Grief Out Loud

What does it mean to train to be a death doula for your community? This is a question a group of Indigenous youth in Canada grappled with as part of the Death Doula Mentorship Program, created by Blackbird Medicines and the Indigenous death doula collective. Chrystal Wàban Toop, founder of Blackbird Medicines, joined us to talk about how early experiences with grief grounded her in the the work sh...

Even if you don't really celebrate it, Valentine's Day can be rough when you're grieving. This year, we decided to bring you a compilation of love stories from listeners. In their clip they answered one of these questions: How did your person love you? How did you love your person? How did you fall in love? Even though Valentine's Day is usually marketed as only about romantic love, this episode f...

For the past twenty years, the Native Wellness Institute has worked to promote wellness and balance for Native people throughout North America. Their Executive Director, Jillene Joseph, joined us to discuss how settler colonial policies outlawing funeral rights purposefully cut people off from traditional knowledge and practices. This trauma reverberates today as Native communities work to reconne...

Molly loves her life, but she didn't always feel that way. 18 years ago, on a rainy winter morning, Molly's life changed in an instant. The instant was her mom, who was also her best friend, dying of a heart attack while driving Molly to school. In the almost two decades since that day, Molly's worked hard to figure out what helps her feel healthy and grounded. Part of that work was realizing that...

As of January 21st, 2021, over 400,000 people in the U.S. have been killed by the coronavirus. Globally, the number is over 2 million. Despite attempts by journalists and public health officials to put these numbers into context, what gets lost in tracking case counts are the stories of the people who died and their family members left behind. This is one of those stories. The story of Maria, belo...

This is the story of how a random encounter led to a transformative friendship that's lasted for more than 50 years. A friendship rooted in the shared experience of grieving a parent who died of suicide. David Pincus and Rick Knapp met as high school seniors and they had a lot in common, including having a mothers who died of suicide. Prior to meeting it was something they rarely talked about, but...

After her oldest son was killed in 2017, Julia Mallory had a sense that creativity was a place she could go in her grief. In that place, she wrote Survivor's Guilt , a collection of essays and poems about grief, joy, and the moments when they intersect. In this episode we discuss: The early days of grief. What focusing on resilience asks us to ignore. The concept of survivor's guilt. The push to "...

When Carmel Breathnach was 11, her mother died of cancer. While she felt supported at home by her father, she didn't feel that way at school. Now as an adult, Carmel's carried this grief though graduations, through moving from Ireland to the U.S., through getting married, and now through a pandemic.  We talk about the role anger played in her grief, what she needed from her teachers, how she honor...

Amber Jeffrey is the creator and host of The Grief Gang , a podcast by and for young adults who want to normalize the conversation about loss. Amber was 19 when her mom died suddenly, throwing Amber into a period of questioning and reworking so much in her life, including her friendships and relationship with her older brother. We talk about what inspired her to start The Grief Gang , the solace s...

When Dara Kurtz was in her late twenties, she was excited. Excited about being pregnant. She was also devastated. Devastated t hat her mother was recently diagnosed with stage IV cancer. As Dara's baby grew, Dara's mother grew closer to the end of her life. Two weeks af ter Dara's daughter was born,  her mother died – sweeping Dara into a whirlwind of diametrically opposed emotional states: the th...

It's our third annual holidays & grief episode with Rebecca Hobbs-Lawrence, Pathways Program Coordinator at the Dougy Center. We share updated ideas for navigating the winter holidays while grieving, during a pandemic.  For more ideas on holidays & grief visit our website , listen to Ep. 27 & Ep. 98 , and follow us on Instagram (@thedougycenter) & Facebook (@thedougycenter) to catch all of our Dou...

For Allison Hite, two questions sparked a community project called Never, Ever Give Up . The first question was, "How do I be grateful in grief?" The second was, "What's the hardest thing you've had to do?" These questions became part of Allison's life after her mother died in a traffic accident when Allison was in her mid-twenties.  Answering them, publicly, led to Never, Ever Give Up , which at...

