Hope Comes to Visit

When the Paint Chips: Finding Light After Unthinkable Loss with Theo Boyd

• Danielle Elliott Smith

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Content note: This episode includes candid discussion of traumatic loss, suicide, and grief.

In this final Hope Comes to Visit episode of 2025, I sit down with award-winning Texas author, grief educator, and podcaster Theo Boyd.

Every story has a turning point and she joins me to talk about hers...including her new USA TODAY bestselling book Hope All the Way—and the life behind it. Theo shares the day everything changed: her mother’s tragic death in a farm accident, the unraveling of her marriage, the sudden loss of her counselor, and—three years later—her father’s suicide. Through it all, Theo kept writing, first in private journals, then in two books: My Grief Is Not Like Yours and now Hope All the Way.

We talk about the “black paint” of early grief and the tiny chips of light that follow. Theo opens up about the signs that kept showing up (from song lyrics to butterflies), the in-depth grief study she commissioned to ground the conversation in data, and why so many grievers simply want to be heard. She offers gentle practices—honor where you are, open your eyes to what helps, permit yourself to do less, and remember to enjoy what’s still here.

If you’re on the tar-side of grief or walking with someone who is, this conversation is both a steady hand and a soft place to land.

Guest: thinktheo.com

You can connect with Theo at info@thinktheo.com

 Books: Hope All the Way; My Grief Is Not Like Yours (both also on Audible, narrated by Theo)


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



SPEAKER_01:

I'd like to talk about grief in the first book as a bucket of black paint being poured over you. And it's the thickest, most tar, thickest paint you can imagine. You're in the dark. But as the days and the weeks and the months go by, that paint hardens and it starts to chip away. And in those chips, little rays of light come through. And that's hope.

SPEAKER_00:

Every story has a turning point, a moment when everything shifts. Here on Hope Comes to Visit, we hold space for those moments: the messy middles, the sacred breakthroughs, and everything, the strength inside us that carries us forward. I'm Danielle Elliott Smith. Thank you so much for being here with us today. My guest today is Theo Boyd. Theo is an award-winning Texas-based author, a grief educator, and a podcaster. And she has a brand new book that is available now. It's called Hope All the Way. And it is quite successful so far, and I'm so thrilled to have you here with us today. Let's take a quick moment to thank the people that support and sponsor the podcast. When life takes an unexpected turn, you deserve someone who will stand beside you. St. Louis attorney Chris Duly offers experienced one-on-one legal defense. Call 314-384-4000 or 314-DUI help. Or you can visit Dulilawfirm.com. That's D-U-L-L-E lawfirm.com for a free consultation. Theo, thank you for being here. Thank you, Danielle, for having me. We were talking just before the podcast, how exciting, surprising, overwhelming is the success of the book.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. I I when I found out it was on the USA Today's best-selling list, my jaw dropped, and I was shocked, but then I realized that's just another sign. So I might need to write another book about this sign.

SPEAKER_00:

