As a former news anchor, Sherrie Dunlevy delivered bad news on a daily basis. However, it was the news of a personal matter that would shatter her heart. Sherrie knew she would be delivering her son who would be born with complications and quickly swept away for medical care immediately after being delivered via cesarian. She and her husband would then spend the next 29 days holding their son until he passed away. The years that followed led her on a path of trying to understand why people aband...
Aug 03, 2021•59 min•Season 2Ep. 58
Does everything happen for a reason? How much of our lives is left to chance, and how much of it is a reflection of our choices? I explore these questions in this week's episode and more. Larry and Michelle shared their stories of love and loss and, although their stories of grief are vastly different, there are a few things incredibly similar in their stories: The willingness to love and be loved. Listen to this week's episode and reflect on the choices you've made, the chances you've taken, an...
Jul 27, 2021•20 min•Season 2Ep. 57
Michelle St Jane is no stranger to grief, like many guests who have shared their stories. The traumatic experience of finding her grandfather deceased when she was 15 and the subsequent "Don't talk, don't tell" approach to grief laid the foundation for her in how she addressed her grief. She would later better understand the impact that her family of origin had on her life. Michelle left her family of origin at age 17 to travel and later found herself in love, married, and with children. However...
Jul 14, 2021•51 min•Season 2Ep. 56
Grief makes grievers feel like they don't have choices. And, it can also be difficult to bring yourself to take a chance on something or someone. In this episode, I explore choice and chance with Larry. Larry shares his stories of loss, focusing on a short-term love that touched his heart and life deeply, leaving a lasting impact. He shares the wisdom that came from that love experience with Gayle in his book, 126 Days, 11 Minutes: Our Love Story . "I wrote this story as a tribute to Gayle's ext...
Jul 13, 2021•57 min•Season 2Ep. 55
I share my favorite takeaways and reflections from Ep. 52 with Staci Bartley and Ep. 53 with Tina Ginn, exploring the importance of learning from the past and having the forethought for preparing for the future. Life is messy, and we can learn from our messes, and we can clean them up, too. If we could learn how to re-frame the challenges of our lives by asking ourselves better questions, I do believe we would spend far less time emotionally suffering. Staci, through early teen pregnancy and thr...
Jul 06, 2021•22 min•Season 2Ep. 54
Tina, like many grievers, has found her passion in her pain. What started out as a career as a financial advisor, where she was well-versed in risk management, morphed into helping others prepare for the worst in their lives. Having lived through a forest fire evacuation order, the quick decline of a dear friend's health and death due to cancer, a traumatic car accident which later led to losing her job, to a subsequent divorce and estrangement with her children, Tina has learned the importance ...
Jun 29, 2021•53 min•Season 2Ep. 53
From the age of 16, Staci Bartley was in the Relationship School of Hard Knox. She found herself pregnant at the age of 16. And, to do the "responsible" thing, she and her then-boyfriend (21 at the time) decided they would get married. A year later, she would end up a divorced single mother. However, at 21, she would expect a second child with a new man in her life, and, together, they decided to get married. It would take a lot of heartbreak and breaking down to recognize that the effort to att...
Jun 22, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 52
We often find our purpose through our pain. Or are lead to our purpose through our pain. Either way, there's often a strong, deep desire to find meaning through the terrible life experiences we've gone through. I'm no exception to that, and many of my guests aren't either. Darren created AfterCloud, a "life-tech" app for capturing life's most precious moments and memories to make it both easy to do so, and in the process, create a legacy. It's also used in music therapy and has a lot of potentia...
Jun 15, 2021•37 min•Season 1Ep. 51
Arielle wasn't a newcomer to grief and loss by the time her husband decided to take his own life when she was only 29. She shares the highs, lows, and fears of navigating all of the unknowns and changes that came with losing her beloved, Rick. She wondered if she would ever love again, and because she and Rick couldn't have children together, she then had to face the possibility that she would never become a mother. Would she meet someone who would want to have children? Would she meet someone w...
Jun 08, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 50
In this episode, Darren shares how loss (and his son) inspired him to create a way to capture life's most precious moments, support others through caregiving and loving gestures, and leave a legacy for future generations. After Cloud is, as Darren calls it, a life-tech app; for sharing what needs to be said, capturing what you never want to forget, and connecting with loved ones in a way that is both easy and joy-filled. Through his losses, which include his older brother as a kid, and his fathe...
