April 23, 2025 • 40 mins
Michelle Hord had a thriving professional life, collecting achievement after achievement as the Vice President of Creative Content and Talent Management for NBCUniversal. But all that came crashing down when her ex-husband murdered her seven-year-old daughter, Gabrielle. In the dark aftermath of such immense loss, Michelle was faced with questions around faith, identity, and the question we ask ourselves in times of grief: what comes next? In this emotional episode, Michelle shares how she laid out her roadmap for healing in her bestselling book, "The Other Side of Yet” - and how she moved through sorrow, through anger, numbness, even hope, and eventually arrived at a place where life could continue. Not the same life. Not without pain. But a life on the other side of yet.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Michelle Hord (00:00):
Welcome back to She Pivots. I'm Michelle Ward.
Emily Tisch Sussman (00:13):
Welcome back to She Pivots, the podcast where we talk
with women who dare to pivot out of one career
and into something new and explore how their personal lives
impacts these decisions. I'm your host Emily Tish Sussman. Today
I'm honored to have Michelle Hoard on the show. Michelle
(00:37):
is a true powerhouse pivoter. The former vice president of
Creative Content and Talent Management for NBC Universal. There's no
question that she collected professional achievement after professional achievement, but
then it all came crashing down in twenty seventeen when
the unimaginable happened. She lost her so seven year old daughter, Gabrielle,
(01:02):
and what was already a nightmare turned into a scene
out of a horror movie when she discovered that it
was her ex husband who had murdered Gabrielle. Everything shifted
after Gabrielle's murder, and in the years that followed, Michelle
found herself standing at a crossroads not just of grief,
(01:22):
but of identity, faith, and the question we all ask
in our darkest moments, what comes after? Her answer became
a powerful personal and deeply human roadmap to healing, and
her best selling book, The Other Side of Yet, Michelle
shares how she moved through sorrow, through anger, numbness, even hope,
(01:48):
and eventually arrived at a place where life could continue.
Not the same life, not without pain, but a life
on the other side of Yet. Here in this episode
that she thinks of her life as before and after
the death of Gabrielle. Of course, like all our episodes,
(02:10):
we will go through the before as we put the
puzzle pieces of her life together. But what I love
so much about her story and how she speaks, thinks,
and acts is what she has chosen to do with
that quote after. We often talk about pivots on this
show as bold choices, unexpected moves, or new chapters, but
(02:30):
sometimes a pivot is survival. Sometimes it's choosing to get
out of bed, choosing to write, choosing to love again,
and Michelle's story is a powerful reminder that our pivots
are ever evolving, and sometimes the best we can do
is to meet that change where it is. Here is
(02:51):
Michelle in her story this episode it contains content that
might be difficult for some listeners. Please listen with care.
Michelle Hord (03:06):
My name is Michelle Horde, and gosh what do I do?
I do a bunch of stuff. But right now I'm
working as a coach and a keynote speaker and a
strategic consultant for a variety of different companies.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Okay, let's say more about that. Let's just start there.
What is the work that you do? So I grew
up as a television producer and then pivoted to HR
which is kind of crazy, you know. I remember like
the hallway getting longer, like I was in Poltergeist when
I went to the corporate side of the house. But
(03:41):
it was because I wanted to understand the business broader.
This is to age myself, like as Twitter is developing
and as the iPhone is developing, and it was so
clear that the business was changing, so I wanted to
understand it. So I brought fifteen years of actual producing
experiences at places like Oprah, America's Most Want and Good
Morning America to looking for on air talent, to running
(04:05):
all of recruiting at one point for NBC Universal and
spending about a decade there. So now I work for
myself and I'm a consultant in in addition to doing
keynote speeches, and one on one leadership coaching. I also
consult in a variety of areas.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Can you tell us about little Michelle, like where did
you grow up? What made you you?
Michelle Hord (04:27):
One of the things that made me me is I
was never little. I was always the tallest kid in
the class. I remember being taller than our fairly tall
sixth grade teacher. And so I think one of the
things early on was learning how to fit in right.
And you know, one of the cruel things about school,
(04:47):
early years of school is it's all about sameness, right,
and whether that's being the only black kid in the class,
or being someone with an unusual not a generic class name,
or being able to see the top of everyone's heads,
or being the one that the teacher says, okay, Michelle,
let's let someone else answer the question. You know, those
were any differentiator, it becomes the beginning of us othering people.
(05:12):
And I think sometimes as women and as girls, we
feel like we have to make ourselves smaller in order
to be palatable. I think as a woman of color,
that comes into play. So it's amazing how young those
sort of ideas started being too much. So that was,
you know, something that I think helped make me who
I was and where it wound up being helpful is
(05:34):
I have the ability to code switch pretty easily, and
to read the room, know what's needed in the room,
and to be an ambassador between different rooms, you know,
between different styles, between different perspectives, which really comes into
play in the workplace.
Emily Tisch Sussman (05:51):
These skills didn't just form out of nowhere. In fact,
growing up, Michelle and her family moved around quite a bit.
Michelle Hord (05:58):
I went to six elementary schools. I was a corporate brat,
not an army brat, but a corporate brat. And you know,
I think another layer is when one has to adjust
to new environments and new places and new people. That
probably also lends itself to how do I introduce myself?
Not that you're thinking this as a kid, but what's
(06:18):
my place? How do I introduce myself? You start to
see similarities in people and like, oh, this is a
Cindy type. I know how to manage this person. Again,
not little kid thoughts, but what you're actually doing.
Emily Tisch Sussman (06:29):
But soon Michelle found her place and started to settle
into herself when she enrolled at Howard University.
Michelle Hord (06:37):
And you know, the wonderful thing about attending a historically
black college like Howard University is the best way I
can describe it is it's everything and everyone you have
in the world except for that one thing is an issue,
The one differentiator isn't an issue, and the freedom in
that not being an issue. You know, there's all sorts
(06:58):
of other personality and you know, I was still the
tall girl and you know whatever, but not having that
as an issue really helps you identify your stuff. And
just the incredible sense of community that still. I mean,
I don't know friends that went to non HBCUs that
are still going to homecomings in their fifties. We do,
(07:19):
you know, because it feels like that one time of
year we get to go back to OZ. So, yeah,
I went to Howard and it was a life changing
experience for me for sure, life changing in what way.
I think It's when I gained confidence for the first time. Ironically,
Howard was not my first choice. I applied to a
(07:39):
bunch of schools. My first choice was Georgetown. It was
the only school I didn't get into. And as a
smart kid that for their whole life, you know, a
whole seventeen year tenure, had pretty much been able to
work their way to what they wanted. It was devastating,
and it's so funny when you look back at yourself
and see how early things develop. I kept my rejection
(08:02):
letter from Georgetown. I had it in a photo album
that I still have to this day, because I said,
this is this must mean something. And I did like
the early investigator reporting of like we've got to call
the admissions, like you know, before the Internet, Like I
want to understand why, and you know, I had to
understand that, like the percentage of people applying from my
state was blah blah blah blah. But I got a
(08:23):
full ride to Howard. And although my parents were in
a position that they were gracious and enough to say
you can go wherever you want, I felt like that
meant something and said, Okay, I know I lived DC,
I'll go for a year and if it doesn't work out,
you know, I can transfer to Georgetown. And I never
looked back. I never looked back.
