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July 16, 2025 22 mins
Guest Christine Handy shares her inspiring story of survival and self-awareness in the film "Hello Beautiful", based on her book "Walk Beside Me". Handy's life story is beautifully depicted, about her successful modeling career (Target, Pepsi, J.Crew, among many others) and how she embraced her inner beauty after her always-prized outer self became scarred by life-threatening diseases. 

The transformative journey of Willow is a powerful and emotionally charged movie, exploring the themes of identity, resilience and the enduring strength of the human spirit in the face on unimaginable adversity.

Christine Handy is the film's Executive Producer.

Guest Ziad Hamzeh is an award-winning director.

"Hello Beautiful" screening 
Sunday, July 20, 2025 
20th Century Theatre
Oakley


Click here to watch the Hello Beautiful trailer.

Click here for Movie Screening information.

If you or someone you know is affected by cancer, click here to find out about Move Beyond Surviving in Cincinnati.

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You know what's funny about being human?

Speaker 2 (00:02):
This week on iHeart Sensey, we just know what we
like and what we don't like. You walk through any
shoe store and you're going to see what I mean.
You glance around, and without even thinking, your brain starts
sorting yes to that pair, no to that one style,
colored designs. Our minds are wired to respond to beauty
almost instantly. In advertising, it's no accident that the most

(00:24):
attractive faces get our attention.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Studies show that ads featuring.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Beautiful people grab at eleven percent more attention, and we
remember them more.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
So let's be honest. The pressure to be beautiful or to.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Own beautiful things is everywhere, and in today's world of
curated feeds and filtered lives, being one of the pretty
people has real power. But here's the question today. What
happens when beauty is stripped away?

Speaker 1 (00:47):
What's left behind?

Speaker 2 (00:48):
When identity is no longer defined by appearance? That's the
powerful journey my guest today, Christine Handy, had to face.
After a decade's long career in fashion and as a model,
Christine's life took an unexpected and life altering turn. A
breast cancer diagnosis forced her to confront everything that she
thought she knew about beauty and self worth.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Her book Walk Beside Me.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Has now been adapted into a film, and you can
see it here in Cincinnati next Sunday at a special
screening in Oakley, a fundraising screening for Move Beyond Surviving,
helping breast cancer survivors reconnect with their bodies.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
And later in the second half of.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
The show, we'll revisit my conversation with doctor Kelly McClain,
the founder and board president of Move Beyond Surviving. Find
out why she created this group that connects breast cancer
survivors with nature and helps them heal. And we'll have
all the information about the screening of Hello Beautiful, a
benefit for Move Beyond Surviving, coming up next Sunday, July twentieth,

(01:46):
at the twentieth Century Theater in Oakley.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
Now on iHeart Sinsey with Sandy Collins.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
I'm Sandy Collins. Thanks for tuning in today. Really excited
about today's show.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
My guests are movie makers.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
The first guest is Christine Handy and she was working
in high fashion, a model. You've seen her face all
over advertising. She's gone through some terrible things in her life.
Three devastating illnesses that really made her think about what
was important in her life. So we're going to talk
to her about her book, which has now been turned
into a movie, which you can see as a fundraiser

(02:23):
this upcoming weekend. Plus joining her is the director of
the film. We caught up with them in Italy earlier
this week to talk about Hello Beautiful, a benefits screening
for Move Beyond Surviving, a nonprofit group designed to help
breast cancer survivors reconnect with their bodies and their minds. Model, author,

(02:46):
public speaker, and more. Christine Handy, welcome to the show.

Speaker 4 (02:50):
Can you see us? Oh yeah, oh yeah, Okay, we're
in Italy. Do you want us to show you? I
would love to be very jealous.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Gosh, I'm looking at a c or a base, ocean
of boats, of boats and white boats everywhere, and beautiful
people running around with tans.

Speaker 4 (03:11):
That's beautiful exactly. We're here for a film, though, we're
not here for vacation.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Sure, sure, we don't get to do this, We just get.

