SHE Asked Podcast
Welcome to The SHE Asked Podcast with Anna McBride—a space where the stories we tell ourselves are challenged, reimagined, and rewritten to unlock personal transformation.
Hosted by former therapist, storyteller, and lifelong seeker Anna McBride, this podcast dives deep into the power of narrative. Through personal stories and intimate conversations with guests, we explore how shifting our internal dialogue can change not just how we see our lives—but how we live them.
Each episode offers what Anna calls “practical hope”—real tools, lived experience, and emotional honesty for anyone feeling stuck, lost, or ready for change. Whether you’re navigating divorce, grief, reinvention, or simply trying to understand your past, The SHE Asked Podcast invites you to become the author of your own story—and the hero in it, too.
Follow along for weekly episodes filled with compassion, perspective, and the courage to ask yourself:
What story am I telling—and is it still serving me?
SHE Asked Podcast
The Whole Way Home〡Honoring My Sister in the Grand Canyon
n this moving episode of She Asked: Where Healing Meets Practical Hope, host Anna McBride shares the sacred story of her final road trip with her sister Tish — a journey of grief, love, and letting go. Through vivid storytelling, Anna reflects on Ram Dass’s powerful quote,
“We’re all just walking each other home,”
and explores what it truly means to accompany someone through the hardest transitions of life.
Recorded with heart and honesty, this episode takes you from the Grand Canyon to the Colorado River, through memories, music, and ashes — offering insight into grief recovery, spiritual companionship, and the healing power of connection. Anna weaves her personal experience with wisdom from Ram Dass, scientific research on grief and relationships, and the transformative lessons of walking each other home.
✨ In this episode, you'll hear:
The story of Anna’s sacred promise to her sister
Reflections on grief, recovery, and spiritual connection
The science behind why relationships are essential to healing
Journaling prompts to deepen your own self-reflection
A guided affirmation for honoring the road between souls
💬 Journal Prompts:
Who has walked you home during a hard time?
Who are you walking home right now?
🧡 If this story resonates with you, please share it with someone you love. Subscribe, leave a review, and remember: you are never walking alone.
#GriefHealing #RamDass #WalkingEachOtherHome #Sisterhood #SpiritualGrowth #PracticalHope #SheAskedPodcast #GriefRecovery #ConnectionHeals #HealingJourney #MentalHealthAwareness #LettingGoWithLove #GrandCanyonJourney #PodcastEpisode
Welcome back to she Asked. I'm your host, anna McBride, and I am so glad you're here. In today's episode, I want to share a story that changed me about grief release and the sacred experience of walking someone home, or, in this case, it was a road trip. It's a story about the last road trip that I took with my sister, tish, and how that journey brought me face to face with one of Ram Dass's most enduring teachings. He's known for this quote we're all just walking each other home. So here's a story. This is 2017, so it's about eight years ago.
Speaker 1:It was a beautiful spring morning. I still remember what it felt like. It was one of those spring mornings where the sky was an obnoxious shade of blue, the sun shone brightly, but yet wasn't too intensely hot yet wasn't too intensely hot and the breeze, the air, was just crisp enough that I knew that something was going to happen. In fact, it's the kind of weather that makes me want to go on an adventure, and so I did. I set about packing. I packed very intentionally because I had just gotten back from the Camino de Santiago, some months before that pilgrimage hike through Spain, and so I knew how to pack. I packed a backpack with hiking boots and clothes, and, of course, there was snacks and music. Music was important for any road trip, right, it had to be perfectly curated, carefully curated, with the favorites, and in this particular case, because it was involving my sister, tish, I wanted to include hers as well, and one of her favorite artists was Melissa Etheridge, and so I put those on the soundtrack. There was also something else I packed, and, as I said that, for a road trip, what you need it's an essential ingredient is a co-pilot. You need someone who is your trusted co-pilot, someone who's going to help you navigate, someone who is your trusted co-pilot, someone who's going to help you navigate, help you keep track of the directions, maybe give you some unsolicited opinions, right, that's what Tish was really known for, and we were known for our road trips.
Speaker 1:We went on many, whether for hiking, or. Most memorable was when she went away to college in Colorado. I drove her out there and then, after she was done, four years later, I went out, got her and drove her back and we had the best laughs. We ate poorly, we blasted the music loudly and she was my favorite co-pilot ever, and this trip that I'm talking about was no exception, except this time she came in canister form. What I mean by that? She had been cremated. This was after Tish had passed away.
