The Morning Glory Project

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, through the eyes of immigrants, and in so doing was inspired to uncover the lost history of her own Jewish family. Through this interwoven experience of their story and hers, Leah found not only a larger context for the story of immigrants, but a new way of looking at how her own identity, rather than as a member of a small “minority”, but as a part of a very large majority who are here in this country because either they or their parents immigrated from another country. Nearly two decades after Leah had those conversations, long after the opera she wrote had left the stage, she captured those stories into this “libretto” of a story, her extraordinary new book, Not From Here: The Song of America. Leah was a guest on The Morning Glory Project after her deeply stirring memoir, Uncovered: How I Left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home, which was the first gay memoir ever to come out of the Jewish ultra-Orthodox world. Leah’s dual career as an author and as a librettist has brought her many well-deserved accolades. When she’s not writing, you can find her playing cello or kayaking around the world with her wife.

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 fourteen, the upheaval in the family was seismic. At 20 she met a guy who was loving and warm and wonderful. At first he was great fun, but he liked to drink. Each year went by things became more difficult, as he would yell and stagger, and diminish Susanna and their two children. After 11 years, Susanna made the decision to get a divorce, but she knew she didn’t have enough skills to support herself and her kids on her own and that “women’s jobs” of that era wouldn’t provide enough. She decided that she would need what was then called a “man’s” career, with a “man’s income”. Everyone she knew, but for her brother, made fun of her for what seemed like an absurd choice. After six-and-a-half years, she graduated Summa Cum Laude, got a job and ended her marriage, becoming a single parent. In her delightful short story collections, Point Reyes Sheriff’s Calls, and More Point Reyes Sheriff’s Calls, Susanna takes the tidbits of sheriff’s call incidents published in her local small-town paper and imagines what the late Paul Harvey might have called “the rest of the story”. In her more recent publication, Paris Beckons, she continues to do what she’s always done… breaking from the expected, weaving her lived experiences and fictional storytelling throughout a collection of short stories that put a different light on loss, memory, and independence.

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 to the tragic losses her family would sustain. When she was 7, Kathryn’s brother was born and would be struggle with a heart defect that required extensive treatment. During this time, her mother was diagnosed with cancer. Her brother died at the age of 18-month. Her mother at age 32, and Kathryn’s whole world changed. Kathryn, despite a happy marriage and beloved children of her own, would find herself in the throes of depression as she came to her own thirtieth birthday. With what were then inexplicable feelings of abandonment, she’d make an attempt to take her own life. Behind the scrim of her own life, there would always be the image of the mother she lost before she ever got to really know her. It was by reconnecting to the joyful aspects of her early life that Kathryn was able to heal, and specifically through dancing that she’d reconnect to this joy. Her memoir, Dancing Into the Light gives readers a unique glimpse into her story, into Arab culture, and into the psyche of a young Arab woman.

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 with her mother did not end with her passing at age 88. Catch Me When I Fall is a moving collection of poems and letters through which Donna keeps her heart open to the mystery and power of transcendent, eternal love that lives on beyond the human lifetime. Donna’s lifelong experience as a poet accustomed to seeking meaning, her professional experience as an executive coach, and her history as a hospice chaplain inform her rich and deep exploration of connection with her mom as a part of not only grieving death, but embracing life. A balm for a grieving heart, Catch Me When I Fall is an inspiration for anyone who has lost someone they love. Part love song, part grief map, this collection offers another way to look at loss and a thousand ways to embrace life. Donna is also the author of The Thrivers Edge: Seven Keys to Transform the Way You Live, Love, and Lead.

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, after seven and a half years of stability, she suffered a manic episode after the death of her friend and partner who had helped her launch her non-profit, Anne Marie Ames. Living in recovery with bi-polar disorder is a daily struggle, but Jennifer is determined to live successfully despite mental illness. With good health practices, good medical care, and the support of friends and loved ones Jennifer continues her campaign to de-stigmatize mental illness and to celebrate the brave people who put their names and faces to it. Jennifer founded “This is My Brave”, an organization to celebrate the stories of those who struggle with or have relationships with those who struggle with all forms of mental illness.

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 multi-billion dollar food conglomerate Hormel Foods. As a child, Gretchen listened to riveting stories about these two men from her father. Third in the trio was the company’s comptroller, Ransome J. Thomson, who, over a decade, embezzled $1.2 Million from the Hormel company and nearly brought it to its knees. Rumors suggested Gretchen’s grandfather was “in cahoots” with the embezzler. But was he? Gretchen sent out to investigate this question. Research led Gretchen to business documents, letters, and historical records that helped her find a few of the missing pieces of the picture that is her family’s history puzzle. Kirkus calls this new book “A dazzling account that deftly combines crime, drama, history, and introspective remembrance…a mesmerizing story filled with drama, suspense, and told with remarkable emotional insights.”

