Cheering through Struggles: An Insight into Health, Influence, and Resilience

Join me for a compelling conversation with the phenomenal Samantha Rose Holdren, a.k.a Samantha Rose Keto, as we pull back the curtain on the Cheer Choice Awards - a high-spirited fundraising event for Spread the Cheer USA. Samantha takes us on a deep dive into the health and wellness industry, sharing her commitment to aiding those battling addiction and her belief in the transformative power of social media in rallying support for community causes. Are we ready for an intimate look into the Cheer Choice Awards? I think we are!

Also, brace yourself for an inspiring tale as we connect with a single mother grappling with multiple sclerosis and a history of abuse. Her resilience and determination transform her struggles into a beacon of hope on TikTok, aiming to inspire others in similar situations. We also get the chance to connect with Samantha Rose Holdren, the driving force behind Spread the Cheer USA. She underscores the importance of inclusivity, diversity, and the joy of reaching out and connecting with others. Ready or not, here comes an episode charged with emotion, inspiration, and a whole lot of grit.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Good morning bitches and dolls. If no one told you they love you today, then I love you because you're you. Who else you're going to be Samantha, right? So I have this gorgeous, incredible Samantha Rose Holden, also known as what?

Speaker 2: 0:22

Samantha Rose Keto. Samantha Rose on all platforms.

Speaker 1: 0:26

Oh great. So now I found on Tick of course is like the clear, the chair. What is the chair?

Speaker 2: 0:34

choice.

Speaker 1: 0:37

Okay, so okay. First I'm going to read her horoscope. She's a Gemini. Deep focus will produce your best work, and it's only possible if you take precautions to prevent, prevent, interrupt.

Speaker 2: 0:52

That applies.

Speaker 1: 0:53

Okay, so let's yeah. So tell me about how you got involved with the award and what are these awards?

Speaker 2: 1:02

Yeah, I'll tell you all of the things. So the cheer choice awards is one of the largest fundraiser events that we do for the nonprofit that I'm a part of called spread the cheer USA. I am the executive director of spread the cheer and I've been sitting on the board now for almost two years, and it's an absolutely remarkable organization. We help families in need across the country year round kids, families who need toys, food, holiday stuff, anywhere from like bills to, you know, access ramps, all different types of things that they're in need of. It's absolutely incredible, and the cheer choice awards came about as just a really fun event, a great idea, a way to bring people together who are possible, and we want to honor and celebrate them.

Speaker 2: 2:01

So, yeah, so the cheer choice awards was born, and how it works is basically the public can nominate social media creators on any platform it could be TikTok, youtube, instagram, facebook, wherever Twitch, and or you can self nominate as well and then public voting opens up. Everybody in your community can vote and support you, and there's a couple of different rounds and then it goes all the way up to top five and then the winner is announced in Las Vegas at the cheer choice awards. We do it every year in April and it's a whole weekend of fun. There's a pool party and after party, the award show is beautiful, we get to get dressed up and it's all just like positive, influential people that are on social media.

Speaker 1: 2:54

Wow, and I don't know how I got nominated for that. I don't know anything about it and whether I go to any other rounds. I'm just so happy, I guess, to be nominated because of my platforms that are very important to me. You know, my LGBTQ plus platforms, of course, my transgender platform, my alcohol and drug platform. It was on and on and on for me, but that was very sweet. So you know I understand. Is Mama Top involved with it? We got from, yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:35

She sure is. She is actually on our frontline. She won last year cheer of the year and it's an absolutely remarkable award it's like the award of the cheer choice or cheer of the year and now she sits on our frontline board and she does a lot of the work with us going out to give to these families. She's such an incredible human, she has such a beautiful heart and she's just so much fun, so she'll definitely be there again this year.

Speaker 1: 4:07

First, about her being on Twitter when I was on TikTok when her son passed being sober 38 years as I am, that it's so fleeting. There are some of us who make it in sobriety and some of us who don't, and the most horrible thing is to see your child die from drugs and alcohol or shot or whatever and you know it is. I really hate when people talk about how they deserve it. They were doing drugs and they should have gotten that. You know alcohol is a disease. If you're a doctor, it's a disease. It takes over you. There's the good you and the bad you, the little devil, the angel. So it's not your fault and I hate when people say it's your fault in situations that overwhelm you. And being sober all those years, I don't know how I stay sober. I do what I've been doing for 38 years, so I was really hurting with her son.

Speaker 2: 5:10

Yeah, me too. That's hard. I couldn't imagine how horrible it must be, yeah. But you know, there's always a learning and a light and an awareness and I couldn't imagine being a parent losing a child like that either. You know she used her platform to really shine that awareness and share her story and also support her journey. You know have so many people support her journey and share her love and show up for people. She's just such a giver and such an amazing human. She shows up for people every single day and she's a busy little bundle of me.

