Show Transcript

0:00:01 - (Kevin Lowe): You remember those days back when you were a kid, when time moved a little bit slower, when the day seemed a little bit longer and you loved nothing more than being outside, laying in the grass, staring up at the sky, watching the planes fly overhead. Or maybe it was staring up at those big, puffy white clouds, picking out the animals that they resembled, or the castles, whatever your imagination could create.

0:00:27 - (Kevin Lowe): Now, with that feeling, with that memory, I want to paint a picture for you. You're just a child with the boundless freedom of growing up on a horse ranch in the remote part of Colorado. Your biggest canvas, it's the sprawling meadows. Your dreams, they fly as high as the eye can see as you stare up at that crystal blue sky. Cheryl Hunter, she was this girl. She was this girl with a taste of adventure for dreaming of what was out there, who was in those planes flying overhead.

0:01:05 - (Kevin Lowe): And, well, she dreamed of being in that plane one day. But then, of course, there comes a point in everyone's story when those untamed dreams that we have as a child, they meet the dark realities of life. They intertwined with the shadows that we never even knew existed back when we were just an innocent child staring up at the sky, dreaming of what the future may look like. You are about to be taken on a journey from the depths of despair to the heights of healing and empowerment.

0:01:42 - (Kevin Lowe): I ask you to join me as today's guest, Cheryl Hunter, shares her story. And it's one of resilience. It's one of the human spirits thrive to survive, both mentally and physically. This is a story about finding light in the darkest of places. And it's about emerging not just unbroken, but unbound. My friend, I welcome you to episode 278. What's up, my friend? And welcome to Grit, grace, and inspiration.

0:02:16 - (Kevin Lowe): I am your host, Kevin Lowe. 20 years ago, I awoke from a life saving surgery only to find that I was left completely blind. And since that day, I've learned a lot about life, a lot about living, and a lot about myself. And here on this podcast, I want to share those insights with you. Because, friend, if you are still searching for your purpose, still trying to understand why or still left searching for that next right path to take, will consider this to be your stepping stone to get you from where you are to where you want to be in today's world. With today's economy, you tell me what you can buy for only $25.

0:02:58 - (Kevin Lowe): If you said not a whole lot, well, then, baby, today is your lucky day. Because today I'm about to introduce you to the dollar 25 extravaganza brought to you by our amazing sponsor, mypillow. With this $25 extravaganza, you can get all of the following for just $25. Their two pack of the multi use mypillows, just $25. What about those mypillow sandals? Yup, those too. Just $25. Their six pack towel set, thats also on the list.

0:03:35 - (Kevin Lowe): And well, you gotta dry off your dishes, so you might as well grab their four pack of dish towels. Also just $25. And of course, for the first time ever, their Giza premium mypillow. Any loft, any size, even king. Just $25. My friend. All you have to do is use promo code Kevin. Again, that is promo code Kevin when you go shopping@mypillow.com. And listen, in case shopping online isn't so easy and you'd rather just give them a call.

0:04:10 - (Kevin Lowe): Well check out today's show note because I'm going to leave the 1800 number that will automatically apply the promo code Kevin, so you can just give them a call and get your order placed. My friend. Get shopping today with the dollar 25 extravaganza.

0:04:29 - (Cheryl Hunter): I grew up on a horse ride in the remote rockies of Colorado. Oh, wow. It was, oh, Kevin, it was heaven as a child. I mean, I just, I spent my childhood atop a horse. I would literally do homework after school, sitting on top of my horse. I would face backward, make his big rump my desk, and just sit up there for hours. And it was so much fun. I would go out in the meadow. He'd graze. No matter what time of year, there's always a little bit of alfalfa, generally. Or I'd throw a pile down for him or some grain or something.

0:05:04 - (Cheryl Hunter): He'd be content to just hang out there and just to hang out there in the meadow. And it was wonderful until I got older and I became a young teenager and I thought, good grief, I want to go the places I've read about and seen in movies or heard about. I would love to meet people that I'm not related to by blood. That would be the big dream. Someplace where perhaps they wore anything other than roper boots and bootcut wranglers.

