Welcome back to This Person I Met! My name is Kayla, and I’m the host of this podcast.

On my first snow day of the season, I drove 30 minutes to Ele’s Place, braving the iced highways to sit with Uzochi Nwauwa. Uzo, the bereavement coordinator for Ele’s Place, talked to me for nearly an hour about a topic that many, including me, shut our ears to: grief and death.

Ele’s Place was founded by Betsy Stover and her husband following the death of their daughter, known as Ele. The organization was created in the interest of youth dealing with grief and the concept of death, an idea that many young minds have yet to truly define and absorb. Death is the thing that we do not talk about. It’s “passing away,” “kicking the bucket,” “biting the dust,” but it truly is just what it is. Dying.

In this episode, Uzo talks about how grief differs from person to person, and specifically how it affects children. She is blunt about death and how to go about helping those dealing with grief, those existing on, as she said, “a completely different timeline” as those that are not. The world moves on when a loved one dies, but how do you move with it when the one who you loved is no longer in the same world that is still pushing forward? What does existing in this new timeline without them look like? And to a child, what does this feel like, and how can we support those who have yet to formulate even the idea of death?

Due to the length of our conversation, this will be the first of two episodes dedicated to Uzo and her work. Without further ado, here’s Uzo.

Welcome back to This Person I Met! My name is Kayla, and I'm the host of this podcast.

Jaenika, like many others in the Delonis shelter in Washtenaw County and shelters around the country, never had a chance to run from unstable housing because she was born into it. The homeless issue within the United States has only grown since the pandemic, surging to record highs in 2024 of around 770,000 homeless persons in the country.

When I first saw Jaenika coming through the door to the interview room, I noticed she had a notepad full of notes she had taken to prepare and was ready by the first question, which surprised me, because most interviewees came empty handed except for the experts. She looked well put together and proper. She mentioned holding jobs in the medical field and having children who went to good universities and who had successful families of their own. To me, she seemed like a regular person I might meet at the supermarket. And yet, her story reverberated the simple message of empathy in a raw way that I admittedly have never truly opened myself up to to hear in such a light, and her words begged that humanity choose to be kind, to listen to others, and to help those who were never given the opportunity to help themselves.

After our interview, I continued my conversation with Jaenika and I asked her if there was anything else people like me could do to help. She told me to listen. To see with my own eyes the struggle of others, and to hear the stories of those less fortunate. To give warmth not just through blankets and donations of food, but empathy. The simplest and most seemingly obvious answer that has been drilled into us since we were kids, one that we as a society have yet to embrace as not just a concept, but a necessity.

Welcome back to This Person I Met! My name is Kayla, and I'm the host of this podcast.

As you may have inferred from the title, this is the second part of "The Business of Being," our segment dedicated to a certain member of Unlock Highest Dimension, a nonprofit for "gathering people with spirit gifts around the world and opening their connection with the high dimensional wisdom of the Universe so they can complete their calling and return to the N-dimensional Universe," as stated in their mission statement.

In this episode, we continue out conversation on the necessities of such an organization in a time where it seems as if modern beliefs trump spiritual ones and dive into the intricacies of both managing and enjoying being part of such an organization.

This will be the final part of her story, closing off this unique segment.