Grieving Voices

Ram Dass Khalsa is a singer-songwriter who, through the loss of his newborn son to Trisomy-18, learned how to write a new song as he learned how to grieve healthily. It would take Ram Dass several years to learn what it means to grieve healthily, and growing up with "yogi" parents, taught him the importance of being in his body. However, he never learned how to be with his feelings. Ram...

Imagine identifying your parent for a crime, knowing that what you disclose will send your only parent to prison. Imagine moving 11x by the time you were in the 5th grade. And imagine being the child of a parent who, for most of your childhood, was struggling with undiagnosed bipolar disorder. Kyira was no stranger to chaos and uneasiness. She was the only child of a parent who turned to substance...

We all have intuition. And we all have the power to tap into the intuition within us, too. However, sometimes our intuition doesn't feel good to us. As was the case the day that Stephanie's father wasn't coming home as was expected. She looked out the window, saw his car but didn't see him and instinctively knew something wasn't right. At the age of 15, Stephanie found her...

This week's episode is an invitation to look at how you had been mothered and nurtured by your mother (or mother figure) as a child and how that has influenced you today. I also bring Mother Nature into the conversation because what Mother Nature gives us is a great analogy, in general, for the topic of experiencing mothering and nurturing.  When was the last time you gave yourself, as an adu...

Were you born and raised in the land of the free and home of the brave, the United States of America? This week's episode reminds me that oppression and enslavement are not only in Yemen, where this week's guest was born but also in the free world. It just looks different from what Maha experienced. Ironically, Maha fled Yemen, where she experienced oppression, enslavement, arranged marr...

How would you live your life if a ticking time bomb was woven into the very fabric of your everyday life? Would you carry on business as usual? Would you live like tomorrow is not guaranteed and chip away at your bucket list?  Rachael's story isn't about a ticking time bomb that is in her body. Rather, it is about the ticking time bomb of grief that lies in wait due to the one her belove...

In this week's episode, Michele of @soaringspiritsintl and a 2021 Top 10 CNN Hero, shares her story about the challenges of blending a family, but then enduring a devastating loss and grieving as a blended family. But because grief is cumulative and cumulatively negative, a previous divorce, followed by the sudden death of her spouse, then the death of her father, taught her so much more abou...

As a mother, carrying and growing another human in the womb for nine months, it is expected that a healthy child will be born. However, for Elizabeth, that is not what happened. Her world was shattered when she realized that she wouldn't be a new mom overflowing with joy. Rather, she would become a mother with grieving empty arms.  After her firstborn died, Elizabeth and her husband were fort...

When you're pulled between the feelings of what you wish would be different, better, or more, and faced with a moment where a decision has to be made, it can be challenging to cut through all of the emotion and lean into trust. In this week's Takeaways & Reflections episode, I use Kasey and Michelle's stories to illustrate the challenges we can have with trust, not only in our o...

In the grief recovery programs, one way we describe grief is that it is the loss of hopes, dreams, and expectations. This description of grief, in this way, has not been better understood by society as a whole more than it has since 2020 with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. As society begins to emerge from the darkness Covid brought to so many lives, we start to see ourselves and others in a n...

Warning: This episode contains a mother's account of her son, CJ's, final days of life. This may be difficult for some listeners to hear, particularly those who have lost a child. 99 Days. How much life can you squeeze out of 99 precious newborn days? Especially when 84 of those are spent in the hospital? Kabuki, a major theatrical form in Japan for four centuries, became less of a theat...

Addiction isn't just applicable to a substance use disorder. Often the anxiousness of learning to live life as a griever can lead to overdoing, busyness, workaholism, etc. We can become addicted to being busy in an effort to avoid feeling our feelings.  "Keeping Busy" is actually one of the 6 Myths of Grief.  In this week's Takeaways & Reflections episode, I reflect on alco...