0:05:39 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah.

0:05:42 - (Cheryl Hunter): Weren't always covered in dung. You know, I thought, golly, the big city where people dress much more nicely than they do here on the ranch, any place like that. We were truly in the flyover zone. And as I used to lie on my back in the meadows or sitting atop my horse, I would look up at the planes flying by and think, man, I want to be the girl in the plane looking down at the girl lying here on the ground.

0:06:11 - (Cheryl Hunter): If I were, though, in order to be the girl on the plane, you know, the one going somewhere, the one going places, I'd have to have something I could do for people, and all I know how to do, really, is ride horses and train horses, and I'm definitely not the best at that. People that I learned from, so that's out. I got to figure something that I could do that I could give people.

0:06:35 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah.

0:06:36 - (Cheryl Hunter): And that's kind of where it started. It's just like, well, I'll figure that out if I can just get out into the big city.

0:06:42 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Such the. Such the typical, I believe, kind of situation for so many of us as kids. Like. Like, you feel like you're stuck in that same little small town, and you just want to experience the world, yet you're just a kid, so you can't, and you dream of the day that you can.

0:07:02 - (Cheryl Hunter): Right. Anywhere but here. It kind of feels like anything. But this would be great.

0:07:09 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely.

0:07:11 - (Cheryl Hunter): There. I grew up near, not in, but near Rye, Colorado, it was called. And I mean teeny tiny, you know, one street corner, and it was 20 minutes from where we lived out in. In the middle of nowhere. But I used to look at maps and go, oh, there's a. There's a rye in New York and a rye in England. Boy, somewhere there's civilization with the same name. It's just funny how we long for something else other than what we've got, right?

0:07:45 - (Kevin Lowe): Yes, absolutely. Now, did you guys ever do any vacations growing up?

0:07:52 - (Cheryl Hunter): We did, and I got to see enough of the world that I thought, oh, this is. I am definitely going. I am built for a big city. And it's funny. Now, anecdotally, I'm like, oh, can I just get back to where it's quiet? But at the time, it was just like, it's all happening somewhere without me. It's definitely not all happening here, but somewhere. There's civilization in life, and I've just got to figure out how to get there.

0:08:20 - (Cheryl Hunter): And one day, I played hooky, hopped on my mini bike, and rode to the nearest town that had a store of any kind. And I picked up a glamour magazine because I thought, you know, I'm a teenage girl. And it was like, I thought, they're bound to have some life advice in there and career advice for my lifetime moving forward. It was the best idea I had as a young teen girl. And they talked about models and that the fact that they always need them.

0:08:51 - (Cheryl Hunter): And I thought, wow, there's no way my parents could argue with the fact that there's no need for models anywhere near Rye, Colorado. So that's going to be the thing I'm going to go for. I was already on the boys basketball team. I was tall enough. I figured, this is going to be the thing that's going to get me to the big city. Crazily enough, my parents, who were in the midst of divorcing, just somehow said okay to the cockamamie scheme.

0:09:21 - (Cheryl Hunter): I talked my best friend, we worked several jobs, got enough, saved enough money to go to Europe, where I figured that's where they must need models. I guess that's where fashion comes from, right? And no sooner did we get to France than a man with this big fancy camera around his neck. It was the day before, days before, cell phone photos, right? But he walked up and said, hey, are you a model? I can make you one. Just come with me and my friend over there, this really big, tall man. Now, I thought, God, that's probably not the smartest idea, but hey, I'm a ranch raised, strong, smart, savvy girl. I know how to wrestle a steer and drive a tractor.

0:10:02 - (Cheryl Hunter): I'll figure it out. Turns out that my figure it out ness, my strength and savvy that I was so certain I had, which had never been tested, were no match for these criminals drugged me, took me to what was probably an abandoned construction site. It was undone and just raw cement and sheets of plastic hanging everywhere. And you can fill in the gory details with your mind. They held me captive. They brutalized me, they tortured me.

