What happens when you take a year away from your income generating work to focus completely on grief? This is the question Rebecca Feinglos faced at the end of 2021. Grief wasn't new to Rebecca. She was a teenager when her mother died of brain cancer. On the same day her state shut down due to the COVID pandemic, she got a call that her father had died suddenly. In the ensuing months, she ended her marriage. So, by the time she got to the end of 2021, she was exhausted and empty and unwell. It's common to wish the world would stop and give us a break when someone dies, but we usually dream of escaping from it all. Rebecca did something different - she took a year to delve fully into her grief and along the way she wrote about it on her blog. This experience inspired her to start her organization, GrieveLeave, a community to support others in learning to grieve all of their losses. 

We discuss:

• Growing up in the shadow of her mother's brain cancer
• How Rebecca responded to grief as a teen and young adult
• The sudden death of her father the same day the COVID-19 shutdown began
• Rebecca's realization that she needed to do something different
• What she discovered during her GrieveLeave about how to grieve
• The daily practices Rebecca still does to stay connected to her grief
• What she hopes to accomplish with GrieveLeave

Follow GrieveLeave on IG & Fbook. 

It's generally accepted that there's no official end point to grief, but what happens when there's also no end point to the questions about someone's death? Charlotte Maya's life changed drastically when she came home from a hike with her two young children to find two police officers and a priest at her house, waiting with news that her husband Sam had died by suicide. In those early days of grief Charlotte dealt with sadness, anger, confusion, and the endless tasks that come when someone dies. She also faced the question, "Why?" Why did Sam do what he did? What was he going through? Why didn't he ask for help? Almost 16 years later, Charlotte and her children have more understanding about suicide, but they've mostly had to accept that they'll never truly know the answer to a question that only Sam could answer. 

Charlotte's new memoir, Sushi Tuesdays, chronicles the first few days, weeks, and years of grief and how she learned to take care of her children and herself in their grief. 

We discuss:

• The early days of grief
• The shock of Sam dying of suicide
• Searching for an answer to "Why?"
• How anger was a part of grief
• What Charlotte's two children needed in their grief
• Falling in love again and blending a family
• Learning to parent her stepsons who were also grieving
• How Sushi Tuesdays, Charlotte's dedicated day for self-care came about
   

If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out for help. You can call the National Crisis Line at 988 or text Hello to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.

"What was your dad like?" It's a simple question that's not easy to answer when you had a complicated relationship with the person who died. Claire's dad died of a stroke almost four years ago and one of the first emotions she felt was relief. Relief that she wouldn't have to worry if he would want to walk her down the aisle when she got married. Relief she wouldn't have to wonder how he'd act in the future. She also felt deep grief and sadness about the relationship they never got to have. Claire's dad was brilliant. He loved music. He was extremely active. He was also emotionally abusive to Claire and her mom. This reality adds layers of complexity not just to her grief, but to navigating other people's assumptions about what their relationship was like. 

We talk about:

• Grieving when the relationship was complicated
• Secondary grief & remorse 
• Forgiving herself & trying to better understand her dad
• Continuing to work on their relationship, even after his death
• Finding ways to stay connected to her dad
• Planning a wedding and balancing how to honor his memory

• Growing up with her father’s illness and the threat of him dying 

• Running from guilt & shame in grief 

• Overachieving as a coping mechanism 

• Wanting to be a “geriatric kid” at Josie’s Place, a peer grief support program for children & families  

• What Laurel learned about grief from being a volunteer facilitator in that program 

• Learning a new way of being in the world & staying open to love 

• Having a “cosmic do-over" in helping her mom at the end of her life 

• The co-existence of love and sadness

At the age of 27, Dr. Peg Sandeen faced an impossible request. Her husband, John, who was dying from HIV/AIDS, told Peg that he couldn’t stand the pain anymore and wanted her to help him end his life. It was the early 1990’s though and there was no legal avenue for Peg to help John in his wish to die with the dignity he had in life. Peg went on to get both a Master's and Ph.D. in social work. Throughout that time, the memory of John’s last wish motivated her to work towards changing the landscape for people facing the end of life. Dr. Sandeen is now the Executive Director of Death With Dignity, working in end-of-life advocacy and fighting for medical aid in dying laws across the U.S.  