I love that we're going to be talking about signs. Um, signs are, see, I even got chills just like just talking about it. So anyone who's watching us can see that I got chills on my arm. But if you are listening, you're just going to have to trust me. So before we get into the book and the signs, it is imperative that we share with everyone your story so that people know the genesis of your first book and your second book and why grief and hope are such a central purpose and calling and love in your life.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, you know, um everything was great in um July of 2019 until that day that I got the phone call. And you know, everybody knows the phone call that can completely change your life. It was July 29th, 2019, and I was getting ready for a museum fundraiser. I had a very successful husband, wonderful life. I was a school teacher. I lived about three minutes from my school where I taught 10th grade English and creative writing. And we were out for the summer, and I got the phone call, and I found out I learned that there had been an accident on our family's farm. My mom and dad were peanut farmers about an hour south of where I lived. And when I got to the farm, I learned that my father had accidentally run over my mom with one of the farm tractors. And of course, forever lives changed. My dad's, my sister, mine, my daughter. And I took some family leave from school, you know, later on, stayed with my dad. And then during all this, family leave and trying to make sure that my dad's gonna be not happy, but making sure that my dad, according to my counselor, making sure that he was safe and knew that he was loved and did doing all this, then my marriage started to fall apart. So I found out my husband had been having an affair during the grief. So there's another loss. And the whole time, Danielle, I'm journaling because that's what I taught my students to do at school. If you had something inside that was really hurting or bothering you, put it on the paper. Get it out on the page. And so I was journaling and then, you know, going through the divorce, that was really difficult during that time. And then a few months after that, my counselor died suddenly. And I just remember looking up to the sky, like, what are you doing? God, what are you doing? What is going on? So I had to tell my dad about another loss of a female, a strong female in our lives that he'd he'd found a confidant in, you know, for his grief, because I've been taking my dad to see the counselor. So mom accident, husband affair, counselor just dies suddenly, very tragic. And I in all this, I'm journaling and never thinking that I'm gonna write a book, but I did eventually get back to the classroom. And one of my colleagues was going to my desk to get a pen and she looked down and she just read like one thing in my little notes. And she said, I hope you don't mind, but I read some of the things you were writing. And Theo, you just have to write a book. And 47 years old, teaching creative writing, been writing for newspapers and little things all my life, but never written a book. But that was the seed that was planted. And I decided right then I'm gonna write a book on grief. I'm gonna write a grief book. So I'm doing all this, and three years passed since the accident, and I'm still working on the book, but really close to the deadline. I was about two weeks away, and it was Father's Day, June the 19th, 2022. And I went to the farm that morning to take my dad some McDonald's breakfast we like to do and have coffee with him. And it was Father's Day, so I was gonna surprise him. And when I got to the farm, went in his bedroom, I found that he had taken his life. So that was three years after the accident where he'd run over my mother. And at that point, of course, the book was the last thing on my mind. I just thought, forget it. I've lost everything now. I'm not gonna write a book. Everything was hopeless, everything was dark. And it wasn't two weeks later, I was back on a Zoom with my publisher. God had put that inside of me to write. Writing was healing for me. I realized that it comes hard for some people to write, but for me, it was healing. And then what I found out is my words are helping others. So we actually met the deadline. I was able to fit my dad in the book beautifully with my mom into each chapter. And I realized my dad never did anything without my mom, and mama never did anything without daddy. So they just needed to be together in that book. And God had a plan all along.

SPEAKER_00:

It's amazing to me how you have managed to fit the pieces of all of this together. Um, I am not grief is is not a stranger to me. And I'm thinking as you're talking about your timeline where the parallels are in my world. In that first part of yours, I was in treatment for alcoholism. And in 2023, I lost my significant other. And uh through those pieces, one of the things you said was I felt hopeless. This podcast, Hope Comes to Visit, was in process when my significant other passed away. And I thought, I how am I gonna talk about hope when uh I I don't have any? I I have no hope to give. And it took going through that to recognize that I needed to experience hopelessness in order to be able to have these conversations, to be able to understand you and have that compassion to sit next to you during a story like this. Because I had never been there. So I wasn't equipped to have these conversations in 2023 before experiencing grief at that level. And now I'm in a place where I feel as though I'm I'm better equipped to have these conversations. And it's almost as though you were you were given a the not given, but you have you were able to fit your dad into the story to be with your mom that way.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. And the title of that first book, My Grief Is Not Like Yours, I'll explain that really quickly. I mean, it wasn't it wasn't so that everybody would read about my grief. It is a memoir, but I titled it that so that when other people that were like me got it, they could own that title for themselves. They could write their pain on the pages. And I love that what was happening, and you probably can and any grievers out there can probably relate to what I'm about to say. Everybody was trying to help, but they were they were saying all the wrong things. They were they were trying to relate to me. Well, when my mom died, I blah, blah, blah. And I was like looking at these people, and it was like the peanuts cartoon where the teachers wah wah wah wah wah. That's all I was hearing. And all that was in my head is my grief is not like yours, my grief is not like yours, my grief is not like yours. Unless your mother was killed by a tractor that your father was driving, I could not relate with you. You weren't helping me. So I felt very unheard in my grief. And I thought, if I'm feeling this way, there would have to be millions of other people feeling this way. I'm titling my book that because I need a book that hit me as hard as I've been hit, and I couldn't get my hands on it. So I wrote it.