0:10:33 - (Cheryl Hunter): All of this. And then eventually, for Lord only knows what reason, they decided to let me go. And they just dumped me out of the car, pushed me out of the car on this little grassy piece of land, and I laid there pretending to be dead until they drove away. And the whole time that I was there and captive by them, I thought, I only need to get free. That is my one and only one objective. I must get free.

0:11:11 - (Cheryl Hunter): And I was lying there bargaining with God. If you let me go, I will be a better person. I won't talk back to my parents when my grandma tries to hold my hand, as she would often do at the mall or someplace in public, and I was mortified as a teenager, but I will hold her hand back. I won't boss my brother and sister around. I'll be nice to them. And I bargained. I just kept bargaining with God, please let me be free.

0:11:42 - (Cheryl Hunter): And there I was, Kevin free. And that's when the real captivity began. I couldn't get the thoughts out of my mind of what had happened, of what I'd endured, of the plans and strategies to get back at these men, somehow make them pay for what they had done. I would walk by every person just randomly on the street and think that they were bad and out to get me. I mean, it was. I was captive in a whole new way between my ears, and I finally had a very serious conversation with myself and said, I cannot continue like this. Life was hell.

0:12:23 - (Cheryl Hunter): Not like the kind of hell they talked about in my grandma's very doom and gloom church, where it was, you know, it was, it was fire and brimstone in the extreme. And I thought, you know, that hell isn't that hell is right now on earth?

0:12:38 - (Kevin Lowe): Yes. Wow. So did they use probably something like the date rape drug like that. You were knocked out.

0:12:46 - (Cheryl Hunter): I don't know what it was. They asked me if I wanted wine. I thought, foolishly, that we were going when I went to meet them, that we were going to shoot photos. They said, have some wine, loosen up. And I said, no, no, I want to be my best for the photos. Oh, don't be such an american. Oh. So I had wine, sauvignon blanc. I mean, I was so naive. I just, I thought, oh, God, that's so fancy, you know? And the next thing I know, I'm like a dog sitting in the front seat of a car with my head halfway out the window.

0:13:25 - (Cheryl Hunter): My tongue is out and I'm drooling, and I'm like, uh oh, this. This isn't good. But every time I had a lucid moment, I would ask, when are we going to shoot the photos? Thinking that they were actually going to make me a model. When are we going to shoot the photos? And then, ironically, you know, when he finally did push me out onto the ground, he says, darling, like I'm his girlfriend or some damn thing. And I look back over my shoulder, and he starts shooting the photos of me lying there on the ground just bloody. And he cut my hair off. I mean, like, what a sadistic, horrible person.

0:14:08 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow.

0:14:10 - (Cheryl Hunter): There I am, captive, right in my head. And I thought, okay, I am not the first person to go through something bad, something unplanned, something that I didn't choose. There have been people who've gone through way worse. Where do I find these people? How do I learn from them? I didn't want to read a book that seemed too passive for what I needed. The voices in my head, so to speak. That internal dialogue seemed too loud.

0:14:40 - (Cheryl Hunter): I wanted something, an active way to. To free myself and figure out how to overcome. I started volunteering at old age homes, prompted by my mother. When I'd said, I feel so depressed now. I never told Daria. I never told anybody what had happened. I just didn't. I didn't. I thought they'd make me go back to the ranch. And I thought, oh, my God, I will literally die if I have to go back there and be sequestered and apart from people and just left in my own head and thoughts, I can't do it. And I said to my mom, I'm depressed. And she said, well, I don't know what you're dealing with, but there's this saying that if we're struggling, there's always somebody who's got it worse. Find those people, help those people.

0:15:25 - (Cheryl Hunter): And I thought, well, God, the way we seem to discard elderly people in this country, I feel like I've got no future and I'm messed up in the head. They feel like they've got no future and they're messed up in the head. At least people listen to young people. Sometimes they don't listen to old people. And so I went and started volunteering at elder care facilities. And just at first, all I did was just sit and listen. And, boy, they wanted to talk. And it was fantastic.

