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Grief Out Loud

Remember the last time you tried to talk about grief and suddenly everyone left the room? Grief Out Loud is opening up this often avoided conversation because grief is hard enough without having to go through it alone. We bring you a mix of personal stories, tips for supporting children, teens, and yourself, and interviews with bereavement professionals. Platitude and cliché-free, we promise! Grief Out Loud is hosted by Jana DeCristofaro and produced by Dougy Center: The National Grief Center Children & Families in Portland, Oregon. www.dougy.org
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Now displaying: 2024

Remember the last time you tried to talk about grief and suddenly everyone left the room? Grief Out Loud is opening up this often avoided conversation because grief is hard enough without having to go through it alone. We bring you a mix of personal stories, tips for supporting children, teens, and yourself, and interviews with bereavement professionals. Platitude and cliché-free, we promise! Grief Out Loud is hosted by Jana DeCristofaro and produced by The Dougy Center for Grieving Children & Families in Portland, Oregon.

Nov 9, 2024

In May of 2024, Christine Passo's beloved dog, Maya Ray, took her last breath in Christine's arms. This wasn't the first time Christine experienced loss or trauma, but the grief she felt and continues to feel for Maya Ray caught her off guard with its intensity and depth. We talk about Maya Ray's last day, how Christine's other dog, Zoe, grieved, and how Christine and her partner are finding ways to continue honoring Maya Ray's life and her place in their family. 

Christine Passo is a coach who specializes in supporting women through life changes, many of which come with grief. She is also the co-author of My Fur Baby Wrote This Book and host of the Unconscious Evolution podcast. 

Be sure to check out our previous episode on grieving for a pet - Ep. 238 "These Relationships Matter."

Nov 1, 2024

In honor of Children's Grief Awareness month, we asked kids and teens to talk about grief in their own words. This compilation episode includes clips from children and teens reflecting on their people who died, their varied responses to loss, and what they hope grief will feel like in future. 

Thank you to all the children and teens who contributed to this episode - and to their parents and caregivers for facilitating the recording process. 

Want to learn more?

Oct 18, 2024

No one is perfect and no one is just one story, but how do you grieve when the person who died was so different than the person you fell in love with? When Jenn met and fell in love with Jesse, she never imagined their relationship would unravel due to his struggles with mental health and alcohol use disorder. Jesse died in 2020 and Jenn's been left to reconcile the man she loved with the one she eventually had to leave. His death also left her unsure where her grief fits in the world of bereavement and how to support their son, whose grief is complicated by the impact his father's illness had on their relationship. 

Dr. Jennifer Vriend is a Licensed Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychologist and co-host of The Coping Toolbox podcast.

Oct 14, 2024

Susan Lieu, is a Vietnamese-American author, playwright, and performer. When Susan was 11 years old, her mother died from a routine plastic surgery. After she died, Susan's family stopped talking about her mother, leaving Susan on her own to figure out what happened and how to feel. Susan's debut memoir, The Manicurist’s Daughter, recounts her quest to get to know her mother, avenge her death, and try with all her might to get her family to open up about it all.

Susan is a compelling and accomplished storyteller, co-hosting The Model Minority Moms podcast and speaking at TEDx, the Smithsonian, and at universities and companies across the country. Her memoir is an Apple Book of the Month, most anticipated 2024 book by Elle Magazine and Goodreads, and has been featured on The New York Times, NPR Books, and The Washington Post. Read her press here

Follow Susan on IG @susanlieu

Oct 2, 2024

It's our 300th episode and this conversation with Maegan Parker Brooks, PhD, is the perfect one to honor that milestone. Maegan is an Associate Professor at Willamette University and a volunteer at Dougy Center where she facilitates a peer grief support group for adult caregivers of teens who are grieving. Maegan is also a daughter and sister, grieving the deaths of her father, her sister Emily, and her mother. In this conversation we talk about grief and estranged relationships, relationships impacted by substance use, non-death losses, memorialization during the pandemic, and all the ways we talk to one another - and ourselves - about that grief. 

