The Kindness Podcast

What Does Kindness Look Like When You Have to Rebuild Yourself? with Cindy Rowe

Twelve years ago, Cindy Rowe was in a dark season, and a friend gave her one simple piece of advice: go do something kind for someone. Cindy took it and ran with it, turning her birthday month into a 31-day kindness challenge. Nothing about her circumstances changed. Her perspective did.

Then life tested that practice in ways she never saw coming. A 2018 car accident left her with a traumatic brain injury and a long road back. Later, her husband Scott died unexpectedly. Through both, Cindy kept choosing kindness, including the kind she had to learn to give herself: rest, grace and speaking up for what she needed.

In this conversation, she shares easy, budget-friendly acts anyone can start with, what it looks like to really show up for a friend, and why kindness doesn’t have to be a grand gesture. It’s love in action.

The question we’re sitting with: what does kindness look like when you have to rebuild yourself?

About Cindy

Cindy Rowe is a speaker, trainer and Kindness Ambassador who helps organizations build cultures rooted in kindness and emotional intelligence. She’s the founder and CEO of Cindy Rowe LLC and The Be Kind Crew, and she’s delivered keynotes and workshops for national conferences, professional associations and Fortune 500 companies. A survivor of a traumatic brain injury and personal loss, Cindy draws on her own story to show the measurable impact kindness has on well-being, retention and workplace success. She also hosts The Kindness Advantage podcast.

Connect with Cindy

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cindyrowe-publicspeaker/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/cindyarowe
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecindyrowe
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thecindyrowe
• The Kindness Advantage: https://open.spotify.com/show/3FB6vTnjSZwrzGBaYmS9nP

And remember, what you look for is what you see.

There was a woman in Stephanie Duguid’s hometown who knew everybody’s name before they’d finished unpacking their boxes. They called her the Welcome Wagon Lady. She was also Stephanie’s mom.

Margie wrote notes. Hundreds of them. She remembered students twenty years after they left her classroom, and she kept showing up long after the welcome basket was delivered. Dr. Stephanie Duguid lost her unexpectedly on her third day as a teacher, and what carried her through was everything her mother had already given away. Fifty years later, those notes are still finding their way back.

In this episode:

• What a Welcome Wagon Lady actually did in the 1970s, and how Margie turned strangers into friends in a matter of minutes
• The student who held onto the family recipes for twenty years, and the cookbook that came out of returning them
• A stack of postcards dated 1975, mailed back to Stephanie just a few months ago by a woman she’d never met
• The weekend Margie came to visit with two suitcases, one for clothes and one for stationery, stamps, and her address book
• Why social media is everybody’s A side, and how Margie got people to show her the B side
• Flowers in the morning, a car accident that night, and the third day of teaching that changed everything
• “What would Margie do?” and what to do when you can’t find a mentor
• Leading with kindness without letting accountability slip

About Dr. Stephanie Duguid

Dr. Stephanie Duguid (yes, it’s pronounced “do good”) is a leadership culture strategist, keynote speaker, and founder of Do Good Leadership. She spent more than thirty years in K-12 and higher education as a teacher, athletic trainer, and administrator, and she now helps organizations build cultures where people feel seen, heard, and valued. She holds a Doctorate in Educational Leadership and is the bestselling author of Exponentially Elevate Your Leadership Impact.

Connect with Stephanie

Website: drstephanieduguid.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drstephanieduguid Instagram: @drstephanieduguid Facebook: facebook.com/DoGoodLeadership YouTube: youtube.com/@stephanieduguid

What does kindness look like when we start communicating clearly?

Think about the last time you were frustrated with someone. Did they actually know what you wanted? Dr. LauraLynn Jansen says most of the friction in our relationships comes from expectations we never said out loud. In this episode, she makes the case that clarity isn't the opposite of kindness. It's one of the most generous things we can offer other people, and ourselves.

