The Morning Glory Project

The Morning Glory Project

By Betsy Graziani FasbinderHealth & FitnessMental HealthEducationArtsBooksSelf-Improvement
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The Morning Glory Project episodes

  • **EXTRA BLOOMS** with Laura Davis: The Burning Light of Two Stars
    As the co-author, with Ellen Bass, of the iconic and groundbreaking book The Courage to Heal Laura Davis rode the hurricane-force that was unleashed by empowering women to talk about surviving sexual abuse, while also being catapulted to fame for the worst thing that had ever happened to her. In her new memoir, The Burning Light of Two Stars: A Mother Daughter Story Laura reveals what it was like behind the force of that hurricane and tells the intimate story of her relationship with her mother, of whom she eventually became caretaker.
    33 min
  • **EXTRA BLOOMS** with Damien Posey: Everybody is Family
    In this Extra Blooms episode, we catch up with past MGP guest, Damien Posey, an award-winning Bay Area mentor, affectionately known as Uncle Damien to his community. When the coronavirus pandemic hit and other service organizations had to shut down, the most vulnerable took the brunt, and Damien stepped up what they do every day in a big way. Now, through his organization Us4UsBayArea Damien and his team work to provide health clinics, mentorship, food services, and entrepreneur training to help and inspire others to live healthy, happy, productive lives.
    There’s not a single term that describes what Damien—known as Uncle Damien, or “Unc” in his community—means to his beloved San Francisco Bay Area community. Perhaps his six-word biography says it best: “Once a monster, now a mentor.” As a low-income young man of color in the inner city, Damien chose an all too familiar path that led him to gunfire, crime, and ultimately incarceration. In jail, he realized he’d gotten there because of choices he’d made and that he could make different ones for himself, his daughter, and his community. Now he works to help others to avoid the path he took.
    Working in concert with existing organizations and resources, Damien has worked for decades to serve the young, the old, and the vulnerable in San Francisco. Regarding every young person as his “baby” and every adult as his sister or brother, Damien never stops doing all he can to serve his “family.”
    Mayor London Breed awarded Damien the key to the city, and he holds the key to the hearts of many.
    30 min
  • Claire Hennessy: The Art of Storytelling and a Bonkers Brit
    British-born Claire Hennessy is an award-winning storyteller, producer, podcaster (The Bonkers Brit) and author. She reconnected with her first boyfriend after not seeing him for 30 years and then uprooted her entire life in England and took her two kids to live in California to marry him. She then wrote a humorous memoir about her journey and is hoping to find an agent before she is too old to go on a book tour. She recently “came out” as a comedic storyteller, performing funny, true and often embarrassing stories around the San Francisco Bay Area. She started an online storytelling show at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and co-produces Six Feet Apart Productions with longtime, successful comedian Regina Stoops. Together with her husband, Mark, they have produced over 40 online live storytelling shows. To top it off, Claire is the Morning Glory Project’s very first countess. We only hope she’ll let us borrow her tiara.
    31 min
  • Judy Temes: Girl Left Behind
    Judy Temes was just five years old when she was left by her parents seeking to escape Communist Hungary. With borders sealed in 1969, there were few options for crossing the East-West divide. Her father—a Holocaust survivor desperate to leave behind Hungary’s totalitarian government and the legacy of the Holocaust—used tourist visas to take his wife and twelve-year-old son to the West. These visas, however, came at a high price: one child would need to be left behind. Left with an antisemitic uncle in a destitute Hungarian village, five-year-old “Juditka” had to cope with not only her parent’s apparent desertion, but questions about her real identity and what it means to be a Jew. Judy documented her story in her debut memoir, Girl Left Behind. She is a former journalist, a secondary humanities teacher in Seattle, and the mother of three children.
    37 min
  • Lisa Lucca: Living True
    Lisa Lucca was enjoying what anyone might call an idyllic 1970s Midwest family life. But as an adolescent, the image of the ideal was shattered when she learned her father was gay, beginning a long journey from confusion and shame to acceptance. Lisa shares this experience in her work as a life coach and with listeners on her weekly radio talk show, Live True.
    35 min
  • **EXTRA BLOOMS** with Amy S. Peele: Turning Real Life Passion into Fictional Stories
    In our first conversation with Amy S. Peele, we focused on her newest role as a newly elected City Council member.  But this time we're chatting about how she's brought her long career in the fascinating world of organ transplantation into writing medical murder mysteries.  "A murder mystery with a mission and a side of humor" is how Amy describes her series. First CUT and now MATCH, the adventure continues. And while there's always someone murdered in each book, don't worry; as a conscientious organ transplant professional, Amy always finds a way to use their organs.
    30 min
  • Toni Gattone: Blooming for Life
    Toni Gattone fell in love with gardening in her grandfather’s backyard in Chicago, but it wasn’t until she moved to Northern California that her passion began to bloom.
    She was a Sales Executive in corporate America for seventeen years but when the gardening bug kept biting, she started a sales company selling gifts and garden products to the retail market. Twenty-eight years later, Toni closed the doors to her business so she could focus on her “encore” career as an author and speaker.
    When Toni became a Master Gardener in Marin County she started speaking on her love of gardening but her chronic bad back kept her from gardening with gusto, so she developed a seminar and wrote her book on adaptive gardening and never looked back.
    Her book, The Lifelong Gardener, Garden with Ease and Joy at Any Age, reflects Toni’s true purpose and passion: helping gardeners do what they love to do…Garden for life, in comfort, ease, and joy!
    29 min
  • Julie Ryan McGue: Twice a Daughter
    Julie Ryan McGue is an adult domestic adoptee and an identical twin. In her new memoir, Twice a Daughter, she tells the story about finding out who you are, where you come from, and making sense of it. At 48, Julie was sent for a breast biopsy, and for Julie and her twin sister, this event highlighted what they could not know about themselves due to their closed adoption. What followed was a five-year search to locate birth relatives who could provide family medical history, background, and genealogy. What began as a quest for information ends with the discovery of family, literally, right next door.
    33 min
  • Fay Darmawi: Imagine a Different World