0:15:54 - (Cheryl Hunter): It was a true win win, Kevin. They got to talk and I didn't have to listen to the angry chatter in my head. And eventually I thought, wow, these people have been through a lot. War vets, Holocaust survivors, people who'd been through unthinkable tragedy, and some of them had overcome and lived happy, productive, fruitful lives. And others, understandably, were bitter and hardened. And I made it my job to figure out why.

0:16:23 - (Cheryl Hunter): And I used what they had given me. I turned it into a framework and I used it, and it really was helpful. And I wanted to give it away to other people so that they could overcome adversity.

0:16:38 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. Wow, wow, wow. I have two quick questions. How long did they hold you captive for?

0:16:48 - (Cheryl Hunter): It was a few days.

0:16:51 - (Kevin Lowe): When they let you go, did you jump right back on a plane and fly home?

0:16:57 - (Cheryl Hunter): I did not. I first went to find my friend, who was understandably infuriated, and started to shout. Now, the ringleader had followed me, so I ran as fast as I could and I went to the hostel where we were staying. She started shouting. I held my hand over her mouth and said, don't make a sound. Grab everything you can and let's go. And we went to the train station and got on the first train. It didn't matter where it was going.

0:17:31 - (Cheryl Hunter): We just got on a train. It happened to be going to Italy, but it didn't matter. We just had to get out of there. I left half of my stuff now I was a teenager, so I had overpacked dramatically, but I left half of my stuff. That was that we got on a train.

0:17:45 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Wow. The last thing that I just wanted to say that I couldn't help but. But see this, this cruel irony and the fact that as a child, you, you sat watching the airplanes and you wanted to escape. You. You wanted out of there. You felt captive, in a sense, and then you finally got the opportunity and you were immediately held captive again, just in a new way. And I can't help but think, wow, what cruel irony that is.

0:18:22 - (Cheryl Hunter): I mean, I like to look at the universality of these things. I'm not the first person to ever have experienced, quote, captivity. Right. We get captive to a dream, a relationship that's not working out well, a job that similarly is not going well. I mean, in a positive spin, we can't, like I said, a dream we could be captive to. I can't think about anything else than my dream, whether it's an individual dream for myself, for my children, my family, what have you.

0:18:57 - (Cheryl Hunter): That's a common phenomenon, I think, which is why it recurred, yes, in France. And I'm not pretending that everybody's kidnapped. But then once I was free, there was another kind of captivity, the captivity of the thoughts occurring in my own head. And then I declared, once I'd come up with this educational framework to overcome adversity, it really worked on me. And then I started giving it away to other survivors, the survivors of violent crime, sexual assault, trafficking. I started there, and it really worked in an extraordinarily powerful way with them as well. And I thought, man, this is my purpose, to help people overcome adversity. Because every time I do, it makes it worth it, what I went through, every time I liberate somebody else.

0:19:51 - (Cheryl Hunter): And so, in a way, Kevin, I then became captive to a dream. I mean, it's a conscious declaration, so to speak, of captivity. And I'm turning the phrase in some way and repurposing captivity rather than as a negative, as a, as a positive. Like, look, if captivity is a recurring phenomenon, I may as well use it to my advantage and declare I'm going to be held by this dream, this vision, this commitment this purpose and held captive to it, rather than held captive to the constraints of the past?

0:20:31 - (Kevin Lowe): Yes. No, it makes total sense. When you started coming up with this framework and you talked about starting to talk with people and helping people, were you sharing your own story of what happened, of how you came up with this framework, or.

0:20:50 - (Cheryl Hunter): No, not at all. Now, there were several things I did to overcome the impact of the trauma of the kidnapping. One was I started volunteering at old age homes, and then ultimately took what I learned, codified it, and made it into an educational framework to overcome adversity. One of the other things that I was doing was I started taking personal development seminars and programs. And ultimately, once I had taken everything there was that I could find available, I became trained to lead these programs.

0:21:25 - (Cheryl Hunter): And ultimately, just because I wanted more, I felt so much better when I was in that conversation. And there. And ultimately, I led programs for hundreds of thousands of people. And then simultaneously, one of the things I did initially that felt liberating to me was I started putting my thoughts on paper and then started writing stories and creating all kinds of stories and ideas for shows and plays and tv shows and movies.