Speaker 1: 5:52

So tell me all about Youth. Samantha, how are you like getting into the mix of everything, with everything that you do?

Speaker 2: 6:00

Yeah, so I'm in the health and wellness industry. I help people identify what their goals are, what their health journey, reverse, engineer them, create a healthy rhythm for them, and that will look different for everybody. A lot of us focus primarily on ketosis. It's all about mindset, physical health, mental health, spiritual health, and the goal is to just be healthy. With everyone I work with, we create customized plans and with Spread the Cheer USA, I mean, I'm definitely working full time with them as well, and we're just a small board of six people and we pour our hearts and soul into this thing and it's just so fulfilling. I love helping people. I help people with their health, I help people with this, with that, and then Spread the Cheer just fell into my lap and it was such a beautiful opportunity. My best friend, danielle Claudio she's the president of Spread the Cheer USA and then we have several other board members who support this journey and that's really my day to day.

Speaker 2: 7:04

I'm a single mom. I have, yeah, two kids. I've been a single mom for the whole time. It seems like I went through a lot of challenges and I learned and I've grown so much, but it was a lot of physical and emotional abuse and just things that I didn't wanna show up for with my kids around, and I finally was in a place where I just left it all. It's a lot and I have a lot of health challenges. You do.

Speaker 1: 7:39

Oh my God, I have friends who have it.

Speaker 2: 7:42

Yeah, yeah, it's an interesting disease I got diagnosed.

Speaker 1: 7:47

I hope you don't mind me asking I'm 35 now.

Speaker 2: 7:55

Yeah, I'm stuff. I'm grateful, I'm blessed, I am, I'm very blessed. Oh, I love your mom.

Speaker 1: 8:02

Oh, yeah, I'm for you Most of your address. I'm doing this. Everybody gets a mom.

Speaker 2: 8:09

Oh, I'm so excited. I love that. I'm sure of course they don't make the black ones anymore, though.

Speaker 2: 8:14

Okay, I love turkey. Okay, good, yup, I love those. I drink a lot of tea, so I'm a little bit of a meanie. I'm a little bit of a meanie, as we all have, and I've used. When TikTok came around, I used TikTok as an outlet to share my story, to share, to inspire people, like I had never shared anything before TikTok came around and I don't know what sparked any to just start sharing about what I have experienced and how to turn it into light. And that's kind of where I don't know. Tiktok started for me too, and now I see so many people message me and share with me that what I've shared has impacted them and inspired them and helped them through things, and that's really what is important to me and it's fulfilling. Again, back to helping people. I love helping people, so, on a daily basis, as somebody who's?

Speaker 1: 9:11

living with. I have some disabilities myself. How do you live every day with your disability?

Speaker 2: 9:20

Yeah, so I'm just curious. That's a great question.

Speaker 1: 9:23

I have a guy friend who's moved to Arizona. He's, you know, completely, not completely incapacitated yet, but I don't, you know, I don't know the journey.

Speaker 2: 9:35

Yeah, yeah, you know MS can be very scary, right? Because it's so different for everybody and you never know what's going to happen. When it's going to happen, it's just like your body decides. One day I'm going to attack you and it could be anywhere. So for me it started out with my eyes. I've gone blind a couple of times completely, and there were times where my eyes got stuck cross-eyed and I couldn't move them back, and then I have something called relapsing remitting MS, so it just like goes and comes and goes and comes whenever there's a go, and I couldn't get words out of my mouth.

Speaker 2: 10:18

I couldn't feel my legs. I was like sleeping for days and like I was. The words were in my brain but they weren't coming out of my mouth. And you know, they put me on a medication. I had 24 lesions on my brain from that one and I just completely took a shift on my health and that's really how I started with health coaching as well. I started really focusing on my health and autoimmune and inflammation and gut health and all the things that are important to your body, and you know I focus on low carb and supplementing and moving and sweating and infrared stuff and all that. And then two years ago my body actually developed another autoimmune challenge to where it was negatively responding to food, so majority of the foods I was eating was then creating an attack in my body as well. I lost all of my hair in four weeks. I had to shave my head.

Speaker 1: 11:14

My body was just well, I think that was a good look on you, though you gotta look at that it was, it was so good, it was it was very GIG-ish and it was kind of hot and you know, there was a lot of bright sides and I'm actually very grateful.

