Episodes

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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. ...

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...

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...

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...

Lynda Fell's life was full and happy, with family at the center of it all. Then she got the call no one can imagine getting, your daughter has been in an accident. On the way, she was not expecting what she found when she got...

Rudi and Julie fell in love across a great divide. Rudi was born and raised in Germany right after World War II, his father having been a high-ranking Nazi. Julie was a Jew from the Bronx whose father had helped in Germany af...

Join me as we talk about how the worst time in Amikaeyla’s life led to Music As Medicine, programming she developed which successfully helps people in the United States and around the world (including recently in Israel, Jord...

The loss of a child is beyond our comprehension and throws parents into an eddy, swirling around trying to find a way to shore. But when 18 month old Sophie died, there was the added pain of traumatic loss. Sophie was killed ...