How To Deal With Grief and Trauma

Send us Fan Mail On the 21st of June 2026, this podcast turns four years old. In this anniversary episode, I step away from the interview format to speak directly to the people who have made this show what it is: the guests who gave their time and their honesty, and the listeners who showed up week after week — in the hardest seasons of their lives — and kept listening. This episode is a thank-you...

Send us Fan Mail In this final mini-series episode, I reveal and revisit number one — the most listened-to episode in the podcast’s history: my conversation with Turiya Hanover on the loss of significant partners in life. Turiya is the co-founder of Path Retreats and the Path of Love process, a therapist and course leader with over five decades of experience. In Episode 4, she speaks from inside f...

Send us Fan Mail In this mini-series episode, I revisit number two in the top ten most listened-to episodes: Episode 1 — the very first conversation I ever recorded for this podcast — with Rachel Tenpenny on why and how healing is possible after loss. Rachel’s twin daughters, Aubrey and Ellie, were born in 2008 and died a few days after their birth. In the years that followed, she made a promise t...

Send us Fan Mail In this mini-series episode, I revisit number three in the top ten most listened-to episodes: my conversation with Deb Dana , clinician, consultant, author, and the world’s leading translator of Polyvagal Theory — on loss, the nervous system, and what it means to trust your body through grief. Deb brings both her professional expertise and something deeply personal to this convers...

Send us Fan Mail In this mini series episode, I revisit number four in the top ten most listened-to episodes: my third conversation with Meghan Riordan Jarvis — psychotherapist, podcast host, TEDx speaker, and author — on the essential questions about grief, loss and trauma. Meghan joins me for the third time, and this conversation goes deepest. We explore the intersection of grief and trauma, wha...

Send us Fan Mail In this mini-series episode, I revisit number five in the top ten most listened-to episodes: my double-episode conversation with James Fish Gill — heart coach, yoga teacher, and transformational facilitator from Australia — on bringing loving awareness to pain, grief, and longing. Fish introduces the concept of conscious communication and applies it to grief: rather than dismissin...

Send us Fan Mail In this mini-series episode, I revisit number six in the top ten most listened-to episodes: my conversation with Laney Rosenzweig , the developer of Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) — an evidence-based, eye movement therapy that can resolve the symptoms of PTSD, grief, depression, anxiety, and more, often in just one to three sessions. Laney is a Licensed Marriage and Family T...

Send us Fan Mail In this mini-series episode, I revisit number seven in the top ten most listened-to episodes: my third conversation with Turiya Hanover — co-founder of Path Retreats and the Path of Love process, therapist, and grief survivor — on the deep connection between grief, trauma, essence, connection, and safety. Turiya first appeared on this podcast in Episode 4, which became one of the...

Send us Fan Mail Content note: This episode discusses suicide, intimate partner abuse, and traumatic loss. In this mini-series episode, I revisit number eight in the top ten most listened-to episodes: my conversation with Shavaun Scott , a psychotherapist and author who shares the story of her husband’s revenge suicide — an act carried out on the very day she asked for a divorce, after 17 years in...

Send us Fan Mail In this mini-series episode, I revisit number nine in the top ten most listened-to episodes of this podcast: my conversation with David Kessler on the question that almost every grieving person asks — how long does grief last? David Kessler is one of the world’s foremost experts on grief and loss, the author of six books, including Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief , and t...

Send us Fan Mail In this mini-series episode, I revisit one of the top ten most listened-to episodes of the podcast: my conversation with Stephanie Sarazin on Ambiguous Grief — the grief that arises from losing someone who is still alive. Stephanie is a writer, researcher, and ambiguous grief guide, and the author of Soulbroken: A Guidebook For Your Journey Through Ambiguous Grief, winner of the 2...

Send us Fan Mail This podcast turns four years old on the 21st of June 2026. To mark the anniversary, I am counting down the ten most listened-to episodes in the show’s history — one mini episode at a time. In this trailer, I introduce the full countdown and share what to expect from the mini series. Guests include David Kessler, Deb Dana, Meghan Riordan Jarvis, and more. The countdown starts now....