Speaker 2: 11:33

It was definitely the rock bottom of my health and I thought I was gonna die for sure, like I, just that I've never had that feeling within me and I started working with this amazing doctor. I'm gonna have to give him a shout out. Dr Wilcole literally saved my life. He's remarkable. You can follow him on Instagram. He's written tons of books. He's a life saver and I've done some interviews with him as well on his podcast and I just really started focusing on my health.

Speaker 2: 12:03

So if I can give anybody one piece of advice for their health journey, if you're dealing with anything autoimmune related, then really focus on healthy choices. And I look at it like this and he taught me this your relationship with food will be treated the same way. Having something or surrounding yourself with people or eating the foods that serve you, then it's just as toxic as any of those relationships that I shared and it hit me hard because I was in one of those relationships, you know, and I stayed around for too long and I'm like ill. So I now make really, really mindful choices on what I'm doing and I asked myself it's very black or white. Is this making me healthier and helping me live longer, or is this literally killing me?

Speaker 1: 12:53

Right.

Speaker 2: 12:54

That's what it comes down to.

Speaker 1: 12:56

Oh yeah, and you have two kids. How old are they? If you don't mind me asking, yeah, 9 and 12.

Speaker 2: 13:06

Yeah, my little, my little one is nine. She's amazing, her name is Tyler. She's on the spectrum, so that's a journey in itself.

Speaker 1: 13:15

I love people on the spectrum. I don't know why it is besides LGVD, you could all that but I love because people on the spectrum are really genius, yes, genius.

Speaker 2: 13:28

Absolutely Amen, and I agree, I absolutely adore it, I adore her and I adore everyone on the spectrum. I think it's so, it's so special and it can be hard for some people to really process and be aware of, and I'm just so proud of all the people who are pushing through and doing amazing things in life.

Speaker 2: 13:46

My daughter's like a master artist, like since she was little like I'm normally good at art. And then my son. He is remarkable, he is the sweetest soul. He's 12. He's in middle school. He's just such a calm, caring kid and I'm just so grateful. I have good kids and they're just so amazing. I love it. I was born to be in a mom. I never thought I was born to be in a mom.

Speaker 1: 14:10

I became a mom late in life and then, like I just took to it like a doctor water. So, and that's why I went on TikTok, because of my opinionated big mouth of things and stuff, I alienated my son and his family and we haven't really been in contact for many, many years. Then I was looking for my grandchildren on TikTok but I found so many people who see me as their grandmother, their bubby, that that's the only thing for me that fills my life on a daily basis. And when people ask me for advice, like you know, it's just wonderful for me to, you know, be there and be there. I'm a very accepting person. It's like, whoever you are, I accept you for who you are, as long as you're not hurting you or anybody else.

Speaker 2: 14:59

That's what it's all about and family isn't always blood, you know, and it's so important to play that role. Like I love you and your page Like remarkable, remarkable, and I feel so much goodness and so much love. I can tell your heart is pure and you care about people and same for me, that's what matters. I love it, are you? I have a question. Your name is TikTok bubby. Yeah, you Jewish Me too.

Speaker 1: 15:27

I thought, yeah, yes, I'm Jewish, me too. I'm a Jewish girl from Earl Park in.

Speaker 2: 15:37

Blackbush yeah, my grandmother was from New York and we were born and raised in Miami and we are definitely Jewish over here.

Speaker 1: 15:48

My father was a con artist. God bless his soul. So we moved from place to place to place and we lived in Miami in the early 50s on Collins Avenue. So we were at the hotel actually so not a fancy hotel, but I have pictures of it, whatever it was called and we lived there brief, you know, back up on follow, follow the man kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 16:14

Yeah, oh, that's so cool.

Speaker 1: 16:16

Yeah, I was raised on new yes, close families that move to Israel to say about life there. I have much, many close relatives and you know they have to make that decision for them. Oh, I, you know I can't, so anyway, it's so you're a single.

Speaker 2: 16:53

So I had my first baby really young. I was 21 when I got pregnant, 22 and I had my first baby and I mean that's the whole craziest story in itself. But when my son was two and a half years old, I decided to just move and move on to another portion of my life and your chapter and I chose to become a single mom and A year and a half later I ended up with Someone who was kind of like a best friend to me and we had a baby together. So I have two different dads. But that that ended up being the very traumatic, toxic relationship that I was in and After that I stayed single.

Speaker 2: 17:36

Like I, I do everything for myself, my health, my kids and my business, and my family is most important.

