Season 2, Episode 01: Packing Up, Moving Forward: Grief, Change, and Fresh Starts

In this season opener of Hey Pops, Cori returns to the mic after three months away—on a date that holds deep significance: February 12th, the last time she spoke to her dad. From uncovering old text messages to preparing for yet another move, she reflects on the unexpected ways grief and life keep colliding.

This episode is a mix of nostalgia, resilience, and the bittersweet humor that comes with navigating the chaos of change. Cori shares how she’s been rebuilding—financially, emotionally, and physically—after another rough season and how, even in the hardest times, her dad’s words still find a way to guide her forward. With big moves (literally) on the horizon, she’s leaning into the unknown, trusting the process, and, of course, planning a pizza party.

Show Notes:

• Season 2 Kickoff: Cori returns to Hey Pops on a meaningful date, unsure of where this season will go but ready to dive back in.
• The Last Call: February 12th, 2021, was the final video chat Cori had with her dad and brother. She reflects on that moment, the screenshot they saved, and why it still matters.
• Old Texts, New Moves: A four-year-old message from her dad resurfaces at the perfect time—just as she prepares for another big life transition.
• Rock Bottom and the Climb Back Up: Cori opens up about the financial, emotional, and personal struggles of the past few months, plus the steps she’s taking to rebuild.
• Creating Rituals in Grief: How she’s making this move a ceremony of its own, aligning it with her birthday, her dad’s day, and her love of making ordinary moments meaningful.
• What’s Next: A new home, a fresh start, and a season ahead full of stories, reflection, and maybe even a few surprises.

Links & Resources:

• Learn more about the podcast: https://coriorak.com/hey-pops-podcast
• Submit your own voicemail or story about Dan: https://www.speakpipe.com/HeyPops
• Get involved with the Dan Culhane Memorial Fund: https://www.danculhanememorialfund.org/

Transcript

 Hello. Hello, everybody.  Did you miss me?  I didn't know if or when I was going to pick this back up again, but there's no better time than today. So sit back, relax, and listen to episode one of season two of Hey Pops. 

Hey, I'm Cori and this is Hey Pops. 

Is this thing on? 

I feel so.  rusty in this. It's been exactly three months since I recorded and put out the final episode of last year  in season one, if you will.  And uh,  what an auspicious day to record again.  It is February 12th  and I have a reminder in my calendar.  For February 12th, because it is the last time I talked to my dad.

And,  I'm obviously having a lot of feelings this week  and I'm missing him like crazy.  So,  here I am. I wasn't sure when and if I was going to pick this up again. So February 12th, 2021,  I did a weekly call, um, my dad, my brother, and myself have been doing weekly calls. for, man, I don't even know how long, six months or eight months or something.

It's something we started in the pandemic and it's something we started because my dad was sick.  And we would do these weekly video calls. And the last video call we did is something that I can hold close in my heart. The last like video chat I had with my dad was shared with my brother, which is beautiful.

And he was in England.  Studying for shoot. I want to say a master's degree, but I'm not exactly sure what it was and I was in Bali and my dad was in Minneapolis and how fucking cool is it that? My dad was on a phone call a video call With his kids that we were all sprawled out across the globe, living our lives, bettering ourselves, learning and growing.

I, I am so fucking grateful. And we took a screenshot. I don't know why we took a screenshot. It's not a great screenshot. Everybody's not in focus, but we took a screenshot of the three of us. I have this memorialized forever.  And that's epic. And yesterday when I was thinking about that, I went back into my messages with my dad and I was like, what's the last text message that I got from my dad?

And it was crazy because on February 1st, 2021, my dad asked me about how's the battle? How goes the battle? Is what he said.  And I was like, what battle? And he said, you're moving back to Ubud. Because we had spent, my ex husband and I had spent, oh, I don't know how long, three months? In a coastal town of Ahmed, Bali, during the pandemic, staying at a hotel I couldn't afford to stay at now.

