Erica's Story: Last One Standing

Erica had just walked back through a door she thought was closed for good — teaching, after seven years away. 

It was the fall of 2020. Twelve-hour days. New everything. 

And then, in the space of a few weeks... her brother was diagnosed with cancer, she caught COVID, her mom got COVID and her dad went into the hospital alone and came home on hospice. 

Days later, her mom had a breakdown of her own.

Erica was the last one standing. 

Sick herself. Brand new in her job. Every person she loved most, in free fall at the same time.

This is the story of what she did next. 

How she survived hour by hour, ten minutes at a time. 

How she learned to trust a bridge she couldn't see. 

And how everything that felt pointless in that year became the exact skill set she now uses in her work today.

For any woman carrying more than she thought she could.

Connect with Erica:

• Linked in: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erica-warrick2493/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/financecoacherica/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61574475659772

Hosted by Bernice McDonald — Courage Architect, speaker, and author. 

Need to find YOUR Next Step through a hard thing you're facing? Have a simple conversation with the Tiny Brave Steps Generator AI:  www.tinybravesteps.com.

Connect with Bernice:  

Email: bernice@bernicemcdonald.com
Website: www.tinybravesteps.com

Join me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernicemcdonald/

If this episode moved something in you — leave a review, share it with a woman who needs it.

Do YOU have a Courage Story you'd like to share? Send Bernice a message. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

There's a moment in every hard season when you find yourself standing at the edge of something. The ground you used to know is behind you. The ground you need to reach is out there somewhere. But you can't see it. There's fog or there's a chasm. Or both. And you just stand there, toes against the edge, heart hammering, knowing you have to move and not knowing how. This is one of those stories.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Here was so loud because am I gonna lose my brother? Am I gonna lose my dad? Does my mom get to see my dad again?

SPEAKER_00 0:47

I'm Bernice McDonald, and this is Eric Pet's courage story. Now, if you're new here, every story on this podcast walks through four parts of a courage journey. How a woman wakes up to what she can't keep doing, how she stops fighting who she really is, how she finds her footing, and what she builds with what the hard season gave her. You'll feel the shape of this as we go. And if you have ever found yourself the last one standing, the one everyone else is leaning on while you're still trying to stay on your feet? This story is for you. Act one. Before we get to the canyon Erica had to cross, you need to know how she got to the edge. It was the fall of 2020, COVID year. And after seven and a half years out of the classroom, Erica had walked through a door she didn't think would ever open again. Back into teaching. New district, new everything.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

I was a late hire, so I started the day before school started. That's my first day I was approved to show up on campus. And so I know very little about anything. And hey, you're teaching virtually tomorrow.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

She was thrown into the fire. New procedures, kids' space to part, masks, dozens and dozens of new accounts to set up, 12-hour days, six days a week.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Yeah, I worked circles around my first year teaching every single year I was in that district. Saying something even though my first year was a long time ago. But for me to be in my 14th through 19th years teaching, and I'm working circles around anything I did my first year, it's not even a comparison. I worked way harder.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

That was already her baseline. Hot stress, no margin. And then October arrived. Her brother, her only sibling, was diagnosed with cancer. A week later, Erica caught COVID, sickest she'd ever been in her life. Her mom got COVID too. And right behind that, her dad, who had been losing weight since August, eating less and less because of a pain nobody could pin down, finally went into the hospital by himself. Because nobody else was well enough to go with him.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Well, the next day they're running tests and stuff, and he's got stage four cancer. And he's in the hospital by himself. Mom is sick, or I'm sick, like the whole thing. Um, and so then he's in for several days. He comes home on hospice saying he's ready to go meet Jesus. And we're like, hold on, we're processing still, we're not ready for that.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Stage four, pancreatic cancer already in his bones, and then just a week after her dad came home on hospice, her mom fell apart. Fifty years of marriage, a husband, she was already grieving while still caring for him, trying to be the rock. There was just so much, and it all came at once.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

And then she's like, Erica, you and your brother have to take over with medical and financial power attorney. And so I call out to work again. I'm like, I'm gonna by the end of the day, I'm gonna have to go out on leave again.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

