Episodes
July 24, 2024
Where Tenderness Lives
Uncovering the hidden injuries of a life spent denying oneself is deep, painful and meaningful work. How do we find the tenderness and courage to do it well? Heather Plett peeled back the layers of her own truth and discovere...
July 17, 2024
My Mother's Dementia
Meredith Burns' mother was a constant emotional presence in her life, there to offer support, advice and solace. When that began to change, Meredith, and the whole family, searched for an explanation. Was she depressed? Havin...
July 10, 2024
Always a Sibling
A relationship with a sibling holds the keys to our upbringing. No other person knows what it was like to grow up in your family. Some siblings are close, others not, but if you have siblings, it leaves a mark. What happens w...
July 3, 2024
Momento
When Ashley Jones' daughter died, it threw her into a profound grief she didn't know the way out of. In those early times, pictures brought some comfort. As she moved through her own grief, she wanted to offer that comfort to...
June 26, 2024
Sorry For the Inconvenience
Farah Naz Rishi is Pakistani, American and Muslim. Her memoir, Sorry for the Inconvenience, deftly portrays the overlapping pressures that made it hard to find herself. We'll be talking about grief, family dynamics, tragedies...
June 12, 2024
The Together Effect
In her work encouraging healthier relationships as a way to live a happier life, Katarina Blom already knew how key connection is to happiness. Then she was chosen to be the psychologist in a television series called The Gent...
June 5, 2024
The Last Ecstatic Days
Ethan Sisser wanted to die in ecstasy, surrounded by music, community, beauty, but mostly, love. His wishes did not fit neatly into even the hospice paradigm but he was able to draw together a group of supporters, one of whom...
May 29, 2024
When Skies Are Gray
Anticipating the joy of welcoming her first child, Lindsey Henke was completely unprepared for the shock of that child's stillbirth. Although Lindsey had been a practicing psychotherapist for a few years, she had not had that...
May 22, 2024
The Other Side of Nothing
Personal experience with grief and mental health challenges in her family led Anastasia Zadeik to write her novel, The Other Side of Nothing. The families she wriwtes about struggle to know how to support themselves and each ...
May 15, 2024
Everywhere I Look
As a younger sister, Ona Gritz idolized her older sibling. But as the favored child with a disability, she could see her sister struggling. It was thirty years after the murder of her then pregnant sister, partner and baby th...
May 8, 2024
All For You
When Dena Rueb Romero discovered a box full of letters and memorabilia in her mother's house, she furtively took it home with her. Although she knew her parents had fled the holocaust, they failed to share the details of thei...
May 1, 2024
Chaos
What gets you through your own times of chaos? For Noah Asher, it is a deep Christian faith. Already a practicing Christian, his understanding of how that could support him as he faced prison and profound loss grounded him in...
April 24, 2024
Grief is a Sneaky Bitch
Have you ever imagined you were getting a handle on your loss and then been blindsided by a surprise tsunami? As Lisa Keefauver captures in the title of her new book, Grief is a Sneaky Bitch. But there are some tricks to help...
April 17, 2024
Fifty-seven Fridays
Myra Sack and her husband Matt were very lucky. They had fallen in love with the right person, had work they were deeply committed to and had a new baby. Into the middle of their charmed life came the worst possible news; the...
April 10, 2024
When Happiness Ever After Fails
Courtney Deane knows grief from the inside out, having lost both of her parents at a young age. Determined to create something beautiful out of her losses she wrote a book exploring what happiness ever after looks like after ...
April 3, 2024
Recompose Life
Every body that has been lived in will eventually need to be cared for after death. What is the most earth friendly option currently available for after death care? Recompose is arguably not just the greenest but also the mos...
March 27, 2024
The Path to Posttraumatic Growth
Have you ever noticed that after similar traumas, at similar times of life, with so much in common, some people remain traumatized indefinitely, some recover through resilience, while others transcend and grow? Although there...
March 20, 2024
Queer Grief Club
Faced with numerous losses and feeling deep grief, Jamie Thrower could not find grief services that understood how to support a queer griever. Struggling through the feelings and inevitable difficulty of their own grief, they...
March 13, 2024
Waving Goodbye
Warren Kozak thought he had prepared himself for the death of his wife. He knew he would feel sad but had no idea that he would have to invent a new Warren. In the absence of her larger than life presence, he felt unmoored an...
March 6, 2024
Revolutionary Grief Wellness
Roshni Kavate and Rebecca Servoss noticed in their own grieving the lack of services to support grief, especially for people across all identities. They committed to creating a new paradigm for grief support, built on hope, j...
Feb. 28, 2024
What Looks Like Bravery
Growing up with a father who was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer when she was seven, Laurel Braitman was taught survival skills from then on. Out of her own fears she embraced the lessons, hoping they would prevent the te...
Feb. 21, 2024
All She Lost
When a horrific explosion happened in Beirut, Dalal Mawad was living nearby and felt a compelling urge to help. As a journalist she naturally searched for ways to tell the story. But what was the story? The explosion happened...
Feb. 7, 2024
The Sweet Pain of Being Alive
After Ann Anderson Evan's beloved husband killed himself, she wondered what could have led him to such an end. He had not seemed suicidal, or deeply depressed, or haunted by demons. She imagined it must be some secret misery ...
Jan. 31, 2024
Grief and Grit(s)
When a declining parent needs help, it creates a delicate balance of care and acceptance. Marsha Gray Hill thought she had found that balance, even as her mother began to show signs of dementia. But then, COVID ripped the rug...