Elise Hu

But yes, how would you distinguish this one?

You start the book with a specific idea for the type of journey that it takes to find your inner self, to kind of look inward and connect with a story of your brother, Sherrod, and his murder.

Can you tell us why you start off the book this way?

How old were you and how old was he when he lost his life?

So you had 41 years with your brother until he was tragically killed.

Do you consider yourself somebody who has healed from that?

Or is it just this open wound that you'll always feel?

I mean, grief is not linear as we understand it.

This is a great opportunity to shift to talking about forgiveness, because that's another major step in the work to embrace freedom, as you write about.

It's a word that's often directly associated with harm, and yet you call forgiveness a real act of self-love, an act of grace versus justice.

Can you expand on this?

Yeah, in your book, you start the chapter on forgiveness with a quote from Oprah, which really struck us.

She said, quote, forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different.

What does it mean to you to have hope for the past in the first place?

And why do we have to let it go?

I think the story of your mom and your healing journey with your mom is really related to this.

And now you're showing up for other people through your words and through your speaking.

And even after...

all of this forgiveness of yourself, of others, of being forgiven, you write about this tension that you have to hold between gratitude and guilt, between embracing joy and feeling guilty.

Could you expand on that a little bit?