Episodes
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...
Oct. 2, 2024
I Will Do Better
Charles Bock's wife always wanted to be a mother and, just a bit reluctantly, he agreed to have a child. But within a few years his wife died of cancer and he was now tasked with navigating parenting a very small child on his...
Sept. 25, 2024
Death Over Drafts
After helping to get the Medical Aid in Dying Act passed in California and then supporting its implementation, Stefanie Elkin's passion for working in end of life only grew. When she left her job at Compassion and Choices she...
Sept. 18, 2024
Make a Home Out of You
Ginelle Testa's early life with a drug dealer father and an angry mother led to just the kinds of struggles you might predict. She began the relationship with drugs and alcohol that would lead to several bottoms. She experien...
Sept. 11, 2024
Grief Pilgrim
After losses that took her to her knees, Siobhan Asgharzadeh searched for ways to move with her grief, recognizing that loss would not end, that life comes with grief. Over time she sought to support others along the profound...
Aug. 28, 2024
Fall and Recovery
Her work as a special educator did not prepare Joanne De Simone for the news that her precious baby had severe disabilities. At first, she searched for answers to the questions that plagued her; what was her son's condition, ...
Aug. 21, 2024
Our Forever Ben
When Jamie Lee SIlver's son, Ben, took his life, she dived into practices that she had been learning during his struggles with schizophrenia. Over time, she became certified in EFT tapping, a technique to heal through tapping...
Aug. 14, 2024
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...
Aug. 7, 2024
Breath Taking
When Jessica Fein's daughter, Dalia, was just five, she was diagnosed with a rare and degenerative disease that would shorten her life. Because it is rare, no one knew exactly how long she would live. But from that day forwar...
July 31, 2024
Almost Family
Out of her own experience with cancer, Ann Bancroft created an absorbing and compelling story about a woman who changes her life as a result of being diagnosed with metastatic disease. She finds new friends, rearranges her pr...
July 24, 2024
Where Tenderness Lives
Uncovering the hidden injuries of a life spent denying oneself is deep, painful and meaningful work. How do we find the tenderness and courage to do it well? Heather Plett peeled back the layers of her own truth and discovere...
July 17, 2024
My Mother's Dementia
Meredith Burns' mother was a constant emotional presence in her life, there to offer support, advice and solace. When that began to change, Meredith, and the whole family, searched for an explanation. Was she depressed? Havin...
July 10, 2024
Always a Sibling
A relationship with a sibling holds the keys to our upbringing. No other person knows what it was like to grow up in your family. Some siblings are close, others not, but if you have siblings, it leaves a mark. What happens w...
July 3, 2024
Momento
When Ashley Jones' daughter died, it threw her into a profound grief she didn't know the way out of. In those early times, pictures brought some comfort. As she moved through her own grief, she wanted to offer that comfort to...
June 26, 2024
Sorry For the Inconvenience
Farah Naz Rishi is Pakistani, American and Muslim. Her memoir, Sorry for the Inconvenience, deftly portrays the overlapping pressures that made it hard to find herself. We'll be talking about grief, family dynamics, tragedies...
June 12, 2024
The Together Effect
In her work encouraging healthier relationships as a way to live a happier life, Katarina Blom already knew how key connection is to happiness. Then she was chosen to be the psychologist in a television series called The Gent...
June 5, 2024
The Last Ecstatic Days
Ethan Sisser wanted to die in ecstasy, surrounded by music, community, beauty, but mostly, love. His wishes did not fit neatly into even the hospice paradigm but he was able to draw together a group of supporters, one of whom...
May 29, 2024
When Skies Are Gray
Anticipating the joy of welcoming her first child, Lindsey Henke was completely unprepared for the shock of that child's stillbirth. Although Lindsey had been a practicing psychotherapist for a few years, she had not had that...
May 22, 2024
The Other Side of Nothing
Personal experience with grief and mental health challenges in her family led Anastasia Zadeik to write her novel, The Other Side of Nothing. The families she wriwtes about struggle to know how to support themselves and each ...
May 15, 2024
Everywhere I Look
As a younger sister, Ona Gritz idolized her older sibling. But as the favored child with a disability, she could see her sister struggling. It was thirty years after the murder of her then pregnant sister, partner and baby th...
May 8, 2024
All For You
When Dena Rueb Romero discovered a box full of letters and memorabilia in her mother's house, she furtively took it home with her. Although she knew her parents had fled the holocaust, they failed to share the details of thei...