Maegan Parker Brooks, PhD is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Civic Communication & Media Department at Willamette University. At Willamette, Maegan teaches courses in Death and Grief Communication and facilitates the Diversity of Loss grief support group. Beyond Willamette, Maegan co-facilitates a group for adult caregivers of grieving teens at The Dougy Center and she recently earned a certificate in Arts-Assisted Grief Therapy at the Portland Institute for Loss & Transition  

Related Articles:
Brooks, Maegan P. "Listening to Grief." Willamette., 1 Feb. 2024, pp. 20-21. 
Brooks, Maegan P. “Listening to Layers of Loss.” Journal of Autoethnography, 4, 2 (2023): 174-192.
 
Want to help us celebrate our 300th episode? Be sure to follow the show and give us a rating/review on whatever platform you use to listen!
 
Sep 19, 2024

Kendra Rinaldi knows a lot about grief. When she was just 21, her sister died in a car accident. Ten years later she had a miscarriage. Ten years after that, her mother died of cancer. Professionally, she is a grief guide and host of the Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray In Between podcast. But she didn't always get grief. When she was 21, she didn't realize that everything she was thinking, feeling, and experiencing after her sister's death counted as grief. In the years since, Kendra's gotten to know her grief well and uses that knowledge to support others.   

We discuss:

  • The spectrum of losses Kendra's experienced
    • Grieving her sister's death in a car accident
    • Grieving a miscarriage
    • Grieving her mother's death from pancreatic cancer
  • What can be different between a sudden death vs. one from a long-term illness
  • Discerning grief from depression
  • Writing as a tool for navigating grief and staying connected to her sister
  • How Kendra's sister's death shifted family dynamics
  • Tri-lingual grieving - and why Spanglish is her favorite language for grief
  • How grief is approached differently in the U.S. and Kendra's home country, Colombia
  • The origin of the Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray In Between podcast
  • The hardest aspect of doing a podcast about grief
  • Kendra's recent sneaky grief attack

Follow Kendra on IG @griefgratitudepodcast

Want to help with our special Children's Grief Awareness Month episode? If you have a child or teen in your world who is grieving a death who would like to participate, you can record a voice memo of them responding to one or more of the following prompts and email it to griefoutloud@dougy.org

  1. When my ____ died, I felt...
  2. When I'm missing them, ____ helps the most
  3. Today, my grief feels like...
  4. In the future, I hope my grief feels...

Thank you for considering!

Sep 6, 2024

It might be better to ask Canada Taylor what she doesn't do in the realm of suicide prevention, postvention, and grief support rather than what she does because she seems to do just about everything and anything. This is part two of our conversation with her, so if you missed the first, Ep. 297: Honoring A Great Love, be sure to listen. In this episode, we talk about the holistic  approach she takes to suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention. An approach that focuses on building a world worth living in. A world where youth - and people of any age - have their basic needs met and can access safety, community, and true belonging. 

We discuss:

  • Some of the professional roles Canada holds
  • What is different for grief professionals and educators when the topic of suicide arises
  • The changing landscape of suicide prevention & postvention
  • How systems and institutions can create barriers to more humane and effective interventions
  • What we still don't know when it comes to suicide
  • How stigma, shame, and isolation contribute to suicide - and the harm they cause for those left behind
  • Risk factors for youth suicide, especially for BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ youth
  • Protective factors like belonging, safety, and community
  • Why cultural & community specific prevention & intervention strategies are necessary
  • What the headlines get wrong about youth suicide
  • The pockets of hope Canada's come across in the field