In our conversation we discuss:

• Meeting and falling in love with John
• Getting the news of John's HIV diagnosis
• How Hannah and John talked with their daughter Hannah about her father's illness
• The shame and stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS
• Caregiving for a dying husband as a young mother and wife
• The current state of right to die laws across the U.S.
• Moving from an intellectual to emotional understanding of grief
• Learning to support Hannah in her grief

Dr. Sandeen's HuffPost article: My Husband Asked Me to Help Him Die. I Couldn't Do It - and My Life Changed Forever 

Meet Me Where I Am, a new film by Grant Garry, explores the topic of grief through individual stories of loss, love, and hope. The film aims to normalize grief in our culture and explores how we can actively participate in helping others through grief. Grant has always been curious about grief, from his first experience when his grandmother died when he was a teenager to his most recent loss, the death of his uncle. Meet Me Where I Am is the culmination of that curiosity, and a dedication to ensuring we all feel better equipped to talk about grief. 

Follow Meet Me Where I Am on Instagram to see clips from the film (@meetmewhereiamfilm). 

Colin Campbell is a lot of things - writer, husband, friend - but the role he identifies with most is being a father. So, when his two teenage children, Ruby & Hart, were killed by a drunk driver in 2019, Colin was lost and terrified. Who was he without his kids? How would he survive the intensity of grief? Soon after their deaths, well-meaning friends and family would say, "There are no words," but for Colin, this phrase wasn't comforting. It left him feeling more alone because what he really needed were words. Words so he could talk about Ruby & Hart. Words to help articulate his pain. And words from others who shared what they remembered and missed about his children.   

Colin's book, Finding the Words: Working Through Profound Loss With Hope and Purpose, outlines the words and actions that helped him stay close to Ruby & Hart while learning to live in a world without them.  

Topics in our conversation:

• How Colin continues to honor and remember Ruby & Hart
• The rituals and routines that were helpful in the early days of grief
• How Colin navigates guilt and anger
• Learning to lean into the pain
• Finding ways for joy to live alongside grief
• The myth that the death of a child leads to divorce
• How Colin continues to embody being a father

Colin's article in The Atlantic - What Losing My Two Children Taught Me About Grief

When Jessica Schaffer's partner of 25 years, Patrice, died in March of 2021, she found herself untethered. In the early days of grief, Jessica went within, needing to find her orbital pattern in this new solar system without Patrice. During this time she also germinated seeds of creativity. Seeds that were planted by Patrice when she gifted Jessica an iPad, just days before she learned she was dying. In the fall of 2021, Jessica picked up the iPad and started drawing. This process inspired her to start The Chrysalis Imagery, a company where she offers a line of greeting cards and other inspired imagery. 

In this conversation we discuss:

• What is was like to midwife Patrice through her dying process
• How the early days of grief felt
• The image that came to Jessica soon after Patrice died
• How creativity changed everything
• The ways their dog Kirby grieved
• Jessica's hopes for The Chrysalis Imagery

Jessica on IG - @thechrysalisimagery and Facebook - @thechrysalisimagery

It's rare for a story to have just one side, especially in grief. This is true for Eddie, whose father died of suicide in 2021. One side of the story is how Eddie's father was in the world - extremely successful and well-regarded. Another side of the story is how he was at home and in his relationship with her. In grief, Eddie has had to reckon with missing her dad while also being confused about why she is missing him. She's also had to navigate living in the world without a dad who was such a force in shaping everything she thought she wanted in life. Eddie is committed to talking openly about grief and mental health and wants to ensure there is room for her and others to tell both sides of the story. 

When Tida Beattie's Thai immigrant parents died in 2019, she went from being a long-distance caregiver to an overwhelmed & grieving daughter. In her search for support, she found what so many do, a lack of culturally specific or informed resources. This experience motivated her to change this for others by creating spaces for immigrant families to receive support before and after a death. Tida is a Thai-American end-of-life doula, grief support facilitator, immigrant advocate, and co-founder of MESO, dedicated to supporting caregivers and those in grief with compassion and a cultural lens. 

In this episode, we discuss:

• Growing up as a Thai-American and her family's experience of cultural bereavement.
• How her parents' immigrant experience informed their approach to end-of-life.
• What it was like to be a long-distance caregiver.
• Tida's search for culturally relevant grief support.
• The importance of acknowledging cultural bereavement.
• The goal and mission of MESO.
• Learning to hold both joy & grief.

