Coffee, Grief, And Gratitude

Casey reads from her gorgeous new memoir:  The Full Catastrophe: All I Ever Wanted, Everything I Feared.  She talks about her many griefs that could have undone her, and how, while we can never be prepared for major loss, her early experiences with loss helped carry her through later ones. She shares how she’s grown through grief. Her compassion for herself and others shines through our entire con...

We’re delighted to bring you Coffee Talk #46 from May 2023. It’s a special reading, honoring Harvey, Monica’s infant son who died days after he was born. We’re honored to support Monica in these yearly readings, to keep talking about Harvey who has touched so many lives. We hope these five phenomenal writers/readers/humans and their stories are just what your heart needs today. We bring you:  Anat...

Season Two Episode Thirteen   Pedaling Hard with Ronit Plank   Ronit Plank reads from her fabulous memoir:  WHEN SHE COMES BACK  and talks about her grief of losing her mom, her family, and her sense of self. She shares gems about writing memoir along with talking about how all of her family relationships have evolved, how healing has come through writing and having honest conversations. She remin...

We’re delighted to bring you Coffee Talk #67 from March 2025. We hope these four phenomenal writers/readers/humans and their stories are just what your heart needs today. If you missed the live Coffee Talk, if you’d like to hear their voices again, we bring you Christie Tate, Gina Moffa, Jing Jing Tsong, Natalie Hirt and Tanya Friedman. Enjoy! Thank you for letting us be in your ears.   Coffee, Gr...

In this episode Jenny Leon talks about being a cancer survivor while two of her children were very young. She was diagnosed with breast cancer when he was 33 weeks pregnant with her daughter, and had chemo until her daughter was nine months old. She’s since gone on to support others in their grief around cancer. She gifts others with her time, her understanding, her kindness.    Jenny talks about...

We’re delighted to bring you Coffee Talk #63 from November 2024. We hope these four phenomenal writers/readers/humans and their stories are just what your heart needs today. If you missed the live Coffee Talk, if you’d like to hear their voices again, we bring you Jessica Fein, Lanette Smith, Becky Ellis, and Laurie Easter. Enjoy! Thank you for letting us be in your ears.   Coffee, Grief and Grati...

  Season Two Episode Nine   Loving the Dying with Jennifer Bedford   Jennifer reads a beautiful piece about her dog’s death, her mom’s death,  and a paramedic who showed up at the scene of the car accident where her beloved dog, Leo, died a week after her mom died. She shares her experiences of being with the dying and how she’s learned to embrace death, to see the beauty. She also gives practical...

We’re delighted to bring you Coffee Talk #60 from July 2024. July’s reading highlighted five contributors to the beautiful collection DARING TO BREATHE:Stories of Living with the Foreverness of Grief, edited by Armen Bacon and Nancy Miller. We hope these five phenomenal writers/readers/humans and their stories are just what your heart needs today. If you missed the live Coffee Talk, if you’d like...

Eileen Vorbach Collins shares about suicide loss, how a close friendship buoyed her during her hardest grief time, her up-close experience with hospice, and her strong feelings about long term grief being labeled a disorder. She tells us: “If we’re normalizing grief, we can’t call it a disorder.” Brava, Eileen. Brava.  Eileen Vorbach Collins writes true stories she wishes were fiction and fairy ta...

We’re delighted to bring you Coffee Talk #61 from September 2024. We hope these five phenomenal writers/readers/humans and their stories are just what your heart needs today. If you missed the live Coffee Talk, if you’d like to hear their voices again, we bring you Kelly James, Casey Mulligan Walsh, Jessica Thomas, Pamela Kripke, and Lita Kurth. Enjoy! Thank you for letting us be in your ears.   C...

Debra Gwartney talks about her many layered griefs: the fire that ravaged her home on the McKenzie River, the death of her beloved husband Barry Lopez, the death of her parents and more. Barry died during covid, after their home and forest were destroyed in the fire, and she couldn’t get him home, to let him die where he’d lived for 50 years, where he wrote his cannon of incredible work. She talks...

We’re delighted to bring you Coffee Talk #66 from February 2025. We hope these five phenomenal writers/readers/humans and their stories are just what your heart needs today. If you missed the live Coffee Talk, if you’d like to hear their voices again, we bring you Abby Maslin, Chelsea Pegues, Randye Sundel, Lisa Keefauver, and Doug Chase, Thank you for letting us be in your ears. Coffee, Grief and...