In this episode:

• Why clarity is a form of kindness, even when we think of kindness as softness
• How to recognize the unspoken expectations you're carrying
• What happens in a relationship when those expectations stay unspoken
• The "gremlin" and how unclear expectations at work feed imposter syndrome
• Why so many of us choose silence over asking, and what to do if you're afraid asking will make you look incompetent
• The basics of Nonviolent Communication: feelings, needs, and requests
• Why clarity matters even more in a world of AI and automation

About Dr. LauraLynn Jansen LauraLynn Jansen, Ph.D., PCC, is an award-winning scholar-practitioner, keynote speaker, and Co-Active coach who's spent more than 20 years helping people and teams build sustainable connection. She's worked across healthcare, government, the military, nonprofits, and private enterprise. Her doctoral research on what it means to feel truly seen earned the Academy of Management's 2023 Promising Dissertation Award. Her signature message: technology can accelerate what we do, but it can't replace how we relate.

Connect with LauraLynn: Website: lljansen.com

Have you ever been around someone who makes you feel like you could say anything and it would be okay? Romaine Waller is one of those people. She's the woman who says hi first at the grocery store, the friend whose confidence is "a vault," and the leader who reminds her clinical research teams that at the end of every piece of paper is a patient. In this conversation, Romaine shares why kindness currency is unlimited, how she stays kind and direct at the same time in a highly regulated corporate world, and what it takes to become a safe, judgment free person for the people in your life.

In This Episode

• Why Romaine always says hi first at the grocery store, and the lesson from her mother that shaped everything: "It doesn't cost you anything to be nice"
• Kindness currency is unlimited. You never run out, and it costs you nothing to spend it
• "At the end of everything we do is a patient." Keeping compassion at the center of data driven clinical research, and remembering there's a human on the other end of every email
• Kindness isn't soft, it's a strategy: how curiosity and listening open the door with teams set in their ways
• What it means to be a vault friend, and how to become a safer, judgment free person for others
• A first look at FIND T-squared: the Feeling Inside No one Dares To Talk about
• Romaine's challenge to dig deeper: are your relationships authentic and meaningful, or surface level and exhausting?

About Romaine

Romaine Waller is a U.S. Army veteran, an operations and strategy leader in clinical research and clinical systems, and a self-described connector of people. She holds a steadfast belief that knowledge and information become truly transformative only when shared, and that the most powerful technology in any room is still human compassion. Her CliftonStrengths of Positivity, Developer, Connectedness, Belief, and Maximizer are basically a fancy way of saying she's going to hype you up, help you grow, and refuse to leave potential on the table. Whether she's leading teams or mentoring the next generation of leaders, Romaine is proof that kindness isn't soft, it's a strategy.

Connect

Connect with Romaine on LinkedIn.

Learn more about Nicole and The Kindness Podcast at nicolejphillips.com.

A note before you listen: this conversation includes references to childhood sexual abuse and trauma. Please take care of yourself as you listen.

EJ and Tarah Kerwin were two therapists already barely keeping up: twins conceived on their honeymoon, four kids under five, a new counseling business. Then a medically supervised ketamine session surfaced repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse Tarah had no idea existed, and overnight her nervous system went from calm to chaos. No diagnosis, no doctor's note, no roadmap. Just EJ, feeling like he got it wrong every day. They talk with Nicole about what he finally said out loud, why kindness here looks like curiosity instead of solutions, and what it takes to stay when you can't fix what's hurting the person you love.

