Episodes
March 9, 2016
Forgiveness: Stories for Our TIme
Our religious and spiritual teachers encourage us to forgive, as if we know how to do that and naturally want to. Yet forgiveness is actually a complex and nuanced experience, especially complicated when great loss has result...
March 2, 2016
Dying to Talk
Breaking the silence to talk about the end of life is sometimes hard, but can also be compelling. For those who have had experience with people facing the end of their lives, the conversation is crucial. And if you work with ...
Feb. 24, 2016
Dear Dead Mother: Against Grieving in Silence
When Rachel Stephenson was five years old, her mother died in a car accident and never returned home. While the rest of her family was determined to move on, replace her mom and maintain their silence, Rachel rebelled against...
Feb. 17, 2016
Sexy After Cancer
No one talks about the hidden losses that come along with a cancer diagnosis. For Barbara Musser, a single young woman in 1989 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, suddenly facing struggles with her sexuality was an une...
Feb. 10, 2016
Where There's Smoke, There's Dinner
Regi Carpenter has always used story telling to make sense of her world. By the time she faced the loss of her brother suddenly, she was well established in her story craft. And as she moved through her own experience of loss...
Feb. 3, 2016
In the Womb of Love
Aida Salazar lost a baby and quickly found herself pregnant with another. Struggling to find an open heart in the midst of fear, she did what artists, and many other grievers, do; she accessed her creative expression as a way...
Jan. 27, 2016
Five Hours
How would we cope if our brand new baby could not live beyond a few hours? Most of us cannot imagine that experience but, for others, it is a reality. Beyond a crushing grief and sense that this should not have happened, ther...
Jan. 20, 2016
Resolution Care
The obstacles to exercising our own choices at the end of our lives sometimes seem impossible to overcome. We are part of a culture that refuses to accept death, a medical system that reflects that culture and a lack of capab...
Jan. 13, 2016
Conversations That Heal
Some losses are losses of things we never had; a safe childhood where we were protected and treasured. Attention to our needs and protection from what hurts. For a person abused as a child, the grief is for what never was and...
Jan. 6, 2016
The Soul With Two Voices
How do our losses help us uncover our true purpose? This is the question at the heart of Sonika Marcia Ozdoba's memoir, The Soul with Two Voices. Losing what she thought was most valuable to her, her professional singing voic...
Dec. 30, 2015
Hope is a Good Breakfast
Tara Shuman had the kind of life you could wish for; rewarding work, a husband and two little kids. She had started a few books, a children's book, a novel, but hadn't ever finished. The cancer came, unwelcome of course, into...
Dec. 23, 2015
Fire in the Heart
How do we move through multiple losses in a short period of time? What helps along the way? When Deborah Allen lost 5 of the most significant people in her life in just a few years, her considerable resiliency was put to the ...
Dec. 16, 2015
Every Twenty-One Days
Stephanie Johnson was always a part of theater- behind the scenes. She was comfortable supporting other people's production with her talents as a lighting director. But the arrival of cancer on the stage of her life moved her...
Dec. 9, 2015
Notes From the Waiting Room
Being an advocate for a loved one at the end of their lives is so much more than reading their advance directive documents. The decisions are complex, nuanced and unpredictable. There is no way to predict what will be asked o...
Dec. 2, 2015
Climbing Out From Under
It is only experience that seems to teach us how to heal from heartbreak. Caron Post and Deborah Pardes' experiences led to their deep commitment to help others through their heartbreaks. It also led to the creation of their ...
Nov. 25, 2015
Grieving Through the Holidays
Our life losses can seem overwhelming when it appears the rest of the world is celebrating. But in fact, we are in good company! Holidays are natural times to remember people we've lost and to honor them. But how do we step b...
Nov. 18, 2015
The Complete Eldercare Planner
Planning for the end of life is something most of us delay and resist. But when we put a plan in order, it is empowering, allowing us to feel a measure of control over this most mysterious time in our lives. But how can we le...
Nov. 11, 2015
Rollercoaster
How does the spouse of a woman with breast cancer cope? Can he find the support he needs and forget about toughing it out? Will people realize that he has also lost his security, his foundation and the person who helps him? W...
Nov. 4, 2015
Transfer
What does a poet do when she suffers the loss of her father? She writes. Exploring the depths of her relationship with her dad, Naomi Shihab Nye writes with the beauty of love, loss and continuing relationship. Her father wan...
Oct. 28, 2015
What Really Matters
Karen Wyatt worked with hospice patients. In the end, they taught her the lessons of dying, but also the lessons of living. Applying those lessons to her own life, she became a fierce advocate for the spiritual importance of ...
Oct. 21, 2015
Madness at the Gates of the City
In today's world, what have we lost of myth and meaning? Maya and Barry Spector dedicate themselves to exploring the mythic and indigenous practices that once supported us as human being in a community of support and caring. ...
Oct. 14, 2015
The Wild Edge of Sorrow
Grief touches us at the outer reaches of our experience, challenging us to respond to new and unfamiliar terrain in our own souls. Finding rituals and pathways to carry us through the mysterious territory of loss encourages n...
Oct. 7, 2015
Where Love is Illegal
Throughout the world, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex people continue to experience oppression, including physical attack, psychological torture and rejection by family, friends and communities. In his travel...
Sept. 30, 2015
Sevati Songs
The musical group Mirabai Ceiba formed after its two members met and fell in love. Their music blends many traditions and sacred songs into a meditative and beautiful form of meditative and inspiring music. Then, when loss ca...