SPEAKER_00:

What I love about that is so much of my healing through every piece of my journey has been in feeling heard, in hearing my story coming out of someone else's mouth and recognizing that I'm not alone. I feel as though your first book, and we'll talk about your second book in a moment, you are giving people that opportunity to feel seen and heard. I had moments where my head, I was thinking, I can't believe someone is saying this to me. Someone asked me shortly after Marty passed away, how are you doing? And I said, not great. And she looked at me and said, I know this past year's been really hard for me after I was fired from my job. And I thought, you getting fired from your job, not the same thing as having someone die. But no, people say these things, right? Um, so being able to offer people a soft landing with your first book to say it's okay that your grief feels different. And I know that heading into your second book, you actually did a grief survey. Let's talk a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01:

I did an in-depth grief research study with the Center of Generational Kinetics out of Austin, Texas. And it cost me more than my first house. And I didn't have a lot of money, but I had some money that daddy had left me with the farm. And I felt like that my dad was saying, use this, use this. And so I just did it. And it took over a year and a half, and it came back with some findings that I knew were happening. I knew these things were, you know, real. Like 80% of grieving Americans wish that the media would talk more about grief and how to cope. And they're getting better. I'm hearing a little more grief out there, you know, grief talk. But I'm not hearing as much as we need. And we need to stop focusing as much on the horrific accident and what happened, but more on the people that are affected and their healing process and their journey. And the reason that we need to do that is to help other people. That's why we're here. That's why we've been through these things, is to help other people. So I did the research study for that reason, but mainly because as a high school teacher of English, I always told my students, you can't write about something until you know about it, until you've researched it. And I felt like I was writing about something blindly. Yes, I've been baptized by fire, so to speak, on grief, but I felt like my writing didn't have the validity or the facts behind it. So I thought, you know what? I couldn't find a research study out there. I Ashley Judd hadn't done one, Anderson Cooper hasn't done one, you know, and they're all talking grief. And I'm like, I'm doing a research study so that I know what I'm talking about because I've got the facts to back me up.

SPEAKER_00:

Good for you. I was going to ask, what was the impetus behind the grief study? There, because there are so many more books, podcasts, um, conversations, journals around grief now. I was inundated. I dove in to books. This one is helpful, this one is not. I wrote a ton. I spoke about it a lot. I was very honest on social media. I did my own writing. Like you, I find writing and speaking and honesty to be incredibly healing. And found much like you did, that people said to me, I'm so glad you're being honest about it. Because I experienced grief and people were like, Are you better now? Are you good? It's been two weeks. Are you over it now? Because they hadn't, they hadn't experienced it themselves. And seeing that you, a month in, two months in, are still crying almost gives me permission to still grieve on my own. And again, I go back to feeling seen and heard.

SPEAKER_01:

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's all we want, isn't it? Somebody to hear us. And the one person that heard me the most was gone. And, you know, the one person that really listened, my mother was profoundly deaf. She lost her hearing when she was 18 months old and due to a really high fever. And she didn't communicate or speak until she was 10 when my grandparents realized we've got to do something for Sue. That was her name, Sue. And so they sent her away to a school that taught her how to communicate. And at that time, she was not taught sign language, but she was taught how to use her voice box and how to read lips. And she was a beautiful communicator. And so I'll tell you this story about what we were just talking about, using my mother as an example. My mom, 2018, I took her to a women's conference in Dallas. It was at the Windspear Opera House, and it seats about 3,000 people. And we were about three-quarters of the way back. And when we got there and we sat down, we were so excited. We'd dressed up, we'd went out to a nice dinner, and we get there, and I look around, and there's no teleprompter, there's nobody doing sign language. Although my mom didn't use sign language, she could still read it. And there was nothing to help somebody that was hearing impaired. So I looked over to my mom and I said, I'm so sorry that you can't hear them. And she looked back at me and said, It's okay. I'm just happy to be in the room. And that statement has never left me. And when she died, it just kept coming back to me. Her presence was so significant. Her she was the most present person in a room, yet she couldn't hear a thing. So shame on us that can hear perfectly, yet we're not present in the room.