Sarah Gormley talks about how she grieved the death of her parents, how she found joy and gratitude too. She calls herself a joy broker. She describes grief as “this slippery thing.” This conversation was recorded before her fabulous memoir, THE ORDER OF THINGS: a Memoir about Chasing Joy, was published. It’s now out in the world and you can buy it wherever you buy your books.    Sarah Gormley is...

We’re delighted to bring you Coffee Talk #62 from October 2024. We hope these five phenomenal writers/readers/humans and their stories are just what your heart needs today. If you missed the live Coffee Talk, if you’d like to hear their voices again, we bring you Terah Van Dusen, Jewelie Randall, Phillipa Leseberg, Natalie Serianni, and Jennifer Bedford. Thank you for letting us be in your ears.  ...

Thank you for letting us be in your ears. We’re delighted to bring you Coffee Talk #65, our first Coffee Talk this year. We hope these five phenomenal writers/readers/humans and their stories are just what your heart needs today. If you missed the live Coffee Talk, if you’d like to hear their voices again, we bring you Sarah Gormley, Kelly Jeske, Domi Shoemaker, Meg Weber, and Mindy Nettifee.   Co...

We’re delighted to highlight Coffee Talk #55 from last February. We hope these fivevphenomenal writers/readers/humans and their stories are just what your heart needs today. If you missed the live Coffee Talk, if you’d like to hear their voices again, we bring you Anne Richardson, Beth Bornstein Dunnington, Blair Hurley, J’aime Morrison, and Mary Mandeville. Thank you for letting us be in your ear...

We love sharing this Coffee Talk from December 2023. We hope you enjoy the heart-wide stories from these phenomenal humans: Alexis Chen Johnson, Amy Gamble, Asha Dore, Danielle Marie Walker, and J’aime Morrison.   If you missed it or want to relisten, here it is. The readers all brought the best heart medicine.   Thank you for letting us be in your ears.   Coffee, Grief and Gratitude is a created...

Ashmeeta openly shares about being widowed and having her mom, whom she was close with, die. She talks about supporting her kids through their grief, how she both gave them space to grieve as well as keeping eyes on them, describing herself as an Eagle Mama. The grief support group Ashmeeta mentions is Grief Share which can be found all over. https://www.griefshare.org/ Ashmeeta Rama Madhav is an...

Beth reads a piece about a beloved friend who died by suicide almost four decades ago. She talks about long term grief, the importance of writing our stories, the importance of sharing our stories. Beth leads the Big Island Writers’ Workshop in Hawai’i and in cities throughout the U.S, and since 2020, also on Zoom. Beth’s mission is to empower women to find their stories and get them out in the wo...

Gina talks about the complexities of grief, how grief is the great equalizer, and how we can be clumsy and awkward together. She shares how she wrote her book, Moving On Doesn’t Mean Letting go: a Modern Guide to Navigating Loss. She wanted to reach more people than she could in her practice and make grief work accessible to many. Her book is an amazing resource that we highly recommend. Gina is a...

Robin reads an essay that was published in Narratively about becoming a widow while she was in the process of getting divorced. Her essay opens up questions about how we navigate griefs that don’t fit in any boxes. Robin’s almost ex-husband had a girlfriend and they were planning on getting married, but his unexpected death changed everything. Robin shares how she included the girlfriend in as man...

Kelly talks about her range of grief from divorce, to the death of her kids’ father, her dad’s death and more. In this engaging, funny, tender conversation Kelly offers fabulous suggestions, like instead of asking someone “How are you?” she asks, “How are you right this second?” After 22 years of fulltime freelancing, Kelly K. James made the decision to go “in-house” at a small company — and wrote...

We’re delighted to share our recent Coffee Talk with these phenomenal writers/readers: Robert McBride, Lucy Filppu, Ona Gritz, Heather Morris, and Anne Gudger. If you missed it or want to relisten, here it is. The readers all brought the best heart medicine. Thank you for letting us be in your ears. Coffee, Grief and Gratitude is a created by Anne Gudger and Maria Gibson, a mom/daughter duo who ta...

Lisa Keefauver shares insights and compassion along with humor. She talks about the importance of sharing her husband’s life, not just his death. She encourages grief supporters to keep showing up for our grievers and to remember it’s not anyone’s job to fix them. Grievers aren’t broken. There’s nothing to fix. Her fabulous book: GRIEF IS A SNEAKY BITCH: An Uncensored Guide to Navigating Loss is o...

Helen shares her wisdom and heart in this deep and wide conversation where she reminds us to have compassion for ourselves and others, where she reminds us that healing can come from holding each other with the same vulnerability we’d like to be held, where she reminds us everyone can make a difference. Helen Marie is a registered integrative therapist in the UK with a Post Graduate Diploma in Psy...