0:21:58 - (Cheryl Hunter): And by the grace of God, I sold them my original television shows and theater plays. I had them developed by HBO and NBC and Fox, and ended up selling several things, some on my own, some with a partner. And so my day job was writing tv, and I'd never told anybody that I'd gone through this kidnapping. I just had this thing that I did on the side where I helped people overcome trauma, and I would lead these seminars just as a volunteer. I didn't want it to be my full time job that was writing, but all these things that I was doing kind of coalesced in a way. And I thought, okay, working in major media, I can see the power that major media has to alter and shape the collective conversations that we're having, you know, like, kevin water cooler moments where everyone's talking about the same thing.

0:22:56 - (Cheryl Hunter): And I was leading these personal development programs and seeing God, the power of transformation is remarkable. We really can't overcome anything. And then my own education that I created, I was seeing it happen in these survivors of violent, horrible crime. And I thought, man, if I could get my education out through major media somehow and let the world know that it's possible to overcome any adversity and, in fact, be better for it, man, that would change the world.

0:23:31 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow, wow, wow. When did you finally open up and share your story?

0:23:38 - (Cheryl Hunter): I was leading these personal development seminars and finally did it there but simultaneously, I was now on this mission of, I'm going to get my message and this work about overcoming adversity out to the world. And I was connected because I worked in tv, but I. I was struggling for years. I couldn't get myself on media, and it didn't make any darn sense. I had something really valuable to offer and I was connected.

0:24:06 - (Cheryl Hunter): How hard could it be right now? And cut to. It took me over a decade to finally do that. But as I was leading one of these seminars one night, we were doing an exercise on forgiveness, and I came out up front and said, we can forgive anything. And a few people grumbled. And one woman really started waving her hand and said, no, we can't forgive anything. There was a microphone at the front of the room and she ran up there and spoke her story about the atrocities that she and her family had faced.

0:24:41 - (Cheryl Hunter): And the room was starting to turn. Now, I'd been with these people on and off for years, and for the first time, I was about to lose the room. This man stood up, threw his notebooks down and said, this is B's. And he stormed out of the room. And I thought, not only am I going to lose the room, but they're going to miss this massively valuable insight about forgiveness, that it's not about setting them free, per se, it's about setting yourself free.

0:25:10 - (Cheryl Hunter): And it doesn't mean that you condone what they did or agree with it or say, hey, do it again. It's just that you choose peace over resentment. It's an entirely different state than, oh, hey, yeah, I'll tolerate what you did. It's not that. And I wanted them to understand that. And I had this conversation with myself and said, what are you doing holding this in? You are no longer a child. You are no longer a scared teenager running for your life. And I just blurted it out and shared for the first time with any human being.

0:25:44 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow, wow, wow, wow. Talking about forgiveness, did you come to a point either before this or after this, that you were able to forgive those who did that to you?

0:25:58 - (Cheryl Hunter): Oh, absolutely. I had. I had done it beforehand, which is why I knew the potency and power, the grace of forgiveness. To me, it just. It felt like. I don't mean this to be blasphemous in any way, I mean it to be devotional, but it was the closest I could be to being christlike, was to forgive them.

0:26:25 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah.

0:26:26 - (Cheryl Hunter): For that which they had done.

0:26:28 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. I can understand exactly what you mean. The fact of my own, my own life, my own story.

0:26:35 - (Cheryl Hunter): Yes.

0:26:35 - (Kevin Lowe): There was a person who I swore I would never forgive what he did to my family. I swore I would never do it. And everybody kept telling me that I had to forgive him. And I said, no, no, I won't. And one day, it was the middle of the afternoon, I'm in the kitchen cutting up a grapefruit, and my faith is a big part of me and my journey. And all of a sudden, while cutting out that grapefruit, I forgave that person.

0:27:05 - (Kevin Lowe): And I spoke it out loud, and I began just crying, because it wasn't just me talking. It was God, the Holy Spirit, talking through me. And I'll tell you what, there's nothing that can set you free more than being able to forgive.