Emily Tisch Sussman (08:44):
Wow. After you graduated, you went to work on America's
Most Wanted, which is a pretty intense show where you
see a lot of violence, a lot of grief. So
what was that experience like for you?
Michelle Hord (08:58):
It was such a eye open her to so many things.
You know, people would literally be sitting around eating pizza
looking at photos from a murder scene, and so you
start to understand, which I think in journalism you get
as well, but the sort of need for a sense
of heart and shell that a lot of law enforcement
(09:18):
people have, the crew joking that comes up that a
lot of times is just a survival mechanism. And for me,
you know, the one thing from the time I was
a little kid that I loved was storytelling and writing,
and so I've looked for that and every opportunity I've had,
and America's most wanted. I wound up getting the job
of handling all the missing children cases when I was
(09:41):
twenty three years old. And so, you know, this is
the early nineties. We don't have reality television. You know,
reality television was news magazines. So at the time when
things like this would happen, I would be showing up
at a scene that six different national network news magazines
were showing up as well. The difference was I was
(10:01):
inside the house because of the show, because we were
part nonprofit, part counseling agency, part law. You know, it
was this all of these different sorts of things. There
was a connection because of John Walsh, our host, who
had lost a child tragically, and so I found myself
at a very young age, you know, sitting next to
mothers who were in shock or grieving or terrified, and
(10:25):
they're you know, being with someone at the worst moment
of their life in those unimaginable spaces. Taught me that
ordinary people can survive extraordinary circumstances. And you know, I think,
as I think of my own life story, it's a
bit more than ironic that that's where my career started.
Emily Tisch Sussman (10:47):
While still early in her career, Michelle's first life changing
experience happened. She was just twenty four when she got
a call no child wants to get that her mother
had suddenly passed away.
Michelle Hord (11:01):
If you want to talk about significant life pivots, that
was at that moment, and for many many years afterwards,
a defining moment for me. I worshiped my mother. We
were very different types of women. She was a quieter,
more conservative, less of a pirate sailor than her daughter,
(11:24):
and so that, as it does with young people, could
cause stuff. But her mother was dying of cancer that
had started as lung cancer and had spread to her
brain when my mom died, so we had been spending
a lot of time together. I had gone with my
mom to visit my grandmother, and my worst nightmare as
a kid was losing my mom. I would literally, even
(11:46):
as a young adult, you know, wake up in the
middle of the night with a nightmare that she had
died and call her and she'd be like, earl, you know,
I'm not going anywhere, you know, teasing me. So my
mother died suddenly of a cerebral aneurysm at fifty, perfectly healthy,
didn't drink, didn't smoke, and my father came home from
work and founder and when he first called us, called me,
(12:10):
his voice was so small and he said she's gone,
and all I could think of was, oh, my gosh,
my grandmother's passed away. I wonder how mom is doing.
And then there was a step back where he said
your mother, and it was a really you know. It
(12:31):
was that moment of I now have to mother myself
that I am no longer emulating the type of woman
that I saw growing up, but that I would have
to create that path for myself that I didn't have
the cushion of a very involved, in tuned mother and
(12:55):
took on additional responsibilities with my dad and my brother.
So it was it made me feel like I grew
up really quick, and that it really differentiated me for
most of my peers. You know, my mother was so
singular in my life that I've really felt like I
have to I have to take care of myself now.
(13:17):
And there's this wonderful book by Hope Edelman called Motherless Daughters,
and there's a line in there that you know, I
am hoi aan because my mother lived, and I am
hoy am because my mother died. And I think, especially
as a young woman who's just trying to figure out
who she is a couple of years out of college,
that is really really true.
Emily Tisch Sussman (13:39):
Eventually, Michelle found her strength and went on to work
for Oprah, CBS News, and Good Morning America, working her
way up and up and up. A true career woman.
She wasn't thinking much about marriage or kids until things
aligned with an old friend from college.
Michelle Hord (13:59):
And it wasn't an until probably twelve thirteen years later,
when I was living in New York, when I was
in my early thirties, that we really started seriously dating.
And my perspective again in my story was that This
was someone I knew really well, that I trusted, that
had met my mom, who passed away when I was
(14:19):
twenty four, and so there was an assumption of safety
right with a good friend. We did like the vows
thing for the times, and you know, I remember saying,
you know, we're like the black when Harry met Sally,
and that's how I felt at the time. So we
got married when we were thirty seven years old in
(14:40):
two thousand and seven, but the relationship didn't last. When
did you start to see a change and saw like
some red flags, like when did you decide to end
the relationship. We had our daughter in two thousand and nine, Gabrielle,
who from the minute she was born and perhaps even
in tummy, was like a ball of energy, endless energy, bubbly, effervescent.
(15:06):
And you know, I think sometimes people in their stories
tell a story that they're not living authentically. And so
he and perhaps in his mind, because you know, I
would later find out that he had to have been
an undiagnosed, seriously sick person. But you know, he had
(15:27):
in his mind what fatherhood and being a husband meant,
and what he sold and what he delivered were very,
very different. And so as Gabrielle got older and was
five and six years old, I realized that this smart
little girl's going to start seeing things. She's going to
see that mommy's the one that goes to work, that
mommy does everything, and it would kill me to have
(15:52):
her do as I did and not as I said.
And so I realized, more for her than for me,
that I couldn't continue to patch work this thing without
a real partner, and asked him for a divorce in
right around Thanksgiving actually in twenty sixteen.
Emily Tisch Sussman (16:14):
When We come back, Michelle recounts the moment in time
when her quote before and after met. When we left,
Michelle had made the difficult but necessary decision to file
(16:36):
for divorce, and the situation went from bad to worse
to her worst nightmare.
Michelle Hord (16:45):
I moved out at the beginning of the next year.
He was very very much opposed to the divorce. Began
to change rapidly, get more and more desperate, get more
and more really kind of in a fantasy world of
what was really going on in the role that he played.
And so I moved to a rental house to avoid
(17:05):
friction and most importantly, to avoid Gabrielle seeing friction, and
so while we were going through the divorce process, she
would stay with him a few days a week and
would stay with me a few days a week. And
so we had that back and forth, and he fought
and fought and fought and fought against getting this divorce,
and finally I received a call from him on June fifth,
(17:30):
twenty seventeen, saying he would sign the papers, and I
remember running into my boss's office saying, Oh my god,
he's going to sign. I have to get out of
here now before he changes his mind. Met him at
a ups store with a notary, and we kind of
thinddly joked as we signed all these papers that we
got married at this beautiful Riverside church in New York,
(17:52):
fairytale wedding that was in Bride's magazine, and look at
how unceremoniously it's ending. And as I walked out with him,
he said to me, you know, I'm sorry for everything
that's happened, because he really made it as hard as possible.
And I felt this huge sense of relief and said,
(18:13):
that's okay. All that matters is that we both left
Gabrielle and that we can continue to co parent and
we were friends first, and we will always be friends.