SPEAKER_00:

How does this new book help you to feel present in the room?

SPEAKER_01:

Great. I love that question. So of course, we talked about the hopeless. You know, when it first happens and you're in the depths of grief, you're not going to want to think about hope. You're if anybody brings that up to you, you're like, I can't talk to you. I didn't want a book about hope. I didn't want butterflies and rainbows, which is why I wrote that first book. It's a little darker. That's how I was, that's where I was. But and I like to talk about grief in the first book as a bucket of black paint being poured over you. And it's the thickest, most tar, thickest paint you can imagine. You're in the dark. But as the days and the weeks and the months go by, that paint hardens and it starts to chip away. And in those chips, little rays of light come through. And that's hope. So every time I would talk a good game, like I don't believe in God anymore, I don't, there's this world, this existence is meaningless. I'm blah, blah, blah. Something would happen, whether it was a butterfly at a very odd time, a song on the radio that made no sense, voicemails reappearing in my phone, even after they've been gone for years. All these things, I started to open my eyes to them. And I started to get, you know, a few resources and reading about signs. And I realized God and mama and daddy are showing me the way. They're showing me I've got to open my eyes to it. You can get in the bed, cover up, you know, the covers over your head, and that's okay for a time. But God brings the sun every morning, and you've got to try again. Mama always said, and she was completely deaf, she had every reason in the world to complain, but she always said, hobbies make you happy. So I found a hobby in my writing, and I urge people to find that hobby. You may call it an outlet, but find an outlet for what's in here. And that that will keep you going, keep you moving forward. So the next day, try again and get up. Maybe make the bed, maybe go outside and take a little walk and get in some sunshine, get into nature. But do something that's going to help you to move forward and open your eyes to those signs. So in the second book, Hope All the Way, I give a lot of the signs, the most significant ones. There were a lot more, but I picked about the top eight and put them in the book. And they're just beautiful. I, you know, I still have a relationship with my parents. It's just not a physical one, it's a spiritual one. I still talk to them every day. I still hear their whispers. And I know that they're there. Their energy is still here. That keeps me going to help grievers to be able to see the light through that paint and be able to move forward.

SPEAKER_00:

I love that metaphor. And the the signs were incredibly significant for me. The moment I gave myself over to that, the moment I said, okay, like my son looked at me and said, So there was a double rainbow the day that Marty died. And I was it's funny because I was with him when he passed away. He'd been in the hospital and he was taking off life support and um it had been storming outside. And I walked outside and I got in my car, and it was it was what I typically call a rainbow-esque sky where the clouds are just starting to break, and you think there's going to be a rainbow. And I sat in my car and I said, Don't even rainbow me today. Don't even rainbow me. And I got home, and my ex-husband, who's a good friend of mine, and my son were there, and they ran out to get me some food because I'd been in the hospital for days. And my ex-husband came home and he goes, Dee, you gotta come outside. It is the most clear, full, beautiful rainbow I have ever seen in my life. And I went outside and it was end to end, full double rainbow. And my son just held me. I collapsed, and people just started sending me pictures. Like, it's it's it's Martin. And so rainbows have continued to be significant. But my son said to me, Do you think that was him? And I said, Gosh, it feels so easy. And he said, Well, what would feel like a sign from him? And I said, Honestly, hummingbirds. Because he knows that I love them. I uh for my entire life, hummingbirds have been something that I have stopped and stared at because I thought they're magic. They feel like like Disney to me. Yes. And that I had not seen a hummingbird that entire year. This was in August. And I walked outside to write his eulogy two days later. And a hummingbird came right up, right up my nose. And I saw a hummingbird after that every single day for the next three months. And I thought, okay, I'm all in on the signs. I'm all in. And so I continued to ask for them and they continued to show up.