In this episode:

• What medically supervised ketamine therapy actually is, and what happened when Tarah's memories surfaced
• Why anyone would choose to unearth pain their body spent decades hiding, and what freedom on the other side feels like
• The difference between supporting a partner through something visible, like chemo, and something invisible
• The two sentences EJ said out loud that shifted everything, including "whatever level of connection I have with you now, that's enough"
• Why kindness in a healing season has to include boundaries and honesty about your own needs
• How intimacy gets rebuilt without pressure, and why "you'll be fine in eight weeks" is not an answer
• EJ's kindness story about a moment between Tarah and his son he had waited years to see
• The tool they give every couple: daily check-ins and real curiosity about someone you think you know
• Naming lost intimacy as shared grief instead of rejection, and why that reframe matters

About EJ and Tarah Kerwin

EJ and Tarah Kerwin are the founders of Relationship Renovation and creators of the Relationship Renovation Model, as well as hosts of the Relationship Renovation Podcast. Tarah is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and EJ is a Licensed Professional Counselor, and together they run the Relationship Renovation Counseling Center in Tucson, Arizona. They blend raw honesty, humor, and decades of experience to help couples deepen intimacy and build emotional safety, drawing on attachment science and nervous system regulation. EJ also founded Men Who Do the Work, a group helping thousands of men show up more intentionally in their relationships. Their work includes a top 1% podcast, the Relationship Renovation @ Home manual, an online community, and private coaching.

Connect with EJ and Tarah

• Website: https://relationshiprenovation.com/
• Coaching: https://relationshiprenovation.com/relationship-coaching/
• The Relationship Renovation At Home Manual: https://a.co/d/080cziw4
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/relationship_renovation/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/relationshiprenovationcounseling/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@relationshiprenovation
• The Relationship Renovation Podcast, wherever you listen

Amanda Fornal was on a panel at SXSW when someone asked her a simple question: what gets you up in the morning? "To do good," she said, and then she said the rest of it out loud. A few days earlier she had heard a venture capitalist argue that the smart money goes to sociopathic founders, not kind ones. It did not sit right with her logically or emotionally. So on that stage she said, "I'm kind, and I'm proud of it. If you don't want to invest in kindness, that's on you."

A few days later she had a name for her next project. She built the website, started interviewing, and talked with more than 100 leaders, founders, and investors across more than 35 countries about one question: does kindness actually work in business?

Here is what I appreciated about this conversation. Amanda is not asking us to be nice. She went and checked. She read the academic research before she trusted her own instincts, and she is direct about the fact that a business has a bottom line and kindness has to hold up against it. What she found is that it does, through loyalty and innovation and the kind of psychological safety that lets a team say the half-formed idea out loud.

We also got honest about something I do not always admit on this show. I told her that kindness does not sell. Companies hire me for resilience and burnout and mindset, almost never for the word itself. Her answer to that is worth the listen on its own.

Connect with Amanda and dig into the research

• Investing in Kindness: investinginkindnessproject.com
• Be interviewed for the project. Amanda is still taking interviews and invited you directly: forms.gle/o4gMVQWdFLfmugXY8
• Take the survey: forms.gle/Tt3THNeyTUu9Qd968
• Hypatia Leadership (her executive coaching work): hypatialeadership.com
• Elephari (the story preservation platform): elephari.com
• Women in Exploration: womeninexploration.org
• Founder Buddies: founderbuddies.com
• Love Is, the documentary: loveisthedocumentary.com
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/amandadfornal
• Instagram: @TheOrangeExplorer
• Kindness Pays: The Business Case for Prosocial Leadership: https://www.investinginkindnessproject.com/blog/kindness-pays-the-business-case-for-pro-social-leadership
• Kindness and Retention: What the Research Says About Why Employees Stay: https://www.investinginkindnessproject.com/blog/kindness-and-retention

On October 16, 2016, Mickey Z. started walking the streets of New York City with food, supplies, and gift cards to hand to homeless women. He noticed something first: homeless men will often walk right up and ask for a dollar, while women, already pushed to the margins, tend to sit quietly with a sign and wait. Those women became his teachers. They told him what they needed, what size to buy, what actually helped. Nearly ten years later, Cheerful Giver NYC has grown into a seven days a week mission serving anyone who asks, and Mickey has stopped calling it a project. He calls it a calling.

