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 s...
Sep 26, 2022•31 min•Ep. 234
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 ...
Sep 08, 2022•42 min•Ep. 233
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 a...
Aug 12, 2022•44 min•Ep. 232
The word complicated came up a lot in this episode with Joe, whose dad died in 2017 after a decade of failing health. Joe's dad was a complicated guy. Joe’s relationship with his dad was and continues to be complicated. So, it's unsurprising that Joe's grief since his dad died has been equally complicated. That grief has evolved over time, from numbness at the start to beginning to feel and express a full range of emotions. These days, Joe continues to reckon with the complexity of his dad and t...
Aug 02, 2022•39 min•Ep. 231
Everett's spent the last few years trying to access and process the emotions that come with grief. Emotions that he learned to push aside when he was 12 and his father died. Emotions he didn't know how to make sense of in his early twenties when his brother died. Emotions he was better able to feel and express to when his grandmother died just this past winter. Grief doesn't happen in a vacuum and that is particularly true for those who have aspects of their identity that are marginalized by oth...
Jul 18, 2022•43 min•Ep. 230
Valenca Valenzuela, MSW, was born on Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) which seems fitting for someone who grew up to hold space for people before and after a death. Valenca is the Volunteer and Group Coordinator at Dougy Center, supporting children, teens, young adults and their adult family members who are grieving a death. As a death doula, she supports people who are facing the end of their lives. She is also an instructor for the Going with Grace program, readying others to do similar wo...
Jul 01, 2022•36 min•Ep. 229
Amanda Drews is the founder of Buzzy’s Bees , the organization she started after her son Hudson, who was 13 months old, died of SUDC (Sudden and Unexplained Death in Childhood). Amanda started Buzzy’s Bees with a mission to provide financial support to families dealing with the unexpected loss of a child. Over time, Amanda realized what families really needed and wanted was a chance to talk about their children. So she launched the Give Grief a Voice Project where families meet with professional...
Jun 23, 2022•31 min•Ep. 228
This episode originally aired in June, 2019. What is it about dark humor and why are we drawn to it when wrestling with painful life events? Laughter, especially the kind that wells up from a shared understanding of heartbreak, can be a surprising aspect of grief. Harry Jensen's father died of stage 4 colon cancer in January of 2017. Harry turned to stand-up comedy as a way to put his grief into words that often spark discomfort and uncertainty, but also serve as inspiration for people in the au...
Jun 17, 2022•31 min•Ep. 227
Dr. Micki Burns, Chief Clinical Officer at Judi's House and Dr. Laura Landry, Director of Evaluation & Research at the JAG Institute join us to talk numbers. They, along with the team at Judi's House/JAG Institute, created the CBEM , the Childhood Bereavement Estimation Model, which estimates how many children and teens will experience the death of a parent/caregiver or sibling before they turn 18. For years that number in the U.S. was 1 in 14. For 2022, it's increased to 1 in 13, reflecting...
Jun 08, 2022•49 min•Ep. 226
Rebecca Soffer, co-founder of the Modern Loss Community, started becoming an expert in grief the moment she learned that her mother Shelby was killed in a car crash. Her expertise expanded when four years later, her father Ray died of a heart attack while traveling. As a single woman in her early thirties, Rebecca needed to talk about her grief, and she really needed to hear others talk about theirs. It was this longing for an ongoing conversation and led her, along with co-founder Gabi Birkner,...
May 20, 2022•46 min•Ep. 225
As humans, we have a pervasive desire to compartmentalize. To box up messy thoughts and emotions and “just get on with it already.” For Marisa Renee Lee, this was the approach she took to navigating grief. Grief that started when she was 12 and her mother, Lisa, was diagnosed with MS. Grief that grew as her mother was later diagnosed with cancer and died in 2008. Grief that expanded to included infertility, pregnancy loss, and most recently, a cousin who died of COVID-19. These last three losses...
May 12, 2022•36 min•Ep. 224
In grief land, lots of groups are talked about as invisible or forgotten. Children, parents grieving a miscarriage, ex-partners, and siblings. For siblings, their grief often exists in the shadow of their parents – or it’s at least treated that way by others. Jordon Ferber ran into that when his younger brother, Russell, died when Russell was 21. While Jordon’s parents recognized that Jordon needed support just as much as they did, the rest of his sphere started where most people do, with the qu...