But because of the pandemic, it was incredibly affordable, and we just stayed in this ghost town of a fancy resort. With Kreacher,  in this cool Fancy suite that had its own pool and kitchen and it was, it was a cool way to go through some crazy, crazy lifetimes. I watched Trump leave office from that place, which was so great and  we don't have to talk about where we're at now. 

So the last message he said, how goes the battle?  I was like what battle and he said you moving back to Ubud and I said it's happening in a few hours I hate moving. I get super anxious and weird. We're 95 percent packed up. I'm doing the rest after I fully wake up And then we'll drive down at 10 a. m. We have more stuff than we thought So I hope we fit it all in the van and my dad said good luck and now it is four years later And I am packing up my shit  and moving again.

So I'm just reading this message and replacing Ubud with Cyan. Ugh, I'm holding my microphone, which means I'm bumping it and everything. Everything's wonky. I'm getting back in the groove of things. But I'm just replacing  Ubud with Cyan, which is a neighborhood in which I used to live, and I am hearing my dad say, good luck, and I'm looking at it, I'm looking at a message from my pops that says good luck, and I'm holding on to that when I do this move.

So much has happened in three months. I wrapped up this podcast a little before December because it had been a one hell of a year and I was struggling so hard in November and December It was like another layer of rock bottom after all of the rock bottoms. I've had over the last three years  Three four years five years six years, whatever It was just one more rock bottom and I was completely out of money.

I was struggling to find work. I was struggling to stay confident and persevere finding work while getting extremely discouraged by not getting any jobs or clients. I was feeling heartbroken about my third holiday. Completely alone. No family. No holiday traditions. Just me and my cat in my house. Mind you, I do deck out my house with holiday decorations.

I don't skimp on that. I still celebrate and have a party by myself, but that didn't fill some of the heartache of sharing it with family and having some people, real people around. I was totally bankrupt. Going in the red, getting those beautiful messages from the bank being like, you don't have any money in here. 

And I got some jobs. In late December, but here's the deal, when you get a new job, your first payments don't come in for a while. So it was that awful and awesome feeling of finally getting back on a good path in life after having such a rough go of depression, grief, heartbreak, divorce, international moves.

And then, you know, the state of the world doesn't help. And the entire genocide in Gaza was happening during that time. And I, my heart just couldn't take anything that was going on. But anyways, I was starting to get some lights at the end of the dark, dark tunnels. But it's that awful transition period where You've locked down those next steps, but you don't actually see the fruition of that hard work for a while So it was a struggle and looming over my head was this move.

I knew that my landlord wasn't renewing her land lease At the end of March, and so I knew I was going to be out of a house at the end of March. And this house, I picked as an Airbnb that I found while living in Minneapolis at my dad's house with my stepmom. I booked it for a month, and then  whatsapped the person within the first, like, 24 hours of being here.

And I was like, ayyy.  Can I stay forever?  Can I extend this and pay by month and keep staying here? Because the amount of energy and gusto I had in life from uprooting everything, from processing the trauma of losing my dad, the trauma of moving back to America, and ending a marriage, and struggling with family relationships, and all of those things, I was losing steam, so I just Got here safe and sound and locked it down and now it's been three years of it almost and I was afraid to leave it because it's like a security blanket, but it's also not my house, you know, it's been a safety net.

It's been a security blanket. Like I said, it held me while I was literally bedridden with depression for months on end. I didn't leave my house for months on end. So many tears, so many experiences. Um, my ex husband came here and we had a little closing ceremony for our marriage. So this place has held all this energy, all this life, all this experience and transition and heaviness and thick energy of grief and sadness.

And so towards the end of December, I started looking for a new place because a girlfriend of mine said, It's time and think of how you get a fresh start and I hadn't been able to see it that way I saw it as a hard, scary, negative thing, and instead it's actually a quite exciting, beautiful thing because I get to pick a house I like, I get to set it up the way I want it, I get to find an area I want to live in.