This week's episode is a collaboration with my friend, Dru Jaeger, co-founder of Club Soda and author of How to Be a Mindful Drinker: Cut Down, Take a Break, or Quit . Dru woke up one morning a happy child with two parents and went to bed that night without a mother. She died suddenly and unexpectedly of a massive brain hemorrhage. Within six months, his father would relocate their family to...

When you're in a place of self-loathing, self-love likely won't come naturally and will be challenging to prioritize and do. However, when grieving, self-love must be a non-negotiable aspect of grieving to grieve well . In this week's episode, I cover the eight dimensions of wellness courtesy of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMH), which collectively...

"Bang, I made a mistake!" Those were the words, my guest, Wayne Forrest, described the moment that changed his life forever. It was a chance happening (or was it?) that Wayne had some teammates out injured from his rugby team, and he filled in to play the game he loved. One play during that game would have him waking up in a hospital bed five days later to realize he could not only move...

Agoraphobia is a mental and behavioral disorder, specifically an anxiety disorder characterized by anxiety symptoms in situations where the person perceives their environment to be unsafe with no easy way to escape. These situations can include open spaces, public transit, shopping centers, or simply being outside their home. Amy's mom died suddenly and unexpectedly when she was 11 of a massi...

In this Takeaways & Reflections episode, I reflect on the importance of not grieving alone. We all need support through grief because, going it alone, keeps us stuck and ruminating on our grief. Connection to others is what gives a griever hope. I also share in this episode how I took a long way around to find the right support for me and the impact that had on my own life and my grief. If not...

Fear can hold you prisoner, hope can set you free. - The Shawshank Redemption This week's guest, Brent Scarpo, was a casting director for one of the most acclaimed and beloved films of all time, "The Shawshank Redemption." Through his personal love of the film, he shares a few of his favorite lessons from the movie. These lessons served him well as he grieved the loss of his best fr...

What is your relationship with food? Would you say it's healthy? Does it leave you often feeling shameful? Does the self-critic lurk out from the shadows after you've eaten something that isn't deemed "healthy?" I know I've left a drive-thru at times wondering why on earth I ever stopped, as I just feel like physical crap after eating something I know isn't servi...

Anorexia nervosa: an eating disorder characterized by attempts to lose weight to the point of starvation. Hannah believed she was destined to suffer in silence. Her obsession with food, body image, and a strive for perfection began in middle school. She was always the tallest in her class and developed early on as well. Hannah would go through periods of starving herself followed by an episode of...

This episode is a quick and dirty one about how we don't heal in isolation and that support is an important piece of the grief puzzle. In all of the conversations I've had with grievers of all kinds over the past several years, none of them wished they would be alone in their grief. Every single one had a desire to be heard and held in their sorrow. Grief is alienating. And, society does...

Like many kids, Phoebe grew up in a broken home. Her parents split up when she was 7 and she would remain living with her father until she turned 14. With her own knowing and willpower, she left her father to go live with her grandmother until landing back with her mother. What she experienced between ages 7 and 14 was a frightening relationship with her father, a Vietnam vet, who was struggling w...

What is it costing you by looking to others for permission to grieve your way? What is it costing you, to not address the child within you and the grief you've carried with you into adulthood from your childhood? Grief isn't about death alone. So, don't be mistaken that because someone did not die in your childhood that you don't have grief or, that you aren't holding on t...

I asked this week's guest, Jill Johnson-Young, the following question: "How are you still upright?" @RebelliousWidow experienced the loss of Linda, her first love, after 23 years. Linda had survived breast cancer but later succumbed to pulmonary fibrosis which was due to the chemo she received to beat the breast cancer. Jill would find herself, what she calls, a "rebellious wid...

As a child, were you called a crybaby? A child taught to grieve alone becomes an adult who also grieves alone. To break the cycle of learned behavior, we have to learn new information. If you want to learn how to support children in their grief, this episode walks you through what not to do and what to do instead. Most of us grew up without a healthy demonstration of how to grieve healthily. When...