Speaker 1:I got permission from her husband to take some of her ashes with me on this road trip to the Grand Canyon. And the Grand Canyon hike was going to involve going from the rim down to the Colorado River, which the Colorado River was one of Tisha's favorite places in the whole wide world and I was going to take her ashes there and release her back. It was a sisterly promise. I remember as children that we committed to each other to have adventures in life. Back then we were daydreaming with National Geographic and as we got older and technology caught up, we had pictures and movies and videos and trips together where we got to experience some great things, and I wanted my final release of her to be no different. So I got her ashes, got the snacks, got the music, got the clothes, got the backpack, got the hiking boots and set off for the Grand Canyon. Took me a few days to get there and the odd thing was one thing that I didn't appreciate or calculate until I arrived was the timing.
Speaker 1:I arrived at the Grand Canyon on Memorial Day weekend, and it's so funny to me now because of the fact that I'm such a planner of trips I'm known for that. However, that particular time clearly lost in some sort of grief. I lost track of time and space, and so when I arrived there and realized that it was Memorial Day weekend, I didn't understand the date until I saw the sea of people with selfie sticks and all the children and the families and the groups and the buses and the population. I was like, oh my gosh. I had this idea that it was going to be a sacred moment, a quiet servitude of celebrating her life.
Speaker 1:Before I released her, and it couldn't have been more of the opposite if I tried, so determined to do my sisterly promise, I pressed forward and put her in my backpack, got all situated, started hiking on the trail to go down to the basin where the Colorado River access is, and as I was making my way along the trail, right before I was about to head down, to start going down the trail to the bottom, I was met with a park ranger, and it is apparently a part of their practice to check in and make sure anyone going down to the basin has a reservation to camp down there. There are only so many sites and not everybody who goes down can camp. And when I told him no, my plan was to go straight down and back up in the same day he looked at me and said lady, that is not a good idea. And I cocked my head and looked back at him with dismay. And then he asked me had I ever hiked at the Grand Canyon before? And I told him very quickly no, this was my first time. And then he asked me had I ever hiked at the Grand Canyon before? And I told him very quickly no, this was my first time. And I was excited. And his response to that was it's not recommended for first-timers to hike down to the river. It's not, because the elevation changes alone are really intense and that time of year the heat index at the bottom was going to be pretty ridiculous. In fact, I think they were predicting about over 100 degrees at the base. So I looked at him without any problem appearing in my mind and just nodded, to which I then said I hiked the Camino, and he blinked for a moment and said the Camino de Santiago, and I said yes, yes, and then I went on and said I hiked all 724 miles of it in under 42 days and in the dead heat of summer, and probably because of that statement, as well as the fact that he could read on my face and in my body language that I was not going to do this that he relented, handed me an extra bottle of water and said buen camino. And I went on my way. I did the descent down to the base and when I got down there getting down wasn't the problem.
Speaker 1:Finding a private space to scatter ashes was because there were so many people I had in my mind this idea that it was going to be a heartfelt ceremony, like a river-related type of declaration, maybe some personal reflection, before I released her ashes and instead I had to grab the first moment of space. I could opened up the canister of space. I could opened up the canister and before I flung her ashes, I said out loud there you go, sis, back to the wild. And her ashes just scattered through the sky due to the little breeze. There was danced a little bit and then disappeared into the water, and I can remember thinking that was just like her. She had such great presence for a flash and then she would go on to the next thing and I thought that was very in keeping with who she was, that experience and then I made my way back up and that was a whole other part of the story. Yet what I know from that experience was that I was committed to seeing her through. I did my best to save her from the dreaded disease that she was afflicted with alcoholism, and then, when she passed, I helped her family handle all the funeral arrangements. I actually gave the eulogy, handle all the funeral arrangements. I actually gave the eulogy, and I saw that as a part of walking her home Years before this actual story happened.
Speaker 1:The great gift of studying at a center out in California that was run by Deepak Chopra and one of his guests while I was there was Ram Dass, and Ram Dass has written many famous books, be here Now being one of the ones I love, and his quote that has always resonated is we're all just walking each other home Like. That's why we're here. We're here to witness, we're here to witness, we're here to connect, we're here to be together with other people in relationship with other people, and if you are lucky, you'll get to love somebody. I did with my sister, so all of that was a sacred journey, to which then I was able to help her get to where she was going to the other side and it's really helped me to understand and appreciate what that means. And because of that experience and the fact that I've had many chances to tell this story in different ways through the moth storytelling community, I can really see how connection is probably one of the most important things that we as humans are here to do. So I want to share with you some information about Ram Dass, and some research has further helped me to understand what this whole story means and to put it into context and frame it for you.
Speaker 1:Ram Dass, if you don't know, is this very famous person who was a guru to many people and formerly known as Richard Alpert. He was a Harvard psychologist back in the 1960s. He was a radical. He did a lot of research. I'm using air quotes because he and one of his partners in work study were checking out the effects of psychedelics and how they could help expand the mind, expand your world. After a trip he took to India back in the 1960s he had a spiritual transformation which then had him change his name to Ram Dass, and he became a teacher of mindfulness, compassion and presence. Those were his three cornerstones.
