Grief Out Loud

When Frank Flores' younger brother Marcelo died suddenly at 23, Frank found himself in an unfamiliar role: identifying his brother's body, navigating paperwork, and figuring out how to bring him home to the U.S. from Mexico. There was little room for grief. Instead, Frank went back to work - and then worked even more.

Five years later, Frank's father died during COVID. Once again, grief was crowded out by the bureaucracy of death: bank accounts, debts, paperwork, family responsibilities, and the messy, exhausting task of untangling a life after death. Frank describes this as a "mountain of...

What if we thought about death not as something that needs to be handed over to institutions, but as something that communities could face together? 

In this episode we talk with Crystal Meneses, a death worker, spiritual counselor, hospice chaplain, artist, musician, and longtime community caregiver. Crystal's path into death work began with watching a recording of her grandfather's funeral in the Philippines, which sparked questions around being able to one day provide a similar ceremony for her father. Questions that inspired her work to help us rethink how we approach death and dying. 

Crystal and J...

In 2022, Steph Tupper's two older children, Ali and Joe, were killed in a car crash. Ali was 16 and Joe was 14. Four years later, Steph is still learning how to live with the reality of losing her children while continuing to parent her youngest daughter. 

In this episode, Steph talks openly about the devastating night she learned Ali and Joe had died, the ways she continues to feel connected to them, and the complicated process of building a life around an absence that will never go away. She shares what she has learned about community, judgment from others...

When physician and writer Shanda McManus was fourteen, her mother died after living with ovarian cancer. Three years later, her grandmother - the person who became home after that loss - was killed by a drunk driver. Then, while Shanda was in medical school, her younger brother Monir was murdered on Christmas Eve. 

For years, surviving meant staying busy. Planning funerals. Managing paperwork. Pushing forward. The grief itself was boxed up, held in place by what Shanda describes as an emotional tourniquet. It kept her moving, but it also kept her separated from memories of her mother, g...

When it comes to children and grief, there's a lot we misunderstand. Adults might think they are either resilient and unaffected, too young to understand, or irreparably broken by the death of someone in their life. In reality though, their experiences of grief can be just as profound and complex as those of the adults around them. 

In this episode of Grief Out Loud, Jana talks with Certified Child Life Specialist Jessica Correnti

For many, September 11th is a shared, historical tragedy. But for today's guest, it is a personal anniversary - the day his father died.

David Ferrugio was twelve years old when his dad was killed in the World Trade Center. Twenty-five years later, his grief continues to unfold - from recently sitting with his father's forensic file at the 9/11 Memorial to hosting his own podcast, DEAD Talks, where he invites people into honest conversations about death, grief, and what it means to keep living. 

In this conversation, David reflects on carrying his private grief through suc...

What happens when grief isn't an exception, but a constant presence?

In this episode, Jana talks with researcher and educator Nora Gross about her book, Brothers in Grief: The Hidden Toll of Gun Violence on Black Boys and Their Schools, which follows the two years she spent embedded in a Philadelphia boys' high school where students were grieving repeated losses from gun violence. Through interviews, observation, and simply showing up, Nora witnessed how grief shapes friendships, school life, ideas about the future, and the social constraints Black boys face when it comes to grief.

Nora...

Is it harder when someone dies suddenly, or when you know their death is coming? 

It's a question that comes up often in grief spaces, and there's no easy answer. Both are hard - just in different ways. 

In this episode, Aimee Craig talks about grieving the deaths of both of her parents under very different circumstances. Aimee's dad died suddenly when she was 23, during a season of major life transitions. Nearly two decades later, her mom died after living with cancer for many years, including five years with a terminal diagnosis. 

Aimee reflect...

How do you talk with children about death, dying, and grief - especially when the truth feels impossible to say?

Most adults feel unprepared to tell a child that someone in their life has an advanced serious illness or has died. There's often a deep desire to protect kids from pain, avoid overwhelming them, or wanting to wait until there's a "better" time to talk. But children often already sense that something has changed.

In this episode, Jana is joined by Dougy Center colleagues Rebecca Hobbs-Lawrence, M.A. and Sat Kaur Khalsa, M.S.W...

Have you ever found yourself trying to outrun grief? That's what Camila Crews did when she was 19 and her mother died. Twenty years later, following the heartbreaking disappearance and death of her father, Camila stopped running and started feeling. Unable to just keep pushing through, she had to face her grief and learn how to care for herself in the process. 

Facing her grief inspired Camila to start Sorry for Your Loss (Cards), an initiative to help people better understand grief and show up for those who are mourning. Centering the experiences of Black and Brown communities, Sor...