Since 2005 Canada Taylor has worked in behavioral health care serving youth and adults, with a focus in deathcare and helping families navigate grief, loss, and trauma amidst crisis. Relational, restorative, and transformative approaches are key underpinnings to Canada’s holistic, integrative philosophy to creating change and healing for all. Currently she is the Suicide Prevention Coordinator and Postvention Response Lead for the Multnomah County Health Department. Canada was honored with the Trillium Health Mental Health Hero award in 2021 and Multnomah County's Committee Choice Award in 2024 for her work in grief and suicide prevention. Grounding spaces in humor, authenticity, and vulnerability are essential to Canada’s professional and personal life, and especially her work in suicide prevention  

Organizations we reference:

School Crisis Recovery & Renewal Network (SCRR)

SAMSHA Black Youth Suicide Prevention Coalition

National Suicide Prevention Month

If you are someone you know is struggling, please reach out

Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: 988

Trans Lifeline: 877.565.8860

YouthLine: 877.968.8491 

BlackLine: 800.604.5841

LGBTQ National Hotline: 888.843.4564 

The Trevor Project: 866.488.7386

Aug 30, 2024

Twelve years ago today - August 30th - Canada Taylor was having an amazing night. She and her husband Rick were sitting outside, talking about life and work and dreams for the future - their future. Then everything changed. Rick had a medical event, and Canada became his first responder. Hours later, she became his widow. In the twelve years since, things continued to change. Canada's two sons grew up and grew into their grief. She changed the course of her career - moving from behavioral health to suicide prevention and grief justice. Throughout all these changes, Canada has found ways to honor who Rick was in this world and the love they share.  

We discuss:

  • What Canada's husband saw in her that no one else did
  • The last day they spent together
  • Being a first responder for Rick & the trauma that brought
  • Supporting her two children 
  • The challenge of finding culturally relevant grief support for her kids
  • How difficult it was to find skilled support for herself
  • A preview of how grief informs the work Canada does in the realm of suicide prevention & postvention
  • How Canada plans to honor the anniversary of Rick's death this year

Connect with Canada on IG @canadalauren and Linkedin

Aug 8, 2024

When Barri Leiner Grant was 28, her mother Ellen died suddenly. Barri was hit with intense grief, but back then the expectation was to hurry up and get back to work and life. She didn't have the time, space, or tools to acknowledge and attend to grief. Over the past 31 years, Barri and her grief have gotten to know each other on a deep level. In this long-term relationship, she's learned that her grief gets louder each time she reaches a new milestone or faces a transition. Even with that knowing, the grief can still find ways to catch her off-guard. Recently, one of those times was watching her daughter turn the same age Barri was when her mother died. 

We discuss:

  • How Barri's mom, Ellen, was a woman before her time
  • The day her mother died and the last sounds she heard
  • What the early days of grief felt like
  • The untenable expectation to get back to "normal"
  • Finding Hope Edelman's book, Motherless Daughters
  • The grief tending tools Barri turned to over the past 31 years
  • Her daughter turning the age Barri was when her mother died
  • The newer grief of being a caregiver for her father who has dementia
  • How The Memory Circle came to be and Barri's work as a grief coach
  • One of Barri's favorite ways to engage with grief - writing

Barri Leiner Grant is the founder and Chief Grief Officer™, of The Memory Circle for grief support--a place and space she created in 2019, for those learning to live with loss. She left a longtime career as a journalist and motherloss peer guide, to pursue full-time work and training as a Certified Grief Coach and Educator. Connect with Barri on Instagram and Substack

Jul 24, 2024

Sometimes we can't really begin to understand grief - ours or anyone else's - if we don't have space to talk about the death. The context surrounding how someone died matters and can shape our grief in meaningful ways. This was true for Kari Lyons-Price, MSW, who was a caregiver for her parents, Hal and Sylvia, for many years. They died three years apart, her dad in 2019 and her mom in 2022, and the circumstances of their deaths greatly impacted Kari and her grief. 

