Twenty years ago, a life-saving scholarship brought Christina Simos through the doors of Friendly House — the first all-women's recovery home in the country. Today, she runs the whole place as CEO. In this powerful episode, Cynthia Marks sits down with Christina for a conversation about lived experience, radical equity, and reinventing what recovery can look like when it's built on love instead of rules. Christina shares her story with striking honesty — growing up inside the family disease of alcoholism, carrying generational trauma and the weight of being the "parental child," and the long, hard road that eventually led her, terrified, through the doors of the house that would change her life.

Together, she and Cynthia explore why real healing can't happen on a 28-day clock, how community and sisterhood become the ground people rebuild on, and the belief at the center of Christina's work: my healing is your liberation, and your healing is mine. They talk about the remarkable 75-year legacy of Friendly House — just four executive directors across three-quarters of a century — meeting each woman exactly where she is, and the joy Christina has reclaimed in her music, her son, and yes, even championship dodgeball. It's a story of coming full circle, and a living example of what it means to lead with love.

This is And Now Love. Listen to your dreams and live from your heart. Please follow, rate, and share the podcast, and pass this episode along to someone who might need it.

To learn more, donate, volunteer, or find help, visit Friendly House LA online. Friendly House's 75th Anniversary Celebration takes place Saturday, October 17th at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

This episode includes candid discussion of addiction and past suicidal thoughts, shared in the spirit of recovery and hope. If you or someone you love is struggling, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 by call or text at 988, and the SAMHSA National Helpline is at 1-800-662-4357.

0:41 — Welcome, Christina Simos

1:58 — Dodgeball, Music, and the Gifts That Kept Her Hopeful

3:55 — Growing Up in the Family Disease

7:20 — Finding No Escape, and Becoming Her Mother

9:45 — Walking Through the Doors of Friendly House

13:40 — Healing as Liberation and the Power of Being Seen 17:20 — 75 Years and Why 28 Days Is a Lie

21:30 — What Actually Happens at Friendly House

46:00 — Carrying the Torch and How to Help

Book link: https://www.burnbarrelpress.com/product/grey-flowers-by-suitcase-joe

Website: https://www.suitcasejoe.com/

For over a decade, the anonymous Los Angeles street photographer known only as Suitcase Joe has walked Skid Row and the fringes of the city, photographing the people the rest of the world tends to look past. In this moving episode, Cynthia Marks sits down with Joe to talk about what he's learned in that time — not just about the community he's come to love, but about himself. What began as a project to document Skid Row "for historical purposes" slowly became something far more personal, as strangers became friends, encampments started to feel like homes, and Joe's own hardwired assumptions about people quietly fell away.

Joe shares stories from the streets, including his close friendship with a man named Cricket and the complicated reality of what happens after someone finally gets housing. He reflects on the "birth lottery" that shapes so much of our lives, how following his passion pulled him out of his own darkest chapter, and the freedom he found by letting go of what society told him he was supposed to be. It's a conversation that lands, again and again, on the theme at the heart of this show: that beneath our circumstances and our trauma, we are far more alike than different — and that seeing another person with compassion can change everything. Joe's new book, City and Soul, continues that work, honoring the people who give the city its real soul.

This is And Now Love. Listen to your dreams and live from your heart. Please follow, rate, and share the podcast, and pass this episode along to someone who might need it.

You can find Suitcase Joe on Instagram @suitcasejoe and at his website, and look for his forthcoming book City and Soul, published by Beyond the Streets.

This episode includes a candid discussion of depression and past suicidal thoughts, shared in the spirit of hope and healing. If you or someone you love is struggling, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 by call or text at 988.

0:40 — Welcome, Suitcase Joe

1:50 — Wandering Into Skid Row

3:30 — These Are Their Homes: A Shift in Perspective

7:47 — The Reality of Getting Off the Streets

9:41 — Cricket: A Friendship and a Loss

14:00 — Crushow and Earning Trust on the Blocks

18:44 — The Depression That Led to Grey Flowers

28:00 — There Are No Rules to Making Art

46:00 — City and Soul and What Unites Us

What happens when everything you built your sense of security on is taken overnight? In this profoundly moving episode, Cynthia Marks welcomes Rabbi Amy Bernstein, who has weathered an extraordinarily heavy couple of years — losing her home in the Palisades Fire alongside many of her congregants, and facing a cancer diagnosis and chemotherapy soon after. As a spiritual mother to a community of hundreds of families, Amy found herself holding others through the very catastrophe she was living herself. Drawing on Dr. Bernard Bail's idea of the mother's imprint — the unconscious blueprint we inherit before we have words — she and Cynthia explore what it means when a crisis shatters that blueprint and forces us to rebuild from scratch.

At the heart of the conversation is post-traumatic growth: the surprising, science-backed truth that trauma can lead not only to suffering but to profound transformation, when we intentionally reframe the story we tell about how the world works. Amy shares what she learned traveling to Lahaina to sit with fire survivors further down the road, why community and connection became her new ground when her possessions were gone, how she's learning to hold everything more loosely, and why our culture so badly needs to honor pain — and aging — as rich and meaningful parts of being human. It's a testament to resilience, love, and the unexpected freedom that can come when we stop grasping so tightly.

This is And Now Love. Listen to your dreams and live from your heart. Please follow, rate, and share the podcast, and pass this episode along to someone who might need it.

You can find Rabbi Amy Bernstein's weekly Torah study wherever you get your podcasts, and learn more about the organization After the Fire, which supports communities recovering from wildfire.

0:38 — Welcome, Rabbi Amy Bernstein

2:38 — Holding a Community While Losing Everything

7:27 — Lessons From Lahaina and the Fire Survivors

8:26 — When the Blueprint of Security Shatters

13:08 — Holding Things Loosely

20:37 — Facing a Cancer Diagnosis and Being Seen

23:30 — Post-Traumatic Growth: Rewriting the Story

29:05 — Mortality and What Really Matters

34:00 — eSocial Media and Judging Our Insides by Others' Outsides

42:55 — Meaning vs. Happiness: We Are Meaning-Making Creatures

51:18 — The Loafers: Reinvention at Any Age