Episodes
Feb. 12, 2025
No One Gets to Fall Apart
When a child grows up with a single mentally ill mother, chaos seems normal. How did Sarah LaBrie find her way to a life not defined by fear and confusion? In part, it was through writing, whether or not she knew she was tryi...
Feb. 5, 2025
Where Yellow Flowers Bloom
Our guest this week, Kim Cantin, is a powerful symbol of resilience, having survived the devastating Montecito mudslides of 2018 that claimed 23 lives, including her husband and son, and left her daughter buried alive. Throug...
Jan. 29, 2025
A Space in the Heart
Guest bio: Larry Carlat is a and group leader for bereaved parents at Our House Grief Support Center in Los Angeles. He has written for The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, GQ, Rolling Stone, Men’s Journal, Men’s...
Jan. 22, 2025
The Last Love Note
The Last Love Note tells the fictional story of a young widow trying to find a way to move forward. Its heroine, Kate, has continued to parent, work, and keep her sense of humor but has had very little time to give her grief ...
Jan. 15, 2025
Bright Eyes
Bridey Thelen-Heidel had a chaotic and traumatic childhood with a mother who brought dangerous men into the house and failed to protect the little girl called Bright Eyes. But Bridey was determined to face her traumas and fin...
Jan. 8, 2025
Seeding Joy
Darnell Lamont Walker makes it his life's mission to seed joy everywhere he is. How do his callings intersect? He is a children's television writer, a death doula, a filmmaker. In every case he hopes to inform, encourage and ...
Dec. 18, 2024
Keep Breathing
A week before their wedding, Kate Truitt's fiancee died unexpectedly. In deep grief and trauma she saw no way forward and, even as an informed investigator of the way trauma affects us, she could only live the reality. It was...
Dec. 11, 2024
Architecture of Death
In a three part series for the non-profit When You Die, Johanna Lunn has explored questions of dying and death. She shared her first film on Good Grief, and now we welcome her back to talk about her third, Architecture of Dea...
Dec. 4, 2024
Also Here
How does a traumatic history affect a family? Even though Brooke Randel's grandmother never talked about living through the Holocaust, it was a part of the fabric of the family tapestry. And then one day, it came out of the s...
Nov. 27, 2024
Can Anyone Tell Me?
Already a grief counselor when both of her parents died within a few years, Meghan Riordan Jarvis was undone by the full weight of her own grief. Her immense sadness resulted in a hospitalization and a long road to find her w...
Nov. 6, 2024
A Healing Heart
Nichole Lee had a successful career as a business consultant, traveling the world and supporting change makers on a global level. When her mother died she continued to work just as hard, despite her grief and the global COVID...
Oct. 30, 2024
The Widow's Crayon Box
When Molly Peacock's husband died, poetry supported her grief. Already a published poet with several books, she captured her experience of grief, navigating the twists and turns through creative expression. Some grievers rely...
Oct. 23, 2024
Lamenting While Doing Laps in the Lake
How does loss become poetry? Bill Ratner's losses lived in the depths of his soul and over time, found expression. Creativity can help us to move grief through us, transforming the shape of it. What was that process for Bill?...
Oct. 16, 2024
How Children Grieve
Corinne Masur's father died suddenly when she was just fourteen. When grief came into a family that had no idea how to talk about it, they mostly didn't. Corinne went on to become a psychologist, writing what she came to call...
Oct. 9, 2024
Stay
If you grow up, as Julie Fingersh did, convinced you shouldn't share the family secrets, that all that messy stuff is private, how do you cope when those secrets begin to undermine your life? How do you come to terms with bei...
Oct. 2, 2024
I Will Do Better
Charles Bock's wife always wanted to be a mother and, just a bit reluctantly, he agreed to have a child. But within a few years his wife died of cancer and he was now tasked with navigating parenting a very small child on his...
Sept. 25, 2024
Death Over Drafts
After helping to get the Medical Aid in Dying Act passed in California and then supporting its implementation, Stefanie Elkin's passion for working in end of life only grew. When she left her job at Compassion and Choices she...
Sept. 18, 2024
Make a Home Out of You
Ginelle Testa's early life with a drug dealer father and an angry mother led to just the kinds of struggles you might predict. She began the relationship with drugs and alcohol that would lead to several bottoms. She experien...
Sept. 11, 2024
Grief Pilgrim
After losses that took her to her knees, Siobhan Asgharzadeh searched for ways to move with her grief, recognizing that loss would not end, that life comes with grief. Over time she sought to support others along the profound...
Aug. 28, 2024
Fall and Recovery
Her work as a special educator did not prepare Joanne De Simone for the news that her precious baby had severe disabilities. At first, she searched for answers to the questions that plagued her; what was her son's condition, ...
Aug. 21, 2024
Our Forever Ben
When Jamie Lee SIlver's son, Ben, took his life, she dived into practices that she had been learning during his struggles with schizophrenia. Over time, she became certified in EFT tapping, a technique to heal through tapping...
Aug. 14, 2024
Bright Eyes
Bridey Thelen-Heidel had a chaotic and traumatic childhood with a mother who brought dangerous men into the house and failed to protect the little girl called Bright Eyes. But Bridey was determined to face her traumas and fin...
Aug. 7, 2024
Breath Taking
When Jessica Fein's daughter, Dalia, was just five, she was diagnosed with a rare and degenerative disease that would shorten her life. Because it is rare, no one knew exactly how long she would live. But from that day forwar...
July 31, 2024
Almost Family
Out of her own experience with cancer, Ann Bancroft created an absorbing and compelling story about a woman who changes her life as a result of being diagnosed with metastatic disease. She finds new friends, rearranges her pr...