Jun 01, 2021•55 min•Season 1Ep. 49
We come into this world knowing how to grieve. We naturally know how to express ourselves to get our needs met. Then life happens, along with generational teaching that creates the perfect storm for adult issues. So much of what is wrong in our lives, as adults, can be traced back to our childhoods. That goes for possible health concerns, as well as our mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Adulthood is a childhood re-enactment. And, considering that research suggests that our brains develop ...
May 25, 2021•28 min•Season 1Ep. 48
Crystal shares the impact of losing her sister by suicide and the process of working through the grief that led her to start not one but two businesses in honor of her sister. What you will learn, though, through Crystal's episode, is that the loss of her sister was not the first. It was actually one of three within a short period of time. And, if there's one thing that I've learned through the work that I do and conversations for this podcast, it's that grief isn't a one-and-done experience. We...
May 18, 2021•53 min•Season 1Ep. 47
Rachel was living the good life; valedictorian and class princess, great friends, travel enthusiast, and living her best twenties life. That is until life became not so good. Her body began to deteriorate and, she didn't know what was happening or why. And, it would take several years, fourteen different doctors, and a diagnosis of Hashimoto's, mold biotoxin illness, chronic Lyme disease, endometriosis, and mast cell activation syndrome before life would get better. Rachel shares the rollercoast...
May 11, 2021•1 hr 34 min•Season 1Ep. 46
I get really fired up when a podcast guest shares their story of, essentially, their emotional pain being dismissed. Instead of their pain being addressed when seeking help, their symptoms are "addressed." If misguided white coats started to flip that around, and look at the bigger picture and set aside the big pharma kickbacks, and become patient-centered, we'd maybe be in a less dire situation when it comes to mental health in the U.S. than we are today. Both Brianne and Jordan ended up findin...
May 04, 2021•33 min•Season 1Ep. 45
Jordan grew up knowing he was different. And, it was in that knowing where he could be himself with his loving, supportive father. However, in the outside world, he navigated the harsh reality of mean kids. Aside from his sexuality, growing up as a child of a deaf adult (CODA) also felt like a dirty little secret. What happened, as Jordan grew, is years of trying to deal with being put in a special class for kids with high intelligence, and in middle school, he found himself drinking and startin...
Apr 27, 2021•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 44
Actress, Podcaster, and Author, Brianne Davis shares, for the first time, about the loss of who she once was. Brianne has come to terms, with the help of therapy and the 12-step program for sex and love addiction, to understand the depths and impact of being sexually abused as a child. And, how that experience, along with early exposure to what she believed love was impacted her well into adulthood. She would find herself choosing a profession where she could blend into the roles of another pers...
Apr 20, 2021•44 min•Season 1Ep. 43
Talking about end-of-life is never easy. And, receiving a terminal diagnosis (with a prognosis full of unknowns), is nowhere near easy either. I reflect on what my guests, Dr. Chris Kerr, author of "Death Is But a Dream," TEDx Speaker, and researcher of end-of-life experiences of terminal patients and 17-year metastatic breast cancer survivor, Anne Jacobs, shared with and taught me. I have flipped how I feel about end-of-life experience and what I hope my end-of-days are like based on my trainin...
Apr 13, 2021•42 min•Season 1Ep. 42
Anne is, what is called in the metastatic breast cancer world, an "outlier." She's lived with triple positive metastatic breast cancer for seventeen years. And, for the past seventeen years, she's gone to sleep and woken up, not knowing when the other shoe will drop, and being out of treatment options. What does this do to the psyche of the human mind? How does one even begin to comprehend the weight of this diagnosis and prognosis? So many unknowns and what if's...the overwhelm and weight of it...
Apr 06, 2021•2 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 41
This episode is a must-listen for anyone who is facing terminal illness right now. Whether you are a caregiver or a patient, Dr. Chris Kerr's wisdom may help you feel empowered in how you address the end-of-life experience. Dr. Kerr's work has focused on affirming that end-of-life experiences are real and how the medicalization of the end-of-life process hinders one's ability to have "a good death" and also impacts the family who will be left behind. Dr. Kerr's message is impactful because the e...
Mar 30, 2021•57 min•Season 1Ep. 40
Generational learning and ancestral trauma run deep in families. It's not even something I gave much thought to before becoming an Advanced Certified Grief Recovery Specialist. In episode 37, Angela shared how the lessons her mom was taught were passed down generations, impacting her life ten-fold. It takes courage to break the cycle of generational learning because it takes action and deep, internal work to address it. In this week's episode, I talk more about my takeaways and reflections from ...