In December of 2021, Sawyer was halfway through their final year of college in a world that was still reeling from the pandemic. Home for the holidays, Sawyer got the heartbreaking news that their older brother, Jason, had died by suicide - a before-and-after moment that continues to reverberate today.

Sawyer shares their nuanced perspective on grief, delving into how mental health, incarceration, and other systemic barriers impacted Jason's life and death. We also explore how the phrase, "It's not your fault," while well-intentioned, can leave little space for those who are grieving to truly reckon with both...

Acknowledgment, validation, and curiosity – meeting grief with these three elements is crucial in creating supportive, culturally relevant grief support environments for children and adults. Dr. Allen Lipscomb has spent his career researching, designing, and implementing anti-racist interventions that directly support not just grief from death loss, but also the grief from racialized trauma experienced by those in the Black community.

Dr. Lipscomb shares his personal experiences with grief, including the death of his grandmother when he was a child and being wrongly accused of a crime in his adolescence. He also discusses the roots of his work as...

In this episode of Grief Out Loud, Jana is joined by N'keya Peters-Camille, LCSW, RYT® 200, a social worker, certified Grief Yoga teacher, facilitator for e-motion grief meet ups, and creator of Hope: A One Line A Day Journal for the Bereaved. N'keya shares the story of her mother, Hope - a woman she describes as her soulmate - who died of pancreatic cancer in 2021 at the age of 46.

N'keya reflects on growing up alongside her mother, witnessing her overcome immense challenges, and experiencing firsthand what it meant to be deeply seen, supported, and loved. After her mother's d...

Mother's Day is approaching - Sunday, May 10th, 2026 - and it's a "holiday" that comes with lots of mixed emotions for those who are grieving. Whether you're a child grieving a parent, a parent grieving a child, or anyone who is carrying grief into the day, this episode might be for you. We explore why holidays connected to particular relationships can be so tough in grief and outline ideas for navigating both the lead-up and the day itself. 

This episode originally aired in April 2015. 

Other Grief Out Loud episodes related to mothers, mothering, and Mother's Da...

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Kailey Bradley about support for grieving a death loss, but also the more overlooked non-death losses, including chronic illness, infertility, shifting identities, and the futures we imagined but don't get to live. 

Dr. Bradley is a clinician and educator who specializes in working with children and families navigating grief and illness. Kailey shares her experiences growing up with chronic illness and being diagnosed with premature ovarian failure at age 12, and how those layered losses affected her at different life stages. We explore what it means to "process" grief, why anger and big...

Jeremy's mom was a protector, an optimist, and someone who held onto a sense of lightness - even after a cancer diagnosis that led to her death just a few months later.

In this episode, Jeremy shares what it was like to navigate such a short window between his mom's diagnosis and death, and how her outlook continues to shape him and his grief. From visiting her just before her death to to time spent in the woods bow hunting, he describes the ways he still feels connected to her.

After her death, Jeremy's connection...

What does it mean to live with uncertainty - especially when your body, your capacity, and your sense of self are all changing at once?

In this episode, Jana is joined again by author and advocate Marisa Renee Lee. You may know Marisa from her first book, Grief Is Love, or from her work helping people tell the truth about grief. In this conversation, she returns to share about her new book, Waiting for Dawn, and the realities of living with long COVID - an experience that has reshaped her daily life, her work, and her understanding...

Shelby Forsythia is well acquainted with grief. After a series of losses that started in her late teens and culminated in the death of her mother from cancer, Shelby became an expert in avoiding and outrunning her grief. Then, an incident with a stolen wallet broke through that avoidance; in the aftermath of letting those feelings out, she realized she needed to give herself permission to grieve. Since then, Shelby's done so much in the realm of grief support—as a coach, author, and host of the Grief Grower podcast. Shelby's newest book, Of Course, I'm Here, Right Now, wr...

What does grief look like when you lose your wife, two daughters, your home, and nearly everything you own - all in a single night? In this episode we talk with Michael Reed, a husband, father, and author whose life was forever changed when a wildfire swept through his community, taking the lives of his wife Constance, his older daughter Chloe, his youngest, Lily, their pets, and reducing their home to ashes. Nearly a decade later, Michael shares about the darkness he fell into, who was there to hold him and his son up, the ways he stays connected...

In this episode of Grief Out Loud, we talk with death & grief care professional, educator, and cultural advocate Joél Simone, also known as The Grave Woman. 

Joél shares the story behind a childhood drawing that declared her future as "the grave woman," and how that early curiosity about death grew into a lifelong vocation in funeral service, grief education, and cultural competency. Drawing from decades of experience, Joél reflects on the spiritual, cultural, and embodied dimensions of grief, including what she's learned by listening closely to families, children, and traditions that are too often overlooked. 