SPEAKER_01:

But until you'd gone through the rain, you couldn't have seen that rainbow for what it was.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. What was the most significant sign for you, or what have been a couple of the most significant ones for you?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I'll give a little spoiler for those that haven't got the book yet. But my um the new love in my life, and I had hardened to the fact that I would never love again. But a few um months after my dad's passing, I went to a high school football game because I live back in my hometown now where I grew up and I'm on the farm. But I um went to a high school football game with a couple of girlfriends that I went to school with, and they ended up introducing me to a farmer. So my dad was a farmer, he was a farmer, rancher, and preacher here in Texas. And they introduced me to him. We've hit it off. We we're now official boyfriend, girlfriend, go out all the time. He's great. His family has really taken me in, and they've just kind of been a family that I've needed, and they're close here to where I live. And he's a farmer, so we have a lot in common, you know, farm things, but he's also deaf, like my mother. Really? And I could not discount that. I was in shock. And in the book, I walked you through, I walk you through how I found out, and I just was like, Did you know? Did you know my mom was deaf? You know, he's like, No, I had no idea. And he did not lose his hearing until he was seven years old. So he got all his phonetics, and you would talk to him and not know that he's deaf, but he wears these really fancy hearing aids, and he's profoundly deaf without them. So there again, I've got so much in common with him, just being in the room with him and he him reading my lips and me inherently knowing where I need to be when he needs to hear me. And right it so that was one of the biggest signs. It was like the most beautiful parts of what made up my mom and my dad are in him. So we talk about it all the time, how God brought us together, and mom and daddy had a big part in that.

SPEAKER_00:

How cathartic has it been for you to write this second book? Because you've, for lack of a better phrase, broken through in large pieces a lot of that tar that was holding you in place.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, the second book, what what I loved about it is I wanted to share the signs, just like I heard yours. And, you know, I I want to tell you what's happened so that other people will know and they can open their eyes to the signs. But what I found was when I was writing, well, yes, it was healing, but it was very hard to do the second book because I was wanting to tell everybody the story again. Like, you know, my grief, the grief story. But I kept remembering I've already written that. So it was like the first book is like building a brand new house on land that's clean and empty. And the second book was like remodeling that house. I don't want to repeat too much. I do want to catch people up. So the book does stand alone. If you haven't read the first book, you can read the second book no problem. I catch you up enough. But that was very difficult for me in the journey. And I didn't want to say that my creativeness was getting squashed, but it was. I was like, oh, I just want to write it all. But um, writing is healing for me. And I realize it's not for everyone. So I did put some writing prompts in the book to help people, like I would with my students, because you know, a lot of the students were like, I can't write. And so I did that to kind of help them. And I feel like, Danielle, everything that's happened in my life up until the age of 47 when my mom died, everything that's happened has brought me to this place and has prepared me for what I'm doing now. Being a school teacher, and um, I was a mortgage loan officer for some time. So I've learned a lot about things like that that have helped me in the book business because it is unfortunately, it is business. But I've I've the most important things I've learned were from my parents and my dad. He wrote poetry about the farm, he wrote short stories, and learning what people really need, I learned from my mom. She could see people because she couldn't hear, so all her other senses were heightened. And I learned just how to take tragedy, her loss of her hearing, and turn it into a beautiful life. And the two most, the two strongest characters that anybody could write about, my mom and my dad, Joe, Bob, and Sue, I learned such beautiful things from them. So writing the second book, it was just like, I just want to put it all in there, put it all in there. So I did cram pack it full as much as I could within the limits. And I don't know, I've got many more books to write, but I believe it was Mark Twain that said, the two most important days in your life are the day that you were born and the day you know why you were born. And I know beyond the shadow of a doubt, I was born to write that first book and to write other books, but to write that book and to be a voice for grievers when they don't have one, when it's hard, when they may not have had the strong foundation that I've had. And so that's my job is to be a voice for people that can't speak up in their grief.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm gonna add to that for you. I think part of your job is to channel so much of the presence and beauty of your parents. In reading through the book, I love that you included your writing prompts, the where are you from, right? Taking those bits and pieces. It really had me thinking, but then I love the recipes at the end. You know, you mentioned how you were talking about the hobby, finding a hobby, finding something to do, which you're utilizing as a tool for grievers, but it's also a thread that runs through you that is a piece of your mom, right? And and you include the recipes. Spoiler alert, do you have a favorite of the recipes at the end of the book?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. In the first book, my favorite recipe, because I did it in the first book too, is the Christmas tea cakes. And I'm gonna make those actually this afternoon. But in the second book, my favorite is the big red ice cream.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, I love it. I'm excited to add them to some of my my holiday repertoire. I think that's yes.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, I put Christmas recipes in there, but I threw in the big red ice cream because I talk about it in the book in one of the stories. And I I made that this summer by myself and put it in some little storage containers in the freezer, and I can have some tonight if I want to.

