What if some of the most important leadership in your life happened before you ever realized you were leading?

In this episode of Jam Sessions With Tina Eliana, Tina sits down with educator, editor, writing coach, and podcast host Holly Totten for a conversation about influence, storytelling, and the voices we leave behind.

Holly spent years in the classroom before bringing those lessons into her work with writers. Along the way, she discovered something that reaches far beyond teaching or editing: people are paying attention to how we show up, even when we cannot yet see the impact.

Tina and Holly explore the connection between leadership and everyday influence, why strong leaders sometimes need to step back instead of taking center stage, and what can happen when someone finally recognizes leadership qualities in themselves that others have seen all along.

Their conversation also moves into storytelling and the delicate balance between improving someone's words and editing away the very voice that makes the story theirs. For Holly, helping people preserve that voice is central to writing, legacy, and meaningful connection.

From former students who still remember lessons decades later to writers wondering whether their experiences are worth sharing, Editification is a conversation about what remains after the moment has passed.

Because influence does not require a title, and your story cannot make an impact if your voice disappears from it.

ABOUT HOLLY TOTTEN

Holly Totten is an educator, nonfiction editor, writing coach, and host of The Edit podcast. After a career spent teaching English and writing, she carried what she learned in the classroom into her work with authors, helping writers strengthen their stories without losing the voice that makes those stories uniquely theirs.

Through editing and writing coaching, Holly works with people who are ready to tell their stories, whether they need help getting started, finishing what they have begun, or shaping their words into a finished piece that still sounds like them.

For more information about Holly and her work, visit:

https://www.writelynotable.com

To learn more about Holly and this episode, visit:

jamsessionswithtinaeliana.com/holly-totten

JOIN THE JAM

Subscribe to Jam Sessions With Tina Eliana for weekly insights on intentional leadership, leadership beyond titles, professional growth, communication, self-advocacy, and the ways leadership shows up in everyday life.

To access prior episodes, listen to the Jam Sessions Jukebox, and learn more about each guest, visit:

jamsessionswithtinaeliana.com

ABOUT TINA ELIANA

Tina Eliana is a Leadership and Learning Systems Expert, author, speaker, podcast host, and community builder who helps individuals recognize the leader within themselves and helps organizations build learning and development systems that strengthen leadership across teams.

A four-time WGU graduate and WGU Alumni Ambassador, Tina is also a patient advocate for Visual Snow Syndrome, using education, storytelling, and advocacy to increase awareness and understanding.

Across her work is a simple belief:

Leadership isn’t reserved for people with titles. It lives in the influence of our everyday choices.

Grief does not stay neatly contained in one corner of our lives. It follows us into work, relationships, decisions, identity, and the moments when everyone else assumes we are “back to normal.”

But what happens when normal no longer fits?

In Episode 14 of Jam Sessions with Tina Eliana, Tina sits down with Patricia Freudenberg for a candid conversation about grief, recovery, self-worth, everyday leadership, and what it means to live forward without leaving the people we love behind.

This conversation explores questions many people carry but do not always know how to ask:

What happens when grief follows you back to work?

How can a leader or coworker support someone after a loss without avoiding the subject or forcing a conversation?

Why can simply showing up matter more than we realize?

And what if the role you have called “just” something has been leadership all along?

Tina and Patty make room for grief’s complexity: the awkwardness surrounding loss, returning to responsibilities before the heart has caught up, and the quiet power of presence. They explore legacy without turning it into a polished slogan or a demand to “move on.” How can love move forward with us while life is still being written?

Patty’s story also challenges the language of “just.” She spent years calling herself “just a hairstylist,” even while creating a safe space for people during some of their hardest moments. What influence might we be minimizing because it came without a recognized leadership title?

Whether you are grieving, supporting someone after a death, welcoming an employee back from bereavement leave, leading a team through loss, or exploring how purpose and legacy can coexist with sorrow, this episode offers a compassionate place to begin.

ABOUT PATTY FREUDENBERG

Patricia Freudenberg, known as Patty from New York, is the founder and CEO of Miss-U-Gram, a free social media app created exclusively for memorializing loved ones. She is a certified grief recovery consultant, author, speaker, entrepreneur, and host of the Live Your Legacy podcast.

With more than 33 years of entrepreneurial experience and personal experience with loss, Patty brings practical insight and warmth to grief recovery, remembrance, self-worth, purpose, and legacy. She is also the author of Live Your Legacy: A New Spin on Mourning, a guided reflection book created to help readers engage with grief without becoming overwhelmed.