Speaker 2: 17:45

I'm not one of those girls that is, you know, dependent on people. I have incredible beautiful life and I've spent the last seven years really focusing on Personally growing and personally developing to become the best version of myself, to be the best partner for whoever that I end up partnering with. But I also have really been sitting on the fact that it's totally okay that if I stay single through all of this and then maybe focus on things after my kids are older. That's like a whole nother chapter of my life that I get to embrace and that's kind of where I'm at right now. I dated like once, like a year, and I learned a lot through that, but I I don't know. I want to be able to give somebody 100% of me, or at least a large portion of it, and right now it's for myself, my health, my kids and my business. You know I'm a non-profit and the things that I love, and I'm doing so if I find my grandchildren Like you, and then the ones that came, like I.

Speaker 1: 18:55

There's a big gap that I, you know, a lot of my friends had babies, you know, in the 70s, and that's so. That's my opinion. Generation X forget about it. I love you also more centered and know what they want to do and the very specific. So that's so. You're a millennial, my sons a little. Then we've got the Z generation, are very With everything right.

Speaker 2: 19:21

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:26

So what do you want to tell the world? Because this will go on Spotify and Apple pod. I don't want anybody to know about you and you know your platform and what you're looking for.

Speaker 2: 19:42

Yeah, yeah. Well, I'll use this opportunity to say that Spread the cheer and talk about that. It's yeah, it's my main focus. You know, my business is my business. I do great, my kids are amazing, my family is awesome, my life is good, my platform come follow me, samantha Rhodes, keto, on all platforms, but spread the cheer USA. We are making such an incredible impact on the world. There are thousands of families who have been able to help and we're just getting started. We're always looking for support, volunteers, anybody who wants to get involved. I think for me and what it also provides for other people to plug into To do something good for the world, and it's really like they don't know where to go or what to do. And Spread the cheer USA is social media based, so we use social media to get the word out and spread the word and find families. Right now, our nominations are open until December 10th for you to nominate any family and need across the country, whether it be yourself or a family that you know. So if you go to spread the cheer USA org, you can actually submit a nomination and Majority of these families make it through and we go to their door and deliver whatever it is that they need. It's remarkable We've done back to school campaigns to where we have helped an entire school that was, you know, underprivileged.

Speaker 2: 21:07

A lot of kids in the system gave all their school supplies, give them haircuts, all the things. We love doing stuff like that and we do it across the country. So if we ever do an event or a campaign in your area, we we encourage you and we want people to come support, be a part of it. You know, volunteer can put you any way, shape or form. It's so fulfilling For our holiday campaign the way that I got elf right.

Speaker 2: 21:33

You get to be an elf and there was a family that was like two hours from me. Me and my kids at once in the store, shopped, bought toys, wrapped them up and delivered it to this family store step and I involved my kids and that and it was so impactful, so powerful. My kids were just it opened their eyes so much and they were like, wow, I want to do more of this. And I had never brought them along for anything like that. I'd never introduced them to something like that. So for me it was so powerful and so important. I know it was for them too. So I encourage you guys.

Speaker 2: 22:06

If you want to be a part of USA in any way whether Volunteer, deliver gifts be a part of it. We're always looking for that support, and same goes to the cheer choice awards. This is a huge event, huge event, and we always need volunteers. This is again a huge fundraiser, which is what funds all these families getting helped in the first place. So anyone who wants to be involved in just good, amazing things, reach out. I would love to chat with you and help you. Just plug in and do some goodness in the world.

Speaker 1: 22:47

Thank you very much. How can people reach out From my spot of five or my apple from this podcast to?

Speaker 2: 22:55

reach you so you can email me at Samantha at spread the cheer USA org. You can find me on social media platforms Facebook, instagram, tiktok it's Samantha Rose keto or you'll see Samantha Rose Holdren and you can go to spread the cheer USA org and click volunteer. You can see our campaigns. Go to cheer choice word calm, check out all that and then, of course, I'm just gonna have to say go vote for the cheer choice awards. I did that, you're a part of it and I just Adore you. I appreciate you spending time with me today and bringing me on your platform.

Speaker 1: 23:42

Thank you. We're doing. We're moving in In January to the Jewish oh my gosh, I love that. We'll be the B word. So Young girl, your age and so we're doing something together, so we'll see what's gonna happen with that. But Because I want to reach out, she's more about matching people up. I'm more about Talking to people who have all types of like. You know, things that have happened to them survive the Gallery, like my burn beauty in 2018, whose body burned, and she survived cancer, autism, all the people that I love and you know LGBTQ, transgender. Goes on. For me, it's yeah.

Speaker 1: 24:35

I love that, rosa. Nobody told you they love you today. I love you because you're you. Thank you for coming on morning and I'll get you a cup, yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:55

I'm sure you're amazing and I'm doing great.

Speaker 1: 24:58

Thank you, I love you too. I hope to see you at the awards. It would be nice, but I'm not sure I love you all.

Speaker 2: 25:05

I have a great day Be on and a p-.