The list of things to do when someone dies is long and burdensome. If one of the things on that list was, "return to work," then this episode is for you. If you're a manager or co-worker wondering how to best support someone when they get to that item on the list, this episode is also for you. In a world where most companies provide woefully inadequate, if any, bereavement leave, many people have to return before they are ready, and when they do go back they are usually met with awkward comments or outright silence. Margo Fowkes, founder of Salt Water, an online community for grief, published her book, Leading Through Loss - How to Navigate Grief at Work, with the hope of easing this transition, both for employees and employers. 

We talk about:

• How Margo's experience as a mother grieving a son and a daughter grieving a mother inspired her to start Salt Water.
• Why it's important for companies to support their employees who are grieving.
• The power of peer support in the work place.
• How support doesn't always mean more time off.
• What employees identified as their biggest need at work.
• Examples of effective work place support.
• How writing this book helped Margo reflect on how she and her family returned to work and school after her son died. 

Listen to Margo's previous interview on Grief Out Loud. Ep. 172 Living After Your Child's Life Ends. 

After her mother died in 2013, Charlene Lam faced the daunting prospect of dealing with all of her belongings. Making decisions about what to keep felt impossible, so Charlene turned to her skills as a gallery curator and asked herself: “If I was to do an exhibition about my mother, which 100 objects would I choose?” This experience transformed Charlene's understanding of how to interact with the objects of people's lives. It also inspired her to create the The Grief Gallery and become a grief coach. 

Topics we talk about:

• Feeling blindsided by her mother's death.
• Charlene's instinct to plan and do, rather than feel, in the early days of grief.
• How she eventually found ways to express emotion through creativity.
• What she learned about grief from growing up as the child of Chinese immigrants.
• How we can all think about curating the items of our lives, before we die.
• Grief and the Lunar New Year holiday.

Follow Charlene & The Grief Gallery on Instagram. 

We wanted to release this episode at the beginning of the new year, because it hits on a topic we haven’t explored much before – psychic mediumship. It’s something that comes up in our groups at Dougy Center and the people who bring it up usually do so with a lot of trepidation and concern for how others will respond. We figured if it's coming up in our groups, many of you out there might also be curious about this kind of work. Patty Montoya is a psychic medium, energy healer, anticipatory grief coach, Reiki practitioner, and death doula. She came to this work from her personal experience. When she was 18, her younger brother died of leukemia. A few years later, her mother also died, from a fast-moving disease. Patty turned to this work in the hopes of providing others with the support she most needed in her grief. 
We get into:
Common misperceptions about psychic mediumship.
What kinds of messages Patty receives and how she translates them.
What to expect in a session.
How she responds to skepticism about her work.
Examples of messages Patty's received from her family members.
How she cares for herself in this work. 
www.titipoza.com
Follow Patty on IG & FB

"Are we going to be okay?" This was one of the first questions Amy Choi & Rebecca Lehrer, co-founders of The Mash-Up Americans, posed in their new podcast series, Grief, Collected. Throughout episodes with folks like adrienne maree brown, Dorothy Holinger, and Linda Thai, Rebecca and Amy explore what grief is and how it impacts us emotionally, physically, culturally, and collectively. Rebecca & Amy talk about the questions they posed in this series and how the answers they uncovered are shifting their personal, familial, cultural, and collective responses to grief and loss. 

Listen to Grief, Collected
Check out The Mash-Up Americans

*Note: this episode talks about suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out. You can call 988 or text Hello to 741-741.*

Many of us end up working in the grief world because of our personal experiences. We want to give others what we most needed. This is especially true for Melody Lomboy-Lowe and her niece Gracelyn Bateman, who co-founded Luna Peak Foundation in the hopes of supporting both those affected by cancer and those grieving a death. Melody was diagnosed with cancer when she was 6 and went through intensive treatment until she was 9. Gracelyn's dad, and Melody's brother-in-law, died of a cardiac event while running in 2016. Through their books and social media channels, Luna Peak provides multicultural stories of survivorship and hope. 
Places we go in this episode:
Grieving during the holidays.
What Melody needed from adults while she was going through treatment.
How interviewing those affected by cancer and those grieving a death has impacted them. 
Their hopes for Luna Peak Foundation going forward. 