Mar 23, 2021•34 min•Season 1Ep. 39
What would it be like to get into an accident and walk away not knowing who you are? Shandra shares her experience of what it is like to see her daughter and loved ones and not know them. She found herself living a "half-life" as she called it. However, this accident and memory loss occurred following many other loss experiences. She shares that, while in high school, she found herself down the path of experimenting with drugs and alcohol. When she was 21, her father passed away from cancer. For...
Mar 16, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Season 1Ep. 38
Based on the experiences she had in the first decade of her life, Angela was destined for a life of struggle, and, as her mom declared - die with a needle in her arm by the time she was 16. This prophecy nearly came true more than once. Instead, she got her Ph.D.. A life of trauma, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse by her mother led to early motherhood, heroin addiction, looking for love in all the wrong places, and losing her son to her own mother who put him in foster care. It would take o...
Mar 09, 2021•1 hr 28 min•Season 1Ep. 37
In this episode, I dig more into the topic of faith and spirituality that Lizzy and I touched on in her episode. Communication and support were a huge influence on her grief, whereas, I share how my experienced differed, despite both of us having the exact same losses which occurred in the same order, too. From Margo's episode, I talk about how hope greatly influences our outlook. Also, because it hasn't been talked about a whole lot yet on the podcast, I wanted to talk more about grief in the w...
Mar 02, 2021•34 min•Season 1Ep. 36
In this conversation, Margo shares the lessons she learned from her son, Jimmy, as he battled brain cancer for eight long years. His cancer took his life at the young age of 21. What is a little different about Margo's share is that, prior to her son's death, loved ones close to her who had passed had all lived long lives; close to or in their 100s. Her own father had passed away, also peacefully, in his home. The loss of her son jolted her beliefs around death and also taught her the importance...
Feb 23, 2021•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 35
Lizzy and I share a similar loss experience. So much so, we both experienced the death of a grandmother, father, then uncle - in the same order. We have a conversation about how those losses have shaped and shown up in her life, from her perspective of being in her early 20's. Also, being only ten years past the death of her father, she shares what's helped her throughout her youth. The conversation also turns to spirituality and faith. Lizzy shares grief that she feels around the separateness t...
Feb 16, 2021•46 min•Season 1Ep. 34
Through childhood grief and trauma, we are greatly shaped and influenced by the experiences we go through well into adulthood. I reflect on Nicky's episode, where he shares what life was like growing up as a child of artificial insemination and growing up in an LGBTQ home. We talked a lot about personal growth and how growing up surrounded by diversity helped him be accepting of all people. Sandi's episode brought up how child sexual trauma can bring about intangible losses such as loss of trust...
Feb 09, 2021•21 min•Season 1Ep. 33
Sandi Derby, a fellow Advanced Grief Recovery Specialist, and Life Coach, shares her life's traumatic story that led her to do the work she does today. As a child, Sandi was sexually abused by her father, followed by sexual, satanic/ritualistic abuse at her uncle's hands (a pastor) and his friend (also a pastor). In adulthood, she became a functioning meth addict (by outside appearances) for 3 1/2 years until a pivotal, life-changing moment woke her up, and her transformational journey began. Sa...
Feb 02, 2021•46 min•Season 1Ep. 32
Nicky Scorpio, singer, songwriter, producer, and host of Scorpio Rising Podcast shares his experience being a child of artificial insemination, whose biological father later died of AIDS, and who was raised in an LGBTQ home. Through growing up in and around diversity all of his life, he gleaned many lessons. At age 12, he started to understand where he didn't fit and became an angry child as a result. Nicky recognized later in life, the important role curiosity played in his healing of childhood...
Jan 26, 2021•1 hr 38 min•Season 1Ep. 31
Episode 28 with Quandell Wright offered me a perspective of what life was like for him growing up on the streets of Detroit, MI. He had to grow up fast, growing up with a single-parenting mom during his younger years, and how he found himself in a gang. I share thoughts about how easily a parent can make parenting choices based on fear. I share, from Ruthie Bowles episode ( Episode 29 ) more about my thoughts on how the traumas that happen to us, like sexual assault, impact our parenting. I also...
Jan 19, 2021•30 min•Season 1Ep. 30
Ruthie Bowles shares her story of being raped not once but twice during her time serving in the U.S. Army full-time. The first assault occurred at the hands of her then-boyfriend. The second time she was assaulted was the very day she came back from deployment. Surviving a deployment, only to come home and be assaulted in her own private space, along with the previous assault, set Ruthie up for a long road of healing. Between her first case never being resolved, leaving her to feel defeated and ...
Jan 12, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 29
