Give Grief A Chance

Come and listen to this week's episode where I get to chat with entrepreneur, life coach, and author Cindy Baumann. In 2007 Cindy's fast track life came to a screeching halt when she had to deal with the unthinkable. Cindy received the news that her twenty six year old son Shaun had suddenly died. In Cindys book Grief Warrior you will find authentic accounts of gut wrenching grief, and after years...

On this week's episode I'm offering a few ways to help you find motivation after a loss. Grief can make you lose the will to do the simplest of things that used to make you feel happy, and finding motivation can be the last thing on someones mind after experiencing a significant loss. However, it is possible to heal from your pain and suffering and learn to live a full and happy life again. 

The truth is that having difficult conversations can make people clam up because they feel very uncomfortable don't know what to say. Talking about death, getting older, health issues, painful feelings, or any type of loss can be challenging and intimidating, but these difficult conversations are very necessary. Listen to this week's episode as I go deeper into this subject and offer a few helpful...

This week I had a wonderful chat Sherrie Barch who's passion for storytelling and making room for serious and heavy conversations was a strong motivation for her to write her children's book called Heaven's Bell. The book was written to create a safe space for families to have conversation about death and dying. It encourages the sharing of memories and is meant to bring readers of all ages comfor...

Let's be honest... no one likes to be lied to, but I'll bet at some point in your life you've lied about your painful feelings following a loss. Sadly, most of us have been given a lot of misinformation surrounding grief and loss, and we've learned how to lie about how we really feel after all, we don't want to bring others down or burden them with our sad and painful feelings. 

For many people, dealing with, and having those difficult conversations can be hard. This week I had a chat with David Richman whose book The Cycle of Lives takes the reader on an unexplored journey uncovering the emotion behind cancer. David biked 5,00 miles in six weeks to meet fifteen of the books participants while sorting out his own emotions over having lost his sister to cancer years before...

This week I'm talking about complicated grief. Now, grief is different for everyone, some people may experience intense periods of grief, but over time those feelings begin to to ease and they are able to move forward and adjust to a new reality without the person they have lost. However, for others, their feelings can become chronic and debilitating, their grief doesn't seem to improve over time,...

Who isn't fascinated with psychic mediums? This week I had a great chat with Shauna Domalain who is the creative founder of the Growing Up in Heaven Program which is for mothers who want to connect and communicate with their children on the other side. She offers individual sessions to connect you with your lost child and loved ones in Spirit and empowerment sessions to bring you back into alignme...

This week on Give Grief a Chance podcast, I had the pleasure of chatting with Mark Chesnut who is an award winning travel writer and has just finished a memoir called "Prepare for Departure" which showcases what happens when a permissive mother and misfit son face death while revisiting life. Mark shares his story of caring for an elderly parent and how writing about grief helped him on his healin...

This week I had the pleasure of chatting with Reid Peterson who is the founder and creator of the Grief Refuge mobile app. After losing his biological father to suicide in 2006 and his stepfather to cancer in 2016, Reid felt a calling to help the grieving find peace and purpose after loss. Grief Refuge is your daily companion to help navigate the difficult journey called grief, it's a safe and sac...

This week my heart has felt heavy with the loss of a childhood friend. And the death of our friends can be just as painful as that of any loved one, even if you haven't seen that friend in a long time, knowing that they are no longer here can stir up a multitude of thoughts and emotions. Life is always a little bit different after someone you know and care about dies, and death reminds us that lif...

On this week's episode I'm offering five practical suggestions to help you cope with your grief and move toward healing. Let's face it, coping with the loss of a loved one or friend can be one of the hardest things many of us face, and even though loss is a natural part of life it can be very difficult for many of us to deal with. Grief is an emotional response to a loss and while emotions can be...

How can you heal something if you can't identify it? This week's podcast is all about intangible losses, which are things like loss of safety, loss of trust, loss of security, loss of freedom. And, if you've experienced any of these types of loss you'll know that just because it's an intangible loss doesn't mean it isn't real and painful. 

One of the first steps to healing is to accept, acknowledge, and name your emotions. Sadly, what we learn as a society is not how to work with our feelings but how to avoid them, and most of us do that pretty well. If you try to suppress your pain around loss, then your fighting a losing battle because, those emotions need to be expressed or you can lose it, explode, or have a nervous breakdown. H...

This week's Give Grief A Chance podcast is all about ways to help someone who's grieving. I'm offering suggestions of things you could do and things you should avoid. Let's face it, when someone you know and care about experiences a significant loss, they need your support more than ever, but for many people, it can be difficult to know what to say or what to do, as those intense emotions that the...

Do you know that it's a very common response for people to feel anger after a loss. Sometimes anger comes when individuals are angry at a loved one for dying and leaving them to face life alone. You could be angry because you've been left with financial issues. You might feel anger toward a pet for running away. Or your angry at people not reaching out and helping you through your grief. Whatever...

On this week's podcast I'm chatting with Dr Philip Lister who is an adult and child psychiatrist in a private practice in New York City. He is also the author of "A Good Short Life." Twenty five years ago at the age of four his daughter Liza became ill with leukemia and died at the age of six, since Liza's death Phil has been inspired through his love of writing to capture Liza's spirit and share...

This week I'm chatting with a wonderful young woman Jessie Lestelle, who at the age of twenty five lost her entire immediate family. Jessie has found herself being called to share her story with the world and has created a podcast called 'Good Grief Jessie' where she only openly talks about her losses and her struggles with anxiety, depression, and PTSD plus, she interviews some very interesting p...

Coping with loss is hard, and levels of grief experienced can feel so emotionally painful and there might be times when your grief feels more overwhelmingly unmanageable than usual. What can you do when that overwhelm hits you at the worst times? Find out by listening to today's podcast for a few helpful suggestions and techniques on how to deal with grief that feels overwhelming. 

From the day we are born to the day we die our lives are filled with love of people, pets, places, and passions, and life is also filled with the loss of those things we so deeply love and care for. The grief that fills are hearts, drains our energy and numbs our body can make us feel so empty and lonely, after all grief is another form of love. Acknowledge your pain, give your grief a voice, and...

Andre is a supervisor and licensed funeral director at Roupp Funeral home. He believes that funeral ceremonies are a time of remembrance and celebration of a loved one's life, each person has a life story, and each family has a story, part of his work is to help each family remember and celebrate those stories in their own personal manner. 

Our world is full of chaos and life is filled with uncertainty and worries about the future, but if you stay stuck in those thoughts and worry, then that fear will leave you feeling powerless over where you want to go in life, and worry, will lead you on that downward spiral. Uncertainty is a natural part of our lives and while we have control over many things, we simply cannot control everything...

We humans are social creatures by nature and most of us crave intimacy, friendships, companionship, or just having a good connection with others. So when we can no longer see or speak to someone we care about, those memories and the pain of their absence can sit heavily in our hearts, and we don't want it to negatively affect our home, work, or our health.   

Anxiety that follows a loss is very real and often overlooked, I remember going through bouts of anxiety after my dad, brother, and mum all died within eight months of each other, but for the longest time I didn't connect it to my grief because it hit me some time after they had died. In this episode I offer some suggestions of what you can do to help manage your anxiety because, there are many wa...

Sheena is a lifelong student of well-being and a certified yoga teacher. After the death of her parents, sister, and best friend, Sheena was led to integrate her yoga practice with her grief. She has created a beautiful offering called 'yoga for living with loss' which uses a variety of breathing practices and gentle yoga movements to help you to navigate through loss... without getting lost.