We discuss:

  • How her parents lived - and how they each died
  • Why their death stories matter when it comes to grief
  • The anger and resentment in the immediate aftermath of her father's death
  • What she's done to come to terms with the circumstances of each of their deaths
  • The role advocacy and education in the realm of care facilities played in that process
  • Making decisions about her mother's care in light of how her father died and the pandemic
  • The ongoing, slow nature of grief when someone has a long-term degenerative illness
  • What it's meant to no longer be a caregiver for her parents
  • Overcoming her family's narrative of autonomy and learning to accept support in grief
  • Where Kari finds her foundation now

 

Jul 17, 2024

In May of 2023, Sweta Vikram was overwhelmed with grief. In the span of three days, her father died, her father-in-law died, and it was the  9-year anniversary of her mother’s death. When she looked for information on how to survive the maelstrom of emotions, she found reassurances that she would eventually get to the other side, but nothing that showed her how to do that. So, Sweta set out to create the resource she was looking for and recently published, The Loss That Binds Us, a manual with 108 practical tips to survive and navigate grief.  

We discuss:
  • The overwhelm of multiple losses 
  • Turning to writing for solace and support
  • Lessons she learned from each of her parents
  • The impact of sudden vs. expected death
  • Becoming a protector & caregiver for her dad - and the comfort that brought after he died
  • How grief shaped Sweta's values
  • The meaning behind the number 108 across multiple cultures
  • How she managed to finish her PhD in Ayurvedic Medicine so early in her grief
  • Which of Sweta's tips are the easiest and hardest for her to follow
  • Her relationship to forgiveness in the context of grief
  • How she approaches the anniversary season
  • Sweta's self-care practices

Sweta Srivastava Vikram is an international speaker, author, and Ayurvedic Doctor who also teaches yoga and meditation.

Jul 11, 2024

Camille Sapara Barton is a social imagineer who is reimagining how we define and relate to grief. As a writer, artist, and somatic practitioner, Camille is looking to create a new grief narrative expansive enough to include multiple forms of individual and collective grief, especially for queer, trans, and BIPOC communities. In Camille's book, Tending Grief, they offer rituals and embodied practices for feeling into and metabolizing grief. 

  • Camille's lived experience with grieving death & non-death losses
  • Support for grief that falls outside the traditional box
  • Grief as a generative process
  • Camille's learning from Dagara spiritual traditions and Sobonfu Somé
  • Collective grief that comes out of displacement, colonization, and threats to queer & trans people around the world
  • How we numb our grief and the cost of doing so
  • The narrative Camille is hoping to create around grief
  • Examples of embodied practices to tend grief 

Be sure to check out Camille's new book, Tending Grief - Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community. 

Jun 26, 2024

Cody Delistraty is a journalist and he's also a son whose mother died of cancer. These two identities intersect in his new book, The Grief Cure, which chronicles his quest to find a way to eliminate the pain of grief. After exploring Laughter Therapy, silent meditation, Breakup Bootcamp, and other avenues for grief expression, Cody landed where so many others do: realizing the "cure" for grief is allowing it to exist, while still engaging with life. 

We discuss: 

  1. Who Cody was when his mom died
  2. How he used to define "successful" grief
  3. The secondary losses connected to his mother's death
  4. How his relationship to the 5 Stages of Grief evolved over time
  5. The quest to "cure" grief and the options he explored
  6. Which grief memory Cody most wished he could erase
  7. How important community can be
  8. Learning to embrace both grief and an ongoing connection with his mother

Cody Delistraty is a journalist and speechwriter in New York City. As a journalist, he has written stories, profiles and essays for The New York Times, The New Yorker and The Atlantic, among many others. He has served as culture editor at The Wall Street Journal‘s magazine and as features editor of the Paris-based magazine Mastermind.

Jun 19, 2024

It's impossible to speak for an entire community, especially when it comes to grief, but Sharice Burnett, LCSW, knows a lot about the ripple effect of loss in the Black and African American community in Portland, OR. Born and raised in the community, Sharice is a clinical mental health therapist and consultant dedicated to naming and dismantling the larger systemic barriers that stand in the way of Black children and families having access to culturally relevant support, particularly mental health and grief support. 