Explore Patty’s story, Miss-U-Gram, Live Your Legacy, her book, and ways to connect:

https://jamsessionswithtinaeliana.com/patty-freudenberg

CONTENT NOTE

This episode discusses death, grief, bereavement, and the loss of loved ones, including the loss of a child or spouse.

Patty is a certified grief recovery consultant, not a licensed medical or mental health professional. This episode offers perspective, insight, and encouragement. It is not medical advice, mental health treatment, or a substitute for qualified professional support.

JOIN THE JAM

Subscribe to Jam Sessions With Tina Eliana for weekly insights on intentional leadership, leadership beyond titles, professional growth, communication, self-advocacy, and the ways leadership shows up in everyday life.

To access prior episodes, listen to the Jam Sessions Jukebox, and learn more about each guest, visit:

jamsessionswithtinaeliana.com

ABOUT TINA ELIANA

Tina Eliana is a Leadership and Learning Systems Expert, author, speaker, podcast host, and community builder who helps individuals recognize the leader within themselves and helps organizations build learning and development systems that strengthen leadership across teams.

A four-time WGU graduate and WGU Alumni Ambassador, Tina is also a patient advocate for Visual Snow Syndrome, using education, storytelling, and advocacy to increase awareness and understanding.

Across her work is a simple belief:

Leadership isn’t reserved for people with titles. It lives in the influence of our everyday choices.

What happens when being the person everyone depends on becomes the very thing that keeps people from seeing what else you are capable of?

And how do you know when being the go-to person is a strength, a comfort zone, or a role you may have outgrown?

In Episode 14 of Jam Sessions With Tina Eliana, host Tina Eliana sits down with Online Business Manager Chris Cushing for a candid conversation about leadership, professional identity, visibility, self-advocacy, career growth, and the complicated relationship between being needed and being valued.

Because being dependable does not automatically mean being recognized.

Chris Cushing is an Online Business Manager who helps founders step out of the operational weeds and start leading. She manages systems, projects, launches, teams, communication, follow-up, and the details that can quietly become bottlenecks.

Her work offers a unique lens for a conversation about leadership that often happens outside the spotlight.

Tina and Chris explore questions that reach beyond entrepreneurship and into workplaces, teams, and careers:

• What causes highly capable people to become known as the go-to person instead of being recognized as leaders?
• Can someone become so identified with being helpful, dependable, or needed that the role starts shaping how they see themselves?
• What is the difference between being needed and being valued?
• How much do fear, familiarity, acceptance, and other people’s expectations influence the roles we continue to play?
• What happens when everyone around you sees your capability before you fully recognize it yourself?
• How can someone begin advocating for themselves without feeling performative, arrogant, or uncomfortable?
• And if your title does not fully reflect what you actually do, how do you begin examining the gap between the two?

The conversation moves through operational leadership, workplace identity, support roles, career advancement, self-perception, professional visibility, communication, growth, and the assumptions that can form around the people everyone trusts to get things done.

It is a conversation for the reliable one, the fixer, the operations person, the behind-the-scenes leader, and anyone who has ever wondered whether being indispensable is actually moving them forward.

MEET CHRIS CUSHING

Chris Cushing’s philosophy is action over noise: clean execution, clear communication, practical systems, and consistent progress.

Learn more about Chris and connect with her:

jamsessionswithtinaeliana.com/chris-cushing

ABOUT JAM SESSIONS WITH TINA ELIANA

Jam Sessions With Tina Eliana is a leadership podcast hosted by Tina Eliana that explores intentional leadership beyond titles, positions, and organizational charts.

Here, we leave the titles at the door.

Through candid conversations across industries and lived experiences, Jam Sessions With Tina Eliana examines how people lead, influence, communicate, navigate uncertainty, and recognize their own capacity, often long before anyone officially calls them a leader.

No pedestal. No pretending.

Just meaningful conversations about how we show up, what we learn, and the influence we carry.

JOIN THE JAM

Explore prior episodes, listen to the Jam Sessions Jukebox, and learn more about the guests featured on Jam Sessions With Tina Eliana.

Visit:

jamsessionswithtinaeliana.com

ABOUT TINA ELIANA

Tina Eliana is a Leadership and Learning Systems Expert, author, speaker, podcast host, and community builder who helps people recognize the leader within themselves and helps organizations strengthen leadership.

Leadership isn’t reserved for people with titles. It lives in the influence of our everyday choices.