Erica called out of work, made a telehealth appointment, and by that afternoon she was driving her mom to the emergency room, knowing she'd be transferred to a mental health facility, knowing this might be the last time her mom and dad saw each other. She couldn't even go inside. She was just barely past her own COVID.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

So drop off my mother, and uh she had a special moment with my dad, you know, to maybe say goodbye, not knowing if they're ever gonna see each other again because we don't know how long my dad has. And so I take her to the ER and I know that she's gonna get transferred to a psychiatric facility because of you know what she communicated she was struggling with in that moment, just trying to care for my dad, and my brother's sick, you know, like major stuff. So I'm the last one standing. And I was like, how can this be my life? How is this accurate? Like major stuff with all three of my immediate family.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

The last one standing, sick herself, brand new in a job she had just found her way back into, and every single person she loved most was in some kind of free fall at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

Fear was so loud because am I gonna lose my brother? Am I gonna lose my dad? Does my mom get to see my dad again? I mean, whoa.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

And in the middle of all that, her phone buzzed. An email from her team lead at school, two pages long, four or five action items she needed to complete before she could officially go on leave.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Okay, so my world is falling apart. My brother's got cancer, my dad's got cancer, my mom is in a psychiatric facility, but let me do some work. And I was like on the edge of like, I'll quit right now. I will quit.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

On the edge of quitting, right there. She was at her limit. This is the first part of the courage journey. The waking up, not a thunderclap or a battle cry, but just the moment when everything collapses under its own weight and overwhelm engulfs you. That night after she put her mom in the hospital, after she laid down and could not sleep, Erica did something quiet and ferocious. She sat up in bed.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

I just sat up in bed and I just had words with the enemy. And I was just like, no, you're not taking my family, you know, all the things, right? And it was just like, nope, this is it, it stops here. Stops here.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

She didn't know how, she didn't know what, but she had drawn a line. And drawing that line, even when you can't see what comes next, is your first tiny brave step. Always. Act two, embrace who you are. Deciding is one thing. Doing is another. And in the weeks after Erica put her mom in the hospital, the doing was a fog she walked through one breath at a time. A couple of days after that hospital drop-off, she made herself a doctor's appointment, not for anything dramatic, just because she hadn't seen a primary care physician in a while, and somewhere down deep, she knew she needed eyes on her. She walked in expecting a checkup. She walked out having had something closer to a counseling session.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

And it was a God ordained appointment. Because by the time I left that appointment, I felt like I'd had a counseling session. Because the nurse practitioner had been through something just as wild. And she shared all that, and she sat there in victory, having overcome these circumstances. Um, and she's like, Erica, you need to go for walks, and even if it's 10 minutes, and you need counseling, and you need this, and you need this. And I'm sitting there like, Yes, I do.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

Help in a season like this can arrive looking like nothing more than a regular Wednesday appointment. And that stranger gave Erica one sentence that would carry her for months.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

She was like Erica day by day or hour by hour, and that was she was the first person to say it to break it down like that. And I was like, I'm just gonna make it through the next hour. And I'm gonna make it through the next hour. Even if it's just the next 10 minutes, you know, whatever it needs to be, like this is how much longer I can go. Because thinking past that was too hard.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

Hour by hour, some days, 10 minutes by 10 minutes. That's what survival looks like from the inside. Not heroics, not a five-year plan, just the next 10 minutes, and then the next. Erica started her own counseling that next week, then the next, then every week for months on end before she felt steady enough to space the sessions out. She started taking walks just down the block and back. They traded off. She and her nephew, one of them would slip out for 10 minutes of air, the other staying in the house with her dad, then back into the caregiving, back into the next hour. Her nephew. Let me tell you about her nephew.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Uh, my brother's got three kids, and his youngest live is the only one that lives here in Dallas. And so the day I took mom to the hospital, my nephew came over to watch my dad because we couldn't leave my dad alone. And uh, so my nephew was right there with me in all of it, and he was uh an answer to prayer. He went on leave from his new job, too. And I mean, he took a couple of weeks, but then he was still like right in it, you know, helping me figure things out, helping all of us, you know, just carry forward.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Devin was the youngest of her brother's kids and the only one local. He took leave from his brand new job. He was at the house every day for weeks on end, taking turns watching her dad, running errands, helping her organize the thousand things that needed organizing. She could not have carried what she carried without him. And her brother, sick himself, going through chemo on the other side of the country, was doing everything he could from California, sending supplies, sending groceries on the phone with her daily, and many days more than once. The three of them made the big decisions together, the medical ones, the financial ones, the ones nobody wants to make about a parent. Erica was the one in the house, but she wasn't alone. She's a journaler, she's also a processor. She has a deep church community and a circle of friends who show up. None of that was new. What was new, what this season taught her bone deep, was what it actually means to be on the receiving end of it all and to receive it well. This is its own quiet kind of courage, letting your people show up. Meals and prayers, and the healthcare aide who came at 7 p.m. and stayed until 7 a.m. helping with her dad. And right alongside the people showing up, Erica was doing something inside herself too.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