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: Life I Design. She has built a successful art career as a teacher, as a creative who sells her own work, and now as a published author with an upcoming book to help others develop their artistic skills. While the medium Nicki has used through her career may have changed greatly over the years, the goal has always been the same: to have the courage to try, and to find joy in the moments exploring. Known best for her “Watercolors Made Simple” online classes and new book of the same name, Nicki has a casual and approachable philosophy about making art and inspires other artists to adopt it, too. It’s not about achieving perfection, but about having the joy of experiencing artistic expression, developing techniques so that they can create art that pleases them, and for each creative person to find their own style.

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 reveals with both candor and vulnerability the nearly unimaginable challenges that first responders face, the pressure they feel to be invulnerable to the mental health impact of their work, and the value of support, treatment, and healing for the brave people who serve.

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 and gratitude for lessons learned—even as the personal hits just keep on coming. Joanne also hosts two podcasts—“In This Story…”, XX minute musings on XXX and “All the F Words”, which she and her Gen X co-host explore everything from fun and friendship to Fiber, Fraud, and Feng Shui.

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 and their leaders act strategically, improve their performance, and achieve their business goals. Last September, on what should have been Jimmy’s 30th birthday, Margo published Leading Through Loss: How to Navigate Grief at Work. The book provides practical tools and ideas from leaders who’ve dealt with loss and offers insights into the perspective and experiences of grieving employees: what they want and need, what helps and what hurts, what support they were deeply grateful for, and what they wish their leaders had done differently.

Carlyn Montes de Oca grew up surrounded by secrets. She never knew that her dad was a Marin during World War II or that her grandmother hired kidnappers to bring her mother back home after her parents eloped. But her parents took an even bigger secret to their graves…Carlyn’s identity. At age 57, a DNA test taken for fun revealed that Carlyn’s parents were not her biological parents and everyone in her family, including more than 60 first cousins, knew but hadn’t told her.  The search for her lineage, her identity, and her truth would result in Carlyn’s memoir, Junkyard Girl: A Memoir of Ancestry, Secrets, and Second Chances. Carlyn is also the author of Dog as my Doctor, Cat as My Nurse and serves as a sought-after expert on human health and well-being.

For 21 days in 1976, Carol Menaker served with eleven others on a sequestered jury in the trial of Frederick Burton, a young Black Revolutionary charged with the grisly murders of two white prison wardens. She was 24 years old. Forty-seven years later, she is publishing a memoir in which she unravels the trauma of that experience and comes to the unsettling conclusion that her youth, naïveté, and white privilege may have led her to convict a man whose shoes she never could have walked in. Mr. Burton, now 77 years old, remains incarcerated in a Pennsylvania prison. Today, Carol has become an advocate for criminal justice reform and looks forward to the way her story will influence others with the political and legislative willpower to consider “second chance” laws for the thousands like Mr. Burton serving excessive sentences with no hope through the courts of earning their freedom. Carol chronicles her experience in her new memoir, The Worst Thing We’ve Ever Done: One Juror’s Reckoning with Racial Injustice.

For lots of us, there’s the life we plan and then there is reality. At age 22, looking forward to a life full of opportunity for success and happiness, Jennifer Cramer-Miller got tossed into a world she’d never imagined. Diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune disease that caused kidney failure, she would face dialysis, and ultimately not only one kidney transplant, but four…and counting. This led her to become a “joy scouter.” The title of her memoir Incurable Optimist: Living with Illness and Chronic Hope (August 2023) is a hint to not only how Jennifer has coped for more than 30 years with illness, but how she lives her whole life. But she’s no Polly Anna, ignoring the hard stuff. Her optimism is born of living with reality, with the operative word being living. Anyone dealing with disappointment, hopelessness, or fear will be inspired by Jennifer’s infectious optimism. Listen in to her inspiring story.

How will empathetic people survive the troubles of this time? How do we rescue our overburdened spirits from overlapping disasters such as rising fascism and climate collapse? And from where can we summon the power to heal ourselves, our communities, and the planet? These are the animating questions behind singer, songwriter, and storyteller Shannon Curtis’s newest album Good to Me—Curtis’s 10th studio album and in her book of the same name. Confronted in late 2021 with near-paralyzing anxiety brought about by the increasingly fraught state of the world, Curtis aimed her angst at her journal. Using tools she acquired in 12-step recovery, she set out on a quest for self-healing, with the intention of nurturing her personal sense of peace and agency in a world on fire. The result is a song journey and an accompanying book that took Curtis through a practice of identifying failed coping mechanisms, coming to terms with radical acceptance, learning to trust her inner truth and reconnecting to her serenity and power even as the world continued to burn. The extended Good to Me album project aims to illuminate a path for others to undertake this same journey for themselves—complete with a companion book and scripted podcast.