And I went home and called everyone that had been
praying for me and thinking for about me, and felt
this huge lift after just a terrorizing several months, and
(18:33):
slept well. And I woke up the next morning, as
I always did when Gabrielle was not with me, I
sent her a voice note via her dad's a text
via her dad's phone. I got a bunch of emojis back,
which is what she would typically do, and I went
to work. And about three o'clock that afternoon, I was
presenting at a facility and I got a phone, a
(18:56):
missed phone call, and you know, as a mom like,
the phone becomes an appendage, so you know, it wasn't
There wasn't a lot of time between a miss phone
call and me responding, and so I quickly called back,
and it was Gabrielle's caregiver, and this blood curdling scream
came out, and it was very very clear that she
(19:17):
had walked into a crime scene. I didn't know exactly
what that meant yet. My first thought was that my
then husband had killed himself, and how in the world
was I going to explain this to Gabrielle. I told
her to get out of the house to call nine
to one one. I called my mother in law to say, listen,
(19:38):
I need you to get to the house. I was
in downtown Manhattan for those that know Manhattan, and had
to get to New Rochelle. So you know, on a
good day, that's a forty five minute drive. It probably
was like the longest hour and a half of my life.
And one of my colleagues was driving me home, and
you know, tried to keep me encouraged, try to keep
(20:00):
me you know, maybe you know, she's just hurt, maybe
it's nothing serious. And I just knew, I just knew.
I just want to add one thing, just that I
should have added a little earlier. When I got the
call and initially thought that he had hurt himself, I
(20:20):
started to get this like cold feeling through my body.
And I called a friend of mine who was a
fellow mom at the school, who was always there for
a drop off and pickup, and asked her if she
had seen Gabrielle that morning, and she said now, And
that's when everything changed. And I went and found a
little phone booth they call them now, tiny closet space
(20:42):
and got on my knees and said, God, I don't
know what I'm walking into, but please give me the
strength to endure it. And took that long ride home.
I got to a point where my good friends weren't
returning my text or calls. Who I knew had had
time to get to the scene. And about five minutes
before where I arrived, one of my friends called me
and asked where I was, and I said, I'm about
(21:04):
five minutes away. And as we pulled up, I could
see the lights of the police, the police tape, and
my pastor was the first person I saw, and he
almost lifted me out of the car like a child
and said, it's true, and he is in an ambulance
on his way to the hospital. And I said, do
(21:26):
you mean that motherfucker didn't have the decency to kill himself.
And so my sweet seven year old baby girl was
murdered by her own father.
Emily Tisch Sussman (21:48):
The most unfathomable thing that any parent can imagine.
Michelle Hord (21:52):
This was worse than my worst nightmare. You know, my
worst nightmare was something happening to her right getting sick,
a horrible accident, and a stranger. And yet it was
her father, and so you know, the levels of loss
and betrayal just were like unpeeling an onion. I remember
(22:12):
as we were, as I was being driven away from
the crime scene back to the rental house, googling a
verse in job because I felt like I needed it
and wanted to get it right, and the verses though
he slained me, yet do I trust him? And I
remember that first night as people started just showing up
and coming in, friends with me in prayer on our knees,
(22:37):
crying and ME saying over and over and over again,
though he slain me, yet, do I trust him? Though
he slain me? Yet, do I trust him? And it
was very aspirational. I didn't quite believe it, but there
was something in my gut that said, you know, this
was worse than my worst nightmare, and so as someone
who grew up with faith, it felt to me like
(22:58):
whatever the enemy, they went for the jugular and this
was supposed to take me out. I later found out
from the police that his plan most likely was to
kill me as well, because I was supposed to come
to the house that afternoon and the caregiver surprised him
when she showed up, So if I was still here,
I had to be here for a reason, and so
(23:20):
you know, the kind of you know, it's almost like
flashes of moments for those first couple of days and
weeks of people arriving, of dealing with law enforcement, of
just all the things that you could imagine would go
with not just losing a child, but being a victim
of a crime and having to deal with Special Victims Unit,
(23:42):
and you know, being ushered in the back door of
a police station because there were camera crews out front.
It was, you know, surreal. Certainly doesn't articulate what those
early days and weeks were. But I did start writing immediately,
and I started reading the Book of Job. Would get
up every morning. I mean, not that I was sleeping much,
(24:02):
but by five I was outside. It was June. I
was outside in the dark, reading and crying and writing.
But it felt like the only way I could begin
to process and imagine what was happening to me. And
it was such a solitary grief, right, This wasn't a
situation where a child dies and the parents have each other.
(24:25):
I lost one of my best friends. I lost my child.
Over time, I would lose some friends who frankly could
not deal with the proximity to something so traumatic, and
so my writing was about lost. Sometimes it was about
just that day. I would usually write in the morning
(24:46):
and it would be something like I have to make
myself go out and walk today, or I'm proud of
myself because I took a shower and met somebody for lunch.
And so there was a bit of chronicling what was
happening and a lot of asking God and sometimes myself,
how I was going to survive.
Emily Tisch Sussman (25:05):
You talk in the book that you eventually published, You're
an incredibly beautiful radar, and you talk very candidly about
what grief and processing looked like for you, like as
a result of this, but it was everything like from
guilt to gratitude to survival and success and anger. How
did you give yourself the grace through each of these
emotions to allow for processing.
Michelle Hord (25:28):
Every minute an hour was different. In addition to really
good therapy, I just have incredible friends, just incredible friends.
And one of the chapters in my book is find
Your Army, And I had people come out of the
woodwork for me in all ways, whether that was cooking,
(25:48):
whether that was a list of people to make sure
I wasn't spending the night by myself for several months
after this happened, someone showing up with dresses for me
for funeral to pick from. And you know, the reality is,
these dear friends were also exposed to trauma. You know,
this was my best friend's godchild. These were people who
(26:13):
had to explain to their own young children what happened,
or grapple with whether they were going to tell the
truth about what happened. She was in the second grade,
So there were so many tentacles. But I just had
amazing friends that stood by me, and my therapist early
on suggested that I occasionally share some of my writing
(26:34):
with my friends, just to give them some sense of
where I was and where my head was. And over time,
as I did that and started sharing it in a
more expansive way, and after speaking at Gabrielle's funeral, I
had people say things to me like, you know, I
hadn't prayed for years until I heard you at the funeral.
(26:55):
Or I read this and it's so inspirational. And so
I certainly did not go out at five am on
June eighth, twenty seventeen to write a book. I was
trying to survive. But at some point I realized that
those holes in my body were somehow shedding light for
other people. And so that's how I wrote the book.
Emily Tisch Sussman (27:19):
In the inter of the book, you write, quote, I
made a conscious choice not to hide. I could have
chosen to try to quiet the noise of what he did,
but I didn't, and I won't. I will not shrink,
I will not whisper. Stories have the power to heal,
and this story certainly does. My story matters because Gabrielle mattered.
It matters, because hope matters, resilience matters, the realization that
(27:39):
is something bigger than us in the universe matters. So
can you tell us more about for someone to go
through something as horrific as you, that they easily could
have put their energy towards talking about violence in specific
or toxic men in specific, Like why did you go
in the direction that you did in your Hope Warriors
meaningful work?
Michelle Hord (27:59):
I think for starters, because I was a journalist and
because I understood storytelling, and to me, it would have
been a tremendous disservice to my beautiful daughter to let
the focus be on what happened to her, And so
I decided the focus was going to be on how
to best honor her life and for starters that was surviving,
(28:21):
that was continuing to go talk about who she was
as a person, what she meant to other people, And eventually,
you know, it evolved into me starting a nonprofit in
her memory. And yes, there and you know, I don't
in any way begrudge people that make different decisions in
(28:43):
their grief. And I've been involved with organizations like the
Traydemon Martin Foundation, you know, where there's a very specific
type of violence and incident that was not my experience.
