Good Grief

When Jessica Fein's daughter, Dalia, was just five, she was diagnosed with a rare and degenerative disease that would shorten her life. Because it is rare, no one knew exactly how long she would live. But from that day forward Jessica lived with potential loss in the background while doing everything she could to give Dalia, and her other two children, a love-filled life. Along the way she learned...

Out of her own experience with cancer, Ann Bancroft created an absorbing and compelling story about a woman who changes her life as a result of being diagnosed with metastatic disease. She finds new friends, rearranges her priorities and begins to heal the places in her life that have troubled her for years, even decades. Join us as we talk about how a life-changing event like a cancer diagnosis c...

Uncovering the hidden injuries of a life spent denying oneself is deep, painful and meaningful work. How do we find the tenderness and courage to do it well? Heather Plett peeled back the layers of her own truth and discovered it is possible. As she healed herself, she came to long for a larger healing, beyond the individual and spreading into her family, her community, her culture and the world....

Meredith Burns' mother was a constant emotional presence in her life, there to offer support, advice and solace. When that began to change, Meredith, and the whole family, searched for an explanation. Was she depressed? Having a psychotic break? Less interested in supporting them? Over the years, it became obvious that there was a serious problem going on, one that all the medications that had bee...

A relationship with a sibling holds the keys to our upbringing. No other person knows what it was like to grow up in your family. Some siblings are close, others not, but if you have siblings, it leaves a mark. What happens when sibling dies? There has been very little work done to understand the impact of this under-attended loss. After her own sibling died, Annie Sklaver Orenstein applied all he...

When Ashley Jones' daughter died, it threw her into a profound grief she didn't know the way out of. In those early times, pictures brought some comfort. As she moved through her own grief, she wanted to offer that comfort to others. She offered free photo shoots to people anticipating a loss and saw the impact it had. Over time she founded her organization, Momento, to continue to supply photo sh...

Farah Naz Rishi is Pakistani, American and Muslim. Her memoir, Sorry for the Inconvenience, deftly portrays the overlapping pressures that made it hard to find herself. We'll be talking about grief, family dynamics, tragedies and how to become yourself against the backdrop of family, community and intergenerational overlays. How did Farah learn to live her own life, with so many expectations of wh...

In her work encouraging healthier relationships as a way to live a happier life, Katarina Blom already knew how key connection is to happiness. Then she was chosen to be the psychologist in a television series called The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, produced by Amy Pohler. Along with an interior designer and an organizer, she supported people to deal with their stuff, leading to surprisin...

Ethan Sisser wanted to die in ecstasy, surrounded by music, community, beauty, but mostly, love. His wishes did not fit neatly into even the hospice paradigm but he was able to draw together a group of supporters, one of whom offered him room in his home so that Ethan's community could care for him in the way he wanted. He also found Aditi Sethi, a palliative care and hospice doctor who agreed to...

Anticipating the joy of welcoming her first child, Lindsey Henke was completely unprepared for the shock of that child's stillbirth. Although Lindsey had been a practicing psychotherapist for a few years, she had not had that much therapy herself. Suddenly, those tools she had learned about, and therapy itself, became invaluable to her. Over time she dedicated herself to working with other people...

Personal experience with grief and mental health challenges in her family led Anastasia Zadeik to write her novel, The Other Side of Nothing. The families she wriwtes about struggle to know how to support themselves and each other in all their challenges. Through a spellbinding trip across the country, they slowly find their way. What was it like for her to write it? How did she employ her family...

As a younger sister, Ona Gritz idolized her older sibling. But as the favored child with a disability, she could see her sister struggling. It was thirty years after the murder of her then pregnant sister, partner and baby that she was finally ready to unpack the effect of that loss and the family secrets that had become interlaced with her pain and guilt. Out of this path towars healing, Ona wrot...

