A SIDE OF HOPE PODCAST Stories of hope and grit: amplifying voices in human services If you are a human service professional, social worker or one in the making, you’re in the right place. We’re here to help you navigate the messiness of human services with inspiration, tools, and support.
A Side of Hope
Claim This Podcastby Side of Hope
5.0(21 reviews)
29 episodes
Updated Weekly
Accepts GuestsHas Sponsors
40
Podcast Authority
BetaPoorBased on show quality, social media presence, reviews, charts, and more
Quality46
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Engagement85
Podcast Overview
A SIDE OF HOPE PODCAST Stories of hope and grit: amplifying voices in human services If you are a human service professional, social worker or one in the making, you’re in the right place. We’re here to help you navigate the messiness of human services with inspiration, tools, and support.
Language
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Publishing Since
8/12/2024
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Quality46
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17 episodes over 1.1 years
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Recent Episodes
July 20, 2026
Beyond the Diagnosis: How Cancer Taught Us to See Hope in Hard Places
<p>Most people, when they get a cancer diagnosis, think about survival. Lauren Huffmaster did too, until she realized that surviving and living are two very different things.</p><p><br></p><p>Lauren Huffmaster is a metastatic breast cancer survivor and the founder of Adventure Therapy Foundation, where she's working to reimagine what the cancer experience can look like. Through her work as a speaker, author, and podcast host, Lauren invites others to find meaning, connection, and even joy in the midst of hardship.</p><p><br></p><p>Melanie and Lauren first connected through a shared experience of moving through life with cancer, and that shared ground gives this conversation a depth that's hard to manufacture. Lauren opens with what it actually took to learn how to live with a diagnosis that never fully resolves, and how that process became the foundation for everything she now builds for others.</p><p><br></p><p>Much of this conversation is about grief, and not in the way most of us have been trained to think about it. Lauren describes grief as something that layers through everyday life in ways people rarely stop to name: a future that no longer looks the way you imagined, an identity reorganized around a diagnosis, relationships that quietly shift or disappear. She calls these "pinpricks of grief," and makes the case that unacknowledged, they don't go away. They accumulate.</p><p><br></p><p>Melanie draws that framework directly into the human services field, particularly for families of people with disabilities who carry years of unprocessed grief that the people supporting them rarely think to address.</p><p><br></p><p>Lauren also introduces irrational optimism, kinship groups built around shared interests rather than shared diagnoses, and the story behind her children's book The Adventure Jar, written because cancer is never just one person's experience.</p><p><br></p><p>Melanie closes with a reminder that lands for anyone doing this work: people are often grieving more than we can see, and presence, the genuine kind, is the work.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Topics covered in this episode:</strong></p><ul><li>Grief beyond loss of life: identity, future plans, and relationships</li><li>What families of people with disabilities carry that often goes unaddressed</li><li>Irrational optimism and why the stories we tell ourselves matter</li><li>Kinship groups and shared interest as a path out of isolation</li><li>Asking for help when the need is long-term</li><li>Dreams, courage, and declaring what you believe in</li></ul><p><br></p><p><strong>Guest:</strong> Lauren Huffmaster, Founder, Adventure Therapy Foundation<br><strong>Host:</strong> Melanie Basil</p><p><strong>Connect with Lauren:</strong></p><ul><li>Adventure Therapy Foundation: <a href="https://adventuretherapyfoundation.org">https://adventuretherapyfoundation.org</a></li><li>Podcast — Adventure Found: <a href="https://adventurefound.org/podcast/">https://adventurefound.org/podcast/</a></li><li>Instagram: @Lauren Huffmaster | @adventuretherapyfoundation | @canceringcollective</li></ul><p><br></p><p><strong>Lauren's Books:</strong></p><ul><li>Cancering: Exploring the Seasons of Emotional Healing — <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Cancering-Exploring-Seasons-Emotional-Healing/dp/B0D6XCGMM3">https://www.amazon.com/Cancering-Exploring-Seasons-Emotional-Healing/dp/B0D6XCGMM3</a></li><li>20 Shades of Grief (contributing author) — <a href="https://www.amazon.com/20-Shades-Grief-Impacts-Experience/dp/1969864117">https://www.amazon.com/20-Shades-Grief-Impacts-Experience/dp/1969864117</a></li></ul><p><strong>Free Children's Book — </strong><strong>The Adventure Jar</strong><strong>:</strong><br><a href="https://www.expose-mbc.com/free-mbc-childrens-book">https://www.expose-mbc.com/free-mbc-childrens-book</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>More from A Side of Hope:</strong><br><a href="https://linktr.ee/sideofhopepodcast">https://linktr.ee/sideofhopepodcast</a></p><p><br></p>
July 6, 2026
Staying When Everything Says Leave
<p>There are people in human services who have been showing up for years, not because it's easy, not because the system cooperates, not because anyone is watching. This episode is about what actually keeps them there.</p><p><br>Melanie Basil is the Director of Innovation and Expansion at Compass and the host of A Side of Hope. With over 30 years in the human services field, she brings hard-won experience in direct support, leadership, and building systems that actually work for the people inside them.</p><p><br>In this solo episode, Melanie gets personal about one of the most essential qualities in human services work: grit. Not the motivational poster version. The real kind, the kind that doesn't show up on any award or go viral, but keeps people in this field doing hard things for a long time.</p><p><br>She opens with her own story of nearly failing lifeguard training as a young camp counselor who couldn't swim well, and what it meant to keep showing up anyway. From there, she connects that individual experience to what grit actually looks like in direct support work: walking alongside someone pursuing a driver's license when everyone else doubted it was possible, supporting families who are exhausted but still advocating, finding ways to serve people well in the middle of system barriers and shrinking resources.</p><p><br></p><p><br>Drawing on researcher Angela Duckworth's work, Melanie defines grit as passion and perseverance for long-term goals, and she makes the case for why that definition hits differently in human services. Outcomes here don't happen overnight. Progress is often measured in inches, not miles. The long game requires something that raw talent and good intentions can't fully sustain.</p><p><br>She also introduces the concept of "loaned grit," the idea that when the people we support lose hope, we hold it for them until they can hold it themselves. It's a reminder worth sitting with.</p><p><br>Melanie closes with a direct challenge to listeners: grit should never mean running yourself into the ground. Healthy grit includes support, boundaries, and sustainability. Just because someone can keep going doesn't mean we should keep asking them to.</p><p><br>Topics covered in this episode:</p><ul><li>The difference between grit, talent, and luck</li><li>Angela Duckworth's research on grit as a predictor of success</li><li>What grit looks like on the ground in direct support work</li><li>"Loaned grit" and holding hope for someone else</li><li>The GRIT acronym: Guts, Resilience, Initiative, and Tenacity</li><li>Why grit without support can become burnout</li><li>How Melanie uses grit as a lens in hiring and developing people</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Host: Melanie Basil, Director of Innovation and Expansion, Compass</p><p><br>Referenced in this episode:<br>Angela Duckworth — Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (book and TED Talk)<br>Simon Sinek — concept of the "infinite game"<br>More from A Side of Hope:<br><a href="https://linktr.ee/sideofhopepodcast" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://linktr.ee/sideofhopepodcast</a></p>
June 22, 2026
The Whirlwind Isn't Going Away. Here's How to Lead Inside It.
