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What if hope isn’t a feeling… but a skill?

This week on Hope Comes to Visit, I’m joined by my longtime friend Ann Imig — MSW, certified coach, and founder of the storytelling phenomenon Listen to Your Mother. Fifteen years after giving motherhood a microphone on stages across North America, Ann now helps burnt-out women retrain their brains for clarity, calm, and joy.

We talk about:

• Why your stress brain dominates your decisions
• How to literally rewire your brain for hope
• The myth of “I’ll be happy when…”
• Achievement addiction and burnout
• Why curiosity is the antidote to anxiety
• How 10-second sensory practices can change your day
• Staying sober, staying open, staying a learner

Ann explains that hope doesn’t require you to feel hopeful first.

You can take hopeful action — and the feeling will follow.

This conversation is practical, grounding, and incredibly timely. Especially if you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, stuck, or unsure of what comes next.

✨ Connect with Ann at listenlifecoaching.com
✨ Take the saboteur assessment at positiveintelligence.com

If this episode resonates, please share it with someone you love and leave a review. It helps more than you know.

Thank you for listening to Hope Comes to Visit. If this conversation helps, follow the show, share it with someone who needs hope today, and leave a review - it helps others find their way to these conversations.

New episodes drop every Monday, so you can begin 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 if you don’t have to like someone to love them?

In this powerful and deeply honest conversation, I was honored to sit down down with mindfulness coach, yoga teacher, and master storyteller Oneika Mays to explore what it means to practice loving kindness in the hardest places — including Rikers Island and how these experiences inspired her new book: Sit with Me: A No BS Journey to Mindfulness & Meditation.

Oneika spent years teaching meditation and yoga inside one of the most notorious jails in the country. What she discovered there reshaped her understanding of agency, boundaries, spirituality, and hope.

Together, we discuss:

• Why mindfulness belongs in places we overlook
• The radical power of choice in environments with no agency
• Loving people you disagree with
• Leaving work that no longer aligns with your body
• Grief, hope, and the moment Onika’s father died
• Writing through rejection (15 no’s before a yes)
• And why loving yourself is the first act of activism

Onieka’s new book Sit With Me is part memoir, part field guide, and part meditation on meta — the Buddhist practice of loving kindness. It’s a deeply human invitation to embrace the messy, clunky parts of ourselves.

This episode is a reminder that hope doesn’t require perfection. It requires presence.

✨ Connect with Oneika:
Instagram: @OneikaMays
Substack: Oneika Mays

If this episode moved you, share it with someone you love — and leave a review. It means more than you know.

Thank you for listening to Hope Comes to Visit. If this conversation helps, follow the show, share it with someone who needs hope today, and leave a review - it helps others find their way to these conversations.

New episodes drop every Monday, so you can begin 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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Season 2, Episode 5

A Missouri girl in a New York world on founding Combs & Company, honoring her father’s legacy, and why hope is the only thing greater than fear.

This week I’m joined by Susan L. Combs—president of Combs & Company, bestselling author, and daughter of Major General Roger E. Combs. We talk about the moment “Pancakes for Roger” was born, the quiet heroism of caregivers, what the military gave her family (and took), and how a single story can ripple into grants, breakfasts, and thousands of tiny acts of hope every February.

What we get into:

• The kitchen-table moment that sparked Pancakes for Roger
• How Susan turned grief into a living legacy (and a nonprofit)
• Mentorship, “slaying dragons,” and finding the lesson in the hard thing
• Caregiving, oxygen levels, and the strange quiet after loss
• Veterans, VA claims, and why tiny actions scale change
• What hope sounds like when you say someone’s name—again and again

About Susan:
Susan L. Combs is the president of Combs & Company, a full-service insurance brokerage in NYC. She launched the Pancakes for Roger book and foundation to honor her father, Major General Roger E. Combs (USMC/Army/Air Force). Every February, thousands post pancake photos to raise funds for veterans’ legal aid and home grants. Missouri roots, New York hustle, heart-first leadership.

Links & ways to support:

• Pancakes for Roger: share your pancake pic + tag @pancakesforroger (feed posts > stories)
• Donate: pancakesforroger.org (button :
• Combs & Company -for her day-job brilliance
• Susan on LinkedIn

Call to action:
Have pancakes this month. Tag your post. Say Roger’s name out loud. Then share this episode with one person who needs a little light.

Chapters
00:00 Intro
02:00 Meet Susan + her dad, Major General Roger E. Combs
07:00 “Pancakes for breakfast” — the spark
12:30 From post to movement to nonprofit
18:20 What the military gave (and cost)
24:50 Mentorship: finding the lesson + slaying dragons
31:30 Hope, grief, and saying the name
39:30 How to join Pancake Month
45:00 What Susan’s building next

Thank you for listening to Hope Comes to Visit. If this conversation helps, follow the show, share it with someone who needs hope today, and leave a review - it helps others find their way to these conversations.

New episodes drop every Monday, so you can begin 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