Speaker 5 (03:20):
To watch them.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Well, I'm glad that we got to share that moment.
That's probably as close as I'll ever get to Italy.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
But thank you for being here on the show.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
I know that you, you know, were excited about this film.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
It's based on your book. Let's talk to you, Christine,
and then your your director is how do you say?

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Your name is zaiad Yea ziad okay ziad Hamza, which
is a very unexpected addition to this interview.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
I'm so glad to have you both here.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
Tell me about Christine Gosh, where do we start? You
wrote a book in twenty sixteen, a fictional writing about
your life and what was going on with you.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
But let's start with where you're from?

Speaker 3 (04:10):
You you are?

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Are you from Saint Louis?

Speaker 4 (04:12):
I'm from the West.

Speaker 5 (04:14):
I do love Midwest people and Midwest cities because I
find the Midwesterners to be very kind.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
We try to be.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
But you're from Saint Louis, and you became a model
when you were very young.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
I did.

Speaker 5 (04:29):
I was around eleven years old, and I was kind
of determined to do that, which I guess looking back,
it shows my determination and my personality, which is maybe
why I actually have a movie, because it takes a
lot of determination to get to this place.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yeah, not for the heart.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
I can't imagine how long it would do when when
you see this. You wrote the book in twenty sixteen.
This is about your breast cancer story in a fictional form.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
You wrote it in twenty.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
Sixteen, and now what is that nine years later it's
finally become a movie. That is a long long time.
So you became a model, and you're living the high life,
and you're married, and you're beautiful, and you're a speaker,
and you do all these wonderful things, and then breast cancer.

Speaker 5 (05:14):
Yes, correct, actually breast cancer was the third of third
major illness, but widely known.

Speaker 4 (05:20):
I'm more widely known for my breast cancer.

Speaker 5 (05:23):
And of course then I felt like I was losing
completely my identity.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
Right right, because your whole life was built on your
beauty and your looks, and that's what was your paycheck.
So when you first had your first illness, it was
that botched operation and that messed up your insides.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
Apparently how long did you When was that and when
did you have to how long did that go on?

Speaker 5 (05:50):
That was in two thousand and six and I was
thirty six years old, and that went on for well continues.

Speaker 4 (05:59):
Let's put it that way.

Speaker 5 (06:00):
Oh my goodness, right, as if that wasn't enough and
then a few years later I had a major arm problem,
which ultimately led to a fully fused wrist and a
reconstructed arm with cadaver bones and a canaver Achilles tendon,
And then I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
You know, Christine, it seems like you have a lot
of medical problems with the medical community, like almost like malpractice.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
What's going on with these doctors.

Speaker 5 (06:30):
Fortunately I had a few really good ones, like my
oncologists who just took me under his wing after being
very bullied by my arm doctor. And he knew that story,
and he was very kind and funny in the very
beginning to kind of settle me down. He knew I
was coming in kind of angry and kind of hopeless,

(06:52):
and so he was very kind and funny and very
settling and very peaceful. Actually kind of a note he
recently passed away.

Speaker 4 (07:02):
He was not an old doctor. He was actually younger
than me and an unknown illness.

Speaker 5 (07:07):
And I feel less protected now that he's not on
this planet.

Speaker 4 (07:12):
I always felt very protected knowing he was around.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
That's a wonderful talent and trait that some doctors have.
It just makes you feel enveloped and held and cared for.
So you were a model and you did work for
guests and bud Light PEPSI jcpenny. You were living happy
in Dallas and then you got this breast cancer diagnosis.

(07:37):
Tell me if you can. I mean, it's a long process.
Obviously we don't have a whole lot of time to
go into all the details. But how did that happen,
how did you find out? And really what happened after that.

Speaker 4 (07:51):
So it was actually in New York City.

Speaker 5 (07:53):
I did not live in New York City, but I
went up there to meet with my new arm surgeon.
He was at HSS, which is Hospital for Special Surgery.

Speaker 4 (08:01):
And I had a botched arm job.