We discuss:

  • Grieving the loss of an entire generation of elders during the Covid-19 pandemic
  • The grief and displacement from the Vanport Flood of 1948
  • The cultural nuances of grief
  • Historic, intergenerational, and collective grief
  • The unacknowledged grief of racism
  • How each death & loss ripples out to the larger Black/African American Portland community
  • How safety from racial harm is critical to accessing grief support services
  • Sharice's hopes and dreams for creating more culturally relevant grief support
  • Creative grief support & healing spaces for Portland's Black community (Black Rose Wellness) 

This episode is the third and final in our 2024 three-part series highlighting the voices of communities who have historically been underrepresented in the grief world. The series is part of an ongoing collaboration between Dougy Center and The New York Life Foundation. We are deeply grateful for New York Life Foundation's tireless support and advocacy for children and teens who are grieving.

Jun 7, 2024

Lisa Keefauver is a lot of things - she's a writer, speaker, educator, social worker, podcast host, mother, widow, and grief activist. She came to the last two titles when her personal experience of grieving for her husband Eric, who died of a brain tumor in 2011, intersected with her professional life as a clinician. At this intersection, Lisa realized just how grief illiterate the world is and how that illiteracy creates unnecessary suffering for those who are grieving. Lisa hosts the acclaimed podcast, Grief is a Sneaky Bitch and recently published her book, Grief is a Sneaky Bitch: An Uncensored Guide to Navigating Loss.   

We discuss:

  • The gift of love from her husband Eric
  • Living in the both/and of grief and life
  • Being a mental health professional while grieving
  • Navigating a breast cancer diagnosis in a medical system that failed her husband
  • How we bring our full history into each new loss
  • The "shoulds" that hassled Lisa
  • The grief time warp
  • Grief thieves - including the one in the mirror
  • Lisa's go-to skill in her own grief
  • The power of observation & being with grief as it is

Lisa Keefauver is a grief activist, speaker and author. She began her career as a social worker and narrative therapist in 2004. She expanded her activism in a variety of roles: clinical director, non-profit co-founder, clinical supervisor, facilitator of personal and professional growth and healing, and mentor. Lisa's wisdom and insights on grief are also embodied from her personal losses, including the death of her husband Eric in 2011.

May 31, 2024

The Autism & Grief Project is a new online platform designed to help adults with autism navigate and cope with the complexities of grief arising from both death and non-death losses. Alex LaMorie, A.A.S is a member of the project's Advisory Board and brings his lived experience with both autism and grief to this work. Dr. Kenneth J. Doka, PhD, MDiv, brings years of both professional and personal grief knowledge to his role on the project's Development Team. The Autism & Grief Project is unique - just as grief and autism are unique - and the site provides information not only for adults with autism who are grieving, but also the people who are supporting them. 

We discuss:

  • Parallels between the uniqueness of grief and the individual experience of autism
  • What Alex found to be helpul and unhelpful in his grief
  • Being open to different forms of communication and emotional expression
  • Learning to ask for help
  • The goals for the Autism & Grief Project
  • What Alex and Dr. Doka learned from being part of the project

Alex D. LaMorie, A.A.S is an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland Global Campus and autism advocate. Alex's expressive grief artwork was recently featured in the textbook Superhero Grief: The Transformative Power of Loss (2021, Routledge). He serves as an advisor on the Hospice Foundation of America's Autism & Grief Project. In his spare time, he loves movies and TV shows as well as traveling to Comic Con and Anime conventions with his older sister. Alex also loves creative writing and spending time with his New York family so he can eat the world's best pizza and bagels!