So part of it was being authentic to my action experience.
But more important to me than my experience was how
(29:05):
people experienced Gabrielle and my hunger as a mom to
ensure children that looked like her would have some of
the opportunities that she would have had, And so that
really became my focus.
Emily Tisch Sussman (29:20):
You talk a lot in your book about the before
and the after. When did you start to delineate that
in your mind?
Michelle Hord (29:29):
You know, before was very clear, and I think we
all obviously my situation was an extreme situation, but we
all have these moments in our lives, right, these pivot moments,
and you know, there was a very clear everything that
happened before June seventh of twenty seventeen versus everything that
(29:50):
happened after, and for me, what it really was about,
and it began with me googling that verse was how
do I get to the other side this has happened yet?
And the yet for me was the opportunity to still
try to keep going, not knowing what after was. And
(30:10):
even in the book, I haven't divided into before yet
and after and with after I have a question mark
because it's always evolving and changing. Right before it is defined,
there's a line. The decision to pivot and to change
and to say yet and to continue is one we make.
And then after is an ongoing thing that unfolds.
Emily Tisch Sussman (30:34):
We're going to take a short break and when we
come back. Michelle shares what her quote after looks like
these days.
One of the things that you talked about in your
book was how you thought that the after for you
(30:57):
would mean not loving again, not being mother again not
finding joy again. And actually that perspective has changed for you.
How and when did that change for you? My happy
place is the Bahamas, and I started going there probably
in my early thirties regularly and bought a little time
(31:18):
share and would go every year and would take friends,
and once Gabrielle was born, she would go with me.
Her dad thankfully did not and it was just this happy.
Michelle Hord (31:29):
Place, you know. We went to a specific resort, specific
place people knew us, and so during the trial I
went there often. I had taken a leave of absence
from work and over the months I had the opportunity
to meet someone that worked at the resort and didn't
think anything of it. In fact, I knew pretty quickly
(31:50):
he was considerably younger than me, so I definitely wasn't
thinking anything of it. Yes, I've been called Stella a
thousand times by people and my friends. But Axel, who's
my husband now, and I met in twenty nineteen and
wound up doing COVID together, which I think was a
(32:11):
make or break for a lot of people. And the
ease of which the relationship evolved, you know, it was
not anything I was obviously looking for, but you know,
somehow I really believe God and my daughter put us
in that space. And he often talks about watching me
(32:34):
just sit on the beach and staring out into the
ocean and wondering what I was thinking before he knew
what had happened to me, And two and a half
three years later, we got married on that same beach
where I had stared off into the water, where he
had worked, and where I had spent time with my daughter.
And you have a new baby. Yes, we have a
(32:55):
new baby. We had a very long surrogacy journey, which
is a whole other podcast, but yes, we have a
baby boy. We have a baby boy. And I remember,
you know, we knew exactly the sex of the embryos,
and we're asked if we wanted to choose, and felt like, gosh,
this incredibly expensive, stressful process has been so designed. Let's
(33:19):
leave something up to God or chance. And we have
a little boy. And you know, there's a part of
me that is relieved because it gave me the opportunity
and is giving me the opportunity in a very present
way of having a completely different experience than when I
had my daughter. So, Gabrielle has a little brother. What
(33:43):
do you think that success looks like for you? Now,
that's a great question. I think I used to think
of success as tangible marks right of titles, and success
for me now I think is going to be about
being authentic to myself, making sure that I am practicing
(34:06):
self care, that I am being creative and telling rich stories,
and that I have a healthy marriage and a healthy child.
And while those things were always important, I think, you know,
looking for a certain title or a certain salary just
had a very different We're just very different before all
(34:28):
this happened. And what does self care look like for
you now? Probably sleeping a little more than you are
sleeping that part. I'll tell you something interesting though, I
had not slept well since I lost Gabrielle and have
dealt with incredible depression and anxiety. And when I can
sleep now I sleep and my anxiety is almost gone.
(34:52):
And so this little boy has been like the balm
in so many ways that I'm so grateful for, so
grateful for. But self care, you know, making myself, which
I'm not doing that great of a job at so
now I'm saying it on the record, I have to
do it of getting out and exercising right of you know,
(35:13):
taking a few minutes to actually go out with a
friend or get a massage, you know a lot of
those sorts of things. But you know, it's so easy,
I think, as women to put everybody else first, and
it's important to me in a new marriage. You know,
I know that we we certainly tell people how to
treat us right, and we tell people what is or
(35:35):
isn't acceptable and what our boundaries are. And so I'm
working hard to ensure in this relationship that I am
doing everything I can to take care of myself as well,
which was not really how I thought about it when
I was married the first time.
Emily Tisch Sussman (35:54):
Well, I asked this question of all of my guests.
So it could be the thing we've already talked about
or something else, But what is one thing that at
the time you thought was a total low and now
in retrospect you see it as having really put you
in the headspace and the position that you are today.
Michelle Hord (36:12):
In October of twenty nineteen, as I was flying to
the Bahamas right after the murder trial ended, I did
not know that the day I flew there, my divorce
had become final, and what had become a place to
mourn and to remember somehow became a place where new
(36:39):
love and new life and new memories were formed. And so,
you know, I think for many of us, having to
pivot in life is about what do I take with
me and what do I leave behind, what still serves
me and what doesn't, And that can change and evolve
over time, and it's important that we ask ourselves those
(37:02):
questions about what I need right now, what's important to
me right now, what serves me right now, And it
may not look the same as it did a month
or two years ago, and that's okay. But for me,
a place that had started as a wonderful place that
became an escape and a refuge in the worst moments
(37:24):
of my life also birthed my next chapter with my husband.
Emily Tisch Sussman (37:30):
That's so incredibly beautiful. Now I know why you write
so well. Do you think you'll pivot again?
Michelle Hord (37:35):
Of course, listen. I think people that think that life
is a linear beginning, middle, and end, and you know
they live happily ever after, are rudely awakened often. You know,
I think there are times that I will have to
pivot because of circumstances that I don't control. There will
be times that I pivot because there are new opportunities
(37:57):
or I have new needs. And for me, you know,
in some of my consulting work, I talk about change
confidence instead of change management, because change is coming and
so I think it's really important for us, not in
a dreadful way, but to understand what it takes to
be resilient, to understand the tools we need when those
(38:19):
pivots occur, whether they're self induced or put upon us.
Because life is changing, our world, our country, I mean,
things are changing around us and they always are, and
so you can either be the thermometer or the thermostat
and decide how you're going to set the tone the
(38:40):
temperature for where you are right now.
Emily Tisch Sussman (38:43):
Thank you so much, Michelle, this was great.
Michelle Hord (38:46):
Thank you for your grace.
Emily Tisch Sussman (39:14):
Michelle has found so much in her after and is
now married with a brand new baby. She still continues
to change the lives of hundreds of children through her foundation,
Gabrielle's Wings, so be sure to visit their website Gabriellswings
dot org to support. You can also find her foundation
on the she Pivots Our Causes page. Talk to you
(39:36):
next week. Thanks for listening to this episode of she Pivots.
I hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, leave
us a rating and tell your friends about us. To
learn more about our guests, follow us on Instagram at
she Pivots the Podcast, or sign up for our newsletter,
where you can get exclusive behind the scenes content on
(39:58):
our website at she pivots podcast dot com. Special thanks
to the she pivots team, Executive producer Emily eda Velosik,
Associate producer and social media connoisseur Hannah Cousins, Research director
Christine Dickinson, Events and Logistics coordinator Madeline Sonovak, and audio
(40:19):
editor and mixer Nina pollock
Speaker 4 (40:22):
I endorse She Pivots
Welcome back to She Pivots. I'm Michelle Ward.
Emily Tisch Sussman (00:13):
Welcome back to She Pivots, the podcast where we talk
with women who dare to pivot out of one career
and into something new and explore how their personal lives
impacts these decisions. I'm your host Emily Tish Sussman. Today
I'm honored to have Michelle Hoard on the show. Michelle
(00:37):
is a true powerhouse pivoter. The former vice president of
Creative Content and Talent Management for NBC Universal. There's no
question that she collected professional achievement after professional achievement, but
then it all came crashing down in twenty seventeen when
the unimaginable happened. She lost her so seven year old daughter, Gabrielle,
(01:02):
and what was already a nightmare turned into a scene
out of a horror movie when she discovered that it
was her ex husband who had murdered Gabrielle. Everything shifted
after Gabrielle's murder, and in the years that followed, Michelle
found herself standing at a crossroads not just of grief,
(01:22):
but of identity, faith, and the question we all ask
in our darkest moments, what comes after? Her answer became
a powerful personal and deeply human roadmap to healing, and
her best selling book, The Other Side of Yet, Michelle
shares how she moved through sorrow, through anger, numbness, even hope,
(01:48):
and eventually arrived at a place where life could continue.
Not the same life, not without pain, but a life
on the other side of Yet. Here in this episode
that she thinks of her life as before and after
the death of Gabrielle. Of course, like all our episodes,
(02:10):
we will go through the before as we put the
puzzle pieces of her life together. But what I love
so much about her story and how she speaks, thinks,
and acts is what she has chosen to do with
that quote after. We often talk about pivots on this
show as bold choices, unexpected moves, or new chapters, but
(02:30):
sometimes a pivot is survival. Sometimes it's choosing to get
out of bed, choosing to write, choosing to love again,
and Michelle's story is a powerful reminder that our pivots
are ever evolving, and sometimes the best we can do
is to meet that change where it is. Here is
(02:51):
Michelle in her story this episode it contains content that
might be difficult for some listeners. Please listen with care.
Michelle Hord (03:06):
My name is Michelle Horde, and gosh what do I do?
I do a bunch of stuff. But right now I'm
working as a coach and a keynote speaker and a
strategic consultant for a variety of different companies.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Okay, let's say more about that. Let's just start there.
What is the work that you do? So I grew
up as a television producer and then pivoted to HR
which is kind of crazy, you know. I remember like
the hallway getting longer, like I was in Poltergeist when
I went to the corporate side of the house. But
(03:41):
it was because I wanted to understand the business broader.
This is to age myself, like as Twitter is developing
and as the iPhone is developing, and it was so
clear that the business was changing, so I wanted to
understand it. So I brought fifteen years of actual producing
experiences at places like Oprah, America's Most Want and Good
Morning America to looking for on air talent, to running
(04:05):
all of recruiting at one point for NBC Universal and
spending about a decade there. So now I work for
myself and I'm a consultant in in addition to doing
keynote speeches, and one on one leadership coaching. I also
consult in a variety of areas.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Can you tell us about little Michelle, like where did
you grow up? What made you you?
Michelle Hord (04:27):
One of the things that made me me is I
was never little. I was always the tallest kid in
the class. I remember being taller than our fairly tall
sixth grade teacher. And so I think one of the
things early on was learning how to fit in right.
And you know, one of the cruel things about school,
(04:47):
early years of school is it's all about sameness, right,
and whether that's being the only black kid in the class,
or being someone with an unusual not a generic class name,
or being able to see the top of everyone's heads,
or being the one that the teacher says, okay, Michelle,
let's let someone else answer the question. You know, those
were any differentiator, it becomes the beginning of us othering people.
(05:12):
And I think sometimes as women and as girls, we
feel like we have to make ourselves smaller in order
to be palatable. I think as a woman of color,
that comes into play. So it's amazing how young those
sort of ideas started being too much. So that was,
you know, something that I think helped make me who
I was and where it wound up being helpful is
(05:34):
I have the ability to code switch pretty easily, and
to read the room, know what's needed in the room,
and to be an ambassador between different rooms, you know,
between different styles, between different perspectives, which really comes into
play in the workplace.
Emily Tisch Sussman (05:51):
These skills didn't just form out of nowhere. In fact,
growing up, Michelle and her family moved around quite a bit.
Michelle Hord (05:58):
I went to six elementary schools. I was a corporate brat,
not an army brat, but a corporate brat. And you know,
I think another layer is when one has to adjust
to new environments and new places and new people. That
probably also lends itself to how do I introduce myself?
Not that you're thinking this as a kid, but what's
(06:18):
my place? How do I introduce myself? You start to
see similarities in people and like, oh, this is a
Cindy type. I know how to manage this person. Again,
not little kid thoughts, but what you're actually doing.
Emily Tisch Sussman (06:29):
But soon Michelle found her place and started to settle
into herself when she enrolled at Howard University.
Michelle Hord (06:37):
And you know, the wonderful thing about attending a historically
black college like Howard University is the best way I
can describe it is it's everything and everyone you have
in the world except for that one thing is an issue,
The one differentiator isn't an issue, and the freedom in
that not being an issue. You know, there's all sorts
(06:58):
of other personality and you know, I was still the
tall girl and you know whatever, but not having that
as an issue really helps you identify your stuff. And
just the incredible sense of community that still. I mean,
I don't know friends that went to non HBCUs that
are still going to homecomings in their fifties. We do,
(07:19):
you know, because it feels like that one time of
year we get to go back to OZ. So, yeah,
I went to Howard and it was a life changing
experience for me for sure, life changing in what way.
I think It's when I gained confidence for the first time. Ironically,
Howard was not my first choice. I applied to a
(07:39):
bunch of schools. My first choice was Georgetown. It was
the only school I didn't get into. And as a
smart kid that for their whole life, you know, a
whole seventeen year tenure, had pretty much been able to
work their way to what they wanted. It was devastating,
and it's so funny when you look back at yourself
and see how early things develop. I kept my rejection
(08:02):
letter from Georgetown. I had it in a photo album
that I still have to this day, because I said,
this is this must mean something. And I did like
the early investigator reporting of like we've got to call
the admissions, like you know, before the Internet, Like I
want to understand why, and you know, I had to
understand that, like the percentage of people applying from my
state was blah blah blah blah. But I got a
(08:23):
full ride to Howard. And although my parents were in
a position that they were gracious and enough to say
you can go wherever you want, I felt like that
meant something and said, Okay, I know I lived DC,
I'll go for a year and if it doesn't work out,
you know, I can transfer to Georgetown. And I never
looked back. I never looked back.
Emily Tisch Sussman (08:44):
Wow. After you graduated, you went to work on America's
Most Wanted, which is a pretty intense show where you
see a lot of violence, a lot of grief. So
what was that experience like for you?
Michelle Hord (08:58):
It was such a eye open her to so many things.