Speaker 1:This quote that I mentioned we're all just walking each other home is probably the center of all of his teaching. It's honoring the shared human journey. It's honoring the human, the shared human journey. It perfectly describes this trip I had with my sister in my life, as well as the ending of it is that we, she and I, were so connected connected enough that we saw each other as the important people that we were. We got to witness and watch very important milestones our weddings, our children being born. We went on together with our families as well as by ourselves and to hear her struggles towards the end with this addiction that she had that ended up taking her life. I really got to see her in all forms. There was no real hiding. I saw her and she saw me. And when I was thinking about the role that this quote has played in my life, I think about the teaching from Ram Dass is very wise and yet it's very built on scientific research which there has been tracking since 1953.
Speaker 1:There was a study at Harvard which he was involved with in terms of understanding the importance of quality relationships. The study actually began in 1938 when he was just a student, but it really became more true when he was actively working there later. And the study looked at how relationships help people reseal through difficult times in their life, which grief is considered, obviously, something very difficult to reseal from People who felt connected or felt like they had someone to witness and watch them and help them through, showed a higher percentage of an ability to reseal from difficult life circumstances, whether that's a death of a loved one, a setback financially or something in their health, loved one, a setback financially or something in their health. Connection isn't just poetic, it's practical, proven and essential to navigating grief and growth. There's also another study that I want to mention about social connection and grief recovery. Specifically, there is another study that I want to mention here that came up in the 2021 Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, a study about spiritual companionship and how it supports long-term psychological well-being. In this study, in this journal, they were reflecting over decades of separate, different studies and how the essential ingredient in all of them was the personal connection that the stronger the personal connection, the stronger the ability for someone to be able to handle things like grief.
Speaker 1:Grief, remember, isn't just about losing somebody. It can be about a pivot in your life. It can be about a loss of a possession, not just a relationship or a loved one, and so grieving anything is made easier when you feel a strong personal connection with someone of matter to you, and I find that, when I think about this story with my sister, what helped me through the loss of that was that I have been blessed with an ability to strongly connect with other people. Even though I struggled to ask for help, even though I struggle to admit what I'm struggling, I know that I have people who love me and I have people who support me, listen to me, and often I'm the last person who reaches out for help. However, I have people who reach out to me and check in on me, and I find what I'm really getting to the point on is understanding that we need to see both as a part of this process of human connection. It's not just about me reaching out and asking for help, although that's important. It's also about other people reaching out to me and checking on me. The quality of my connection matters to how I get through things in life, and that is a way of feeling like I'm being walked through my life. I'm not alone, like I'm being walked through my life, I'm not alone. I may have a tendency towards isolation, yet I have a stronger desire to connect, and so people who reach out to me, I will respond. And because I know how important that is to my mental health as well as to theirs, it is reciprocal.
Speaker 1:So now I want to offer you a chance now to maybe do some self-study through journaling. I want to offer you a prompt to consider, to write about. Here's the question who has walked you home in your life? Who has walked you through some difficult times in your life, whether it's through grief, through transition or even growth, because sometimes growth can create a bit of controversy or problems. I know when I've gone through personal growth, it can feel overwhelming. So who has walked you through that stuff? Name them, write them down in your notes so that you can really see that there is that connection for you. And if there isn't someone that you can think of, I want to challenge you to really begin to build the bridge Because, as I laid out in this research that I mentioned, it is essential, which means you need to add it to your life in order to have the quality, as well as the health, that we all want and deserve.
Speaker 1:And here's the second question we all want and deserve. And here's the second question who are you walking home right now? Who are you reaching out to, checking in on staying connected with? As I said, it's a reciprocal connection. What we give to others, we receive back In recovery. We say that in order to keep it, we have to give it away. So it's a great opportunity to reflect on if I'm not connecting or reaching out or doing service. That way, I benefit just as much by helping somebody else. The work, the help I did with taking my sister back home to the wild and helping her family walk through the grief of her funeral process helped me in ways that I am just now starting to understand.
Speaker 1:Now I want to offer you an affirmation, something to consider and maybe write about, but certainly to acknowledge yourself on. So I want to invite you to just close your eyes, take a deep breath in with me and then exhale as you continue to breathe in and out. Affirm yourself with the words, silently I honor the sacred road between souls. I honor the sacred road between souls. I do not walk alone and I do not ask others to walk alone. We are all just walking each other home. So let those words sink, in, let them affirm for you why I I believe we are all really here. We're all witnesses to each other's lives, to our own life, and our lives are made better by the connection to others. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone you love. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone you love. Leave a review, subscribe and know this you are never walking alone. No-transcript.