0:27:21 - (Cheryl Hunter): Amen to that.

0:27:22 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah.

0:27:23 - (Cheryl Hunter): Kevin, that's so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that.

0:27:27 - (Kevin Lowe): Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. So my question is, is you're at this point, and I. And I would love to back up a little bit and understand how do you go from this small, little town in Colorado to all of a sudden having stories picked up from movies? For now, with these, you get into the personal development scene, you're leaving these rooms. Like, how did that even happen?

0:28:01 - (Cheryl Hunter): Well, I never went back to the horse ranch. I was like, you know what, dad gum it. All this happened with my dream of being in the big city and the idiotic idea I had to be a model. Now, I didn't care about being a model for being a model's sake. I mean, you just basically a human mannequin, you know? But I said, I'm going to do that because that will let me live in the big city and stay here. And so I actually became a model, and I was very successful at it.

0:28:34 - (Cheryl Hunter): I was the worldwide Coca Cola girl, for Pete's sakes. I mean, it was like, who cares? In one regard? But it felt like a victory in the face of what had happened in France. It felt like a true triumph to me. And all along, I had been doing the writing and creating these stories. I hadn't started doing live plays or anything for a few years, but I was volunteering with the elderly people and living all over the world and modeling. And eventually I settled in Los Angeles and in one of the beach communities, and that's where it all kind of came together.

0:29:18 - (Cheryl Hunter): That's when I started really leading these personal development programs and staging plays and getting them developed by the different networks. Just had the grace that I did. And that's when I started. I thought, heck, I, you know, I live in Hollywood. Not literally Hollywood but Los Angeles, I've got to be able to get this message out and help people with this, help people overcome. I could see people were struggling in life, and I wanted to.

0:29:48 - (Cheryl Hunter): I knew I could help. I overcame. They could overcome. I knew it was possible, and it was like it kept me up at night. Kevin, you ever have that kind of a dream where you just can't eat or sleep or think or do anything about it? It's like that is, I must do this. I must get this message out to the world.

0:30:07 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah.

0:30:07 - (Cheryl Hunter): Wow.

0:30:08 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow, wow. You spoke earlier about a framework. Can you talk to us about what that framework is?

0:30:17 - (Cheryl Hunter): Absolutely. And I do want to say I no longer teach it because I created a new, quote, captivity, a new mission for myself. I've never used the word captivity. Kind of misused it, turned the phrase in that way. But, yes, the things that I learned. Here's a few of the most impactful things. There is a gift at the heart of any challenge or adversity that we face. And I'm massively oversimplifying, by the way.

0:30:50 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah.

0:30:51 - (Cheryl Hunter): It can only release itself to us when we look directly at the circumstance that we're facing or have faced and say yes to it when we fight it, when we say, but this should never have been. It wasn't fair. Why me? Whatever that is, it will never reveal its gift to us. It will be the proverbial thorn in our side, and it will take us down. But the moment we can say, yes. Okay. And in my case. Okay, lord, you know better than I.

0:31:25 - (Cheryl Hunter): Okay. Okay. Yes. I say yes to this. There became this holiness to it. I don't know how else to say it then, but. And it's not just anecdotally that I experienced it this way, but what I kept hearing from people as I kept interviewing the survivors of adversity, was that in leaning into what had happened, in not just tolerating it and not just even accepting it, but embracing it. Yes. Yes. This is here, and I embrace it.

0:32:00 - (Cheryl Hunter): It then will unlock its gifts. And it's only in the firm. Yes. Not lip service to it, but authentically standing there that it can bestow its magic upon us. And another piece. I'll give you these two pieces. When I stood in front of that seminar that day and shared my story, I realized I was unlocking the final step in the process of overcoming challenge or adversity. So often when we've experienced something like that, a circumstance that we would never have chosen for ourselves, we hide it. We keep it secret.

0:32:40 - (Cheryl Hunter): We never tell a soul we somehow believe, perhaps, that we are sullied or ruined. Or I also hear a lot and experience for myself that I was somehow culpable in what happened. But regardless of the reason, oftentimes we hold it just to ourselves. And being able to speak on a transparent, candid, raw way, no holds barred, with another person, is the final step in liberating ourselves from that kind of captivity to the adversity and the impact of the adversity.

