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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to All There Is. Wherever you are in the world and in your grief, I'm glad you're here. You're not alone. It's been a bittersweet week for me. I finished my last story at 60 Minutes after more than 20 years there. I left because I wanted to spend more time with my two little boys, Wyatt and Sebastian, but it's hard to leave a job that you've always loved.
The good news is that it makes it easier for me to do more of these podcasts, which I'm grateful for. My guest on this episode is Chanel Jones. In January, she began hosting, along with Jenna Bush Hager, Today with Jenna and Chanel, the fourth hour of the Today Show. In May 2025, Chanel's husband, Uche Oje, died from glioblastoma.
They met when they were in college and have three kids, a 16-year-old and 13-year-old twins. Chanel has a new book out, Through Mom's Eyes, which is full of life lessons and stories from the mother's well-known, highly accomplished people. But our conversation is about the loss of Uche and Chanel's grandmother, who died seven months later at the end of 2025. Thank you for doing this.
You have been, and I mean this so sincerely, the soundtrack to my healing. You, along with all of the people that you've talked with, when you hear other people share, it is healing, and you don't feel as isolated, you feel less alone, and so I feel like you've created this beautiful quilt of nurturing our hearts, and so I am honored to be part of this quilt.
It's still so recent.
So recent. And the truth of the matter is, after he was diagnosed, I still thought he would beat it. Like, you couldn't tell me that he wasn't going to beat it. It was just a matter of finding which trial or something. But I knew that he was going to beat it. Even though all the evidence was very clear, I still didn't believe it. The first time the doctors recommended hospice, I said no.
I wanted him to be able to be home. He wanted to be home. And I was like, I'll do it. And he's big now. He's strong. And I'm I was trying to do all the things, you know, lifting and all the things. And we have a lot of stairs. So that became a bit of a challenge. And I did it for maybe two or three months on my own. There are people who do this for years.
And anyone listening, if you are a caretaker, God bless you.
I just did an interview with a woman who has a very aggressive form of brain cancer, and she's trying to prepare her kids.
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Chapter 2: What personal losses does Sheinelle Jones discuss in this episode?
I saw her story.
And she's writing letters to her kids for the future. My mom's dad died when she was 15 months old, and she had this fantasy her entire life that he had left her some letter somewhere that might arrive in the mail. And I sort of had that fantasy for my dad as well.
I tried. I tried. It was the only time things got a little... Because if I say, hey, I think you should write something for the kids, that means that I think you're not going to make it. And there was one point where I said, why don't you write it? And then at our daughter's wedding, we'll read it and we'll show that you're still here. And I think...
For him to write it would have been accepting that maybe it wasn't going to go that way, his way, and I don't think he was willing to do that. And I think by the time he was like, okay, maybe, I think it was probably too late. Towards the end, I started videotaping everything, whereas before I didn't. He also played a lot of instruments.
My son plays a lot of instruments, and so he would come in, and my son would be playing the guitar, and I would show him playing the guitar and show my husband's face and the pride that he would have when my kind was playing the guitar or whatever. If my daughter's in music theater and she's Matilda, I would come and show him. And then I would record him being proud.
And even now, I have so much that I haven't given them yet because I think it's like in doses. I can only handle so much, so I know that they can only handle so much.
I mean, how do you do this with kids?
As a mom, it's tough because you don't want to make them sad. I have three teenagers, you know, so we're all in one chat. And there'll be times where I'll be tempted to be like, oh my gosh, this crossed my mind. But then I'm worried that, like, what if they're leaving school and they get it? Or what if they're with their friends, you know?
So there's a tap dance as their mom, allowing us all to be vulnerable. And there's a time and a space for us to reflect and also a time for them to show we can't move on. We can move forward with that.
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Chapter 3: How does Sheinelle cope with grief while parenting?
I think the biggest pain I carry now—and I am not even to a year— The biggest pain I have is not my own. And trust me, like, he's all I've known. I didn't date. I was 19, you know. It's not my pain. It's that I can't fix it. As a mother, you just want to fix it. You're a kid. You don't want him to hurt. I can't fix this. And I think when he passed, the blow that it was...
And the grief and all of it, like as the mama bear, for me not to be able to fix it, even now, is excruciating. It's excruciating that I can't take that pain away, that they have to learn how to deal with it and wrestle with it and hold it. make it make sense. And so I'm left trying to figure out how to nurture their hearts.
There aren't a lot of resources and conversations and things like this, but it's part of the reason why I'm willing to sit and have this conversation because I couldn't find it. I joked with Savannah that I went to YouTube and Googled Black Widow and I got spiders. It was true. I remember I was by myself And I'm like, okay, who's been in this position before?
