Episodes

When you lose a child, what makes the difference between collapse and reintegration into your life? Often it is a loving person who has been there and supports the process of recovery while recognizing the feelings of loss. W...

As human beings, we wonder what awaits us after this life is over. When death has come to those near us, the question often becomes compelling! In her quest to understand the many ways people think about what comes next, Clai...

How do we continue to weave the stories of the people we love into our lives after they die. What threads keep us connected to them, as they continue to impact our lives and inform our hearts? Lorraine Hedtke teaches people h...

Nicki Durlester's family faced staggering losses as a result of the BRCAII gene, which made its members vulnerable to diagnoses of breast and ovarian cancer. Then Nicki herself was diagnosed and treated for breast cancer. Her...

Because grief cannot be predicted, it calls on us to ad lib, to feel our ways through an unfamiliar landscape and to find ways to express our experience that nourish and support us. By its nature creative, grief also opens up...

How much time have we each spent trying to fix our lives, and ourselves? Having been taught that unpleasant emotion in the enemy, we are ill prepared to gently guide ourselves through troubled times. But what if we learned si...

Faced with the ultimate challenge of life—confronting death—how do we want to be remembered? Are there stories we want to tell? Experiences we want to share? Illuminations about how we've felt about life and why? Maybe we wan...

A childhood filled with trauma and abuse impacts a person for a lifetime. But making sense of those experiences, moving towards wholeness, allows the adult survivor to create a meaningful, satisfying and relational adulthood....

Kevin and Brian were in love and successful in their careers when they decided it was time for parenting. After a long search for a child, they were offered three; triplets who were at risk and without anyone to care for them...

For many parents, the fear of losing a child is more vivd than losing their own lives. We can't imagine surviving it. And yet, parents do lose their children, to illness or accident, and are left to find a way back to their l...

Does our exploration of race, sexuality and gender hold a possibility of helping us to awaken? Zenju Manuel believes it does. Through a lifetime of deep questioning and knowing, culminating in her ordination as a zen priest, ...

The end of a parent's life is often a steep reversal of roles for both parent and adult child. If the illness is fast moving, there's an avalanche of things to learn about how to care for a now dependent person who, if you ar...

What do we mean when we say we've had a run of bad luck? We mean that we have experienced loss after loss, until we're not even sure which heartache is sending us into the depths of despair. Like quicksand, it seems as if we'...

Isabel and Anabel Stenzel, identical twins diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis as babies, faced a lifetime of ill health and the probability that they would die very young. They also faced numerous losses of friends who had the sa...

One of the most important things for us when we're ill, especially when we are dying, is the compassion and empathy of our doctors. But how do physicians retain these human qualities with each patient when they are bombarded ...

As a hospice social worker and as someone whose husband died of cancer, Marcy Bernstein has learned a lot about the end of life and what kind of support people need to support a good death. It is her calling to offer advice, ...

Katy Butler was dedicated to supporting her parents at the end of their lives and acting as their part time caregiver and full time medical advocate. But the experience taught her just how hard it is to craft a good death in ...

Out of the African-American experience in this country, spiritual and gospel music was born; moving and beautiful music celebrating spirit, faith and the capacity of human beings to overcome adversity. The Oakland Interfaith ...

How can taking care of a sick loved one teach us about taking care of ourselves? The stakes are high, and we can't afford to push ourselves beyond our own edges. If we do, we may not be able to help the person we love at all!...

At the end of life, we want to feel at home, even if we can't BE at home. After a career in nursing, working with very ill patients, Kelley Scott saw the need for a home place for dying people and set about to fill that need....

Helping a parent face the end of their lives can be a sacred part of living. When the relationship has been special and close, we are giving back to a person has given us life and, sometimes, a great deal more. And when that ...

When playwright and actor Ann Randolph faced difficulties and losses, she applied her art to them and created comedy. Being able to laugh at what we cry about is a soothing balm for our difficulties and griefs. Creating chara...

Kiley Krekorian Hanish and Ivy Margulies dreamed of supporting women who have lost babies, to grieve the loss and share the experience with other women. Kiley and her husband were the subject of the film Return to Zero with M...

How do we face the end of a mother's life? This is usually a difficult and painful prospect. But what if your mother wants to end her life by her own volition. How can one accept that? After years of struggling with Parkinson...