    Fay Darmawi is a film festival producer, community development banker, and urban planner using all forms of storytelling and media to achieve social justice. She is the Founder and Executive Director of the SF Urban Film Fest, a film festival focused on civic engagement inspired by great storytelling which just completed its 7th season in February 2021, as a virtual film festival. Her 25 years of experience as a leader in affordable housing finance, as well as five years of screenwriting training, informs her community storytelling work.

    Fay wants everyone to understand how we’re impacted by urban planning in ways large and small that effect the quality as well as the duration of our lives. Everything we see all around us from the practicalities of how we live, work, and commute to issues of social justice is “by design.” People make choices about how we live together. Once you have that awareness, what are you going to do about it? How are you going to change an unjust world now that you’re conscious of it?

    If you want to see a better world, she believes it’s up to us to work together with other folks in your community and most importantly outside your community. Yes individual actions count, but you will be more effective if you work in coalitions and for the service of those who have been most harmed.

    33 min
  • Leah Lax: Uncovered
    Leah Lax is a refugee from extreme religion. Leah’s memoir Uncovered: How I Left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home is the only gay memoir ever to come out of the hasidic world. She is also the mother of seven children. Uncovered was on many “best of” lists, Susan Stamberg read it on NPR, and it is soon to be an opera by premiere American composer Lori Laitman.
    Leah’s next book project is Not From Here, about how she rediscovered America through stories told her by immigrants and refugees, and why that matters. Leah has written four major projects based on interviews with interesting people: a touring photo exhibit, a large scale opera (Houston Grand Opera), a spoken word performance piece (the Houston Symphony), and her forthcoming book.
    37 min

About The Morning Glory Project

From the publisher's feed

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,…