Welcome to Come To The Brink. I’m Zoë Flowers.

On today’s show, we’re diving deep into the realities of caregiving, emotional abuse, and the complex grief that comes from losing loved ones in more ways than one. My guest today is the dynamic and compassionate Sherri Pullum, award-winning storyteller, artist, producer, and wellness coach, who courageously uses her art and advocacy to foster healing, self-awareness, and resilience.

Sherri knows intimately the profound challenges of caring for an ailing parent—her beloved mother experienced a debilitating stroke—and simultaneously navigating the painful breakdown of a nearly 30-year marriage marked by emotional abuse and alcoholism.

Music Inspiration by Chaka Khan

Welcome to Come To The Brink. I’m Zoë Flowers—and this is where we gather to talk about the kinds of grief that don’t fit neatly into a funeral or a diagnosis.

Today, I’m sitting down with someone I deeply respect. Monica Martinez is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with nearly two decades of experience holding space for survivors of trauma, interpersonal violence, and generational harm. She’s worked in shelters, research programs, and private practice—and through it all, she’s been a caregiver, a truth-teller, and a bridge between cultures, systems, and silence.

We’re talking about how grief shows up in Latinx communities. What it means to care for your aging parent while also tending to the wounds of a community. What trauma looks like—and what healing might look like, too.

This is a conversation about thresholds. And the people who hold them.

Music Inspiration- Where is My Mind?-The Pixies

Welcome to Come to the Brink w/ Zoe Flowers. This is the space where we talk about the moments that shake us, the losses that reshape us, and the wisdom we gather along the way.

There is no quick fix to trauma.

Music Inspo-Losing My Religion By REM

Welcome back to Come to the Brink. I’m your host, Zoë Flowers. Thank you for being here, for following, for sharing, for walking this path with me. This podcast is a love note for those of us navigating the in-between—the space between breakdown and breakthrough, between grief and grace. And today's conversation is exactly that: a doorway into what happens when the body starts to speak and we’re finally ready to listen.

Today’s episode is one of those conversations that takes us beneath the surface—into the unseen, the unspoken, and the deeply spiritual.

On today's show, I’m joined by the incredible Shanda Domango—a trained dancer, choreographer, medium, and creator of Healing Movement, a somatic, ancestral, and spiritual healing modality born from her journey through loss, pregnancy, and awakening.

Shanda thought she knew her body. After all, she’d trained it, taught it, and used it to build a career in movement and fitness. But when she became pregnant, something shifted..Guided by a family friend and medium, Minister Esprit, Shanda began studying chakra-based and ancestral healing.

Music Inspo-Break On Through by The Doors

Welcome to Come to the Brink w/ Zoë Flowers!!

This is a space for those of us navigating profound life changes—loss, trauma, caregiving, and transformation It’s about the moment or moments when everything we thought was solid crumbles, and we are forced to rebuild.

What happens when you find out your mother is facilitating your abuse?

In this episode, I talk with the Author of The Invention of Elle Jae about healing from the ultimate betrayal.

Join me every Tuesday as I talk with caretakers, therapists, artists, authors, community leaders, and healers because none of us should be standing on the brink alone!!

Music Inspiration Survivor by Destiny's Child

Welcome to Come to the Brink w/ Zoe Flowers, the space where we talk about navigating life’s hardest transitions—loss, transformation, and the beauty that can emerge from the wreckage.

Today, I'm inviting you to step into the world of art, music, and ancestral power with me and Baba Marcus Ṣàngódoyin Akinlana—artist, musician, spiritual warrior, and a keeper of culture in Bulbancha (aka Nouvelle Orleans).

Today, we’re talking about holding a community’s grief without losing ourselves, how music, arts, and culture have been medicine and why working with our ancestors is not just important—but necessary.

Music Inspo..."Family Affair" Sly & The Family Stone

Baba Marcus Ṣàngódoyin Akinlana materialized in this world in the 1960s during the sublimely Divine year of the ferocious Black Panther. Upon arrival, he surveyed this beautiful green and blue planet and said " Ahaaa, let me feel the Funk BEBÉ!!!" From then on he began to sink his claws into the funk to lavish the world with his Afreecentric Art, Music, Self-Defense Modalities, and Jujupower Òrìṣà Vudu Inspired Living and to be lavished in return.....

Today, Baba Akinlana draws superpowers of creativity from his beloved community and his sacred EGUN {Ancestors} from the Bayous of Bulbancha {aka Nouvelle Orleans} and beyond so he can help bring the unmitigated funktafied creative spice of life to the beautiful masses.

Ya digg?

http://www.akinlana.com

https://www.akinlana.com/bulbancha-rise-up

Welcome to Come to the Brink w/Zoe Flowers. This is the space where we talk about navigating profound life transitions—the moments that shake us, the endings we never expected, and the ways we find our way forward.

Today, I’m sitting down with someone who knows a thing or two about reinvention. Jarvis Antonio Green is a stage director, producer, and cultural worker based in montréal. He is the founder and former producing artistic director of jag productions, a Vermont and NYC-based company dedicated to creating spaces for Black and queer storytelling in the American theatre. during his tenure at JAG, he directed and produced acclaimed productions including Choir Boy, Next to Normal, Fences, and Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, and launched Jagfest, a new works festival for Black playwrights.

After years of incredible work, he closed JAG in June 2024, months later, his beloved dog passed, and then his long-term relationship ended that September.

Jarvis and I are going to talk about what happens when life demands we let go. How do we move through grief and transition? And how do we trust the new beginning waiting on the other side?

We’re going to talk about all of it—mourning what was, trusting what’s next, and the slow process of stepping into a new version of yourself.

Music Inspiration is "Break My Soul" by Beyonce

links to crisis lines..because none of us should be on the brink alone!

https://findahelpline.com/countries/us/topics/grief-loss

https://www.crisistextline.org

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In this episode, I talked with Granddaughter Crow about the grief of holding multiple identities in one body, especially when those identities include conflict, colonization, and attempted erasure.

Music inspo-The Crossroads, BonesThugs-n-Harmony

Granddaughter Crow is a medicine woman, public speaker, teacher, intuitive reader, and author of Wisdom of the Natural World. Descended from a long line of spiritual leaders, she is an empath, medium, and member of the Navajo Nation. She was voted Woman of the Year in 2015 by the National Association of Professional Women (NAPW).