SOLACE: Soul + Grief

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Grief can make a price tag feel like a moral test. When we are standing in a funeral home just days after a death, we are not only choosing a casket or an urn. We are trying to translate love, guilt, shock, and legacy into something that feels “enough,” and the options can quietly push us toward overspending.

We walk through the prodigal son story as a parable of the “prodigal mourner,” and we get specific about how grief spending happens. A mahogany casket instead of pine. An upgraded urn. Extra flowers...

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Grief can make you feel like you have to brace for impact every day, jaw tight, shoulders up, just trying to get through. We take a different path here: a slower, softer approach that trusts silence, tears, and the deep wisdom of the soul. 

Candee Lucas, a Jesuit trained spiritual director and grief chaplain, reads and reflects on “The Place of Rest,” a poem featured in The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (edited with commentary by Ivan M. Granger). We linger with lines like “Unto the deep, the dee...

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The hardest part of grief is not always what happened. Sometimes it’s what it demands from you afterward: action when you have no tools, or patience when there’s nothing you can do at all.

We share a story drawn from the documented life of Jesuit priest Pedro Arrupe, told as historical fiction, set at the Jesuit novitiate outside Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Arrupe has enough medical training to be dangerous and just enough to be useful, and after the blast he finds himself responsible for young men and for a stre...

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Grief comes with a lot of advice, and most of it has the same hidden goal: get away from the pain. Stay busy. Distract yourself. Find a lesson. But what if the more honest move is the opposite, not as a dare, but as a practice of compassion?

We talk about Tonglen, a Tibetan Buddhist “sending and taking” meditation that turns our usual instincts upside down. On the in-breath, we breathe in the real texture of suffering, our own or someone else’s. On the out-breath, we breathe out relief, spaciousness, and te...

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Some rooms don’t reward you for showing up. The person you’re there to support might be frightened, angry, sarcastic, or completely shut down and if your ability to care depends on being liked, you won’t last long. Today we are naming the kind of love that can actually hold up under end-of-life care, hospice chaplaincy, and bereavement support: agape.

Agape is love that doesn’t hinge on affection, attraction, familiarity, or shared theology. It’s a decision, repeated moment to moment, to extend care simply because someone exists and is suf...

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“Good faith” sounds like a legal phrase, but what happens when you treat it as a spiritual practice instead, especially in grief? Slow the phrase down until it shows its older meaning: *bona fides*, a kind of fidelity kept without proof. When life hurts, when doubt gets sharp, when the future won’t cooperate, good faith becomes less about winning an argument and more about how we stay authentic, honest and present with each other.

Explore what good faith asks of the person doing the accompanying, whether you’re a spiritual director...

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A funeral recording fails, years pass, and a question refuses to let go: what did I say, and what do I wish I had said?  I’m offering a do-over eulogy for my mom, Joanne Frances Kimmel Lucas, who died from cancer. If you’ve ever wanted a second chance with your words, this story meets you right where you are. 

Grief doesn’t stay polite.  We sit with Yeats’ line, “All changed, changed utterly. A terrible beauty is born,” and unpack why “terrible” belongs in our vocabulary of bereavement and coping with loss. T...

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Grief can make your life feel like a place you don’t recognize. The sky looks different, familiar rooms tilt, and the road under your feet seems to belong to someone else. 

Walk down the Emmaus Road, where two grieving disciples leave Jerusalem after everything they hoped for collapses. A stranger joins them, listens before speaking, and stays with them mile after mile until a simple breaking of bread opens their eyes. Then comes the sting and the mystery: at the exact moment of recognition, Jesus disappears. We talk about why tha...

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(This one is best heard alone in private and not while driving.)

Some losses don’t just hurt, they shock the whole body. If you’re carrying a death that came too suddenly, too violently, or too unfairly, you may know that lonely feeling of waking up at 3 a.m. with grief in your throat and no words that fix it. We’re not going to make it easy. We’re going to make it honest and we’re going to stay with you.

We begin with an anchor...