When Dena Rueb Romero discovered a box full of letters and memorabilia in her mother's house, she furtively took it home with her. Although she knew her parents had fled the holocaust, they failed to share the details of their story, choosing instead to focus on the life they made in Hanover, New Hampshire. Diving into their story Dena learned so much about their traumas- and their triumphs. Gaini...

What gets you through your own times of chaos? For Noah Asher, it is a deep Christian faith. Already a practicing Christian, his understanding of how that could support him as he faced prison and profound loss grounded him in his belief. It also led to his work; to support others facing times of chaos, offering the assurance that in going forward we find our deepest callings. With humor and honest...

Have you ever imagined you were getting a handle on your loss and then been blindsided by a surprise tsunami? As Lisa Keefauver captures in the title of her new book, Grief is a Sneaky Bitch. But there are some tricks to help us navigate the turbulence. Number one, accepting that it's unpredictable. Join us for a discussion of our own losses and what they've taught us about going froward after los...

Myra Sack and her husband Matt were very lucky. They had fallen in love with the right person, had work they were deeply committed to and had a new baby. Into the middle of their charmed life came the worst possible news; their perfect daughter had Tay-Sachs disease. She would live a very short life. A mistake in the testing they had received for Tay-Sachs blindsighted them. Reeling from the news...

Courtney Deane knows grief from the inside out, having lost both of her parents at a young age. Determined to create something beautiful out of her losses she wrote a book exploring what happiness ever after looks like after loss. She also knows first hand that happiness is not static, it can be found and then lost. Join us to talk about her book, When Happiness Ever After Fails, and the happily e...

Every body that has been lived in will eventually need to be cared for after death. What is the most earth friendly option currently available for after death care? Recompose is arguably not just the greenest but also the most careful about honoring the entire life cycle of our bodies. By composting human remains until they become soil, the planet is enriched. Partnering with land trusts when love...

Have you ever noticed that after similar traumas, at similar times of life, with so much in common, some people remain traumatized indefinitely, some recover through resilience, while others transcend and grow? Although there is a certain amount of mystery and we can't accurately predict which path a given person will follow, there are ways to favor growth and meaning after trauma. In fact, most t...

Faced with numerous losses and feeling deep grief, Jamie Thrower could not find grief services that understood how to support a queer griever. Struggling through the feelings and inevitable difficulty of their own grief, they became intent on doing their part to save others from what they experienced. Queer Grief Club was born! As a death doula, workshop leader, writer and artist, they have made i...

Warren Kozak thought he had prepared himself for the death of his wife. He knew he would feel sad but had no idea that he would have to invent a new Warren. In the absence of her larger than life presence, he felt unmoored and alienated. Slowly, over time, he became a new version of himself. Because he is a journalist, he chronicled every step, including the resources he accessed to understand thi...

Roshni Kavate and Rebecca Servoss noticed in their own grieving the lack of services to support grief, especially for people across all identities. They committed to creating a new paradigm for grief support, built on hope, joy, and the strength of the human spirit. Their organization, Marigolde, they sought to support grieving boldly, loving tenderly, and celebrating the blooming, visceral transf...

Growing up with a father who was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer when she was seven, Laurel Braitman was taught survival skills from then on. Out of her own fears she embraced the lessons, hoping they would prevent the terrible possibility of losing her father. Of course, this isn't what happened. But Laurel would be well into her adulthood before she realized there was one key skill she hadn'...

When a horrific explosion happened in Beirut, Dalal Mawad was living nearby and felt a compelling urge to help. As a journalist she naturally searched for ways to tell the story. But what was the story? The explosion happened against the backdrop of inhumane conditions in the Middle East, a collapsing infrastructure in her country, Lebanon, and an unclear picture of what led to the terrible event....

After Ann Anderson Evan's beloved husband killed himself, she wondered what could have led him to such an end. He had not seemed suicidal, or deeply depressed, or haunted by demons. She imagined it must be some secret misery he didn't share even with her. She thought they had shared everything! Over time she came to believe that he was transgender. Could his belief that he could never share that p...