When Matt Fogelson's father died of lung cancer during his senior year of college, he turned to music to express what words couldn't - rage, self-loathing, and grief so profound he didn't know where to put it. 

In this conversation, Matt - author of the new memoir Restrung - talks about the silence that surrounded his father's terminal illness, the vacuum left by an absent but beloved parent, and how grunge music (especially Soundgarden and Pearl Jam) created space for him to feel what was hard to put into words. 

Matt shares how his Aunt Wendy bec...

When Christina Babich's partner, Alex, died suddenly from a brain aneurysm while they were visiting his family in Italy, her world shattered in more ways than one. In addition to the grief of losing the person she loved and the future they were building together, Christina was also left to navigate the aftermath of a deeply traumatic event - one that profoundly impacted her nervous system, sense of safety, and identity. 

In this episode, Christina shares what it was like to grieve a sudden, "out-of-order" death while also navigating the derealization, hypervigilance, and other ways the trauma of his deat...

In this episode of Grief Out Loud, we talk with Adell Coleman about her mother who was killed when Adell was just 24 years old. Adell reflects on the closeness of their relationship and how her mom's death radically shifted her sense of safety in the world. She shares how the circumstances around her mother's death, including being the person who found her, has made it difficult to remember how her mom lived, without reliving how she died. 

Adell also talks about what it's been like raising two daughters who never met their grandmother, but somehow carry her presenc...

What if grief isn't a journey for us to eventually finish, but more a language we become fluent in? In this first episode of 2026, we talk with writer, storyteller, and social entrepreneur, John Onwuchekwa, whose life was profoundly shaped by the death of his brother Sam in 2015. John shares how Sam's death altered not just his relationships and priorities, but his understanding of grief itself.

Rather than framing grief as a journey with an endpoint, John offers a different metaphor: grief as a language that we learn over time, one with past, present, and future tenses. He...

In the fall of 2023, Mackenzie Galloway-Cole was living out her rom-com-worthy love story with her wife Megan in New York City. Then, on an ordinary night in November, Megan collapsed and died a few hours later from a sudden cardiac event. In the aftermath, Mackenzie had to find her way in this newly shattered world without Megan, her anchor and biggest cheerleader. 

Mackenzie reflects on the shock of becoming a young widow, the added layers of grief that come with queer partner loss, and the painful realities of navigating death care systems that often default to heteronormative a...

It's our annual holiday episode, this time with Dougy Center Executive Director and TEDx speaker Brennan Wood. Brennan first encountered Dougy Center after her mom, Doris, died of breast cancer three days after Brennan's 12th birthday. She has since navigated almost four decades of holiday seasons with grief along for the ride. She shares about the early years that were awful; the young-adult years she spent volunteering away from family; and how, as an adult, she's learned to hold both grief and joy while creating new traditions for her own family. Whether this is your first or 41st holiday...

When Kyndal Parks' grandfather died on Black Friday - the day after Thanksgiving – she lost one of her biggest supporters and confidants. While navigating her grief, Kyndal was also navigating life as a college student where she often felt unseen in her grief by faculty and the wider institution. What began as a class assignment turned into a powerful audio piece about loss, legacy, and the urgent need for grief-informed spaces on college campuses, particularly at HBCUs where collective trauma, silence, and resilience intertwine. 

In this conversation, Kyndal shares about her grandfather's extraordinary life - from his childhood in t...

When Hilary was 18, her oldest sister, Kelly, died from a rare cancer called DSRCT (desmoplastic small round cell tumor). In the same year, Hilary left for college and her parents divorced - three life-altering events that reshaped her relationships, sense of stability, and the early years of adulthood. 

In this episode, we talk about:

When Cassie arrived at Dougy Center for her first peer grief support group for young adults after her dad died, she sat in the parking lot wondering if she could even walk inside. When she did, she found people her age who understood what it meant to have a parent die - people who would end up shaping her life in ways she never imagined. In this episode, Cassie talks about how grief changed her, what it was like to find community in a peer support group, and how those friendships continue to support her years later. Now, as...

When you're grieving, "Take care of yourself," might be the last thing you want to hear. So what does self-care actually look like for a parent or caregiver who is grieving? Rebecca Hobbs-Lawrence, MA, who coordinates the Pathways Program at Dougy Center for families facing an advanced serious illness, joins us to share practical tools for caregivers who are trying to balance taking care of others with tending to themselves, along with crucial advice for friends and family who want to provide truly meaningful support.  

We discuss:

Balancin...

