Episodes
April 30, 2025
Always There, Always Gone
Marty Ross-Dolen grew up in the shadow of her mother's grief. Her mother's parents had died in a plane crash when she was 14, just 5 years before Marty was born. She knew that her mother was different from her friend's mother...
April 23, 2025
Breath Becoming AIr
When Dr. Paul Kalanithi faced a stage IV lung cancer diagnosis in his last year as a neurosurgical resident, his wife, Dr. Lucy Kalanithi faced it with him. In the twenty-two months that followed, they continued to work, had ...
April 16, 2025
The Black Widow
When Leslie Streeter's husband, the love of her life, died suddenly after asking for kisses, she struggled to fulfill the life they had built together. Would she be able to complete the adoption of their son, not even 3 years...
April 2, 2025
That Good Night
Raised with a keen awareness that everything is impermanent, that all life ends, Sunita Puri was challenged to find a way to come to terms with medicine's inability to accept these truths. Her perspective was at odds with the...
March 26, 2025
The Last Ecstatic Days
Aditi Sethi was a doctor who agreed to act as a death doula for Ethan SIsser, who wanted to die in joy and share it with the world. The extraordianry film The Last ecstatic Days, tells the tale not only of Ethan but of the l...
March 19, 2025
Saving Ellen: A Memoir
Growing up with a sister who might at any moment die, a father who was an angry alcoholic, Maura Casey learned to take care of herself. She also learned to drink and run from the bullies. When her mother donated a kidney to s...
March 12, 2025
The Widow's Crayon Box
When Molly Peacock's husband died, poetry supported her grief. Already a published poet with several books, she captured her experience of grief, navigating the twists and turns through creative expression. Some grievers rely...
March 5, 2025
The Full Catastrophe
After a lifetime of deep loss, her parents at twelve, and many others after that, Casey Mulligan Walsh longed for a family. She married young and had three children but ultimately lost the marriage. Still, the epiphany she ha...
Feb. 26, 2025
Unrig the Game
Women of color are reliably at the forefront of every progressive movement, both in sheer numbers and in activism. Yet there are many factors that limit their leadership and put an undue burden on them, resulting in a loss to...
Feb. 12, 2025
No One Gets to Fall Apart
When a child grows up with a single mentally ill mother, chaos seems normal. How did Sarah LaBrie find her way to a life not defined by fear and confusion? In part, it was through writing, whether or not she knew she was tryi...
Feb. 5, 2025
Where Yellow Flowers Bloom
Our guest this week, Kim Cantin, is a powerful symbol of resilience, having survived the devastating Montecito mudslides of 2018 that claimed 23 lives, including her husband and son, and left her daughter buried alive. Throug...
Jan. 29, 2025
A Space in the Heart
Guest bio: Larry Carlat is a and group leader for bereaved parents at Our House Grief Support Center in Los Angeles. He has written for The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, GQ, Rolling Stone, Men’s Journal, Men’s...
Jan. 22, 2025
The Last Love Note
The Last Love Note tells the fictional story of a young widow trying to find a way to move forward. Its heroine, Kate, has continued to parent, work, and keep her sense of humor but has had very little time to give her grief ...
Jan. 15, 2025
Bright Eyes
Bridey Thelen-Heidel had a chaotic and traumatic childhood with a mother who brought dangerous men into the house and failed to protect the little girl called Bright Eyes. But Bridey was determined to face her traumas and fin...
Jan. 8, 2025
Seeding Joy
Darnell Lamont Walker makes it his life's mission to seed joy everywhere he is. How do his callings intersect? He is a children's television writer, a death doula, a filmmaker. In every case he hopes to inform, encourage and ...
Dec. 18, 2024
Keep Breathing
A week before their wedding, Kate Truitt's fiancee died unexpectedly. In deep grief and trauma she saw no way forward and, even as an informed investigator of the way trauma affects us, she could only live the reality. It was...
Dec. 11, 2024
Architecture of Death
In a three part series for the non-profit When You Die, Johanna Lunn has explored questions of dying and death. She shared her first film on Good Grief, and now we welcome her back to talk about her third, Architecture of Dea...
Dec. 4, 2024
Also Here
How does a traumatic history affect a family? Even though Brooke Randel's grandmother never talked about living through the Holocaust, it was a part of the fabric of the family tapestry. And then one day, it came out of the s...
Nov. 27, 2024
Can Anyone Tell Me?
Already a grief counselor when both of her parents died within a few years, Meghan Riordan Jarvis was undone by the full weight of her own grief. Her immense sadness resulted in a hospitalization and a long road to find her w...
Nov. 6, 2024
A Healing Heart
Nichole Lee had a successful career as a business consultant, traveling the world and supporting change makers on a global level. When her mother died she continued to work just as hard, despite her grief and the global COVID...
Oct. 30, 2024
The Widow's Crayon Box
When Molly Peacock's husband died, poetry supported her grief. Already a published poet with several books, she captured her experience of grief, navigating the twists and turns through creative expression. Some grievers rely...
Oct. 23, 2024
Lamenting While Doing Laps in the Lake
How does loss become poetry? Bill Ratner's losses lived in the depths of his soul and over time, found expression. Creativity can help us to move grief through us, transforming the shape of it. What was that process for Bill?...
Oct. 16, 2024
How Children Grieve
Corinne Masur's father died suddenly when she was just fourteen. When grief came into a family that had no idea how to talk about it, they mostly didn't. Corinne went on to become a psychologist, writing what she came to call...
Oct. 9, 2024
Stay
If you grow up, as Julie Fingersh did, convinced you shouldn't share the family secrets, that all that messy stuff is private, how do you cope when those secrets begin to undermine your life? How do you come to terms with bei...