Episodes
Sept. 15, 2021
Walking Through Fire
When Vaneetha Rendell Risner found a deeper faith coming to terms with her childhood disabling polio, she thought that was the end of her challenges. Now, since she was walking with her hand in her God's, life would go well. ...
Sept. 8, 2021
Called to Be Creative
The worst things in Mary Potter Kenyon's life led her inexorably back to her first love; writing. Her first book dealt with her husband's cancer diagnosis and the next two with her grief after the deaths of her mother, husban...
Sept. 1, 2021
Forget Prayers Bring Cake
Alone in a brand new city, Merissa Nathan Gerson set out to connect with her community. Her father shepherded the process, traveling with her to help her choose a house and set herself up for this new life. But very shortly a...
Aug. 25, 2021
Transformed, The Journey to Becoming
When a child is unwanted, abused and neglected it is no surprise they struggle in adulthood. It took Sabine Gedeon a long time to realize that she was replaying her early life in choosing poor relationships, overtaxing hersel...
Aug. 11, 2021
First Art Kit
What helps us as we face a lifetime of challenges? Boo Paterson tried it all and found that many things helped her when times were hard. But what helped the most was creative expression. She set out to find ways that people w...
Aug. 4, 2021
Odyssey of Ashes
Cheryl Krauter and her husband, John, assumed she would die first. After all, she had lived through an aggressive breast cancer diagnosis that challenged her resilience and health. But then it was him, suddenly, with no warni...
July 28, 2021
Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief
When Emily Threatt's first husband died, she didn't anticipate ever marrying again. But then, as sometimes happens with life's twists and turns, she fell in love. Her experience when her second husband died was different from...
July 21, 2021
Healing a Shattered Soul
It was a day in the life of a talented entrepreneur and her family. The kids were headed off to games and an audition, set to showcase their talents. The adults were their chauffeurs and cheerleaders. And then, into this beau...
July 14, 2021
Widowish
Our picture of widowhood conjures a grey haired woman, maybe a grandmother, mourning the loss of a life long love. But that picture does not always fit the facts. Melissa Gould was young, still raising a child, when her husba...
June 30, 2021
Dreams and Grief
What does it mean to us when we dream about a person in our life who has died? Sometimes we are working to understand the loss or move forward from it. Sometimes we are plagued by the need to know that they are ok. Sometimes ...
June 23, 2021
Who Killed My Mother?
Just getting a call that someone you love has died brings grief and profound impact. But what if the second call is from a police officer theorizing that your uncle, your mother's brother, has killed her? This stark and terri...
June 16, 2021
Grief Refuge
What we create as a result of learning to navigate our grief is unique; a creative expression of our deepest lives. For Reid Peterson, creating the Grief Refuge app reflected his deep desire to offer a daily companion to peop...
June 9, 2021
The Big Ordeal
Nothing prepares us for the three words you have cancer. How do people facing this frightening diagnosis navigate the emotional fallout which, for most, will be a significant aspect of their cancer experience? When Cynthia Ha...
June 2, 2021
Hope is a Bright Star
Faith Wilcox faced the unimaginable. Her healthy, accomplished and intelligent 13 year old was diagnosed with a lethal form of cancer and, despite the best efforts of her health care team, she died in less than a year. In the...
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...