As Long As I'm Living

Alina has talked about EMDR a lot on the podcast, and today we are finally going to talk all about it with Rebecca Munini, Alina's trauma therapist! EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, and it is an evidence-based trauma treatment modality that changed Alina's life. Every week for a year, Alina sat in Rebecca's office and reprocessed the trauma of finding Quinn dead (...a...

What is perfectly normal in grief? Pretty much everything. Listen as Alina and Judith chat about page 10 in Megan Devine's How To Carry What Can't Be Fixed (the companion journal to the MUST-READ It's OK That You're Not OK ). This page covers some symptoms and side effects of grief, e.g. forgetting your keys, memory loss, digestion problems, and interpersonal issues.  What else is perfectly n...

Oof... this one is a doozy. This episode kicks off with a few minutes that Alina recorded on a bad, bad day. She felt loneliness, grief, despair, anger, and so many other things. Afterwards, Alina and Judith discuss these feelings, specifically how after your child dies, any other joy in your life can feel like a consolation prize. But is it? Is the joy we are able to feel sometimes now a cheap pl...

In this episode, Judith and Alina are joined by memoirist and loss mama Katie Joy Duke. This is a thoughtful interview about the power of grief, healing, and connecting to our lost loved ones in the stars. Her daughter Poppy was stillborn in 2015, and she turned straight to the page to process her grief and found solace and meaning in the community that followed her journey. Just as her dreams of...

Alina here! Our very own Judith went live on Instagram a few weeks ago with Aimee from I Was Supposed To Have a Baby to talk about Aiden's death, the immediate aftermath, and how her grief has evolved over time. When I say I was BEAMING watching this episode... that is an understatement. I am so proud of her for sharing so openly in such a large public forum. She honors Aiden's life and legacy bea...

In this episode, Alina and Judith give PRACTICAL advice about what to say to someone newly bereaved. They even give you a formula: 1. Express your condolences 2. Validate their feelings 3. Carry the loss with them Listen to the episode for specific examples of how to fill each of these buckets and hopefully provide a small amount of comfort to the griever. They also talk about what NOT to say, and...

Judith's daughter has officially outlived her son, Aiden. This episode is little bits of content we recorded here and there as The Crossover Day approached, and also some discussion about how she feels afterward. ::: Things we talk about in this episode: - Puppy Love | As Long As I'm Living ::: Follow As Long As I'm Living on Instagram at @aslongasimlivingpodcast , send us an email at aslongasimli...

In this episode, Judith and Alina talk about the jealousy that has cropped up in their friendship over the past few months... and it's not in the direction you'd think it is. ::: Things we talk about in this episode: - Alina's interview on the Silent Why podcast ::: Follow As Long As I'm Living on Instagram at @aslongasimlivingpodcast , send us an email at aslongasimlivingpodcast@gmail.com , or vi...

Alina and Judith are joined today for an interview with Dr. Denise Mandel!  Judith has been working with Dr. Mandel for the last 16 months since Aiden died, and we can't wait to bring her insight into the grief process and compassion for grievers to all of you. In this episode, we talk about what grief therapy looks like, what is normal in grief, when and how to seek help, and tons of other s...

An episode about feeling happy, recorded together in person! Alina came to DC to meet Judith's new baby girl. We talk parenting after loss, watching your friend have a new alive baby, grieving together in a marriage, and the complicated feelings we have about being happy. In case the title doesn't make it obvious, we do want to note that Judith's alive baby daughter is somewhat prominently feature...

This is not the episode we had planned for this week, but we are outraged at today's Supreme Court decision to overrule Roe v. Wade and terrified for the wide-reaching effects it may have on many areas of reproductive health, including but not limited to: - elective termination - termination for medical reasons - miscarriages requiring D&C or D&E - fertility treatments like IVF - birth con...

Today on the podcast, we are going to be talking race, and specifically how race is unfortunately a factor in maternal and fetal health outcomes. We are joined by Emy Collins, whose child Bash died at 15 days old in 2018 after an extraordinarily medically mismanaged pregnancy, delivery, and NICU stay. If Emy's is one of the only stories you've heard from a Black birthing person in the infant loss...