SPEAKER_00:

That's amazing. Theo, if someone is listening and they are thinking, I'm on the tar side of this grief journey, and I I don't know how to break through. I don't know how to make the bed today. What do you say to them?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, first, honor where you are. And I'm gonna use my acronym for hope. Honor where you are. Now, this is not the same acronym that's in the book. That one's harvest, harvest friends, but honor where you are, feel where you are. Don't try to jump ahead, don't try to mask it, don't try to ignore it. A lot of people, I watch a lot of people in my own family do that. They just put the grief to the side, I'll deal with that another day, and then they go forward and they go back to work and get busy. But honor where you are. If you know you can't get out of bed that day, that's that's good. Give yourself grace and grief, I like to say. Give yourself grace and grief. And at the same time, give others grace in your grief. Bless their hearts. They're gonna say and do all the right wrong things. But honor where you are. The O is to open your eyes to the signs. So laying there in bed and feeling hopeless, you don't really want to hear about hope, and that's okay. But open your eyes to what's around you. Go outside for maybe five minutes if you can. Talk to a friend. Have I had one friend and I call them my fairy blonde mothers. But she she was one of the fairy blonde mothers, and they would magically appear anytime something bad happened in my life. And she called me every morning and every evening as a check-in. This is your morning check-in. This is your evening check-in. And she would keep me going to the next day and the next. So find that friend. And if you don't have one, go make one. Go go and find someone, a confidant in your grief. A counselor would be great. I know a lot of people can't afford counseling. So go to your local church or your local grief share group. Try to find somebody that knows and feels what you're feeling. If you do go to a counselor, make sure they're trained in your specific type of loss, your specific type of grief. The P in the hope. So we've got honor open, and the P is permit. Permit yourself. Allow yourself to not do all the things you used to do at the holidays. You don't have to do and be all that you were. It's okay. And that's where that grace and grief comes in. If you can't make all the recipes, I'm already a little upset, Danielle, because I can't make the pies. I'm not going to have time. But it's okay because I've had so much, so much other going on with the book and the book tour, and we're going to a bookstore tomorrow night for a signing. And that that's most important right now. God's put that on my heart to help other people. So give yourself grace. Permit yourself. The E of the hope. So we've got honor. Open your eyes. Permit yourself. The E is to enjoy. Enjoy. You are still here. Life is for the living. And you are still here for a reason. If you have a pet, enjoy that pet. I'm manly, my dog. He's been through everything with me. He's 11 and a half years old. He's laying over here now in his bed. And he he's my enjoyment. Go on a walk, watch him. I'm going to be watching my daughter's two dogs this weekend. So I'm going to have a house full with three dogs, and I'm just going to enjoy that time. This afternoon, I'm going to go make those Christmas tea cakes. And I'm going to enjoy that first bite because I'm going to picture my mom. So that maybe I hope helps some people out there that are in a dark place. But just to know that you're not, it's okay to be sad. And I know that right now, I think the APA and the DSM have named complicated grief, prolonged grief disorder. And that's another conversation for another day. But being sad and grieving is not a disorder. Being sad and grieving is the most human thing. It's the most human emotion that you can have. So honor that you're feeling that because that's the love. And if you weren't feeling that, there was no love lost. But the fact that you're grieving and feeling that means that there was once love. And it's still there.