You know, people would literally be sitting around eating pizza
looking at photos from a murder scene, and so you
start to understand, which I think in journalism you get
as well, but the sort of need for a sense
of heart and shell that a lot of law enforcement
(09:18):
people have, the crew joking that comes up that a
lot of times is just a survival mechanism. And for me,
you know, the one thing from the time I was
a little kid that I loved was storytelling and writing,
and so I've looked for that and every opportunity I've had,
and America's most wanted. I wound up getting the job
of handling all the missing children cases when I was
(09:41):
twenty three years old. And so, you know, this is
the early nineties. We don't have reality television. You know,
reality television was news magazines. So at the time when
things like this would happen, I would be showing up
at a scene that six different national network news magazines
were showing up as well. The difference was I was
(10:01):
inside the house because of the show, because we were
part nonprofit, part counseling agency, part law. You know, it
was this all of these different sorts of things. There
was a connection because of John Walsh, our host, who
had lost a child tragically, and so I found myself
at a very young age, you know, sitting next to
mothers who were in shock or grieving or terrified, and
(10:25):
they're you know, being with someone at the worst moment
of their life in those unimaginable spaces. Taught me that
ordinary people can survive extraordinary circumstances. And you know, I think,
as I think of my own life story, it's a
bit more than ironic that that's where my career started.
Emily Tisch Sussman (10:47):
While still early in her career, Michelle's first life changing
experience happened. She was just twenty four when she got
a call no child wants to get that her mother
had suddenly passed away.
Michelle Hord (11:01):
If you want to talk about significant life pivots, that
was at that moment, and for many many years afterwards,
a defining moment for me. I worshiped my mother. We
were very different types of women. She was a quieter,
more conservative, less of a pirate sailor than her daughter,
(11:24):
and so that, as it does with young people, could
cause stuff. But her mother was dying of cancer that
had started as lung cancer and had spread to her
brain when my mom died, so we had been spending
a lot of time together. I had gone with my
mom to visit my grandmother, and my worst nightmare as
a kid was losing my mom. I would literally, even
(11:46):
as a young adult, you know, wake up in the
middle of the night with a nightmare that she had
died and call her and she'd be like, earl, you know,
I'm not going anywhere, you know, teasing me. So my
mother died suddenly of a cerebral aneurysm at fifty, perfectly healthy,
didn't drink, didn't smoke, and my father came home from
work and founder and when he first called us, called me,
(12:10):
his voice was so small and he said she's gone,
and all I could think of was, oh, my gosh,
my grandmother's passed away. I wonder how mom is doing.
And then there was a step back where he said
your mother, and it was a really you know. It
(12:31):
was that moment of I now have to mother myself
that I am no longer emulating the type of woman
that I saw growing up, but that I would have
to create that path for myself that I didn't have
the cushion of a very involved, in tuned mother and
(12:55):
took on additional responsibilities with my dad and my brother.
So it was it made me feel like I grew
up really quick, and that it really differentiated me for
most of my peers. You know, my mother was so
singular in my life that I've really felt like I
have to I have to take care of myself now.
(13:17):
And there's this wonderful book by Hope Edelman called Motherless Daughters,
and there's a line in there that you know, I
am hoi aan because my mother lived, and I am
hoy am because my mother died. And I think, especially
as a young woman who's just trying to figure out
who she is a couple of years out of college,
that is really really true.
Emily Tisch Sussman (13:39):
Eventually, Michelle found her strength and went on to work
for Oprah, CBS News, and Good Morning America, working her
way up and up and up. A true career woman.
She wasn't thinking much about marriage or kids until things
aligned with an old friend from college.
Michelle Hord (13:59):
And it wasn't an until probably twelve thirteen years later,
when I was living in New York, when I was
in my early thirties, that we really started seriously dating.
And my perspective again in my story was that This
was someone I knew really well, that I trusted, that
had met my mom, who passed away when I was
(14:19):
twenty four, and so there was an assumption of safety
right with a good friend. We did like the vows
thing for the times, and you know, I remember saying,
you know, we're like the black when Harry met Sally,
and that's how I felt at the time. So we
got married when we were thirty seven years old in
(14:40):
two thousand and seven, but the relationship didn't last. When
did you start to see a change and saw like
some red flags, like when did you decide to end
the relationship. We had our daughter in two thousand and nine, Gabrielle,
who from the minute she was born and perhaps even
in tummy, was like a ball of energy, endless energy, bubbly, effervescent.
(15:06):
And you know, I think sometimes people in their stories
tell a story that they're not living authentically. And so
he and perhaps in his mind, because you know, I
would later find out that he had to have been
an undiagnosed, seriously sick person. But you know, he had
(15:27):
in his mind what fatherhood and being a husband meant,
and what he sold and what he delivered were very,
very different. And so as Gabrielle got older and was
five and six years old, I realized that this smart
little girl's going to start seeing things. She's going to
see that mommy's the one that goes to work, that
mommy does everything, and it would kill me to have
(15:52):
her do as I did and not as I said.
And so I realized, more for her than for me,
that I couldn't continue to patch work this thing without
a real partner, and asked him for a divorce in
right around Thanksgiving actually in twenty sixteen.
Emily Tisch Sussman (16:14):
When We come back, Michelle recounts the moment in time
when her quote before and after met. When we left,
Michelle had made the difficult but necessary decision to file
(16:36):
for divorce, and the situation went from bad to worse
to her worst nightmare.
Michelle Hord (16:45):
I moved out at the beginning of the next year.
He was very very much opposed to the divorce. Began
to change rapidly, get more and more desperate, get more
and more really kind of in a fantasy world of
what was really going on in the role that he played.
And so I moved to a rental house to avoid
(17:05):
friction and most importantly, to avoid Gabrielle seeing friction, and
so while we were going through the divorce process, she
would stay with him a few days a week and
would stay with me a few days a week. And
so we had that back and forth, and he fought
and fought and fought and fought against getting this divorce,
and finally I received a call from him on June fifth,
(17:30):
twenty seventeen, saying he would sign the papers, and I
remember running into my boss's office saying, Oh my god,
he's going to sign. I have to get out of
here now before he changes his mind. Met him at
a ups store with a notary, and we kind of
thinddly joked as we signed all these papers that we
got married at this beautiful Riverside church in New York,
(17:52):
fairytale wedding that was in Bride's magazine, and look at
how unceremoniously it's ending. And as I walked out with him,
he said to me, you know, I'm sorry for everything
that's happened, because he really made it as hard as possible.
And I felt this huge sense of relief and said,
(18:13):
that's okay. All that matters is that we both left
Gabrielle and that we can continue to co parent and
we were friends first, and we will always be friends.
And I went home and called everyone that had been
praying for me and thinking for about me, and felt
this huge lift after just a terrorizing several months, and
(18:33):
slept well. And I woke up the next morning, as
I always did when Gabrielle was not with me, I
sent her a voice note via her dad's a text
via her dad's phone. I got a bunch of emojis back,
which is what she would typically do, and I went
to work. And about three o'clock that afternoon, I was
presenting at a facility and I got a phone, a
(18:56):
missed phone call, and you know, as a mom like,
the phone becomes an appendage, so you know, it wasn't
There wasn't a lot of time between a miss phone
call and me responding, and so I quickly called back,
and it was Gabrielle's caregiver, and this blood curdling scream
came out, and it was very very clear that she
(19:17):
had walked into a crime scene. I didn't know exactly
what that meant yet. My first thought was that my
then husband had killed himself, and how in the world
was I going to explain this to Gabrielle. I told
her to get out of the house to call nine
to one one. I called my mother in law to say, listen,
(19:38):
I need you to get to the house. I was
in downtown Manhattan for those that know Manhattan, and had
to get to New Rochelle. So you know, on a
good day, that's a forty five minute drive. It probably
was like the longest hour and a half of my life.
