• Resources Bellamy points to for appointments and next steps

This conversation is a reminder: you’re not alone, and asking for help is an act of love.

Resources mentioned

• *Caregiver planning tools and questions for appointments (the Caregivers Corner Bellamy references at xifaxan.com).
• Local support, peer groups, and your doctor’s care team for HE education and follow-up.

Thank you for listening to Hope Comes to Visit. If this episode resonated with you, please follow, rate, and share the show — it helps others find their way to these conversations.

New episodes drop every Monday and Friday, so you can begin and end your week with a little light and a lot of hope.

For more stories, reflections, and ways to connect, visit www.DanielleElliottSmith.com or follow along on Instagram @daniellesmithtv and @HopeComestoVisit

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“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.

This conversation is practical and deeply compassionate. Karen reframes self-care for parents who can’t just “get away,” sharing five-minute vagus-nerve resets, gratitude practices that soften the stress response, and thoughtful choices around food and substances. We also talk about the ache of isolation, the sting of judgment, and how community changes everything—because you’re not a “bad mom”; you’re doing everything you can for this child.

For families navigating a new diagnosis, Karen offers honesty and hope: grief is real, development doesn’t stop, and strengths-based support—with guidance from autistic adults—opens new paths forward.

Connect with Karen and her Self-Care Support Squad: karenkossow.substack.com

Thank you for listening to Hope Comes to Visit. If this episode resonated with you, please follow, rate, and share the show — it helps others find their way to these conversations.

New episodes drop every Monday and Friday, so you can begin and end your week with a little light and a lot of hope.

For more stories, reflections, and ways to connect, visit www.DanielleElliottSmith.com or follow along on Instagram @daniellesmithtv and @HopeComestoVisit

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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. Our dialogue reveals a troubling truth about maternal healthcare: women’s voices are often minimized, even in life-threatening situations.

But Jenny’s story doesn’t stop with survival. Nine years later, she founded Story of Strength, a groundbreaking organization that gathers women’s stories of birth complications and transforms them into actionable data for systemic change. With her background in bioengineering, Jenny bridges the deeply personal with the scientific, creating resources that can influence healthcare policy, inspire innovation, and ultimately save lives.

This episode explores:

• Why postpartum hemorrhage remains the leading — and preventable — cause of maternal mortality worldwide
• The lifelong psychological impact of birth trauma
• How storytelling can be both healing for individuals and revolutionary for healthcare systems

Jenny’s voice is a reminder that trusting our instincts and speaking our truth isn’t just survival — it’s advocacy. And every story told creates space for another woman to be heard.

🎧 Listen now to hear how Jenny turned her trauma into a movement — and how your story might change someone else’s outcome.

Connect with Jenny on Story of Strength, where you can also share your postpartum birth experiences and support the work she is doing.

Sign up for her Newsletter to get updates about her upcoming book release in October.

You can also find her on Social:

LinkedIn - Jenny Hoffman
Facebook - Story of Strength

Thank you for listening to Hope Comes to Visit. If this episode resonated with you, please follow, rate, and share the show — it helps others find their way to these conversations.

New episodes drop every Monday and Friday, so you can begin and end your week with a little light and a lot of hope.

For more stories, reflections, and ways to connect, visit www.DanielleElliottSmith.com or follow along on Instagram @daniellesmithtv and @HopeComestoVisit

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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 silliness and community. And eventually, he and his wife Nicole launched Vows & Speeches, a business built on love, connection, and storytelling — a radical departure from his career in political consulting.

Brian shares candidly about grief, acknowledging: “I’m not as happy as I used to be…that happiness was living in a fantasy world where nothing bad had happened.” But he’s also discovered a different kind of contentment — one that honors fragility, embraces joy, and redefines hope itself. “Hope is a statement of intent,” he says.

This episode is a reminder that while we can’t control outcomes, we can choose how to show up — for ourselves, for others, and for the life still unfolding in front of us.

Connect with Brian on Vows & Speeches.

And on Instagram: @vowsandspeeches

Thank you for listening to Hope Comes to Visit. If this episode resonated with you, please follow, rate, and share the show — it helps others find their way to these conversations.

New episodes drop every Monday and Friday, so you can begin and end your week with a little light and a lot of hope.

For more stories, reflections, and ways to connect, visit www.DanielleElliottSmith.com or follow along on Instagram @daniellesmithtv and @HopeComestoVisit

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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 struggled with substance use. She poured everything she had into helping Jack — financially, emotionally, spiritually — but in May 2019, at just 20 years old, he died of a heroin overdose. Today, her younger son Sam is in recovery, a gift she holds close.

Out of her own lived experience, Jamie has dedicated her life to guiding others. Through Fresh Start Recovery Consultants, she provides the kind of support and professional navigation she once desperately needed — helping families find hope in the chaos of addiction.

In this episode of Hope Comes to Visit, Jamie shares her story with honesty and courage: the dark valleys of addiction, the grief of losing a child, and the determination to transform her pain into purpose. Her story is a reminder that even in the hardest places, hope can still take root.

Learn more about Jamie's work and how she helps people find hope and recovery here - Fresh Start Addiction and Recovery Consultants.

You can also connect with her on Social:

Thank you for listening to Hope Comes to Visit. If this episode resonated with you, please follow, rate, and share the show — it helps others find their way to these conversations.

New episodes drop every Monday and Friday, so you can begin and end your week with a little light and a lot of hope.

For more stories, reflections, and ways to connect, visit www.DanielleElliottSmith.com or follow along on Instagram @daniellesmithtv and @HopeComestoVisit