In this episode, the Sad Dads take some time to talk about Father's Day as a bereaved dad. They have some wonderful words of wisdom, and we think any bereaved parent will relate to their feelings about this sensitive day. Listen all the way to the end for some bonus content from all 5 of us! We (Judith and Alina) and the Sad Dads (Jay, Chris, and Rob) are wishing all of our listeners a gentle Fath...

It's Father's Day week, and while our listeners know we have a LOT to say, being a loss father is not a topic we feel qualified to speak on. Enter the Sad Dads! Rob, Chris, and Jay are three friends living in Maine who lost their daughters Lila, Izzy, and Bella to stillbirth. They quickly formed a deep bond over beers and tears, and, from the ashes of stillbirth, the Sad Dads Club was born. S...

What do an owl, a rainbow, and Andy Grammer's brother-in-law have in common? They are all signs that either Judith or Alina has encountered since their sons died last year. Listen to this episode to hear more about signs from their babies... thank you Aiden and Quinn! ::: Things we talk about in this episode: @iwassupposedtohaveababy (Instagram) Crisis of Faith | As Long As I'm Living Our Intervie...

Photos and videos are woefully inadequate substitution for your living breathing baby, but they are all that is left after they die. In this episode, Judith and Alina talk about the photos and videos they have of Aiden and Quinn. What is it like to look at them? How do they feel about sharing them with others? How did they choose which ones got printed for the walls in their homes? And of course:...

This episode is a peek into what recording As Long As I'm Living podcast is really like. Spoiler: it's a hot mess. There are internet issues, devices running out of charge, distractions, and so much more nonsense. This is not unusual, Alina just normally edits it out before we release the episodes for all of you. In this episode, we *try* to talk about the physical side effects of grief, but we're...

Dr. Jennifer Su is a pediatric cardiologist and the mother of her beloved son Aeron, who died of SIDS in February 2018.  Judith and Alina have... well.... dumb jobs. They both have been able to give themselves the grace to be bad at their jobs in the aftermath of their sons' deaths, but Jenn and her husband, a pediatrician, did not have that option as their jobs are life and death. How did th...

Jackie Mancinelli is the founder and senior advocate for Start Healing Together, an organization by teachers and for teachers that provides information, instruction, and support to help alleviate the stigmas surrounding pregnancy loss and infertility. Their goal is trifold: to make members aware of their rights, to offer emotional support, and to direct them to helpful resources.  Jackie and...

A recently released study has found a link between the biomarker Butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) and SIDS. What does this mean? How do we feel about it? Listen to find out. If you'd rather watch us have this conversation, click here . ::: Things we talk about in this episode: Butyrylcholinesterase is a potential biomarker for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome As Long As I'm Living: SIDS, an Interview with...

We survived Mother's Day! This is a quick little bonus episode of Judith and Alina chatting while they open their mother's day gifts to each other. Our main episode this week was released yesterday, and it is a great one. We somehow convinced our mothers to come on the podcast and give their thoughts on what it's like to mother a grieving mother.  Click here to listen: Mothering a Grieving Mo...

Meet the Moms behind the Loss Moms! Judith's mom, Marlene, and Alina's mom, Michele, were gracious enough to be interviewed for a very special Mother's Day episode about what it's like to mother a grieving mother and an outside perspective on how the loss of a child affects his mother.  We think this episode is a fascinating example of how different people respond to the "same" loss. ::: Thin...

Meet Jill. She's the mom of Hadley Maeve, one of baby Quinn's friends in the stars. At Jill's routine anatomy scan, she and her husband Eric were given the devastating news that Hadley had not just one but three life-limiting conditions that would lead to extraordinary suffering from birth onward, if she survived that long. They made the decision to take that pain on themselves and interrupt the p...

Alina and Judith are recovering from a couple of happy events that sent them reeling. Everyone knows that the bad days are bad, but sometimes the hardest days are the ones that are supposed to be happy.  ::: Follow As Long As I'm Living on Instagram at @aslongasimlivingpodcast , send us an email at aslongasimlivingpodcast@gmail.com , or visit us at anchor.fm/aslongasimliving ! We would love t...

Hi friends! We weren't able to get our act together to record anything new for you this week, so we are throwing it back to December when we did an Instagram live answering listener questions! Some of this will sound familiar, as we've talked about it in other places, but some of it is new. If you'd like to watch this content instead of listen, you can watch the live video recording here: As Long...