The Morning Glory Project

Apr 03 2024 41

The Morning Glory Project Podcast artwork

The Morning Glory Project is my earnest attempt to listen to, learn from, and celebrate people of exceptional determination.

Whether they’ve overcome obstacles, endured traumas or tragic losses, experienced setbacks, disappointments, or failures, or they’ve accomplished what others might have thought impossible, I want to know these folks, and it’s my joy to introduce them to you.

Morning Glory People endure, when others around them may not. They’ve survived what others might not have. I want to know what inspiration, practices, resources, and decisions keep them going when so many others might quit.

The stories of Morning Glory People are not all tidy, happy-ending stories. Those who endure do so with scars, but they endure. They survive. They thrive. They find meaning—life, love, joy, hope, passion—beyond their experience, and they turn their disappointments and disasters into determination. Some are activists, some are entrepreneurs. Some are artists, others champions for their cause.

These are the candid, authentic stories of inspiring people with stories of determination.

Morning Glory People inspire me; I just know they’ll inspire you too.

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Leah Lax: Not From Here

Apr 03 2024 34 mins

When Leah Lax was asked to write a libretto for an opera intended to celebrate local immigrants, she began by spending a year listening to the stories of upheaval, migration, and arrival, told to her in confidence by people from around the globe. She felt she had discovered the song of America, found its great beating heart. But Leah also discovered troubling truths about America,

Susanna Solomon: Finding Her Own Path

Mar 06 2024 27 mins

Growing up as a girl in the 1950’s girls were not expected to have any career goals. They were going to be housewives. Susanna Solomon’s mother complained bitterly about her lot in life. Her father told her she was too stupid to go to college, then he fell in love with someone else—someone other than Susanna’s mother. When her mother took her own life when Susanna was four

Kathryn Abdul-Baki: Dancing Into the Light

Feb 07 2024 35 mins

Kathryn Abdul-Baki was born in Washington, DC, to an Arab father and an American mother. In addition to her bi-cultural immediate family, she had a globetrotting childhood, growing up with dramatic changes in community and culture as her father’s work brought them to Iran, Kuwait, Beirut, and Jerusalem. The geographical and cultural changes were huge, but dwarfed in comparison t

Donna Stoneham: Life after Life

Jan 10 2024 34 mins

Donna Stoneham and her mother found a special closeness in the end of Mary Ruth’s life. Theirs had been a relationship fraught with challenge throughout most of their shared lifetime but in her mother’s final years, the two found healing and deep connection. When Mary Ruth passed, Donna was launched into a new kind of transformational grief journey in which the conversation wit

Jennifer Marshall: Her Turn to Talk

Dec 06 2023 30 mins

Jennifer Marshall experienced four psychiatric hospitalizations within five years—two before any diagnosis was reached, and two more because she was trying to protect her son during her own postpartum psychosis and later after going off medication to protect her unborn daughter. All of those hospitalizations were because she was unmedicated at the time. Then, seven years later, a

Gretchen Cherington: A Deeper Search for Family Truth

Nov 01 2023 30 mins

As a follow up to her memoir Poetic License which came out in 2020, Gretchen Cherington dug deeper into family myth and lore, resulting in her new memoir The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy—A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry. In the early 1900s, Gretchen’s paternal grandfather was recruited by George A. Hormel to help him build what is now the m

Nicki Traikos: Life I Design

Oct 04 2023 32 mins

Nicki Traikos has been an artist at heart her entire life, though in her early career she thought she had to choose a more “practical and profitable” way to earn a living. But her creative self found its way into every job until eventually she decided she wanted to be a full-time artist, but not a starving artist. Today Nicki is the living embodiment of her company’s name: Li

Christy Warren: Flashpoint

Sep 06 2023 36 mins

Christy Warren is a retired fire captain/paramedic from the Berkeley, California Fire Department, with 25 years of service as a first responder. In 2014, she was diagnosed with PTSD and struggled through shame, exhaustion and feelings of suicide to finally ask for help so she could fight for her recovery. In her memoir, Flashpoint: A Firefighter’s Journey Through PTSD Christy rev

Joanne Greene: Not By Accident

Jun 21 2023 28 mins

Small in stature, large in presence, and always in charge, Joanne Greene anchored the news and hosted talk shows on San Francisco radio while totally devoted to her family—until a traumatic accident suddenly removed her ability to control anything. Her debut book, By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go is a story of resilience and perseverance, of will and pluck, and of positivity

Margo Fowkes: Salt Water

Jun 07 2023 30 mins

Margo Fowkes is the mother of two children – Jimmy, forever age 21, and his younger sister Molly, who is now 26. After Jimmy’s death in 2014, Margo created Salt Water, a blog and online community that provides a safe harbor for those who are grieving the death of someone dear to them. Margo is the president of OnTarget Consulting, a firm specializing in helping organizations a