This one got personal for Nicole. She admits on air that she used to be braver, that she once struck up a conversation with a homeless woman in Chicago about the book she was reading, and that somewhere along the way she lost the entry point. So instead of interviewing Mickey, she asks him for help. What follows is a practical, grace filled conversation about the first words to say, why gift cards work, what to do when you get it wrong, and how to stop separating the person with the sign from everyone else you meet all day long.

In this episode:

• Why Mickey started with homeless women, and what nearly ten years of hands on giving has taught him about earning trust
• How a sign functions as an invitation, and why he will not approach someone who has not extended one
• Nicole's honest confession about losing her courage, and Mickey's response to the question of where a person even begins
• The Carnegie Hall regular who told him that one person's eye contact erases the thousand people who walked past
• Why a fifteen dollar fast food gift card buys far more than a meal: a bathroom, a phone charge, a seat indoors, and the dignity of blending in
• The mythology around giving cash, and the double standard we apply to how vulnerable people spend money

About Mickey Z.

Mickey Z. is a writer, longtime New Yorker, and the founder of Cheerful Giver NYC, a street level mission providing food, supplies, and gift cards to homeless people and other vulnerable souls across New York City. Born and raised in Queens, he began the work in October 2016 with a focus on homeless women, then expanded during the pandemic lockdowns to serve anyone within walking distance of his Astoria neighborhood who asks for help. He is the author of multiple books, has written for and volunteered with the homeless produced newspaper Street News, and writes regularly about giving, faith, and compassion on his Substack. He was named a Queens Person of the Week by NY1 for his work. He would like you to know he is not an expert.

Links

• Cheerful Giver NYC: https://cheerfulgivernyc.wordpress.com/ (mission information and all donation links in one place, including PayPal, Venmo, Patreon, GoFundMe, Amazon wishlist, and mail)
• Mickey's Substack: https://mickeyz.substack.com/ (every post closes with how to support the mission)

Dr. Robyn Graham spent years being praised for the very habits that were quietly wearing her down: the perfectionism, the need to control, the instinct to keep everyone else okay. She was a pharmacist, a high achiever, and, underneath it, anxious. It took real work to see that some of what looked like strength was actually anxiety wearing strength's clothes.

Now Robyn is an Anxiety Breakthrough Strategist who blends neuroscience with real-life coaching to help high-achieving leaders spot those hidden patterns before they lead to burnout. In this conversation, she and Nicole talk about why perfectionism and people-pleasing are so hard to catch in ourselves, what it takes to interrupt a reactive cycle in the moment, and what kindness toward yourself actually looks like when the pressure is on.

In this episode:

• Robyn's path from pharmacist to Anxiety Breakthrough Strategist, and the life circumstances that pulled her there
• Why anxiety-driven patterns like perfectionism and overcontrol are so easy to mistake for strengths, especially in high achievers
• How to tell a genuine strength apart from an anxiety-driven habit wearing a strength's disguise
• What self-kindness looks like in the middle of real pressure, not just in theory
• The difference between caring for someone and managing your own anxiety through them
• How to interrupt the cycle of reactive leadership in an ordinary, everyday moment
• One small shift listeners can make this week to lead from calm instead of fear

About Robyn Graham Robyn Graham is an Anxiety Breakthrough Strategist, keynote speaker, and the creator of The CCC Method, a framework that helps leaders break free from anxiety-driven behavior so they can lead with calm, confidence, and consistency. She draws on her background as a pharmacist, a certified neuroscience coach, and a Master Certified Life Coach, and combines neuroscience with real-life experience to help high-achieving leaders recognize the patterns, like overcontrol, perfectionism, and people-pleasing, that quietly undermine their leadership. She hosts the globally ranked Robyn Graham Show and is the author of "You, Me, and Anxiety: Take Action Over Anxiety to Enjoy Being You."