Kenneth J. Doka, PhD, MDiv, is Senior Vice President of Grief Programs at Hospice Foundation of America (HFA) and recipient of the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Death Education and Counseling. He serves as editor of HFA’s Living with Grief® book series and its Journeys bereavement newsletter. He is a prolific author, editor, and lecturer; past president of the Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC); and a member and past chair of the International Work Group on Death, Dying, and Bereavement (IWG). In 2018, the IWG presented Doka with the Herman Feifel Award for outstanding achievement in thanatology. He received an award for Outstanding Contributions in the Field of Death Education from ADEC in 1998. Doka is an ordained Lutheran minister and a licensed mental health counselor in the state of New York.

This episode is the second in our 2024 three-part series highlighting the voices of communities who have historically been underrepresented in the grief world. The series is part of an ongoing collaboration between Dougy Center and The New York Life Foundation. We are deeply grateful for New York Life Foundation's tireless support and advocacy for children and teens who are grieving.

May 28, 2024

Have you ever heard someone’s voice in your head and suddenly you're transported to a time and place when you were with them? This phenomenon is what Lissa Soep explores in Other People’s Words: Friendship, Loss, and the Conversations That Never End, her book about the intimacy of friendship and how words and language keep people with us, even after they die. After the deaths of her friends, Jonnie and Christine, Lissa found comfort in this idea of them living on through their words. 

We discuss:

  • Lissa's friendships with Jonnie & Christine
  • Grieving a sudden death vs one from a long-term illness
  • The unique nature of friendships formed in our 20's
  • How Jonnie & Christine's come back to Lissa through their words
  • The Russian critic Mikhail Bahktain's concept of double voicing
  • What Lissa's learned about how to support others who are grieving

Lissa Soep is a senior editor for audio at Vox Media and special projects producer and senior scholar-in-residence at YR Media. She has a PhD from Stanford, where she first started writing about Bakhtin.

May 14, 2024

Cristina Chipriano, LCSW, Dougy Center's Director of Equity & Community Outreach and Melinda Avila, MSW, CEO of OYEN Emotional Wellness Center, are committed to changing the landscape of grief support for Latino families. They bring personal and professional grief experiences to the work of ensuring that every Latino family has access to dual language grief support that honors their cultural values.  

We discuss:

  • Cristina & Melinda's personal connection to this work
  • Why it's important now, in 2024, to have this conversation
  • What is unique about grief & grief support in the Latino community
  • The concept of family in the Latino community 
  • How grief challenges our sense of self and identity
  • The ways people have been taught to suffer in silence
  • How culture informs grief and grief informs culture
  • Why it's critical for services to be truly bilingual
  • The barriers to accessing services
  • The first thing service providers should be thinking about when meeting with a Latino family
  • Cristina & Melinda's hopes for the future of grief support for Latino families

This episode is the first in our 2024 three-part series highlighting the voices of communities who have historically been underrepresented in the grief world. The series is part of an ongoing collaboration between Dougy Center and The New York Life Foundation. We are deeply grateful for New York Life Foundation's tireless support and advocacy for children and teens who are grieving. 

May 3, 2024

We cannot separate grief from the context in which it occurs. This is true for Nicole Chung whose adopted parents died just two years apart in 2018 and 2020. The world of 2018 was very different than that of 2020. In 2018, Nicole and her mother could grieve for her father, together and in person. In 2020, Nicole was on the other side of the country, grieving for her mother in isolation during the early days of the pandemic. The other context that played a role in her parents' lives and their deaths is the structural inequality that exists in the U.S. economy and end of life care. Nicole chronicles all of this in her new memoir, A Living Remedy

We discuss:

  • How hard it is to describe people and what they mean to us
  • What it was like to be cut off from more traditional grief rituals during the pandemic
  • Grieving an unexpected vs (more) expected death
  • Learning to distinguish between guilt and regret
  • How grounding her parents' deaths in a larger context helped alleviate some of her guilt
  • The pressures Nicole felt to care for her parents as an only child in a working class family
  • What it costs to die and grieve in the U.S.
  • The unacknowledged grief of being a transracial adoptee
  • Approaching the 4-year anniversary of her mother's death

Nicole Chung’s A Living Remedy was named a Notable Book of 2023 by The New York Times and a Best Book of the Year by over a dozen outlets, including Time, USA Today, Harper's Bazaar, Esquire, Electric Literature, and TODAY. Her 2018 debut, the national bestseller All You Can Ever Know, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a semifinalist for the PEN Open Book Award, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and an Indies Choice Honor Book.

