Claim OwnershipFrom Sparks to Light - Inspiring Stories for Challenging Times
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© 2024 From Sparks to Light - Inspiring Stories for Challenging Times
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From Sparks to Light is the podcast about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. These are the stories of people who are giving back in different ways. Learn what inspires them and what they learned along the way. We hope their stories inspire you to find your spark and encourage you to shine your own precious light in the world.
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This is part 7 of a special series focusing on the community of Honoring Our Experience, and their work with long-term survivors of the HIV/AIDS virus.“I am an educator, listener, advocate, supporter and challenger,” reads Greg Casillas from his version of the George Ella Lyon poem, I Am From. “I am from the belief that it’s never as bad as it is good. I am from a brother that said the only thing that we are given is a chance.” Greg Casillas knows the power of story. The gift of sh...
“I felt as empty as a drum,” says Molly Carr, a Juilliard-trained, world class violist. It was a career she had worked her whole young life for. She travelled the world and performed on some of music’s most iconic stages. From Carnegie Hall to the Kennedy Center, Molly has shared the stage with some of the world’s greatest musicians and yet, “the constant focus on career and the fear that it could all go away,” sucked the joy from the instrument and the music that she had loved since sh...
"No matter who other people are, when you peel back the skin, we're all the same," says Hulda Brown of her struggle to find her place in a world that hasn't always been welcoming.The daughter of a single mom, she had a difficult childhood. She was taught that she was not worthy of love. That she had no value. That her voice should not be heard. But despite those early messages and painful experiences, Hulda Brown would not be silent.In 1991 she was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, contracted, s...
“I’m not Melinda Gates,” says Joy Kolin, the founder of Giving Joy, an organization that encourages and strengthens women entrepreneurship world wide through micro grants and mentorship. “But you don’t need to be. What we’ve learned is that you can do a lot with a little. We can all make a difference —and we should.A self described Tex-Israeli, Joy Kolin was born in Texas but spent most of her formative years in Israel. It was those international beginnings that led her to a love ...
“I wanted to work in something that could better the lives of my community,” says Mariana Incarnato, an Ashoka Fellow and the Founder of Doncel, an agency in Buenos Aires Argentina that focuses on changing the way youth who leave residential care are supported as they find their way into adulthood. A clinical psychologist, she worked in Spain for a few years before returning home to her native Argentina. “My sense of belonging was very deep,” she says of her desire to return home....
Florencia Lalor’s adopted family always spoke openly of her adoption. “It was one of the things they did right,” she says. And if she ever wanted to search for her birth mother, she always knew she would have their support. That moment came in 2004, when curious about the mother that gave her up, she grabbed the phone book and began making calls. What she discovered set her on a path that would change her personal and professional worlds.Florencia Lalor has spent her life working to understan...
This is part 5 of a special series focusing on the community of Honoring Our Experience, and their work with long-term survivors of the HIV/AIDS virus.Harry Breaux never thought he’d live past 30. His father died of a heart attack at 50. His mother passed away when she was 51. Now, at 79, he’s outlived them both. Being diagnosed with HIV did not come as a surprise. “You can’t play in the water and not expect to get wet,” he says. When he finally grew sick in his early 50s, he battled thr...
“I knew I wanted to look at things differently,” says Cleveland Harvey, a social worker who works in palliative care with people who are struggling with serious illnesses. “When I interact with people I want to either help or understand them better.” Cleveland Harvey’s journey to social work is rooted in his early experience as a child in South Central Los Angeles during the mid-eighties when the area was steeped in the gang and crack epidemics. As the only black child in the neighborhoo...
Hi folks,March is national social work month. Social work is one of many professional helping careers, but it’s also an identity. I am a social worker, I tell my students with pride. It’s not my career, its my calling. A calling to serve others. A calling to raise up the disadvantaged, the voiceless and the marginalized. To walk beside the people who often walk alone.Today I’m sharing an episode from season 2 with my friend and fellow social worker Gary Mallon who remi...
“I’m very much a proponent of chop wood, carry water. Just do,” says Paula Sheil, an educator, writer, poet and the founder and president of Tuleburg Press. “My sock drawer is incredibly organized.”It’s an old Zen proverb. Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. When it feels like things are tough, we can still wash the dishes. Weed the garden. Clean out our sock drawer.Paula Sheil is a dynamo. As an elementary school teacher she filled her&n...