Books mentioned:
Beyond Remission
Beyond Grief
Holiday Griefings

When your parent is one of six people in medical history to be diagnosed with and die from a rare disease, the phrase, "The odds are one in a million" takes on a very different meaning. This was true for Rebecca Hobbs-Lawrence, Pathways Program Coordinator at Dougy Center, who was 11 when her father died of heart cancer. At that point, she decided that if something tragic could happen, it would most likely happen to her. This worldview informed so much of how she approached school, dating, family, and becoming a parent. 
In this conversation we explore:

• The early days of being a parent without her father.
• How vigilance and anxiety led Rebecca to over-function as a parent.
• The joy she found in watching her children get to be kids, without the responsibility she had to take on after her father died.
• How witnessing her grandson survive an extremely rare brain disease has helped rewrite her "one in a million" narrative.

Other Grief Out Loud episodes with Rebecca:
Ep. 18: Grieving the Death of a Sibling - Tips for Supporting Children
Ep. 20: Grief & Developmental Disabilities
Ep. 27: Grief and the Holidays
Ep. 67: Creating Legacies in the Face of a Terminal Illness
Ep. 98: Under Pressure - Grief & December Holidays
Ep. 174: Holidays, Grief & a Pandemic
Ep. 240: The (Not) Most Wonderful Time of the Year - Holidays & Grief Mini-Episode

For a lot of us, the end of year holidays + grief = the (not) most wonderful time of the year. Rebecca Hobbs-Lawrence, Pathways Program & Group Coordinator at Dougy Center, is back for our annual Holidays & Grief episode. We discuss negotiating with family and friends around how we want to celebrate or not celebrate and how the past few years have shifted our priorities. Rebecca also shares how she and her family are approaching the holidays with a new type of grief, her mother having Alzheimer's. 
If you missed our past Holidays & Grief episodes, be sure to listen to Ep. 27, 98, and 174. 
Tips For Getting Through the Holidays & Holiday Plan Worksheet.
Register for our "Navigating Grief During the Holidays" webinar happening on Thursday, 12.1.22, 10 am - 11:30 am PST. 

Have you found it difficult to read anything longer than a paragraph since your person died? It's a phenomenon familiar, both personally and professionally, to Eleanor Haley, MS & Litsa Williams, MA, LCSW-C. Eleanor & Litsa started the What's Your Grief community back in 2012 as a way to create the kind of grief resources they most needed in their own lives and for the clients they supported. They just published their first book, What's Your Grief - Lists to Help You Through Any Loss, and it will come as no surprise that it's filled with lists designed to help you better absorb information about grief from death and non-death losses.  
If you missed Eleanor & Litsa's first appearance on Grief Out Loud, go back and listen to Ep. 22: Grief & Becoming a Parent. 

We deliberated for a long time about whether it was appropriate for us to do an episode on pet loss. We know from those grieving the death of a person that it can hurt when someone tries to relate to their loss by sharing about their pet who died. We also know that grief is grief. Pets bring us joy and laughter and frustration and tears and love - just like humans do. In the end we decided to do this episode because we want to honor that for many people, their pets are family members, and the grief when one of them dies is real and valid and worthy of recognition and support. As our guest, Debrah Lee, Veterinary Well-Being Program Director for DoveLewis Veterinary and & Specialty Hospital, says, "These relationships matter."

Mentioned in this episode:
DoveLewis's Pet Loss Support Program
Additional Resources

Día de Los Muertos, or “Day of the Dead,” is a two-day holiday to remember family members and friends who have died. Día de Los Muertos has origins throughout Mexico and parts of Latin America, and is celebrated on November 1 and 2. The holiday is not a version of Halloween, but rather an enduring ritual celebrated since ancient times. Valenca Valenzuela, MSW, Volunteer Coordinator at Dougy Center, joins us to talk about the history of Día de Los Muertos, her personal connection to the holiday, and how people from all traditions can respectfully celebrate Día de Los Muertos by honoring and acknowledging its cultural origins. 

More about Dougy Center's Día de Los Muertos celebration. 
Valenca's previous Grief Out Loud appearance - Born For This Work.
Movies mentioned in this episode: Coco & The Book of Life.
History of Día de los Muertos.