I was forgiving in the midst of difficult situations. And, you know, something happens and it's I forgive, I forgive them for saying that. I forgive them for telling me I need to go home and do grading, but I just put my mom in the hospital, my dad's got cancer, my brother's got cancer. Let me go do grading. Like I forgive them for asking me to do that. Um, you know, it it's not full forgiveness right away that comes in stages, but uh I just had to like start saying that and and just letting things go.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

This is the second part of the courage journey. Stopping the fight against who you actually are, the woman who needs 10 minutes outside, the woman who needs a counselor, the woman who needs her people to show up and is willing to let them, the woman who forgives in stages because that's the only honest way she knows how to do it. Erica's gift, the thing she carries that she didn't yet know was a gift, is her teachability. Teachability is not a soft quality. It's how women survive things they were never given a manual for. Act three stand up for you. Erica told me something near the end of our conversation, a picture that pulled everything else into focus. I want you to hear it now before we get to the rest of the story.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

When you talk about the canyon, like I get a visual of uh Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade where Harrison Ford is standing on one side of the cavern, and he's gotta go over there to go get the the cup. Um, and he's reading the clues, and then he realizes there's a bridge that's already there, you just can't see it. And he takes that blind leap of faith. And so for me, that's that's just the picture of I'm gonna get over there somehow. You're gonna help me get over there, you're gonna give me the eyes to see.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

There's a bridge that's already there, you just can't see it. If you've watched that scene, you know what has to happen. Indiana Jones has to put his foot out over the chasm with nothing visible to land on, just trust that the bridge is there. That's the picture of Erica's whole season. She could not see how any of this was going to turn out. She didn't know if her brother would survive the chemo, she didn't know how long her dad had. She didn't know what to expect when her mom came home from the hospital. She didn't know who she'd be on the other side of all of it. She just knew the direction that she had to walk, and she put her foot out. She kept stepping. Erica learned to advocate even before her medical power of attorney was officially in place, asked questions, called every day, kept her mom tethered to the people who loved her.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

And she did what she was told. Um, and she just prayed and prayed and prayed. She had some serious time with God, and uh he just gave her some revelation, and that helped her enough. She was in for about three weeks with some strategies and some tools that she still implements, where she's just learned to like she's gotta let things go.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

Her mom came home with a tool that would change the rest of her life, letting go. The realization that she could not control the outcome of her husband's illness, could not white knuckle her way through grief, could not be the one in charge of fixing what could not be fixed. And watching her mom learn that, Erica was learning it right along beside her. This is the third part of the courage journey, the standing up for yourself in the middle of a fire, you did not start. It isn't about getting louder, it's about getting clearer, clearer about what you can control, how you show up, what you say yes to, who you ask to help, where you draw your line, and clearer about what you cannot control. Other people, other people's timing, whether the cancer responds, whether the world stops asking things of you while your world is breaking.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

Like in your words, I was on the other side of the canyon. And I'm already over there. I don't know what my circumstances look like, but I trust my God to get me there.