Speaker 5 (08:05):
And oftentimes doctors won't take other doctors botched jobs.

Speaker 4 (08:09):
But this doctor, who was.

Speaker 5 (08:11):
So kind to me, said, come on up, I'm going
to go through all of your hundreds of medical records
and I'm going to help you. And so I was
up in New York and he had just fused my
right arm. So I was at my six week post
arm fusion checkup and I was staying at a hotel. Now,
when I was the year previously, when I had arm

(08:31):
casts on my arm for the whole year, I had
been using liquid soap and pulling it over, pouring it
over my shoulder to wash my body.

Speaker 4 (08:39):
Well.

Speaker 5 (08:39):
At this hotel, I didn't have any liquid soap, so
I fumbled with this bar of soap because I had
a cast on from my fingertips to my shoulder on
my right comind arm. I couldn't use I couldn't put
my hair in a ponytail by myself. I needed help
all the time. And so I went to use this
bar of soap and I.

Speaker 4 (08:56):
Brushed it over my left breast and I felt lump
in the shower in New York City.

Speaker 5 (09:01):
Of course, I panicked, and five days later, after seeing
a breast surgeon and a specialist, I was diagnosed with
stage two level three, which is aggressive form of breast cancer.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
You're looking at cancer and you are how are you surviving?
Are you working? You were married? And then did you divorce?
What happened there?

Speaker 5 (09:24):
We did divorce, not during chemo, but after, and I
was not working at the time. There's no way could
have possibly worked, not obviously not being a model, but
really nothing else. I went through twenty eight rounds of
chemo and almost died several times. During the chemo journey
and my friends, my faith, my kind of dependency on

(09:44):
external shifted to a dependency on working on my self
esteem and trying to figure out why all these people.

Speaker 4 (09:51):
Were showing up for me.

Speaker 5 (09:52):
If I was so, if my self esteem was fragile,
and I wasn't showing up for myself during these other
illnesses and during my life and during my career, why
were all these people showing up for me. They I
couldn't do anything for them, it wasn't transactional, but they
were still And so I thought, Wow, there must be
something inside of me that is beautiful that people want

(10:14):
to show up for.

Speaker 4 (10:15):
And so I went on this.

Speaker 5 (10:16):
Journey of self discovery and introspective work, and I by
the time I would finish my chemotherapy, my self esteem
was untouchable. And I realized that all the focus was
on external things, whether it was external beauty or external
possessions or external people. I needed to be dependent on

(10:37):
faith and things that could never be taken away. I
didn't want to live this roller coaster of unsteady ground,
and when we're focused on external things, that's unsteady ground.

Speaker 4 (10:48):
So I rebuilt my life on faith.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
And you wrote a book about it nine ten years ago.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
I would imagine it took you a while to get
through that, and somebody picked it up for production for
a film, and I think we'll bring a director in
now for the film. It's called Hello Beautiful, and it's
based on Christine Handy's book which is called Walk Beside
Me Again. It's available at the bookstore wherever you shop.

(11:15):
I'm here with the director, Ziad hams Up.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
This is going to be shown in Oakley, which is
a really nice little suburb here in Cincinnati, as a
fundraiser for this group Move Beyond Surviving.

Speaker 1 (11:28):
Have you done much with this group at all?

Speaker 2 (11:32):
Do you really kind of have an idea of what's
happening here or is it just it's just another stop
on the tour.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
No, it's.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
We haven't actually done something in particular with them, but
we have been out reaching to a variety and vice versa.
They are reaching to us to be able to use
the film as an educational basis, as an informational base is,
as a motivational basis for people who really need and

(12:05):
desperately want to see it. And Christine has been so
generous in making sure to share that whatever experience that
you had with and that's how they came along. So
it's going to benefit that particular organization, to benefit those
particular women who are in desperate need to know that

(12:26):
there is life beyond just having breast cancer and stopping.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
You're going to be at the twentieth Century Theater in Oakley,
and this is coming up on Sunday the twentieth, which
is coming up very quickly. There's general admission tickets, and
then they can have a meet and greet with both
of you. What normally happens in those screening meet and.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
Greets, Well, I go up on a table and I
do a tease.