Día de Los Muertos, es una celebración de dos días que tiene como fin recordar a miembros de la familia y amigos que han muerto. Tiene sus orígenes en diferentes regiones de México y partes de América Latina, y se celebra el 1 y 2 de noviembre. Esta festividad no es una versión de Halloween, sino un ritual perdurable celebrado desde la antigüedad. Valenca Valenzuela, MSW, Coordinadora de Voluntarios del Dougy Center se une para hablar acerca de la historia de Día de los muertos, su conexión personal con esta celebración, y cómo la gente de todas tradiciones puede celebrar este día de manera respetuosa, honrando y reconociendo sus orígenes culturales.
Más sobre la celebración del Día de los Muertos del Dougy Center.
Participación previa de Valenca en Grief Out loud – Born For This Work (Nacida para este trabajo).
Películas mencionadas en este episodio: Coco & The Book of Life (El Libro de la vida).
Historia del Día de los Muertos.

Charlie Tull has two lives, but he's not deceiving anyone. There's his civilian one that he lives with his kids and family and there's his professional one that he spends with his firefighter family. In 2018, one of his fire family members, Eli, died of a heart condition. Three years later in 2021, another member of his fire family, Scott, died of COVID. Charlie's first reaction to both of these shocking and unexpected deaths was numbness. Then, he went underground with his grief. Over time though he realized he needed and wanted to honor Eli and Scott by talking about them - and about the grief and pain of their deaths. 

Mark Chesnut is a NYC-based journalist, editor, and public speaker. His book, Prepare for Departure, Notes on a single mother, a misfit son, inevitable mortality, and the enduring allure of frequent flyer miles, is about love and care and acceptance – not the infamous acceptance from the 5 stages of grief – but the acceptance that can happen between a mother and son when one of their lives is coming to an end.

This episode travels to a lot of places, including:
What Mark learned about grief from his mother after his father died.
How those lessons shaped the way he approached caring for her and grieving her death.
How Mark moved into a place of acceptance with his mother for the ways she responded when he came out to her as a young adult.
The ways he dealt, and continues to deal with grief, even during the height of COVID, when he was unable to access his usual outlet, travel.  

This was meant to be a story about grieving in a foreign land. A story about navigating cancer treatment and funeral planning in a different language. And, it is that story, but it it's also the story of the accumulation of loss and grief.

Rebecca was 22 when her mother died of cancer. She was 23 when her fiancé died in a car crash, leaving her with their two young children. In the 8 years since she's also had a number of family members and friends die. In talking with Rebecca, you would think she is decades older based on the number of deaths she's experienced.

This ended up being a story of grieving in a foreign land, of explaining death and grief to children as they grow older, and of finding ways to live with both joy and grief.

Note: thanks to long-distance recording and spotty internet, the sound is a little wonky at times. 

This is a story about the people behind the numbers. A new study came out this week (September, 2022) estimating that 10.5 million children, across the globe, are grieving the death of a parent or caregiver from COVID-19. Lissa and Bryce's children are four of those. Bryce died in late December, 2021, after weeks in the hospital, receiving treatment for COVID-19. Throughout Bryce's illness and since his death, Lissa has done everything she can to answer her children's questions honestly and let them know they are in this together. She's also had to find ways to make space for herself to grieve her husband and all that they shared as a family. 

Here's that new study estimating the number of children impacted by COVID orphanhood/caregiver death. 

Adam Stevens, RDT, (he/they), knows grief. He grew up in a family of five. A family that is now a family of one. Adam brings this deep knowing of grief to his work as the Program Manager for Bereavement and Mental Health Services at the Hetrick-Martin Institute (HMI), where he supports primarily BIPOC queer & trans youth in transforming grief & the pain of loss through creative arts therapy. 

We talk about:

• How Adam came to work with grief & loss.
• What Drama Therapy is. 
• Adam's work at Hetrick-Martin Institute supporting LGBTQIA+ youth in being seen and heard in their grief. 
• The collective losses the youth they work with experienced through the COVID pandemic.
• The multi-faceted intersection of queer identity and grief.
• How Adam's personal grief has changed through this work. 

Learn more about the Hetrick-Martin Institute and follow them on IG & Fbook. 

Note: this episode mentions suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling. Please reach out for support.
Crisis Text Line: text HELLO to 741741
The Trevor Project: text START to 678678 (for LGBTQ youth)
The Trans Lifeline: (877) 565-8860