When someone dies, our relationship with them doesn't just disappear. Sometimes the relationship changes in ways we never expected, allowing us to feel closer to them than we did when they were alive. This can leave us learning to grieve not just for what we had, but for what never got the chance to have with them. In this episode we talk with Never Faull about grieving for their father, who died in 2018 from cirrhosis of the liver. Nev shares how their relationship with their father was distant during his life and how they've found ways to create a deeper connection with him after his death. We also discuss what it was like for Nev, who came out as trans six months after their dad dies, to navigate grieving while also celebrating a new unfolding in their identity.
Topics we discuss:
Never Faull is a queer and trans, disabled, autistic BIPOC writer, photographer, facilitator, and grief tender based in Portland. they explore the intersections of memory, identity, and mourning in their creative work. their current project, The Dead Dad Camera Club, started with the camera their dad left behind, and has become a way to navigate grief through photos and storytelling.
Resources Mentioned
This episode is the first in our 2025 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.
Daria Burke is an author, executive, and healer-at-heart. She's also a grandchild grieving for her grandmother and a daughter estranged from her parents. In this episode, Daria shares the profound impact of losing her maternal grandmother at age seven and how that early loss reverberated through her life. This loss and grief exist alongside the immense healing she's done around growing up in poverty, childhood trauma, and her parents' absences, addictions, and the eventual estrangement from them.
With the recent release of her memoir, Of My Own Making, Daria opens up about the moment, decades later, that reawakened the grief for her grandmother - finding a newspaper article about her fatal car accident. That discovery, and ensuing grief, started a new chapter in Daria's healing process. In our conversation, we talk about inherited trauma, the emotional weight of estrangement, the invisible grief of childhood neglect, Daria's healing practices, and how she stays connected to her grandmother through what she calls “love taps.”
Key Topics:
What role Daria's grandmother played in her early childhood
The ongoing impacts of childhood grief and unprocessed trauma
How truth-telling is part of healing
The collective grief she grew up around in Detroit of the 1980's
Grieving for family members who are still alive
Grief Practices Daria Shares:
Giving herself permission to cry freely
Meditative practices to connect with her grandmother
Volunteering on holidays and creating new rituals
Finding signs from her grandmother in the world around her
Daria Burke is an American writer, speaker and award-winning business leader. A marketer by trade and a seeker at heart, Daria is a storyteller and sense-maker, weaving together personal experience and the science of healing and transformation to explore new ways of understanding how we choose who we become. This passion led her to complete Dr. Tara Swart’s Neuroscience for Business course at MIT and Positive Psychology and Well-Being at Stanford, taught by Dr. Daryn Reicherter, an international expert in trauma psychiatry.
Her debut memoir, OF MY OWN MAKING (April 2025) explores trauma, neuroplasticity, and Post-Traumatic Growth through the lens of her own healing journey. Kiese Laymon called it “as profound a book about the treacherous experience of befriending ourselves as I’ve read this decade.” Part memoir, part methodology, OF MY OWN MAKING blends personal narrative with scientific insight, Daria inspires readers to reimagine the narratives that define their lives.
Connect with Daria:
Website: www.dariaburke.com
Instagram: @dariaburke
Resources & Links:
Dougy Center: www.dougy.org
Email the show: griefoutloud@dougy.org
Production Note:
Grief Out Loud is produced by Dougy Center: The National Grief Center for Children & Families, and is supported in part by The Chester Stephan Endowment Fund.