Early in this conversation, Rachael shares a question her friends began asking her after the loss of her 12-year old daughter, Addy:
What color is your heart today?
It is a gentle question. One that does not demand explanation or insist on answers. It doesn’t ask for strength or optimism. It simply asks for honesty. It allows the heart to be whatever it is in that moment—heavy or hollow, bruised or tender, dim or unexpectedly bright. Some days the answer comes easily. Some days it changes by the hour. And some days, there are no words at all—only feeling.
That question quietly weaves its way through this entire conversation.
After Addy’s death, grief did not live only in Rachael’s thoughts—it lived in her body. Panic, sleeplessness, and a constant sense of being overwhelmed became part of daily life. The grief was loud and unrelenting, and language often failed her. Months later, painting entered her life almost by accident. There were no expectations, no plans to make meaning or beauty—just color moving across paper.
And something shifted.
In those moments, the noise softened. The panic loosened its grip. What could not be spoken found another way out. Color became a language when words were unreachable. Stroke by stroke, layer by layer, painting offered a way to release what grief held inside.
Art became another way of answering the question:
What color is your heart today?
Now, Rachael carries that same gentleness and awareness into her work with young people in suicide prevention. She speaks honestly about pain without fear, encourages emotional expression without shame, and reminds them that life will hold hard things—and that they are capable of moving through them. Not by denying what hurts, but by learning to sit with it, name it, and find moments of meaning along the way.
This episode is about grief and color, about love that remains and courage that grows. It is about how healing does not erase loss—but finds new ways to carry it. And it is an invitation, offered softly and without judgment, to pause and ask yourself:
What color is your heart today?
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