When Leena Magdi's younger brother, Hamoodi, was killed, her world shifted entirely. In her debut book Mourning Air, Leena explores how grief reshapes identity, faith, and love. In this conversation, Leena shares what it meant and means to be Hamoodi's sister, how sibling grief is often dismissed, and how writing helps her navigate the grief. Leena also shares about her family's forced displacement after war broke out in Sudan less than a year after Hamoodi's death - and how she's learning to grieve both her brother and her home. 

We discuss:

When someone you know dies suddenly, everything changes in an instant. The world you once knew can feel unfamiliar and unsafe, and finding your way back to even the smallest sense of stability can feel impossible.

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Jennifer Levin, therapist, educator, podcast host, and author of The Traumatic Loss Workbook: Powerful Skills for Navigating the Grief Caused by a Sudden or Unexpected Death. Jennifer specializes in supporting people grieving sudden or unexpected deaths that can completely upend how we see the world and shift our sense of safety.

We...

When Tiriq Rashad, artist, poet, and performer, sits down to write, he's not just telling his own story - he's carrying his daughter, his brother, and his mother with him. In this conversation, Tiriq shares the layered ways grief has shaped who he is: from the death of his first child before she was born, to growing up caring for his brother who lived with cerebral palsy and autism, to the sudden death of his mother. 

Through it all, Tiriq's foundation in caregiving, service, and community continues to guide him - both in his personal life and in...

When Tyler Feder was 19, her mom died of cancer, an experience she captured years later in her bestselling graphic memoir Dancing at the Pity Party. In the years since, Tyler has described herself as a "dead mom person" - reflecting just how much of her life was shaped by the death of her mother. But this past winter, Tyler's dad also died, adding a new aspect to her identity, this time as an adult orphan.  

In this episode, we discuss:

In 1986, when Kristine S. Ervin was eight years old, her mother was abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered in Oklahoma. Decades later, Kristine tells her story in Rabbit Heart - A Mother's Murder, A Daughter's Story, a memoir weaves together her fragmented childhood memories, growing up with grief, and then as an adult, reckoning with the painful details of her mother's death. The course of the book shifts when there is a break in the cold case of her mother's murder, leading to a trial and eventual conviction of Kyle Eckhart, one of the men responsible.

In this...

When someone dies, the story is often one of sadness, longing, and loss. But what happens when the person who died was also someone who caused great harm? For Kathy, who was sexually and emotionally abused by her father, his death when she was 11 brought more relief than grief.

In this conversation, Kathy shares how her early experiences with grief and trauma shaped her path as a social worker and volunteer, including her current work with teens and tweens who are grieving.  

We explore:  

How do we move from seeing grief as something to fix or overcome, to understanding it as a lifelong companion and guide? In this conversation with Rev. Dr. Jamie Eaddy CT, CTP - educator, death doula, founder of Thoughtful Transitions, and creative force behind The Ratchet Grief Project® - she invites us to reimagine grief as a friend who helps us navigate loss, change, and transition. Drawing from her personal lineage of grief through the deaths of her grandmother, cousin, and uncle, Dr. J. shares how these experiences shaped her work supporting individuals and communities, especially those living at th...

Welcome to a special "podcast takeover" episode. This week, Lindsey Whissel Fenton, creator of Speaking Grief and Learning Grief, steps in to interview Jana. Their conversation centers on Jana's beloved Boston Terrier, Captain, who died in December 2024 at the age of 15. Lindsey understands this heartache well, as her own sweet dog, Birch, died in May 2022. As a skilled interviewer and a thoughtful friend in grief, Lindsey was the perfect person to explore Jana's experience of loving and grieving for Captain.

Together, Lindsey and Jana delve into how Captain came into Jana's life, the complexities of caregiving for...

When Susie and Nick Shaw's nine-year-old son William died in a skiing accident, their world shifted permanently. In the six years since that day, they've found ways to carry their grief and stay connected to William, while continuing to honor the boy who inspired so much good in their lives and in their community.

In this deeply moving conversation, Susie and Nick reflect on William's life—his empathy, his humor, and the motto he created for himself in the year before he died: "Be Yourself." A simple but powerful phrase that inspired their nonprofit, William's Be Yourself Ch...

Jessie was 21. Molly was 11. Two days after their joint birthdays, their mom, Jill, was murdered by Molly's father. In the hours, days, and years that followed, there was little room for grief. Jessie and Molly were expected to keep going — and they did. But that forward momentum came at a cost. 

It's been nearly 20 years, and only recently have Jessie and Molly begun to revisit what happened and what it's meant to live with unspoken grief and unacknowledged trauma. As part of that process, they discovered a manila envelope packed away in storage - inside were eight chi...