Connect with Robyn

• Website: https://therobyngraham.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therobyngraham
• Listen to The Robyn Graham Show wherever you get your podcasts
• Book: "You, Me, and Anxiety: Take Action Over Anxiety to Enjoy Being You"

Seventeen years ago, Bobby Hoffman was stuck in traffic on a Friday night with nothing waiting for him at home but laundry. A car cut him off. He was angry enough to consider ramming it. And then he heard a question that changed the direction of his life: were you paying attention?

That was the epiphany. Bobby called his friends, told them to show up with twenty dollars each, and sent them out into the community to "break the ball of stress." What started as one night with a handful of guys became ePIFanyNow, a Mid-Michigan kindness movement now in its seventeenth year. Their first community event drew 350 people, including a biker gang nobody remembers inviting.

In this conversation, Bobby and Nicole talk about what it actually takes to turn good intentions into a movement, why kindness is not a soft skill, and why the kindest people are so often the ones who have been hurt the most.

In this episode:

• The drive-thru moment and the highway moment that sparked ePIFanyNow in 2009
• Why the name is spelled the way it is (E-P-I-F stands for Pass It Forward)
• The free venue, the phone call to the mayor, and the 350 people who showed up to the first event
• The science of kindness: why the giver, the receiver, and the witness all get the feel-good chemicals
• Bobby's answer to the "you're so Pollyanna" pushback, and where the term "soft skills" actually came from
• The difference between being nice and being kind, and why kindness can carry authority
• What Bobby does when he is the one who needs a break from kindness work
• Growing up as the bullied kid, and how that became the fuel
• Nicole shares the Botox study that explains why your face changes the room
• "Kindness changes the room before you ever say a word."

About Bobby Hoffman Bobby Hoffman spent more than two decades as Public Relations Manager at the Wharton Center for Performing Arts before founding Thought Partner Services, a people-first consultancy focused on leadership, culture, customer experience, and communication under pressure. He co-hosts FOX 47's Morning Blend, produces the weekly Good Neighbors segment, and celebrates teachers through the Michigan Lottery's Excellence in Education. He was named Michigan's 2023 Volunteer of the Year.

Connect with Bobby

• ePIFanyNow: epifanynow.com
• Thought Partner Services: thoughtpartnerservices.com
• Email: [email protected]

Quotable "It's not a soft skill. It's a missing skill in our culture right now." "Kindness changes the room before you ever say a word."

Remember, what you look for is what you see.

The Kindness Podcast with Nicole Phillips Episode: What Does Kindness Look Like When Strangers Share a Name? Guest: Phil Campbell

In 1994, a college student in the Midwest was watching Hee Haw when he learned there was a tiny town in Alabama that shared his name: Phil Campbell. He went mostly because the coincidence made him laugh, and partly because he had a girlfriend nearby. He figured it was a one-time lark. Thirty years later, it has become one of the longest emotional relationships of his life.

This week I sit down with Phil Campbell, a former journalist, memoirist, and nonprofit fundraiser whose writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harvard Review, and Columbia Journalism Review. But his résumé is not why he is here. He is here because of what happened when he started gathering up unrelated Phil Campbells from all over the world and bringing them to one small Southern town that none of them came from.

What started as a joke, a loose collection of strangers half hoping to land on Letterman, slowly turned into something none of them saw coming. In 2011, six weeks before the town's centennial reunion, a tornado tore through Phil Campbell and took twenty-six lives. The Phil Campbells came anyway, and the reason for the trip changed completely. So did everything after it.

It is a story about how kindness becomes friendship, how friendship becomes responsibility, and how a person can come to love a community he has never lived in. If you have ever felt disconnected, or wondered where on earth you would ever find your people, this conversation is for you.

Connect with Phil: Learn more about Phil and his work at philcampbellconsulting.com. His memoir, "I Come From a Family That Won't Talk About It," tells the deeper story behind what we talked about today. You can also find him on Instagram @philcampbellnyc.

If this episode moved you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it.

And remember, what you look for is what you see.