The Best You - A Coaching Podcast: Personal Growth Through Real Conversations · Gary Gillan

From Grief to Growth: The Happy Place Journey

·52 min·3 clips

“Looking out for a better day” became the chorus after Stevie saw his dad sitting quietly at the window.

1. The Best You interview series episode follows Stevie Dukes and the Happy Place Journey from family loss to school workshops and touring plans. 2. Gary hosts, and Stevie Dukes appears as a songwriter, lead singer of St. Phoenix, and co-founder of the Happy Place Workshop, while his brother Alan is repeatedly named as the writing and workshop partner. 3. The episode asks how a song written after Bertie Dukes’s illness became a charity, a teaching tool, and part of a larger music career. 4. Stevie says St. Phoenix started in 2016 and wrote “Happy Place” in 2020 about their dad, Bertie, after his pulmonary fibrosis diagnosis. 5. He explains pulmonary fibrosis as a lung condition where “your lungs harden” and says there is “no cure” except a transplant. 6. Bertie chose to buy land at Kulkegi, just outside Lanark, live in a caravan, and build a house for Stevie’s mum instead of moving abroad. 7. Stevie describes seeing Bertie sit on the couch looking out over the hills, which led directly to the chorus line “over the hills and far away, looking out for a better day.” 8. He says the song was finished on the night the family was told to come for “your last goodbyes,” and they played it to Bertie in hospital. 9. Stevie recalls the PPE gear, the four or five hours with Bertie, and the doctor’s call that changed the rest of the night. 10. After the song was sent to manager Mark, the band got an offer from Atlantic Records in America and began hearing the song on American Idol and Britain’s Got Talent. 11. Stevie says the more important response came through messages, emails, and DMs from people who used the song at funerals, weddings, christenings, and school assemblies. 12. He and Alan then decided the song had “more life in it” and turned it into the Happy Place Workshop. 13. The workshop teaches mindfulness, mental health, and well-being through music, storytelling, art, songwriting, and discussion. 14. Stevie says the project has delivered about 200 workshops in roughly two years and reached about 11,000 to 12,000 children across Scotland. 15. He names partners and supporters including Parks Motor Group, Logan Air, AS Scaffold, Black Rooster, and CSD Air Conditioning, and says the project has been recognised by the Scottish Government. 16. Stevie and Gary talk about grief as something nobody teaches properly, and Stevie says many schoolchildren have already experienced loss, divorce, or trauma. 17. The tone is conversational and reflective, with long personal stories, Scottish humour, and detailed memory-led storytelling. 18. The format is an interview built around back-and-forth questions, with Gary adding his own grief experience and Stevie responding directly. 19. People interested in grief, songwriting, Scottish music, and youth wellbeing. 20. Listeners wanting a quick celebrity news recap or short, light conversation.

As heard by us

A moving grief-to-action conversation that stays rooted in lived experience.

A grief-born workshop sits at the center of this conversation, and it works best when it keeps the story human instead of reducing it to a slogan.

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Why you'd press play

Press play for a grief story that turns into school workshops in Scotland.

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