SPEAKER_00 19:51

She kept her eyes on the other side of the canyon, not because she could see it, because she had decided that's where she was going. A holy kind of stubbornness, the kind that lets you put your foot out over the fog and trust that something will hold. Her brother finished chemo. He is today five years out with clean scans. Her mom came home with new tools and a softer grip on the things she could not control. And her dad. Her dad, who had taught himself how to fix everything that ever broke in the family, who had been an electrician and a plumber and the man who kept the cars running. Her dad passed away in April of 2021. Not every crossing ends with everything you hoped for. That's the part that's work refuses to tidy up. Her mom came back, her brother came back, her dad did not. And Erica had to learn what so many of us have to learn. That getting across is not the same as getting what you wanted. That courage doesn't promise a clean ending. That the bravest thing you do some days is to keep walking even after you've grieved the part of the outcome you cannot change. Which brings us to the question of what she's done with all of it. Act four create your impact. Here's something I want you to know about Erica. This was not her first fire. In 2017, her parents had Tag teamed a season of medical chaos. Her mom had several surgeries with infections to recover from, and her dad had a heart attack. On top of all of it, Erica was the one driving them back and forth, asking the questions, learning a very tender skill that nobody teaches you in advance. The tenderness of caring for parents who used to take care of you. At the time, it felt unfair. Like, why this? Why us? Why me? And then 2020 arrived, and she could see what 2017 had been doing in the background all along.

SPEAKER_01 22:51

And as hard as that was, I found myself in 2020, thankful for what I learned in 17. The way I learned to care for aging parents, the way I learned to show up for them, the way I learned to manage that.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

Um and that helped me in 2020. This is the pattern she started to see, the way the dots connected when she looked back. Even those dozens of tech accounts, the ones she had complained about in August of 2020, the brand new platforms her district had thrown her into during the COVID virtual learning chaos, even those had been doing something out of sight, building a skill set she could not yet see the point of having.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

The dozens of accounts that I had to create uh back in August 2020 and learning to navigate all of those websites and to use those tools in teaching my students. Um I complained about a lot of that because it was a lot. Um but it seriously advanced my skills in a way that I could not see until I quit and started my business, and so now I'm using those skills to do my work every day.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

She has a verse from the scriptures she loves for this. All things work together for good. She borrowed an application of that principle from one of her teachers, but she lives it like it's hers.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

And one of my favorite teachers says, you know, if it's not good yet, it's not done.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

If it's not good yet, it's not done. That is not just positivity. That is not pretending the loss wasn't a loss. Her dad is still gone. The hard year is still hard. But Erica has watched what once felt pointless become useful. What felt like wasted suffering turn into the texture of who she is and what she can offer. And then in May of 2025, she did something that only made sense if you understood everything that came before it. She quit teaching with no business plan, no clients lined up, nothing built in advance.

SPEAKER_01 25:47

But I quit teaching with like no real business plan. Like I didn't already have clients built up. Um, I quit and then I started the business. And that's scary. Like fear has been something I have to continue to conquer when it comes to that and my personal finances, and I'm a financial coach.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

A financial coach with fear about her own finances. No, that's not a contradiction, that's actually a credential. This is the fourth part of the courage journey. What you do is what the hard season gave you. Erica did not become someone who is no longer afraid. She became someone who has walked across so many canyons, she now knows what the bridge feels like when it holds. And now she sits with men and women who are staring at their own canyons. Erica brings everything she earned in those fires into that work. If you're listening to this in the middle of your own canyon where there's no bridge, in the middle of your own fire, if everything you love seems to be falling apart at once, if you're the last one standing and you don't know how you're going to do this, Erica has something to say to you.

SPEAKER_01 27:22

Take care of yourself too. Self-care is like that. And uh so it's it's a matter of finding what works and repeating it, fine-tuning it. And if you try something and it doesn't work, well then you try something else.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

You have to just keep experimenting to find what will find what works, repeat it ten minutes at a time, one foot at a time, one quiet breath, one moment of asking for help, of letting your people show up, of putting your foot out over a chasm and discovering every single time that there's a bridge there. You just need the next hour. And the next 10 minutes inside that hour, if that's all you've got for now. That's enough. That is brave. That is how women like Erica get across. I'm Bernice McDonald. Thank you for listening to this courage story. Erica is a Ramsey solutions-trained financial coach. You can find her at clarifybuildransform.com. The link is in the show notes for the episode. And if you want to find your next Tiny Brave Step, the small, honest, doable step that begins your crossing of that invisible bridge, come find it at tinybravesteps.com. Because courage doesn't wait until you feel ready. It starts with one foot, one step, one tiny brave move in the direction you were already meant to go. You are brave enough for this. You always have been.