And one of my colleagues was driving me home, and
you know, tried to keep me encouraged, try to keep
(20:00):
me you know, maybe you know, she's just hurt, maybe
it's nothing serious. And I just knew, I just knew.
I just want to add one thing, just that I
should have added a little earlier. When I got the
call and initially thought that he had hurt himself, I
(20:20):
started to get this like cold feeling through my body.
And I called a friend of mine who was a
fellow mom at the school, who was always there for
a drop off and pickup, and asked her if she
had seen Gabrielle that morning, and she said now, And
that's when everything changed. And I went and found a
little phone booth they call them now, tiny closet space
(20:42):
and got on my knees and said, God, I don't
know what I'm walking into, but please give me the
strength to endure it. And took that long ride home.
I got to a point where my good friends weren't
returning my text or calls. Who I knew had had
time to get to the scene. And about five minutes
before where I arrived, one of my friends called me
and asked where I was, and I said, I'm about
(21:04):
five minutes away. And as we pulled up, I could
see the lights of the police, the police tape, and
my pastor was the first person I saw, and he
almost lifted me out of the car like a child
and said, it's true, and he is in an ambulance
on his way to the hospital. And I said, do
(21:26):
you mean that motherfucker didn't have the decency to kill himself.
And so my sweet seven year old baby girl was
murdered by her own father.
Emily Tisch Sussman (21:48):
The most unfathomable thing that any parent can imagine.
Michelle Hord (21:52):
This was worse than my worst nightmare. You know, my
worst nightmare was something happening to her right getting sick,
a horrible accident, and a stranger. And yet it was
her father, and so you know, the levels of loss
and betrayal just were like unpeeling an onion. I remember
(22:12):
as we were, as I was being driven away from
the crime scene back to the rental house, googling a
verse in job because I felt like I needed it
and wanted to get it right, and the verses though
he slained me, yet do I trust him? And I
remember that first night as people started just showing up
and coming in, friends with me in prayer on our knees,
(22:37):
crying and ME saying over and over and over again,
though he slain me, yet, do I trust him? Though
he slain me? Yet, do I trust him? And it
was very aspirational. I didn't quite believe it, but there
was something in my gut that said, you know, this
was worse than my worst nightmare, and so as someone
who grew up with faith, it felt to me like
(22:58):
whatever the enemy, they went for the jugular and this
was supposed to take me out. I later found out
from the police that his plan most likely was to
kill me as well, because I was supposed to come
to the house that afternoon and the caregiver surprised him
when she showed up, So if I was still here,
I had to be here for a reason, and so
(23:20):
you know, the kind of you know, it's almost like
flashes of moments for those first couple of days and
weeks of people arriving, of dealing with law enforcement, of
just all the things that you could imagine would go
with not just losing a child, but being a victim
of a crime and having to deal with Special Victims Unit,
(23:42):
and you know, being ushered in the back door of
a police station because there were camera crews out front.
It was, you know, surreal. Certainly doesn't articulate what those
early days and weeks were. But I did start writing immediately,
and I started reading the Book of Job. Would get
up every morning. I mean, not that I was sleeping much,
(24:02):
but by five I was outside. It was June. I
was outside in the dark, reading and crying and writing.
But it felt like the only way I could begin
to process and imagine what was happening to me. And
it was such a solitary grief, right, This wasn't a
situation where a child dies and the parents have each other.
(24:25):
I lost one of my best friends. I lost my child.
Over time, I would lose some friends who frankly could
not deal with the proximity to something so traumatic, and
so my writing was about lost. Sometimes it was about
just that day. I would usually write in the morning
(24:46):
and it would be something like I have to make
myself go out and walk today, or I'm proud of
myself because I took a shower and met somebody for lunch.
And so there was a bit of chronicling what was
happening and a lot of asking God and sometimes myself,
how I was going to survive.
Emily Tisch Sussman (25:05):
You talk in the book that you eventually published, You're
an incredibly beautiful radar, and you talk very candidly about
what grief and processing looked like for you, like as
a result of this, but it was everything like from
guilt to gratitude to survival and success and anger. How
did you give yourself the grace through each of these
emotions to allow for processing.
Michelle Hord (25:28):
Every minute an hour was different. In addition to really
good therapy, I just have incredible friends, just incredible friends.
And one of the chapters in my book is find
Your Army, And I had people come out of the
woodwork for me in all ways, whether that was cooking,
(25:48):
whether that was a list of people to make sure
I wasn't spending the night by myself for several months
after this happened, someone showing up with dresses for me
for funeral to pick from. And you know, the reality is,
these dear friends were also exposed to trauma. You know,
this was my best friend's godchild. These were people who
(26:13):
had to explain to their own young children what happened,
or grapple with whether they were going to tell the
truth about what happened. She was in the second grade,
So there were so many tentacles. But I just had
amazing friends that stood by me, and my therapist early
on suggested that I occasionally share some of my writing
(26:34):
with my friends, just to give them some sense of
where I was and where my head was. And over time,
as I did that and started sharing it in a
more expansive way, and after speaking at Gabrielle's funeral, I
had people say things to me like, you know, I
hadn't prayed for years until I heard you at the funeral.
(26:55):
Or I read this and it's so inspirational. And so
I certainly did not go out at five am on
June eighth, twenty seventeen to write a book. I was
trying to survive. But at some point I realized that
those holes in my body were somehow shedding light for
other people. And so that's how I wrote the book.
Emily Tisch Sussman (27:19):
In the inter of the book, you write, quote, I
made a conscious choice not to hide. I could have
chosen to try to quiet the noise of what he did,
but I didn't, and I won't. I will not shrink,
I will not whisper. Stories have the power to heal,
and this story certainly does. My story matters because Gabrielle mattered.
It matters, because hope matters, resilience matters, the realization that
(27:39):
is something bigger than us in the universe matters. So
can you tell us more about for someone to go
through something as horrific as you, that they easily could
have put their energy towards talking about violence in specific
or toxic men in specific, Like why did you go
in the direction that you did in your Hope Warriors
meaningful work?
Michelle Hord (27:59):
I think for starters, because I was a journalist and
because I understood storytelling, and to me, it would have
been a tremendous disservice to my beautiful daughter to let
the focus be on what happened to her, And so
I decided the focus was going to be on how
to best honor her life and for starters that was surviving,
(28:21):
that was continuing to go talk about who she was
as a person, what she meant to other people, And eventually,
you know, it evolved into me starting a nonprofit in
her memory. And yes, there and you know, I don't
in any way begrudge people that make different decisions in
(28:43):
their grief. And I've been involved with organizations like the
Traydemon Martin Foundation, you know, where there's a very specific
type of violence and incident that was not my experience.
So part of it was being authentic to my action experience.
But more important to me than my experience was how
(29:05):
people experienced Gabrielle and my hunger as a mom to
ensure children that looked like her would have some of
the opportunities that she would have had, And so that
really became my focus.
Emily Tisch Sussman (29:20):
You talk a lot in your book about the before
and the after. When did you start to delineate that
in your mind?