Chung’s writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Time, The Guardian, GQ, Slate, Vulture, and many other publications. Previously, she was digital editorial director at the independent publisher Catapult, where she helped lead its magazine to two National Magazine Awards; before that, she was the managing editor of The Toast and an editor at Hyphen magazine. In 2021, she was named to the Good Morning America AAPI Inspiration List honoring those “making Asian American history right now.” Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, she now lives in the Washington, DC area.

 

Apr 4, 2024

Maybe you're familiar with the phrase, "You can't go around grief, you have to go through it." Or, "You have to feel your feelings." If you're like a lot of people, you might cringe and also wonder, "What does that actually mean?" Grief isn't linear, and it's not something to get through - and yet, a lot of people appreciate having some sense of what to expect and what to do with it all. That's where Claire Bidwell Smith's new book, Conscious Grieving, comes in. Offered as a framework, not a formula, Claire suggests four ways to orient towards grief: entering, engaging, surrendering, and transforming. Claire comes to this work with her lived experience of losing both of her parents to cancer by the time she was twenty-five. She's a licensed therapist, international speaker, and the author of five books

We discuss:

  • What Claire's parents would think of her work
  • How she stays connected to them
  • The rise of anxiety in grief
  • The pressure to "move on" from grief
  • How those who are grieving carry the burden of educating others
  • What Claire does to manage health anxiety
  • The four orientations of Conscious Grieving
  • How important community can be when it comes to grief
  • Where Claire currently is with her grief
  • Both sides of the compassion coin

Listen to our previous conversation with Claire, Ep. 109 - Grief & Anxiety

Mar 24, 2024

In 2015, Diane Kalu was living in Nigeria with her husband and their three young children. One day, about eight weeks after the birth of their third child, Diane’s husband went to work and never returned. A few days later she got the news that he dad died. She was suddenly a widow, responsible for raising three children under the age of five, in a country with several widowhood customs and traditions that are harmful to women. Thankfully, Diane had her mother to help her survive those early days of widowhood. Then, about five years after her husband's death, Diane's mother also died. Through both of these losses, Diane discovered a lot about herself, including a passion for helping others. That led her to start the WiCare Lekota Foundation, an organization dedicated to supporting widows in Nigeria through social, emotional, financial, and educational support programs. 

We discuss:

  • Grieving for her mother
  • Telling her children their grandmother died
  • How her mother supported her after her husband died
  • Grief brain fog and how Diane recovered her memory with singing & sticky notes
  • Widowhood customs & traditions that are harmful for women
  • The ways Diane broke with community expectations for widows
  • Pity vs. compassion
  • The mindset that helped Diane survive
  • What Diane's husband would think of who she is now
  • Starting the WiCare Lekota Foundation to support other widows

WiCare on Facebook

Mar 20, 2024

Read Transcript

Whenever Annette & Mel connect, there's always a third person in the mix. That third person is Amy, their friend and chosen family member who died in 2012 of pulmonary fibrosis. While they each had a unique friendship with her, both connections were formative and deep. When Amy died, Annette and Mel's friendship grew stronger, because of their shared grief. 

This episode is part of a series focused on grieving the death of a friend. As much as we decry there being a hierarchy of grief, most people still assume the death of a family member is harder than the death of a friend. In reality though, the death of a friend or chosen family member can be absolutely devastating, in ways that catch us, and others, off guard.  

