Good Grief

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 capacity to process information and determine our own truth, denying evident contradictions, limiting our own possibilities. For Angela Himsel, the path away from the cult she was...

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, healing. As time went forward, he wanted to share the gift of poetry with other grievers and began collecting poems that spoke to him, resulting in a compilation; Voices of...

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 recognize. Recently, several public figures have chosen to talk publicly about these losses in their own lives, opening up the conversation and helping other women who have exp...

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 itself in unique and moving ways. For David Richman, the death of his sister from cancer led to a 5,000 mile bicycle trip to raise money and also to explore existential questions o...

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. Did coming through a time full of challenge affect the book, The Remnants of Summer? How does she believe facing cancer changed her? Writing a book of fiction that confronts...

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 steps. Following her successful treatment for Stage IV ovarian cancer, she committed to offer resources to others facing a cancer diagnosis; to offer hope, information and resou...

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 powers. So what has this last year during a pandemic, when her work was altered and sometimes unrecognizable, been like? What has kept her optimism and personal healing going? Wha...

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 diagnosis with MLD, an incurable and universally fatal illness, would take her grief to an even deeper place. And facing life with a dying child and husband would seem, at first, im...

How do the lives left behind when parents leave their country and culture impact their first generation children? Esther Amini's parents carried with them the fears, oppressions and traditions they left but also the grit and determination it took to create a new life. Confused as a child about what caused them to behave the way they did, Esther has spent a lifetime seeking to understand them and,...

In the hardest of times, what moves us, inspires us and takes us that one step further? For Neil Beresin, a counselor and interfaith chaplain, it is often poetry. What he learned during his own most difficult times now serves the people he works with, offering inspiration when all seems bleak. What poems most speak to him and to them? How does he bring poetry into the room for comfort and resonanc...

When Keith Cormican's brother died in an attempt at a water rescue, it sparked his search for safe ways to offer families the closure of their loved ones' recovered body. Knowing how important it is to honor the person with our personal burial traditions, he became impassioned advocate for the families of drowning victims. Free of charge, he now travels wherever a family has need of his services a...

Like many people, Eilene Zimmerman believed drug addiction lived in another world, far from her family. That was until her ex-husband, the father of her children, died of an overdose and she discovered his body. How had everyone missed the signs of an ever increasing relationship to substances that was robbing him of his health, his career and his capacity to focus on the important relationships i...

COVID-19 has been challenging in different ways for different people. Some of us are experiencing more isolation and loss than we were. Some of us, especially in industries directly affected by the pandemic, are working harder. And then there are those of us who are caring for children, trying to balance relationships, parenting, jobs and social isolation. This has highlighted the differential eff...

As Nina Simone said, It is an artist's duty to reflect the time in which we live. The Artists' Grief Deck, a project that pairs visual artists with writers, offers visual and written representation of COVID's impact, especially regarding our losses. As it's creators say, COVID-19 presents a unique challenge, among natural disasters, to human culture. Loss is experienced on numerous levels, and it...

Can we ever understand the place a spouse holds in our lives? Often, that understanding comes only after the sudden and terrible loss of that person. Jeff Porter's wife, as it turned out, was the planet around which his life, in some ways, orbited. Her sudden death threw him into outer space, careening into memories, unmoored and trying to make sense of the un-sensible. His attempt to grapple with...

Grief- what's in it for us? Katherine Ingram had to answer this question for herself when her husband died suddenly. Along with the deep pain of that loss, unresolved feelings about the death of her father when she was eight opened up as well. Her realization that she would have to go through every bad and ugly feeling she was having, avoiding nothing, led to the writing of a memoir, Washing the B...

When Liz Tichenor's mother killed herself, it would have been hard to imagine a loss more crushing, even though her mother had struggled with addiction for most of Liz' life. But shortly after that Liz' son, only forty days old, died inexplicably and sent Liz into a territory of loss and grief unfamiliar to her. As she struggled to carry herself through those most terrible days, she knew that her...

What does it mean to hold space for another person? And how do we hold space for ourselves? When Heather Plett's mother was dying, she discovered that holding space for her, without an agenda or any idea what would happen next, launched her and her siblings into a sacred, liminal space of being. Heather received the same fro her mother's palliative care nurse; she offered support and information w...

In the past several years green burial options have become more and more important to those of us who want to protect the planet. Green burial, which uses no embalming, no casket and leaves the land as it was found, is a very appealing option. But there are very few green burial grounds in the U.S. Mary Ann Perry and the women at the Willow-Witt Ranch in Oregon set out to create just such a space....

After her father committed suicide, Karen Wyatt questioned everything about her life, including whether she wanted to continue practicing medicine. If she couldn't help this most important person in her life, what did it all mean? But what slowly evolved was a career she couldn't have predicted; as a hospice doctor and a support to battered women. Over time she came to trust that there was a way t...

People who have not experienced deep loss may believe that grievers like to be cheered up, distracted, told about happy things. But often, deep expressions from other mourners does more. In our shared humanity we walk together, acknowledging the pain and also the moments of beauty and poetry that come with loss. After her husband died, Barbara Abercrombie, an accomplished writer herself, found com...

A sudden disabling stroke hit Annette Libeskind Berkovits' son, leaving him unable to care for himself, or his wife and children and leaving her in deep grief. She wrote as a way to respond to the crushing weight of his circumstance, needing to put words on paper to navigate this strange and unfamiliar territory. Over time, her writing evolved into poetry and her poetry into a book, drawing on the...

Facing a cancer diagnosis presents unique losses, challenges and adaptations. How we face those times and how those around us support us makes all the difference in the overall experience of cancer. Supporting her mother through cancer, Rebecca Whitehead Munn learned what it took to truly be there for someone navigating this perilous world. What she hadn't anticipated was the depth of knowledge of...

Good Grief has been on the air for 7 years, a momentous anniversary for the show and for the host, Cheryl Jones. Join her to hear what she has learned from her over 300 guests; how her own perspective has been reinforced by listening to them, what carries her forward after her own losses and what she knows about facing hard times. How does Cheryl practice what she preaches? By allowing for her gri...

Nothing prepares anyone for times of extreme loss. Autumn Toelle-Jackson was leading a charmed life; married to the love of her life, with two healthy children, 2 1/2 and newborn. But then, over the course of just a few years, Autumn's husband died suddenly, a close relative died suddenly, her grandfather ailed and died and the baby she had, just two years later, with the second great love of her...