Arin Fugate is a survivor. From between the ages of 11-21, she was raised as a “resident” of a spiritual cult and deemed for a time the “ceremonial virgin” whose mother surrendered her child’s custody to the spiritual leader. Deprived of food, education, and freedom of thought, Arin was isolated from a world she’d been taught to fear and indoctrinated in the twisted spirituality of the leader. Arin emerged from the cult experience at 21 unprepared to identify abuse or protect herself from it. Perhaps her most challenging and enduring deficit is being unable to resist an authoritative voice, requiring her to exercise great care in selecting the people she can truly trust. Having overcome addiction, anxiety, depression, and other limitations from years of abuse she is now dedicated to facilitating the rise of the Female Visionary. She serves on the board of Ride My Road, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping survivors of sex trafficking, founded by past Morning Glory Project guest, Lauren Trantham. Arin is a mother of two daughters, wife, and a business owner. She knows how hard it can be for women to carve a path to their dreams. By sharing her passion for natural wellness, and entrepreneurship with inspired business owners, she helps women to find their strengths and to pursue their dreams.

Isidra Mencos was born and raised in Barcelona when her home country was under the oppressive rule of Franco and strict religious teachings. Isidra spent her twenties experimenting with the new freedoms afforded by the end of Franco’s dictatorship, causing her to have a double life of “good girl” and “rebel.” She immersed herself in books and dancing, and working at various jobs. In 1992 she moved to the US to earn a Ph.D. in Spanish and Latin American contemporary literature at UC Berkeley, where she taught for twelve years. After a ten-year stint in the corporate world managing teams in several countries, in 2016 she focused on creative writing. She tells of her journey in her memoir, Promenade of Desire, A Barcelona Memoir, published in 2022.

It can be a helpless feeling to watch a loved one slipping away, becoming increasingly lost to mental illness, drug use, and even homelessness. In this very personal episode, the host of The Morning Glory Project welcomes a loved one, once thought lost. Using only a nickname to protect her privacy, Meesh, now stable, self-sufficient, and four years sober, shares her story of how the toxic cocktail of un-medicated mental illness and methamphetamine use dragged her from her life to the fringes of society—to homelessness, repeated incarceration. She’ll share not only the experience of being lost, but how even in her broken mental state, her psyche served to protect her and help her find her way to health.

With over 6 million books sold (and counting), Kathia’s novels have been #1 bestsellers around the world. They’ve received starred reviews, have consistently earned Editor’s Picks for Best Romance, and have been featured by O, The Oprah Magazine. Kathia has written over 40 books and counting, some translated into several languages, all about hope and dreams and the bonds of friendship and family. In addition to writing, Kathia is an acclaimed artist and kung fu master. She wields both the paintbrush and the sword with great flare. Underlying her prolific writing, her art, and her unabashed sense of adventure, what may stand out most about Kathia is her unrelenting belief in love. When she found and married her own “miracle man”, one who could support her career and share in her adventures, she thought she had it all. Later, however, betrayal not only ended the marriage, but posed a threat to her career and cost her the ownership of 19 of her published works! Has her view of love changed? Is she still a romantic? And how has she healed? That’s what we cover in this episode of The Morning Glory Project.

In troubled times, what good is art of any kind, much less poetry? To many, poetry seems so much the purview of the elite, the dalliances of the fanciful. It can seem esoteric and out of reach for most. Kirsten Casey, both as a poet herself and in her work with teen writers, has found that poetry is far more than fancy, that it can be not only accessible, but essential, and that engaging young people with poetry is a gateway to other meaningful connections. She shares this conversation with us on The Morning Glory Project. In 2022, Kirsten is the poet laureate of Nevada County, California, a California Poet in the Schools, creative writing teacher, and the author of Ex Vivo: Out of the Living Body and Instantaneous Obsolescence in which she explores historical and literary characters struggling with social media.

Following the unexpected death of their daughter Lili Rachel Smith in October 2009, Laura Talmus along with her husband, Averell “Ace” Smith founded Beyond Differences. Passionate about bringing awareness to the issue of adolescent social isolation, Laura is the full-time Executive Director of Beyond Differences, a student-led social justice organization dedicated to ending social isolation among middle school students. Beyond Differences’ Social Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum is now being used in over 9000 schools across all 50 states. They are best known for the national holiday, No One Eats Alone Day. The work of Beyond Differences strives to have an effect on every layer of society when it comes to suffering from social isolation. Working with families, schools, local and state programs, and even on the national level, this non-profit organization works to advance social-emotional learning and children’s mental health. Laura has received numerous awards and recognitions including being selected as an AARP Purpose Prize Fellow, a Jefferson Prize Award winner, receiving the MLK, Jr. Humanitarian Award from the Marin County Human Rights Commission, the Courageous Leaders Award from the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco, and the North Bay Business Journal’s Award’s Nonprofit Leadership Award. She is also a member of the Washington, D.C.-based organization, the Coalition to End Social Isolation and Loneliness (CESIL).