Speaker 1 (12:52):
Dawns nice. Nice.

Speaker 4 (12:57):
Now you're going to get more people.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
To come, right, ladies, gentlemen, yes, go, that's gonna be good.

Speaker 3 (13:04):
Well, one of the things in which constantly excites audiences
to understand and know first the process of filmmaking, how
the actor was able to actually convey such remarkable experience
and embody it so completely that it seemless. It feels

(13:27):
as authentic as absolutely someone going through it. Many times
people ask those particular questions, but more importantly is after
you see a real story and look at the person
who went through hell and survived standing in front of
them with strength. I think it gives the audience a

(13:50):
much more profound sense of hope, real sense of hope,
rather than just shallow or you're gonna be fine. No, look,
here are you know the examples of which we're not preaching.
We're not, you know, saying anything that is beyond the truth.
We kept it as honest as possible, so audience is

(14:12):
usually engaged in that part and want to know more.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
You may have heard that Cincinnati is a very strong
film city because.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
The city.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
Is really like a junior New York city, and we
do a lot of films here with you know, de
Niro and John Travolta and Rainman and all those. We've
put the word out to all of the independent filmmakers
in our area and in the different groups that are here,
because they're going to want to come out and see
and talk to you.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
The book is also available. Will you have copies of
that there for people? Or is that?

Speaker 4 (14:48):
I do think though? I do think so. I believe
that Tom is going to bring some with.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
Him good merch people like merch. Christine, You're the whole
point is that you want to empower people. You know
that you had this beauty, this whole experience, this whole
career based on the hour portion of you, and you
learned that the value is on the inside of you.

(15:16):
How do you think this movie portrays that.

Speaker 5 (15:20):
I think it's beautifully portrayed with such honesty and such
grace because Tricia Helper, who's our star one, she's an
extraordinary actor.

Speaker 4 (15:30):
But you really see the transformation.

Speaker 5 (15:33):
You really feel, especially in the beginning of the film,
her kind of anxiety and her kind of self esteem.

Speaker 4 (15:39):
You notice it's off, and then there's.

Speaker 5 (15:42):
This tension between the husband and the wife. And towards
the end of the movie, you see her lighter, even
though she's bald.

Speaker 4 (15:48):
You see her.

Speaker 5 (15:51):
Exude happiness, which in the beginning she was not as
happy she pretends, I would say, to be happy.

Speaker 4 (15:58):
And then the very.

Speaker 5 (15:59):
Last one of the last scenes of the movie, which
I won't give it away, but there's this light and
there's this lightness between the two. It's really a love
story as well, and she shows her true beauty, which.

Speaker 4 (16:11):
Is with the scars and without a chest, and.

Speaker 5 (16:14):
You really see the impact of the transformation internally, which
I think is really hard to show in film, but
you really see.

Speaker 4 (16:22):
It in the film.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
What is it like to see your life portrayed on
the big screen?

Speaker 4 (16:29):
I get asked that a lot.

Speaker 5 (16:30):
You know, it's if it was self indulgent or if
it was for me, it would feel one way. But
because I'm so determined to get it out to a
huge group demographic of people who need to see survivorship
and cancer and film that it's become it looks as
it's a project for me. And as glamorous as it

(16:52):
looks on the outside, it's not glamorous for me.

Speaker 4 (16:55):
I'm on a mission.

Speaker 5 (16:56):
I'm trying to give be a hope facilitator in every
certain every way I can every capacity I can be,
and until that mission is complete, I will not rest.

Speaker 4 (17:05):
Until that happens.

Speaker 5 (17:07):
And so I see this movie continually at screenings, and
it's worked for me.

Speaker 4 (17:12):
It's a project. It's meant to help people.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
Zeet, how where did you film this and how long
did it take? When did you start giving us some
of the little background details there?

Speaker 3 (17:23):
Absolutely so. As Christine said, it took about.

