Episodes
May 26, 2021
Giving Grief Meaning
When Lily Dulan gave birth to her baby girl, it seemed like the culmination to years of work to create the life she'd envisioned. Despite complications at the start, her child was given a clean bill of health and she and her ...
May 19, 2021
I Wonder
Arriving for a weekend trip, Lisa Goich was unprepared to hear that her beloved mother had just 2 weeks to live. Suspending her everyday life, Lisa devoted herself to her mother's care, fulfilling a deep commitment to honor t...
May 12, 2021
A River Could Be a Tree
There is a comfort in growing up in a cult; believing absolutely in whatever we are taught, giving members a framework for all the difficulties in life. But for many, there is a terrible price to pay; suspending our own capac...
May 5, 2021
Voices of the Grieving Heart
When the unimaginable happens, each of us enters our own grief language, unique to our deepest selves. When Mike Bernhardt's wife died in 1991, poetry (both writing and reading it) connected him to his own pain and, over time...
April 28, 2021
All the Love
Up until recently, families who experienced pregnancy loss, still birth and other reproductive losses had very little to depend on to carry them through the confusing and heartbreaking grief of a loss society often fails to r...
April 21, 2021
Cycle of Lives
How often have you heard someone who has been through loss say they are living their lives to honor the person they lost? This impulse to give back ofter loss is powerful and pure. But the shape it takes varies, showing itsel...
April 14, 2021
The Remnants of Summer
What turns do our lives take after cancer? Dawn Newton wrote a memoir about the lung cancer that dropped into her life so unexpectedly. It would take nine years for the next chapter in her life as a writer to unfold- novelist...
April 7, 2021
I Am With You
Of all the words that can touch our lives, you have cancer are some of the most frightening. For Nancy Novack, her diagnosis also made clear how little she knew about this new world and what she would need to face the next st...
March 31, 2021
Love in Hard Times
Singer Amikaeyla has spent her career sharing musical healing with people facing challenges around the world. Out of her own deep experiences with music as a force for healing, her work is fueled by a belief in its magic powe...
March 24, 2021
Harnessing Grief: A Mother's Quest for Meaning and Miracles
In a short span of time, Maria Kefalas' husband, father and father-in-law were all diagnosed with life limiting cancer. But none of them knew that would not be the worst thing they would face. Her 2 year old daughter's diagno...
March 17, 2021
Concealed
How do the lives left behind when parents leave their country and culture impact their first generation children? Esther Amini's parents carried with them the fears, oppressions and traditions they left but also the grit and ...
March 10, 2021
Poetry as Spiritual Nourishment
In the hardest of times, what moves us, inspires us and takes us that one step further? For Neil Beresin, a counselor and interfaith chaplain, it is often poetry. What he learned during his own most difficult times now serves...
March 3, 2021
Bruce's Legacy
When Keith Cormican's brother died in an attempt at a water rescue, it sparked his search for safe ways to offer families the closure of their loved ones' recovered body. Knowing how important it is to honor the person with o...
Feb. 24, 2021
Smacked
Like many people, Eilene Zimmerman believed drug addiction lived in another world, far from her family. That was until her ex-husband, the father of her children, died of an overdose and she discovered his body. How had every...
Feb. 10, 2021
Moms Don't Have Time To
COVID-19 has been challenging in different ways for different people. Some of us are experiencing more isolation and loss than we were. Some of us, especially in industries directly affected by the pandemic, are working harde...
Feb. 3, 2021
The Artists' Grief Deck
As Nina Simone said, It is an artist's duty to reflect the time in which we live. The Artists' Grief Deck, a project that pairs visual artists with writers, offers visual and written representation of COVID's impact, especial...
Jan. 27, 2021
Planet Claire
Can we ever understand the place a spouse holds in our lives? Often, that understanding comes only after the sudden and terrible loss of that person. Jeff Porter's wife, as it turned out, was the planet around which his life,...
Jan. 20, 2021
Grief Girl's Guide
Grief- what's in it for us? Katherine Ingram had to answer this question for herself when her husband died suddenly. Along with the deep pain of that loss, unresolved feelings about the death of her father when she was eight ...
Jan. 13, 2021
The Night Lake
When Liz Tichenor's mother killed herself, it would have been hard to imagine a loss more crushing, even though her mother had struggled with addiction for most of Liz' life. But shortly after that Liz' son, only forty days o...
Jan. 6, 2021
Holding Space
What does it mean to hold space for another person? And how do we hold space for ourselves? When Heather Plett's mother was dying, she discovered that holding space for her, without an agenda or any idea what would happen nex...
Dec. 16, 2020
Bury Me Natural: The Forest Conservation Burial Ground
In the past several years green burial options have become more and more important to those of us who want to protect the planet. Green burial, which uses no embalming, no casket and leaves the land as it was found, is a very...
Dec. 9, 2020
The Journey From Ego to Soul
After her father committed suicide, Karen Wyatt questioned everything about her life, including whether she wanted to continue practicing medicine. If she couldn't help this most important person in her life, what did it all ...
Dec. 2, 2020
The Language of Loss
People who have not experienced deep loss may believe that grievers like to be cheered up, distracted, told about happy things. But often, deep expressions from other mourners does more. In our shared humanity we walk togethe...
Nov. 25, 2020
Erythra Thalassa: Brain Disrupted
A sudden disabling stroke hit Annette Libeskind Berkovits' son, leaving him unable to care for himself, or his wife and children and leaving her in deep grief. She wrote as a way to respond to the crushing weight of his circu...