0:33:18 - (Cheryl Hunter): Now, for some people, sharing that story with a mental health professional or spouse or partner or loved one is wonderful, maybe with a support group, but there are others who want to share that on a larger way. Now, I'm not talking about trauma sharing, talking about something very distinct. I'm talking about owning our experience and being able to speak unabashedly about it. Some people choose to share that with the world. That was the case for me. I wanted to make a positive difference with it. I felt like it would liberate me as I liberated others.

0:33:56 - (Cheryl Hunter): And finally, after more than a decade of trying, I was blessed to have done just that, gotten my message out in front of an audience of hundreds of millions on major media. And at that point, my mission changed again. I realized, you know what? There's an entire industry dedicated to helping people overcome adversity. I'm going to step back and leave that work to mental health professionals, psychotherapists, psychologists, etcetera.

0:34:28 - (Cheryl Hunter): They have got this. There are mission driven people, just like I was, who have no idea how to share their work with the world. And that is my mission, to help these people get their voice out and make a profound difference so they can serve at the highest level. That's why I went through this whole experience, and it really, I feel, brought it full circle. Kevin, where as I was lying on the ground there in the horse meadows, just looking up at the plains, thinking, man, I want to be the girl there with something to give people.

0:35:04 - (Cheryl Hunter): Somehow this crazy, miraculous, beautiful, even turn of events, as dark and as light as it has been, made me the person that has something to give.

0:35:19 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. When you share your story, when you come on podcasts, when you're on tv interviews, what is it that you hope the person who's listening to you, what do you hope that they come away with?

0:35:35 - (Cheryl Hunter): A few things. I hope that you recognize your magnificence. No matter what you've faced. I hope that you recognize that you are bigger than anything you face and that the adversity you faced, the challenges that you've gone through in your life, there is a gift that they hold.

0:36:02 - (Kevin Lowe): So powerful. So powerful. I have one last question for you, but before I ask that question, I would love to have you go ahead and share for the person who is like, man, this woman has got it going on. I love her vibe. I'm empowered by her story. They want to know more. Where can we send them to get plugged into your world?

0:36:27 - (Cheryl Hunter): My website is cherylhunter.com, and it's c h e r y l. Most of my social is Hunter. Cheryl. I came late to the party. I guess I had to get my real name. Dad gum it. Oh, boy. But that's where. Okay, perfect.

0:36:46 - (Kevin Lowe): Well, I will be sure that that links to all of that is left in the show notes for anybody who. Who is interested in getting, like I said, plugged into your world, learning more about you, following you, social media, all the things. My last question is going to bring us kind of full circle back to where we began and through all that you've been through and where you sit today, what would you say to that girl lying in the grass, looking up and watching the planes fly over?

0:37:19 - (Kevin Lowe): What do you wish you could have said to her?

0:37:23 - (Cheryl Hunter): Wow. What a question, Kevin. Trust. Trust. It's all going to be all right. More than all right. Trust.

0:37:36 - (Kevin Lowe): Trust. Such a powerful word. Such a powerful meaning. Cheryl, you're an amazing woman with an incredible story that, honest to goodness, it's an honor to have you on the podcast, to share it with. With me, with my audience. Thank you so much for being here.

0:37:56 - (Cheryl Hunter): The honor is mine. Thank you, Kevin.

0:37:58 - (Kevin Lowe): Absolutely. For you, my listener. I hope, as always, that today's interview with Cheryl, that didn't just give you something to listen to, but it made you think about stuff. And maybe you're thinking to yourself that, wow, I bet my sister, my friend, whoever, would really love to hear this, too, or that they need to hear it, please share today's episode with them. And with that, I send you out into the world to take on the day, to enjoy the day, to love life, because, goodness gracious, it will go by in a flash.

0:38:39 - (Kevin Lowe): My name is Kevin Lowe. This is grit, grace, and inspiration.