Speaker 6 (17:27):
Quite a while for the film to actually come together
big for a variety of different reasons. Whether it is
COVID whether her going near death experience in twenty twenty,
whether it is the financing. So, there were tremendous amounts
of different obstacles that stood in front of this project,

(17:49):
but amazingly, each and every single one of these obstacles
paid into making the story better, making it much more
understandable and stronger in terms of the truthful portrayal of
Christian's life. Once we were able to raise the funds,

(18:11):
we wanted a variety of different places. One of the
things that we wanted to shoot at one point in
Beirut Lebanon, because one aspect of Christiane's book in which
she talks about the sense of loneliness and isolation that
they feel, and what I wanted to do is have

(18:33):
a model, an American model, married to a foreigner, living
in a foreign country and not being able to identify
with that particular culture, with that particular community, as though
she's pulled out from the foundation in which she was
built on. Well, unfortunately, war happened and we couldn't place

(18:57):
it in that particular area.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
So we found another city and another city. When we
settled onto Marblehead, Massachusetts, and the surrounding areas and what.
It worked out beautifully for a variety of reasons, because
the culture is very strong in Massachusetts. The traditions are

(19:19):
very well set and clear and understood, and it only
enriched the story forward from the visual aspect as well
as the esthetic that contributes to the psychology of the character.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
Yeah, you have something for water, I can tell from
our first beginning of this conversation with a.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
Beautiful view of the Is that the ocean you said,
or a bay? Or what is that?

Speaker 3 (19:44):
That's a Mediterranean See?

Speaker 1 (19:46):
What do you want people to take away from this?

Speaker 5 (19:50):
Well, for me, I want people to really understand that
there's a huge life after a diagnosis and survivorship exists.

Speaker 4 (19:59):
I found a.

Speaker 5 (20:00):
Lot of films that I watched when I was going
through my diagnosis ended in a funeral, and I thought
that was unfair to our society.

Speaker 4 (20:06):
I wanted to give them something better than that.

Speaker 5 (20:08):
So I'm trying to leave a legacy of something that's
hopeful and not something that's tragic.

Speaker 6 (20:15):
Well, indeed, that is the main objective of the film,
but it's also the way the film has looked at
this particular issue from a three hundred and sixty degree
angle rather than from.

Speaker 3 (20:32):
One eighty or less or whatever it might need. We
wanted to broaden at the understanding of the audience, to
broaden the sense of support that the person who's going
through this need, to have them understand perhaps the psychological
impact that is dealt to a woman during that particular

(20:54):
stage in her life and how they can fulfill different
aspects and have a standing of it. So it wasn't
just about you from the patient's point of view, but
from every single person that is touched by the patient's
life or death.

Speaker 1 (21:13):
How are you feeling now these days, Christine, I mean.

Speaker 4 (21:17):
I feel good.

Speaker 5 (21:17):
I feel I feel like I'm fulfilling my purpose. I
feel like I'm doing my job.

Speaker 2 (21:22):
Good, good, Well, you can see this great film. It's
based on Christine Handy's book Cold Walk Beside Me and
the film is entitled A Hello Beautiful. It's a movie
screening that will benefit Move Beyond Surviving, which is a
support group here in the Cincinnati area. And you can
see that at the twentieth Century Theater Sunday, July the twentieth,

(21:44):
and the screening is at three o'clock. And if you
want to meet and greet with the author and the
executive producer and the director. You can buy tickets for
a personal meet and greet before the show. And I
just want to say thanks for taking time away from
your beautiful Italy scene over there and helping us tell

(22:06):
this story today.

Speaker 3 (22:08):
Well, thank you for having us and we're grateful for
the time in which we spent together.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
Thanks. Am Coming up, we'll talk with doctor Kelly McLain,
the founder and board president of Beyond Surviving. She's a
breast cancer doctor and she is helping breast cancer patients
and survivors reconnect with their bodies.

Speaker 1 (22:27):
This is iHeart, Cinsey
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