How do you go on living after your child's life ends? How do you continue to find connection, beauty, and meaning when someone we can't imagine living without dies? This is the question Margo Fowkes faced when her son Jimmy died of brain cancer at the age of 21. Margo barely had a moment to grapple with this devastating loss when just a year later, her mother also died. This led Margo to search fo...

BJ Miller is a Hospice & Palliative Care Medicine physician who works with patients facing the end of their lives. When BJ's sister Lisa died of suicide over twenty years ago, he did what so many of us do, he pushed his pain aside. It was his work, supporting patients with advanced serious illnesses, that helped him realize the importance of reckoning with his own grief.  Watch BJ's TED Talk, What...

We can't separate grief from our identity. Grief is interwoven with our race, gender, sexual orientation, physical ability, access to economic resources, and every other part of who we are. Alica Forneret's mother died just over four years ago in 2016. Since that time Alica has advocated for those in grief to get the support they need - in the workplace and in their communities. More recently, she...

Shelby Forsythia returns to Grief Out Loud to talk about her new book, Your Grief, Your Way , a secular daily devotional for anyone dealing with grief.  She pairs quotes with routines and practices that people can do in any order. We talk Your Grief, Your Way , what grief means during this  time of COVID and a reckoning with police brutality and racism,  the effects of cumulative grief,  and what'...

When Derrick Kirk was six years old, he and his two sisters were removed from their home and placed in the foster care system. For Derrick, growing up in the orphanage gave him a window into a different way of life. Now a successful entrepreneur, Derrick started the Derrick Kirk Foundation and his podcast, My Thoughts With Derrick Kirk , to help other youth growing up in the foster care system.  I...

Paula Fontenelle is a journalist turned therapist who specializes in suicide prevention and supporting those who have had someone die of suicide. Paula's professional interest in this work is deeply rooted in personal experience. Her father died of suicide just over 15 years ago and his death set her on two parallel trajectories. Professionally, she studied everything she could about suicide. Pers...

Many of us grew up believing that some emotions are good, some emotions are better, and some (most) emotions are bad. When it comes to grief the list of emotions we'd like to not have can be long: guilt, anger, shame, regret, etc. What would happen though if we stopped ranking emotions? Stopped thinking of them as problems that need to be fixed? It was this shift that changed things for Krista St....

Mira Simone is a writer, mother, and grieving wife. Her husband Brian died of cancer in the winter of 2019, just seven weeks after a diagnosis of stage IV melanoma. When Brian died, their daughter Davida was about to turn three. Brian's death created a huge crater in their lives - leaving Mira to figure out how to live without Brian, who was the biggest love she'd ever known, while also supporting...

For the past three decades, Kevin Carter, LCSW , has worked as a clinician, administrator, and educator. He currently serves as the Clinical Director at the Uplift Center for Grieving Children in Philadelphia, PA. Kevin's work focuses on how grief and trauma affect youth, and particularly the African American children and families he works with. We discuss how the combination of COVID-19, protests...

When Brianne  Grebil's  mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's at the age of 62, Brianne packed up and moved from LA back to northern Idaho to help care for her. Over the course of her mother's  illness,  many  of the moments Bria nne dreaded the most ended up being the ones that shifted her understanding of love and what remains when we lose everything  we knew to be true about the people in our l...

For the past two decades, Alesia Alexander, LCSW, has worked with grieving children, teens, and families. The original inspiration for doing this work was very personal. Alesia's father died of cancer in 1994 and before he died, he asked her to find a way to give back to the community that gave so much to them throughout his illness. From this death bed promise, Alesia went on to focus on supporti...

To heal you have to feel it and to feel it you have to be present with it . When Ashley Jone s's  infant daughter   Skylar   was diagnosed with SMA (spinal muscular atrophy),  she wasn't unfamiliar with grief, but  she had no idea how Skylar's illness and death would propel her into a new world of supporting others. What started as a photo session for a family grieving the death of their baby, has...

Children's books transport us – sometimes to places of imagination and sometimes to places rooted in place and culture. A children's book can also be doorway to emotional understand ing around complex topics. Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong American writer  and   grieving mother  who recently published The Shared Room , a brave and tender book for children (and adults) about a family grieving the death...