Apr 29, 2022•39 min•Ep. 223
Being a plumber doesn’t mean the pipes in your house never leak. Being a landscaper doesn’t mean your own yard is magically free of weeds. Why is it then that those of us who work in grief sometimes fall prey to the magical thinking that we will somehow be immune to the heartbreak when someone dies? Meghan Riordan Jarvis, LCSW, is a trauma-informed psychotherapist with over 20 years of clinical experience who harbored the same secret wish. A wish which imploded when her mother died in 2019, just...
Apr 22, 2022•48 min•Ep. 222
Lingering. Shivering. Simmering. Splintering. These are the words DJ Arsene Versailles wrote to describe grief after his mother, Florcie Yves Versailles, died of COVID-19 in May of 2020. This grief was and continues to be layered - as most grief is - and some of these layers are specific to his mom being a Black woman who died during a pandemic, of a disease that has come to be so much more than just a medical diagnosis. DJ's mom was committed to social justice and this inspired him to do simila...
Apr 07, 2022•29 min•Ep. 221
Anne Gudger was pregnant with her first child, Jake, when her husband Kent died in a car crash. Years later she met and married Scott and they had a daughter, Maria. Fast forward to March of 2020, the beginning of the pandemic, when Anne and Maria found themselves drinking a lot of coffee and talking about grief. Those conversations inspired them to start Coffee and Grief, a Facebook group for folks wanting to connect around loss. The Facebook group grew into a series of curated readings called ...
Mar 29, 2022•36 min•Ep. 220
There are a lot of things in life that are difficult to describe. That’s why it can feel so gratifying when someone gives voice to something that we can barely grasp for ourselves. Kathryn Schulz is used to finding the right words. She is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Marg ins of Error . She won a National Magazine Award and a Pulitzer Prize in 2015 for “The Really Big One,” an article about seismic risk in the Pacific Northwest. Her newest boo...
Mar 18, 2022•41 min•Ep. 219
Brittany Collin's father died of breast cancer the summer before her sophomore year of high school, Like many students who are grieving, she had educators who responded in ways that were helpful and those who didn't know what to do or say. In the end, the most supportive reactions provided ongoing opportunities to express herself and connection with adults who cared. Brittany’s high school experience helped shape her educational and career choices, leading her to becom an author, educator, and c...
Mar 10, 2022•38 min•Ep. 218
When Sal and Im first met at a grief support group, they connected on being young, motherless, and feeling alone in their grief. From that initial meeting they went on to start the Good Mourning podcast as a way to decrease that loneliness. In our conversation we talk about: - Sal approaching the anniversary of the last time she saw her mother in person. - What it's meant to Im that her mother died of suicide. - How hosting Good Mourning has changed them and their understanding of grief. - Diffe...
Mar 02, 2022•49 min•Ep. 217
In 2016, when they were in their late twenties, Janine Kwoh's partner died. Nap's death launched her into a new world of grief. Janine was the first person in her peer group to have a partner die and she felt confused and isolated. Because we live in a world that judges relationships against external markers like engagement, marriage, parenting, and co-ownership, Janine questioned whether the intensity of her grief was valid. In the five years since Nap's death, Janine examined her emotions and ...
Feb 15, 2022•32 min•Ep. 216
TJ Jackson had just gotten his driver's license as a teenager when his mother, Dee Dee Jackson, was murdered. Almost three decades later, TJ and his brothers Taryll & Taj, started a non-profit in her memory. The Dee Dee Jackson Foundation is dedicated to supporting others in their grief through music workshops, grief education, and their podcast Power of Love . In this episode we talk about how grief changes over time, what it was like to grieve as part of a very public family, and how becom...
Jan 28, 2022•35 min•Ep. 215
Anne Moss Rogers never imagined she would dedicate her working life to reducing suicide risk and supporting those grieving a death by suicide. She first came to this work in search of answers after her son Charles died of suicide in 2015. Most recently, her focus has been on helping teachers and school adminstrators respond when a student is struggling with thoughts of suicide. Part of that focus is also on postvention - the steps schools can take to supporting their community when a student or ...
