Tembi Locke on Parenting With Grace, Growing Through Grief & Thriving No Matter What

EPISODE #26 - You know today’s guest from dozens of roles in television and movies, starting as one of Will Smith’s crushes in the iconic Fresh Prince of Bel Air to her most recent role as Elise Torres in Netflix’s hilarious and endearing comedy, Never Have I Ever.Along the way she lived her best life, working as an actress in Hollywood, falling in love with and marrying Saro, a Sicilian chef, coping with his later cancer diagnosis, adopting a daughter, and then eventually caring for Saro and their daughter as he passed away in 2012. Her journey then turned toward understanding and living through grief, the lessons of which she turned into a 2019 memoir called From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home. The book has been adapted into a series by Netflix, produced by Reese Witherspoon, coming out next year.We met Tembi way back when she started doing work around grief and caregiving after her husband passed away. Our work with childhood cancer families in MaxLove Project provided a lot for us to connect over. Now all these years later we get to connect over parenting, growing through grief, finding resilience in the face of tragedy, and planting roots and choosing love no matter what life throws our way.