<p>If you lead in human services, your day probably started with a plan. And then reality showed up. This episode is about building leadership structures that can hold up inside that reality, not in spite of it.</p><p><br>Sunil Bhaskaran is a global community builder and the founder of Global Business Mastermind, where he helps entrepreneurs grow their reach and impact. With a network of over 200,000 business owners across the world, Sunil brings a perspective on systems, accountability, and intentional leadership that translates directly into the pressures human service leaders face every day.</p><p><br>This episode is part of a mini series drawn from a longer conversation between Melanie and Sunil. If you've ever had a plan at the start of the day that was gone within the first hour, this one was made for you.</p><p><br>Melanie and Sunil dig into the reality that overwhelm in human services isn't always about volume. A lot of it comes from invisibility: tasks that aren't named, tracked, or scheduled end up living in your nervous system instead of on a list. That low-level pressure doesn't clock out when you do.<br>Sunil introduces the concept of workflows, not the assembly-line kind, but simple, reliable systems that let important things happen without depending on memory or heroics. In human services especially, where so much of the work is relational and urgent, having a clear path for things like onboarding new staff, responding to family concerns, or moving an incident report from discovery to follow-through isn't cold or bureaucratic. It protects people.</p><p><br>Melanie gets honest about her own relationship with calendaring, including the irritation she felt when Compass leadership started blocking intentional deep work time and it suddenly became harder to get on their calendars. What she came to understand was that protecting capacity isn't selfish. It's how leaders stay present, creative, and emotionally available over the long run.</p><p><br>Sunil's concept of "joyful calendaring" sounds unrealistic at first. Melanie thought so too. But the practice is more straightforward than it sounds: 15 minutes for triage in the morning, actual transition time between meetings, and stopping the habit of treating blank calendar space as open availability.</p><p><br>The episode closes with a practical exercise around promises, naming them clearly, labeling which ones feel empowering versus burdensome, and rewriting the ones that are weighing you down into something more specific and manageable.<br>Topics covered in this episode:<br></p><ul><li>Why overwhelm is often about invisibility, not just volume</li><li>What workflows actually are and why they matter in human services</li><li>How unclear systems push leaders toward "personal heroics" and poor boundaries</li><li>Melanie's story of onboarding a new supervisor with no documented systems in place</li><li>The "joyful calendar" concept and how to start practicing it</li><li>Protecting capacity as a form of leadership stewardship</li><li>A practical exercise for naming and rewriting the promises you're carrying</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Connect with Sunil Bhaskaran:<br>Website: <a href="https://sunilbhaskaran.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://sunilbhaskaran.com</a><br>LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunilbhaskaranspeaker/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunilbhaskaranspeaker/</a><br>Book: More Money, More Time, Less Stress — <a href="https://www.amazon.com/More-Money-Time-Less-Stress/dp/1490408940" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.amazon.com/More-Money-Time-Less-Stress/dp/1490408940</a><br>Catch Sunil on the Compass Time Capsule Podcast — "The Early Guides Toward Greatness":<br>Spotify: <a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/3t4qrJ06oLI74WuctYcDuz?si=3Bvvgr7BTnGWvLn1C0rP9A" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://open.spotify.com/episode/3t4qrJ06oLI74WuctYcDuz?si=3Bvvgr7BTnGWvLn1C0rP9A</a><br>Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-early-guides-toward-greatness/id1829765091?i=1000735311107" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-early-guides-toward-greatness/id1829765091?i=1000735311107</a><br>Amazon Music: <a href="https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/362abef2-ea9e-4302-b229-632803d85abf/episodes/9349a760-ab00-43c5-b1b7-f08834753f42/compass-time-capsule-the-early-guides-toward-greatness" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/362abef2-ea9e-4302-b229-632803d85abf/episodes/9349a760-ab00-43c5-b1b7-f08834753f42/compass-time-capsule-the-early-guides-toward-greatness</a><br>Book referenced:<br>The Four Disciplines of Execution by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling</p><p><br>More from A Side of Hope:<br><a href="https://linktr.ee/sideofhopepodcast" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://linktr.ee/sideofhopepodcast</a></p>
29 total episodes available
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