SPEAKER_00:

I completely agree. Theo, how do you personally define hope?

SPEAKER_01:

Looking forward to something. Hope can be in very little things, and it can be in really big things. All through the grief and everything that was going on, I didn't even think of that word. And one of my girlfriends, when she had introduced me to this farmer that I hadn't even went on a date yet with, I'd only text with very minimal. She texted me and said, At least it will give you hope, even if it doesn't work out. And I realized in that moment, hope. This is hope. Me getting excited to even talk to someone, that's hope. Me going to pick out a new blouse to wear or put makeup on to go do something, that's hope. And all through the grief, my daughter was at Texas AM University. I have one child, a daughter, and she still stuck with it, stuck with it. She ended up going to law school in Houston. She is now a criminal defense attorney in Houston. She kept pushing, pushing, pushing, even through all the traumatic loss and everything that we went through. She just kept kept going. She had hope. And she is my hope. And I told her that the other day. And she's like, Mom, I don't need to cry. You know, she's an attorney. But, you know, she's she's my hope because she is helping others in her line of work. And so hope doesn't have to be some big thing, y'all. Hope can be in just the smallest of things. Hope can be in a recipe, it can be in your your the eyes of your pet. It can be in a in a book that you're going to read at bedtime. Just have have that hope and hold on to it and know that hope is always there. It's not going anywhere. Hope is always there waiting for you.

SPEAKER_00:

I have so enjoyed this conversation with you, Theo. Where can everyone find you?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, of course, I'm here in Texas. I'd love to meet anybody, but you can email me. I love to hear from people at infothinkheo.com. And my website is thinkheo.com. T-H-I-N-K, like think Theo, T-H-E-O.com. And the books are anywhere that books are sold. And if you're not sick of hearing my voice, y'all out there, I did record both of the books on Audible.

SPEAKER_00:

I love that. I'm actually looking very forward. So I've I've read. I haven't read your your first book, but I've read the second. Um, but I'm looking forward to to diving in on Audible as well. I have I really appreciate you taking this time with me. Um, I feel like I've smiled so big this entire time, despite there being some some heavy topics. Uh, you have really found such a beautiful way to move through this, and I'm grateful to have your voice and your heart and your compassion and your your guidance out there in this space. So thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you. I think we have a lot in common. So anytime you're in Texas, you can come out to the farm.

SPEAKER_00:

I definitely will. Thank you for being here, Theo. Thank you. And thank you, friends, for joining us on this episode of Hope Comes to Visit. A quick note: you can see on each of the podcasts, you are welcome to text us if you ever have a question that you'd like to ask. And please turn around and share these episodes. You know that Theo has some beautiful, wise words, especially around the holidays. Share this episode with your friends, anyone that you think could benefit from this type of wisdom and heart and compassion. And until we see you again next time, I'm so looking forward to having you back on the podcast. And please take very good care of you. Thank you for being here. Naturally, it's important to thank the people who support and sponsor the podcast. This episode is supported by Chris Dulley, a trusted criminal defense attorney and friend of mine here in St. Louis, who believes in second chances and solid representation. Whether you're facing a DWI, felony, or traffic issue, Chris handles your case personally with clarity, compassion, and over 15 years of experience. When things feel uncertain, it helps to have someone steady in your corner. Call 314 384 4000 or 314 DUI Help. Or you can visit Delilawfirm.com to schedule your free consultation.