For the first time ever, Erika has a guest.

Donielle Young, known as the Grief Disruptor, lost her husband to stage four colon cancer, is raising a teenage son alone, and built an entire movement for women who refuse to disappear after loss. She is the founder of MHDS Media and the creator of the G3 Method, a framework that takes you from grief, through the grit, to the glow up.

But this isn't an interview. This is two women who know what it costs to keep going, sitting down together with no script and no performance.

They go deep on what nobody talks about: the second loss, the one that comes after the funeral. The loss of who you used to be. They talk about why grief exposes everything you were before it arrived. Why the glow up isn't a finish line. Why joy comes with guilt, and where that guilt actually comes from. And what to say to the woman whose grief nobody brought a casserole for.

This one is for every kind of loss. The death, yes. But also the divorce, the career, the identity, the version of yourself you thought you were finally becoming.

Connect with Donielle Young at https://mhdsmedia.com/

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Book: From Grief Through the Grit to the Glow Up

The lease renewal came. The rent stays the same. And Erika cried anyway.

In Episode 4 of Purpose Not Pity, Erika Hernandez gets honest about what it feels like to face losing the first home she ever chose for herself. Not out of desperation. Not for her kids. For her. And how a survival decision she made years ago, an $825 car payment that exists because she chose to feed her family instead of ask for help, might be the reason she has to walk away from it.

This episode also carries something heavier underneath it. In one week, her son Jovan would have turned 21. Erika is recording this knowing he is watching. And she is choosing to keep moving forward not because she has it all figured out, but because she owes it to his memory to not give up on her own life.

This is not a highlight reel. This is the messy, real, unfinished middle of rebuilding. For anyone who has ever had to make a decision that looked like a step back but was actually survival. For anyone who has confused their square footage with their worth.

You are not your rent. You are not your car payment. You are the one who survived the fire.

I recorded this episode four times. Did my hair. Set up the lights. Tried to make it look put together. And every single time, I deleted it.

So this is version five. No makeup. No lighting. Just me in my pajamas being honest about something I did not want to say out loud.

I am almost 46 years old. And a few weeks ago, I texted my mom to ask her to cover my rent.

In this episode, I talk about what it actually looks like to survive a hard season when you are the type of person who refuses to ask for help. The delivery apps. The savings account I emptied out. The back that gave out twice doing Instacart. And the 20 minutes I sat staring at my mom's name in my phone before I finally sent the text.

I also talk about the pressure that comes with being in your 40s, 50s, or 60s and still being in the middle of it. The shame of not being "set" by now. The lie we were handed about what this stage of life is supposed to look like. And why I am done pretending that getting through hard things looks like a 30-second montage with an uplifting song.

This one is for everyone who is white-knuckling their life right now because they are too embarrassed to need people.

You are not behind. You are just still in it.