Michelle Hord (29:29):
You know, before was very clear, and I think we
all obviously my situation was an extreme situation, but we
all have these moments in our lives, right, these pivot moments,
and you know, there was a very clear everything that
happened before June seventh of twenty seventeen versus everything that
(29:50):
happened after, and for me, what it really was about,
and it began with me googling that verse was how
do I get to the other side this has happened yet?
And the yet for me was the opportunity to still
try to keep going, not knowing what after was. And
(30:10):
even in the book, I haven't divided into before yet
and after and with after I have a question mark
because it's always evolving and changing. Right before it is defined,
there's a line. The decision to pivot and to change
and to say yet and to continue is one we make.
And then after is an ongoing thing that unfolds.
Emily Tisch Sussman (30:34):
We're going to take a short break and when we
come back. Michelle shares what her quote after looks like
these days.
One of the things that you talked about in your
book was how you thought that the after for you
(30:57):
would mean not loving again, not being mother again not
finding joy again. And actually that perspective has changed for you.
How and when did that change for you? My happy
place is the Bahamas, and I started going there probably
in my early thirties regularly and bought a little time
(31:18):
share and would go every year and would take friends,
and once Gabrielle was born, she would go with me.
Her dad thankfully did not and it was just this happy.
Michelle Hord (31:29):
Place, you know. We went to a specific resort, specific
place people knew us, and so during the trial I
went there often. I had taken a leave of absence
from work and over the months I had the opportunity
to meet someone that worked at the resort and didn't
think anything of it. In fact, I knew pretty quickly
(31:50):
he was considerably younger than me, so I definitely wasn't
thinking anything of it. Yes, I've been called Stella a
thousand times by people and my friends. But Axel, who's
my husband now, and I met in twenty nineteen and
wound up doing COVID together, which I think was a
(32:11):
make or break for a lot of people. And the
ease of which the relationship evolved, you know, it was
not anything I was obviously looking for, but you know,
somehow I really believe God and my daughter put us
in that space. And he often talks about watching me
(32:34):
just sit on the beach and staring out into the
ocean and wondering what I was thinking before he knew
what had happened to me, And two and a half
three years later, we got married on that same beach
where I had stared off into the water, where he
had worked, and where I had spent time with my daughter.
And you have a new baby. Yes, we have a
(32:55):
new baby. We had a very long surrogacy journey, which
is a whole other podcast, but yes, we have a
baby boy. We have a baby boy. And I remember,
you know, we knew exactly the sex of the embryos,
and we're asked if we wanted to choose, and felt like, gosh,
this incredibly expensive, stressful process has been so designed. Let's
(33:19):
leave something up to God or chance. And we have
a little boy. And you know, there's a part of
me that is relieved because it gave me the opportunity
and is giving me the opportunity in a very present
way of having a completely different experience than when I
had my daughter. So, Gabrielle has a little brother. What
(33:43):
do you think that success looks like for you? Now,
that's a great question. I think I used to think
of success as tangible marks right of titles, and success
for me now I think is going to be about
being authentic to myself, making sure that I am practicing
(34:06):
self care, that I am being creative and telling rich stories,
and that I have a healthy marriage and a healthy child.
And while those things were always important, I think, you know,
looking for a certain title or a certain salary just
had a very different We're just very different before all
(34:28):
this happened. And what does self care look like for
you now? Probably sleeping a little more than you are
sleeping that part. I'll tell you something interesting though, I
had not slept well since I lost Gabrielle and have
dealt with incredible depression and anxiety. And when I can
sleep now I sleep and my anxiety is almost gone.
(34:52):
And so this little boy has been like the balm
in so many ways that I'm so grateful for, so
grateful for. But self care, you know, making myself, which
I'm not doing that great of a job at so
now I'm saying it on the record, I have to
do it of getting out and exercising right of you know,
(35:13):
taking a few minutes to actually go out with a
friend or get a massage, you know a lot of
those sorts of things. But you know, it's so easy,
I think, as women to put everybody else first, and
it's important to me in a new marriage. You know,
I know that we we certainly tell people how to
treat us right, and we tell people what is or
(35:35):
isn't acceptable and what our boundaries are. And so I'm
working hard to ensure in this relationship that I am
doing everything I can to take care of myself as well,
which was not really how I thought about it when
I was married the first time.
Emily Tisch Sussman (35:54):
Well, I asked this question of all of my guests.
So it could be the thing we've already talked about
or something else, But what is one thing that at
the time you thought was a total low and now
in retrospect you see it as having really put you
in the headspace and the position that you are today.
Michelle Hord (36:12):
In October of twenty nineteen, as I was flying to
the Bahamas right after the murder trial ended, I did
not know that the day I flew there, my divorce
had become final, and what had become a place to
mourn and to remember somehow became a place where new
(36:39):
love and new life and new memories were formed. And so,
you know, I think for many of us, having to
pivot in life is about what do I take with
me and what do I leave behind, what still serves
me and what doesn't, And that can change and evolve
over time, and it's important that we ask ourselves those
(37:02):
questions about what I need right now, what's important to
me right now, what serves me right now, And it
may not look the same as it did a month
or two years ago, and that's okay. But for me,
a place that had started as a wonderful place that
became an escape and a refuge in the worst moments
(37:24):
of my life also birthed my next chapter with my husband.
Emily Tisch Sussman (37:30):
That's so incredibly beautiful. Now I know why you write
so well. Do you think you'll pivot again?
Michelle Hord (37:35):
Of course, listen. I think people that think that life
is a linear beginning, middle, and end, and you know
they live happily ever after, are rudely awakened often. You know,
I think there are times that I will have to
pivot because of circumstances that I don't control. There will
be times that I pivot because there are new opportunities
(37:57):
or I have new needs. And for me, you know,
in some of my consulting work, I talk about change
confidence instead of change management, because change is coming and
so I think it's really important for us, not in
a dreadful way, but to understand what it takes to
be resilient, to understand the tools we need when those
(38:19):
pivots occur, whether they're self induced or put upon us.
Because life is changing, our world, our country, I mean,
things are changing around us and they always are, and
so you can either be the thermometer or the thermostat
and decide how you're going to set the tone the
(38:40):
temperature for where you are right now.
Emily Tisch Sussman (38:43):
Thank you so much, Michelle, this was great.
Michelle Hord (38:46):
Thank you for your grace.
Emily Tisch Sussman (39:14):
Michelle has found so much in her after and is
now married with a brand new baby. She still continues
to change the lives of hundreds of children through her foundation,
Gabrielle's Wings, so be sure to visit their website Gabriellswings
dot org to support. You can also find her foundation
on the she Pivots Our Causes page. Talk to you
(39:36):
next week. Thanks for listening to this episode of she Pivots.
I hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, leave
us a rating and tell your friends about us. To
learn more about our guests, follow us on Instagram at
she Pivots the Podcast, or sign up for our newsletter,
where you can get exclusive behind the scenes content on
(39:58):
our website at she pivots podcast dot com. Special thanks
to the she pivots team, Executive producer Emily eda Velosik,
Associate producer and social media connoisseur Hannah Cousins, Research director
Christine Dickinson, Events and Logistics coordinator Madeline Sonovak, and audio
(40:19):
editor and mixer Nina pollock
Speaker 4 (40:22):
I endorse She Pivots
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