Jan 18, 2022•41 min•Ep. 214
In the last of our three-part series on Grief & Money, we explore how fears about financial stability can be part of grief. When she was 13 and her father died of a heart attack, Shannon already had a narrative of insecurity when it came to her family and money. Even though they had access to more resources after her father died, this narrative just grew stronger. This legacy of financial fear continues to shadow Shannon, even as an adult living in a secure two income household. We discuss g...
Dec 22, 2021•39 min•Ep. 213
Growing up, Katie C. Reilly, hadn't thought much about grief or mental health. Then, within the span of four years, Katie's mother died of ALS and her father died of cancer. This grief sent her spinning. As a journalist and writer, Katie turned to research as a way to better understand her own experience. In this conversation we delve into being a parentless parent, grieving a miscarriage, and how complex relationships can shape our grief. Follow Katie on Twitter and her website . Kaite's articl...
Dec 16, 2021•29 min•Ep. 212
When our favorite person dies, our entire world gets up-ended. That person was often the planet in our galaxy that all the other planets and moons orbited. For Dr. Julie Shaw that person was her big sister, Jennifer. Jennifer died of Lupus in February of 2020. In the months that followed, Dr. Shaw realized how important it is for people to have acknowledgment and connection in their grief. So, she started Hello, I'm Grieving , a social media account focused on bringing more visibility and awaren...
Dec 03, 2021•38 min•Ep. 211
This is the second episode in our three-part Grief & Money series. We don't get through life without grief and we also can't get through life without dealing with money. Jessica was in her early twenties when she became a full-time caregiver for her mother who was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. At the same time, Jessica was traveling to Colombia to care for her father who had Alzheimer's. After her parents died just three months apart, Jessica assumed responsibility for their finances. All w...
Nov 23, 2021•35 min•Ep. 210
Paula Becker is a writer, so when her son Hunter was killed in 2017, she searched for help in the pages of books. What she found were books heavy with text. The problem was her grief made it impossible to concentrate on that text. She recently published A Little Book of Self-Care for Those Who Grieve - the book she most wished she had in those first days, weeks, and months after Hunter died. Paula was a guest back on Episode 148 - Wrongful Death - A Grieving Mother's Story . Visit Paula's websit...
Nov 12, 2021•30 min•Ep. 209
Jelani Memory is the co-founder of A Kids Company About , which publishes books for kids about important topics like anxiety, empathy, racism, body image, and more. These are conversations kids are ready to have, often long before the adults in their lives feel prepared to have them. That's where A Kids Company About comes in with books that help adults and kids navigate these complex concepts. We are excited to announce that Dougy Center and A Kids Company About collaborated on their latest pub...
Nov 01, 2021•32 min•Ep. 208
When Jeff Porter's wife Claire died of an aneurysm, his world imploded. As he spent time with her in the hospital and started to wander that imploded world after she died, he talked to her, carrying on a conversation they had shared for 27 years. He also started writing and analyzing his experience with grief. This writing led to the publication of his newest book, Planet Claire: Suite for Cello and Sad-Eyed Lovers. Visit Jeff's website Learn more about Planet Claire...
Oct 22, 2021•32 min•Ep. 207
Reid Peterson, MA, recently launched Grief Refuge, an app that enable users to access daily grief support, when and where it's most convenient for them. Reid came to this work through his personal experience of grieving the deaths of his step-father and biological father. At a time when many of us both love and hate the digital world, Grief Refuge, makes support more accessible and grief a little less lonely, no matter where you live or where you are in your grief. Learn more and download the Gr...
Oct 08, 2021•39 min•Ep. 206
While will all experience some type of grief before we die, the prevalence of loss and how the world responds to our grief are shaped by racism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of oppression. Lamya Broussard, MSS, MLSP, School & Community Services Clinician at Uplift Center for Grieving Children works directly with justice involved and queer & trans youth who are also grieving. Lamya shares what she’s learned about the need for culturally and community specific grief s...
Sep 29, 2021•44 min•Ep. 205