We discuss:

  • Amy's magnetic personality - and what she meant to each of them
  • What they both learned from being friends with her
  • The different friendships Mel & Annette had with Amy, while still being part of the same circle
  • How Annette & Mel got closer through Amy's illness and death
  • Witnessing Amy's rapid deterioration
  • How she tried to have end of life conversations with both of them
  • When they each realized that Amy was going to die
  • What grief has been like for both of them
  • Annette being diagnosed with the same illness that Amy had
  • The "Amy objects" they keep close
  • Navigating new relationships with people who never met Amy

Learn more about Annette Leonard and listen to her podcast, Chronic Wellness

Mar 8, 2024

What if there was a place you could go in your grief and be both perfect and broken? That's the kind of place Laura Green dreamed up with her friend and co-founder, Sascha Demerjian. Together they created The Grief House, a community space for people to explore grief through movement, conversation, creativity, and care. Since she was very young, Laura can remember being afraid of death. Afraid of losing everyone and everything she cared about, especially her mother. Three years after starting The Grief House, Laura had to face that biggest fear when her mother, Grace, died in the summer of 2023.  

We discuss:

  • Laura's current grief expression - clay
  • Why she feels so lucky to be her mother's daughter
  • The fear of death she's had as long as she can remember
  • How her mother's death story has influenced Laura's grief story
  • Why it was so important for Laura to spend time with her mother's body
  • The physicality of death and grief
  • The Grief House's origin story
  • What Laura and her co-founder are dreaming up next for The Grief House

Listen to Laura and co-founder Sascha on their podcast, Portals.

Follow The Grief House on IG

Feb 22, 2024

In an instant, Leslie went from sharing every aspect of life with her husband Ryan to feeling like half a person. Leslie, Ryan, their two young children, and their extended family were on vacation in California when Ryan told Leslie that something didn't feel right. He was rushed to the hospital where he died of a stroke and an aneurysym, leaving Leslie to figure out how to live their life without him. The people Leslie most wanted to talk to in her grief were other widows. This inspired her to start Vids for Wids - a project to capture the stories of widows in the hopes of helping others feel less alone. 

We discuss:

  • How Leslie and Ryan met as co-workers 

  • The day Ryan died while they were on vacation 

  • Suddenly feeling like half a person without Ryan 

  • Telling her very young children about his death 

  • The early days and weeks of widowhood 

  • How her kids’ grief is changing over time 

  • The power of talking to other widows 

  • What Leslie learned about grief from Ryan 

  • Dating and becoming a remarried widow 

  • Leslie’s Vids for Wids project to support other widows 

Feb 10, 2024

What happens when you put your grief on hold? In the summer of 2016, Channing Frye was riding high. After over a decade in the NBA, his team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, had won the Championship. Then, in the fall, he hit one of the lowest lows. His mother Karen died of cancer. Just a month later his father, Thomas, also died. Channing put his grief on hold to deal with the logistics of planning two funerals, supporting his family, and going back to work as a professional athlete. Eventually, with the help of his wife, his friends, and a therapist, Channing started to talk about and explore grief in ways that worked better for him. Doing this allowed him to get more present in his life and explore new passions like podcasting and starting a wine label, Chosen Family Wines

We discuss:

  • Channing’s parents and how they supported him in his basketball career 
  • What it was like when his parents died
  • Being with his mom as she was dying 
  • Putting his grief on hold to take care of business
  • How his grief intensified after his dad’s death 
  • Going back to the NBA soon after his parents’ deaths 
  • The role alcohol played in his early grief 
  • How he got into therapy and started working with his grief 
  • Reclaiming significant days like birthdays, Father’s Day, and other holidays 
  • How he stays grounded & connected to his parents  
  • The connection between grief and the name of his wine label, Chosen Family  

Follow Channing on IG

Listen to his podcast, Road Trippin'

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