Episodes

Across the great divide in America, city dwellers and the nation's farmers often fail to understand each other. Marie Mutsuki Mockett set out to close the gap, going back to the place in Nebraska where her family owns a farm ...

Finding a way to live our truest lives is not always easy. Growing up in a religious household, Steve Disselhorst had trouble accepting that he was gay and believed he would lose the dreams he had for himself; especially havi...

Nina Impala, certified by the American Academy of Bereavement, combines intuition with professional education in the End-of-Life Field, including 10 years in hospice. She is a graduate of Mueller College of Holistic Studies a...

After twenty-seven years of marriage, John Sardella lost the love of his life when his wife, Margaret, passed away following a seven-year battle with cancer. John looked for a book that would give him space for his pain and i...

We've all heard we need to get enough rest. But what KIND of rest leads to restorative, rejuvenating wellness? After her own burn out brought her to the ground, Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith set out to discover the many aspects of...

Running from death was a big part of Sue William Silverman's response to early adulthood. Over time, she began to see that running from death was also about running from those things in her life that she didn't know how to co...

Throughout human existence, creative expression has helped people process difficult experiences, including loss. For William Lychack, writing fiction was the vehicle through which he came to terms with loss, including the abs...

What happens when a successful, capable business woman experiences unimaginable loss? For Adriana Monique Alvarez, the still birth of her daughter plunged her into a kind of grief and isolation she had never experienced befor...

What are the paths to connect with our soul, especially in hard times? Christian de la Huerta believes the breath is such a path. Seeking to connect with the spiritual dimension of his life, he was drawn to work with the brea...

Steve Grant could never have imagined that both of his sons would die of accidental drug overdoses. Despite the differences in each of their lives, losing both of them to the opioid epidemic demanded that Steve struggle with ...

It was a day like any other. Rob Alessi was on a business trip and he and his wife Marie and kids were talking twice a day. Then suddenly, he wasn't calling. The worst had happened- he had died of a brain aneurism and would n...

When Chris Meyer bought a funeral home, looking for a business opportunity to support his family, he never expected to learn so much about life from caring for families after the loss of a loved one. Coming into people’s live...

What is music's power to support us through the passages of life? Gary Malkin has spent his career seeking answers to that question. His attention to sound and music and how they affect us led to work with patients and famili...

We're all familiar with the truth that the only constant is change. Yet we often resist change as an unwelcome guest, especially when it comes from acute loss. How can we learn to embrace change as an invitation for growth, a...

What if painful grieving was not inevitable? What if the person you loved most in the world died, and you did not descend into the pain everyone expected? For Jen Mathews, grief came not as a sadness but as a revelation. When...

Facing challenges in our lives, the need for support becomes clear. But what we receive may or may not truly do its job.

When Karen Trench's beloved husband died by suicide, her life as she knew it ended. But somewhere deep within her a new life began to form. By surrendering to her grief and longing she began to follow her instincts towards he...

When Michelle Hoffmann's husband died, she joined a club no one wants to be a member of; the widows club. But over time, she noticed that her community was directing new widows to her for help - they had observed her finding her way forward.

When loss comes to our lives, it often feels as if we'll never recover, let alone find meaning and purpose in the loss. But out of her own loss, Lily Myers Kaplan found over time that she had been given a legacy, passed on for her to continue.

When Charles Fontenot's son died of cance, it sent Charles on a quest to discover who he is. Grief showed him that he didn't really know himself.

The so-called justice system in our country has led to an unjust prison pipeline, undermining families and communities. Communities of color and other marginalized communities are especially hard hit. What is the history that...

Imagine your beloved husband never comes home from a brief drive to the lake. And this leads to weeks of uncertainty and questioning about what has happened. And then his body is found. And all of this happens in the public e...

Ken Ross grew up immersed in the work of his mother, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. Unlike most people in the West, he was immersed in a world where death, dying and grief wer openly talked about and explored. How did he come to view...

When Elena Schwolsky's husband was diagnosed with AIDS, the work she had been doing as a nurse for kids with AIDS suddenly came home. After he died, she wondered what would come next for her. The desire to find a way forward ...