Send us Fan Mail This is the first of a two-part episode. Check out part 2: 189 What a Death Doula Knows About Grief That Most of Us Don't (2/2) | Sierra Campbell What does someone who has spent more than three decades sitting with the dying actually know about grief, and what can that teach the rest of us about living? Today's guest is an elder caregiver, end-of-life doula, and founder...

Send us Fan Mail This is the second of a two-part episode. Check out part 1: 188 What a Death Doula Knows About Grief That Most of Us Don't (1/2) | Sierra Campbell What does someone who has spent more than three decades sitting with the dying actually know about grief, and what can that teach the rest of us about living? Today's guest is an elder caregiver, end-of-life doula, and founder...

Send us Fan Mail This episode is different. Instead of sitting across from a guest, I am the one in the chair. In this solo episode, I share my own personal timeline of grief, loss, and trauma — and trace how each experience shaped the ones that came after it. From what I learned about grief growing up, through infertility, miscarriage, the death of my daughter A’Mya three days after she was born,...

Send us Fan Mail Nathalie and Amanda go beneath the speaker and the frameworks to the private, unscripted territory of grief.  In this episode, we cover What it costs to hold it together when falling apart isn't an option The parts of the story that resist being turned into a growth tool The difference between resilience as armour and resilience as a path back to yourself What genuine support...

Send us Fan Mail When someone is visibly grieving, the people around them quickly conclude, usually without adequate evidence. She isn't crying, so she must be coping. He went back to work, so he must be over it. They seem angry, not sad — that can't be grief. These are presumptions. In Part 3 of this three-part series, Nathalie examines how presumptions about grief operate in real time,...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when an entire nation is traumatised? How does collective grief differ from personal loss, and what does healing actually look like at that scale? In this episode, I speak with Dr Imke Hansen, trauma therapist, scholar of Eastern European History, and Deputy Director of the human rights organisation Libereco – Partnership for Human Rights. Nathalie and Imke first met...

Send us Fan Mail Before a loss happens, most people already hold a set of beliefs about what grief will look like. These are not myths absorbed from the culture in general — they are something more personal: internalised convictions, absorbed through upbringing, family, religion, and lived experience, that then shape how a person enters and moves through grief. These are preconceptions. In Part 2...

Send us Fan Mail HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AND TRAUMA is completely self-funded, produced, and edited by me, Nathalie Himmelrich. Consider making a small donation to support the Podcast: bit.ly/SupportGTPodcast . Thank you!  For more information, please visit Nathalie’s website , join the podcast’s Instagram page, and subscribe to the newsletter to receive updates on future episodes here . About this...

Send us Fan Mail Grief myths are everywhere. They show up in condolence cards, in workplace bereavement policies, in the advice given by well-meaning friends and family and, often, inside the grieving person themselves. They feel like common sense. They are not. In this episode, the first in a three-part series on the beliefs that distort the experience of grief, Nathalie unpacks eight of the most...

Send us Fan Mail HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AND TRAUMA is completely self-funded, produced, and edited by me, Nathalie Himmelrich. Consider making a small donation to support the Podcast: bit.ly/SupportGTPodcast . Thank you!  For more information, please visit Nathalie’s website , join the podcast’s Instagram page, and subscribe to the newsletter to receive updates on future episodes here . Season 18...

Send us Fan Mail Trauma isn’t only a story in the mind—it’s also physiology, sensation, and nervous system patterning. In this final episode of the Many Faces of Trauma series, we explore how trauma can show up in the body through hyperarousal (fight/flight), hypoarousal (shutdown), stress-related symptoms over time, dissociation, and chronic tension patterns. Using a simple polyvagal-informed len...

Send us Fan Mail Dissociation is often misunderstood, but for many people it’s a protective nervous-system strategy—a way the mind and body reduce overwhelm when something feels too much to stay present for. In this intro-level episode, we explore dissociation as a spectrum: from spacing out and going blank to numbness, unreality, time loss, and feeling detached from the body or emotions. Using si...

Send us Fan Mail Complex trauma forms through repeated or prolonged exposure to threat or chronic stress—often in contexts where escape isn’t possible and where relationships or systems meant to provide safety are also part of the problem. In this intro-level episode, we clarify the difference between single-incident PTSD patterns and complex trauma, and we outline how C-PTSD discussions often inc...