She Lost Her Brother Tragically. Poetry Helped Her Heal.

Some moments stay with us long after they end. The choice we made. The thing we wish we had said. The image that still lingers when the room goes quiet. Cyra’s story begins with one of those moments, the kind that changes everything and asks who we will become after it.

At sixteen, she lost her brother to suicide and carried the guilt of that day for years. Her healing came slowly, through forgiveness and the power of words. Poetry became a place to lay down her pain and listen to something deeper, something that kept whispering that love was still possible.

What You’ll Hear

• How grief can hold both love and regret at once
• The quiet guidance of a voice that spoke when she needed it most
• Why poetry became her way to understand pain and healing
• What it means to forgive a younger version of yourself
• The long, patient work of turning loss into meaning
• How creativity can become medicine when nothing else fits

Guest Bio

Cyra Sweet Dumitru (www.cyrasweetdumitru.com) is an accomplished poet, instructor of poetry writing, and one of four certified practitioners of poetic medicine in Texas. Her poems have appeared on a wall in San Antonio's City Hall and on city buses, been spoken on national radio and in museums, published in newspapers, and featured in anthologies and literary journals. She has four collections of poetry and a memoir, Words Make a Way Through Fire: Healing After My Brother's Suicide, which is told through prose and poetry and was published by She Writes Press and distributed by Simon & Schuster. Cyra leads therapeutic writing circles for people from all walks of life.

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The Life Shift shares real and honest conversations about the moments that change us. Host Matt Gilhooly sits with guests as they tell true stories of life-changing events, unexpected challenges, and quiet awakenings that shaped who they are today.

Each episode offers meaningful and candid storytelling about grief, healing, resilience, identity, and growth. These are the personal stories that remind us what it feels like to be human. These are the turning points that stay with us.

If you are drawn to personal growth, emotional well-being, or stories of how people rebuild after loss, this show offers a gentle place to land. Listeners come for the life changes. They stay for the connection.

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