And I knew I had to deal with it publicly. So I was like, okay, who am I gonna be? I found videos of Jackie Kennedy. And I remember watching her and being like, oh my God, how did she, she looks like she has so much grace and poise, like how? And then I looked up like Coretta Scott King and I'm like, Every time I closed my eyes and I pictured those women, they always had such grace.
I told my friend that, and he's like, I love Duce, but he was not Martin Luther King or JFK. And I'm like, I know, but you know what I mean? I was trying to find out who I wanted to be. I think I mentioned it to Maria Shriver, who was like one of my TV aunties, like my Mount Rushmore of aunties. And she said, you can only be you.
Can your kids talk about it now? Do you tell stories about him?
There are pictures all over the house. We have one of those digital picture frames. But you know what's starting to rattle me a little bit is that they're all current pictures within the last couple years of the surfing and the soccer games and the weddings and the holidays and it's a beautiful montage. But what's starting to rattle me is that as we move with each passing day, He stays the same.
And I know that the kids are going to get older. And so... the frames are there, and everything is there, and the pictures are there, and right now we're all still the same. But it's hard, because it sucks that he didn't get to, it feels like not a fair shot to keep going.
So I wrestle with it sometimes, keeping those things out, but then I'm like, no, we're gonna keep them out, we're gonna keep the pictures up, we're gonna still talk about it. And I had to learn how to parent differently. Because I'm not him, and he was strict, you know, and I'm like, eh. So I've had to find that. I remember early on, I said something like, your dad would not.
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Chapter 4: What challenges does Sheinelle face as a caretaker?
Heartbreak. Like, that was going to suck. And I was going to have to be like, have some chocolate, sit down. He's a jerk. Not this kind of heartbreak. And not only are your hearts breaking, but so is mine.
We're going to take a short break. Coming up, I talk with Chanel about the loss of her grandmother seven months after Uche died.
I've been grieving for so long that I don't think I have truly grieved her because then it's too much.
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Welcome back to my conversation with Chanel Jones.
I was sitting on a beach in Jamaica and my girlfriend was like, it's okay to cry. I think it was the first time I had just like really let it go. And I just said, where are you? Like, where are you? Like, are you okay? Where are you? And all of a sudden, and we are in the middle of the ocean. And it was like this rock and we took a picture of it. And here comes this yellow butterfly.
And we both went... And we were like, and then it, and she was like, is that you, Uche? And I said, oh my God, stop it. And she was like, no, just if it's you or if it's like anything that Chanel needs to know, like just let her know that you're okay. Can you come back? And I said, Mia, a butterfly is not coming back. And sure enough, and we're like, and I was like, oh my God. And to this day,
Everywhere I go, when I allow myself and I need it, I see one. And I'm like, how you can see a yellow butterfly in Harlem, I don't know, but I see them. So he finds me, and I think it's because I've allowed myself to open my heart to it.
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Chapter 5: How does Sheinelle navigate conversations about grief with her children?
Yeah. Didn't see it coming. She was so proud of me. She was the first woman of color on the school board in my hometown. Tough cookie. She used to smoke. She'd have her long silver hair. She'd have it in a bun. She was that. And I remember one time she had someone to sign a situation in her like 80s or 70s. And I was the only one with her. And I was holding her nose because it was bleeding.
And I remember her looking at me and seeing the fear in my eyes. She stopped cold turkey that day. Never smoked again. She was a classically trained pianist born in St. Louis. My grandfather was a pianist. one of the only African-American physicians in my town and his father was a physician. So I come from like excellence, black excellence, as they call it.
And my grandfather ended up being this huge part of our lives. And my grandmother ran for the school board and they were just this huge force. And when he died, she didn't want to go. She was like, no, not going.
Chapter 6: What does Sheinelle mean by 'carrying two things' in grief?
And then somebody said, go get Chanel. I went in there and I looked at her and I'm like, At his service, we were like holding on to each other. And even when Uche passed, she hadn't been on a plane 20 years, but she was there. And there's the picture I have, the last picture. Oh my God, it is the last picture. I didn't realize that until right now.
The last picture I have of the two of us, she was wiping my face. Come on. Get it together, you got this? She started a huge choir. It's called ARISE. It stands for African Americans Renewing Interests in Spirituals Ensemble.
I filmed this video, Alana. I just want to play a little bit of it.
Oh, you're going to get me doing the ugly cry.
I picked an upbeat part.
Thanks. And that he has the whole world in his hands. See how she's moving and dancing? I love it. Oh, my God. They used to say, if you can't sing, Joe Brown is going to get it out of you.
Look at her.
I love it. Yes. Yes.
Where's my tissue?
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