This is part 4 of a special series focusing on the work of Honoring Our Experience, and their work with longterm survivors of the HIV/AIDS virus.It started like a nightmare. Pregnant, in a toxic relationship and far away from the family she loved, Deirdre Johnson learned she’d been infected with the HIV virus. It was December 5th, a day Deirdre now celebrates. The day her life changed forever. On a Christmas Day hike to the top of a nearby mountain, Deirdre asked for guidance. “I was abo...
“There is no getting over this. You will find a way to use it,” says Dr. Joyce Mikal-Flynn of the traumatic injury that changed her life. “You will find a way to incorporate this into your life. You will make meaning of this pain and you will find a way to exist —sometimes in the loss.”22 minutes. That’s the amount of time Joyce Mikal-Flynn lay on the pavement beside a swimming pool while friends worked desperately to resuscitate her. She’d just swam the final leg of friendly competition when...
In honor of Black History month, we revisit a conversation from Season 2 with Dr. Samuel Aymer, a professor of Social Work at Hunter College."How do we hold multiple truths? How do we (as people of color) embrace our humanity when that humanity is not always valued," asks Samuel Aymer, a professor of Social Work at Hunter College. "It's not the first thing that comes up... This is difficult stuff to talk about."This is a conversation about the importance of reflection. Of se...
“Everyone is looking for the same things,” says Catherine Schweikert, a PhD and Physician Assistant who has spent the past few years researching the profound power of compassion. “We are all in search of what makes us feel safe, happy, healthy and free," she says. “What that means to me may be wildly different than what it means to you,” she adds, but that’s not the point. It is understanding that desire which has the power to heal us. As different as we may be, we have the p...
“I got tired of being tired,” says Ms. Billie Cooper of her life as an addict. ,Along term HIV survivor and trans activist, she knew she needed to make a change. “I got tired of not being able to eat, of living on top ramen. I wanted a better life.”Ms. Billie has had her share of challenges. But through it all, she has learned to turn pain into purpose. Sober for 23 years, she is a cancer survivor and veteran. HIV positive for more than 35 years, her history with the long term survivor ...
On From Sparks to Light, we hear the stories of people who are making a difference. People who are giving back in various ways. What we don’t often hear, however, is the stories of how their actions impact others. What happens because of that work. In 2024, Honoring Our Experience will celebrate its 10th anniversary. Over the next year we will hear the voices of the people who have become integral members of the long-term survivor’s community that Honoring Our Experience has helped creat...
When Sandy Holman was a teenager, she watched as the Klu Klux Klan burned a wooden cross on her high school soccer field. This wasn’t in the deep south, but in the Sacramento, California neighborhood where her family moved when she was in elementary school. It was that experience, as well as several others, that led her to recognize the work she was meant to do in the world. A world that does not treat all people with love, dignity and kindness.Sandy Holman, also known as the Purple Lady for ...
Back on the podcast this week is my dear friend Gregg Cassin. Gregg is an HIV/AIDS activist, a public speaker and someone I’ve known since our college days back in Boston. He is also someone who has dedicated his life to serving the HIV/AIDS communities, bringing healing to those whose lives are impacted by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The focus is simple. To bring people together to build community because as Gregg knew intuitively from the very first days of the epidemic, community has the ...
Bill Glenn, a retired therapist and author, spent 18 years preparing to be a Jesuit priest before he realized he was being called to something else. “I knew my work was elsewhere," he says, although I had no idea what it was. Two years later, the AIDS epidemic hit. “It was as if I’d been called out of the Jesuits to be present to this epidemic. He realized this was the work he was trained to do, to attend to the pain in the world. This is the journey he writes about in his m...
“[The poverty] was a really big shock,” said Koen Van Rompay, an infectious disease researcher who was in India to speak at a conference. Seeing all the people on the streets of Chennai begging for food was painful. “I felt very frustrated. Here I was a scientist… trying to do something about HIV, but these people lacked even the basic necessities in life.” He had to do something, but what?He met a social worker named Mr. Selvam, He showed Koen some hand embroidered greeting cards...
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