And so I started looking on all the boards and reaching out to all these different people and I was finding some options. But I decided to search for the area I loved rather than like, Browsing the newest posts and I found a place that looked perfect But they had said it was available back in like September and he had his whatsapp on there and I messaged him and I was like Hello, I know this is out of the blue and it might be a long shot But can I rent this starting in March and so this was in December and it was you know Two and a half months in advance and I was like, I'll do anything.

I'll pay a deposit Can I lock it down? And he was like, actually, my current tenant leaves January 19th, so it's only a month and a half in between. I'm happy to do this. And so I got some financial help to put down the deposit from a family member and I locked down a sweet, sweet house. And now it's coming up on that time and it is all set up in the most beautiful, dreamy, magical way because that's how I live my life.

I put things on days that matter to me and I arrange things so that they fall on ceremonious days or I make it a ceremony or I make it a celebration because  why not? I mean, literally, why not? So I am getting the keys to my brand new house and moving in on March  1st, which is your girl's 41st birthday.

And on the 28th, it's my dad's day. So I was, again, making things way harder than they have to be, and thinking, I always take my dad to the ocean. How can I move on my birthday? And then I remembered, like the big dumb idiot I am, I live on a fucking island.  I can make it happen. So I spend one day at the beach with my dad.

I'm just going to take him on a day trip and drive to a beach and enjoy some food and read a book  and enjoy the sea and go swimming and spend that day with him. And then I'm going to come home, sleep my last night in this house. And then the next morning I'm going to pack up creature. And we're gonna move in to my brand new house.

I've logistically mapped it out because that's the lady I am. And I'm gonna move the majority of this stuff over a few days before, so I'm free to go down to the beach without having anything to do. And then on the first, when I wake up, I will have just an overnight bag and my cat to take with me to move in to my brand new house.

And since it's my birthday, I'm gonna go get groceries. And I'm going to have a pizza party because I am nothing if not the biggest fan of having pizza parties, of having my own parties, of celebrating myself. And this will be the fourth birthday I've spent all by myself. And I kind of like it that way because these two days are for me and my dad. 

I love my birthday. I love celebrating. I love talking about myself. I love celebrating me. I think it's so much fun to be able to do it. But I also love having it be this special secret thing. A few days later, I'm probably going to have a dinner date with girlfriends for the first time in five years. To have other people bear witness to celebrating me for once.

But I have this great plan.  And I have this great guy wishing me good luck in my ear, in my head, prepping me for this epic move. And I can't wait. And I'm just really happy to be back to talking to my dad and celebrating that on this day four years ago, I was video chatting with my dad and my brother.

And it was beautiful and we were laughing and telling stories and showing each other around our new houses. And he had just got back from refereeing and he was so fucking happy and so himself and feeling more like himself than he had felt in a long time. And it was awesome. And I just love him. So for the next few weeks, I'm going to listen to more audio books by him.

Random marketing skills, random dating advice books, just to hear my dad talk, watch videos and honor him. And then I'm gonna show him around my new house, I'm gonna text him pictures of the new house. And I know he'd be proud of me, because at the end of the day I'm doing it, I'm surviving. I've made it through some pretty dark shit.

And I'm learning something new every single day. And I'm finally feeling more and more alive. And less afraid. And I'm smiling and laughing and moving every day. And I have my dad to thank for that.  Thank you, thank you, thank you everybody for tuning in. For spending 15 20 minutes with me. There's a big gust of wind, which is my dad saying thank you. 

It's such a short little time to share together, but it means the world to me knowing that you're witnessing my experiences, you're keeping my dad in the top of mind, and you're joining me on my grief journey. I've met a lot of incredible people through this podcast, I've learned a lot of new stories about my dad through this podcast, I've found clients through this podcast,  and I can't say thank you enough.

It means the world to me. Stay tuned. I'm not sure when Missed Calls will be. I don't know if this will be a weekly podcast again or maybe just twice a month, one of each. Uh, but stay tuned for the next Missed Calls and  learn something.