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Grief doesn’t follow a clean five-step route, and a lot of people feel worse because they think it should. We start from a different place: Psalm 23 and the honest promise of walking through the valley, not around it. Here is something practical and gentle map that doesn’t pretend the terrain is easy, but helps you find your footing when life after loss feels unreal.

We talk about where the “five stages of grief” story came from, why it was never designed to describe the grieving, and why real mourning can look...

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Grief can knock you under when you least expect it, in the middle of a normal day, with no warning and no permission asked. A way to talk about loss is not as a wound you “get over,” but as an ocean you learn to swim in. When the waves hit, you are not weak. You are human.

Why does our culture’s timeline pressure make mourning harder, from casual expectations to clinical labels that sound like a countdown? The ocean doesn’t care about deadlines, and neither does love. Share the hear...

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Grief has a way of slipping into the everyday, not as a problem to solve, but as a thread you keep discovering in your own hands. I watched the movie Odyssey with a fairly neutral reaction, yet one thing stayed with me: how clearly it portrays mourning as something communal, honest, and deeply human. That portrayal opens a fresh way to talk about bereavement, spiritual care, and what it means to carry love after loss. 

We walk through The Odyssey’s grief scenes with care: Odysseus weeping as his past is sun...

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Grief does not end when the service is over, it keeps echoing in ordinary places, in old friendships, and even in the way we fall in love again. I’m Candee Lucas, a Jesuit-trained chaplain and spiritual director, and I wanted to add a postscript to my recent conversations with Sandi Moran Brafford, because people who are grieving deserve to hear a simple truth: there is life after. Not a neat life, not an unscarred life, but a real one.

We talk about why telling the story matters, especially when your mi...

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Silence after a death can feel like the cruelest part, not just because you miss their voice, but because the world keeps asking you to “move on” while your heart refuses. Today we are holding space for that reality with a powerful reading from theologian Karl Rahner: “God of the Living” from Encounters with Silence. If you’re looking for grief support that doesn’t rush you, this is a steady companion.

Rahner paints an unforgettable picture of life as a long highway where the ones who began the journey with...

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Death can feel like a doorway into total uncertainty, especially when grief is fresh and your mind keeps searching for a clear picture of “where” your loved one is now. Take a different approach by leaning on Catholic theologian Karl Rahner and his claim that transcendence is not a special experience for a spiritual elite, but the basic shape of human consciousness. If you have ever felt pulled toward something infinite in the middle of ordinary life, Rahner would say you are already living that orientation, even before you can name it.

...

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Grief can feel like wandering off the road without noticing, then looking up and realizing it’s dark and you don’t know how to get home. That’s the emotional weather we step into today as I share a short, dreamlike excerpt from John Fosse’s novel "A Shining", chosen because sometimes someone else’s words can carry what we can’t say out loud.

The reading follows a son who sees his mother and father in the darkness and can’t tell whether he is remembering, imagining, or truly encountering t...

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A single word can quietly rewire an entire faith’s imagination of death. We start with Sheol, an ancient Hebrew concept that originally meant the realm of the dead, a shadowy destination shared by everyone rather than a place of reward and punishment. From there, we follow the translation trail that turns Sheol into Hades in Greek and infernum in Latin, and how that collapse of distinct ideas helps “hell” become a catchall in English, creating confusion that still shapes Christian afterlife theology today. 

We also talk through the major ways early C...

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Grief can change what you believe and how you talk to God, even if you never stop believing God exists. Candee sits down with Sandi Moran Brafford for a candid, tender conversation about faith after devastating loss: Sandi’s son died, and only a few months later her husband died too. What follows isn’t a clean spiritual comeback story. It’s the honest middle many people live in, where prayer feels different, trust feels risky, and your old religious instincts don’t fit the life you have now. 

Sandishares her path into...

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Grief can be hard enough when it comes once, but what happens when it hits again before you can even catch your breath? We pick back up with SandI Moran Brafford, whose year of loss includes the death of her son and, just months later, the sudden death of her husband Jim after a stage four cancer diagnosis and a surgery that was supposed to “help.” The speed of it all leaves no room to plan, no room to process, and a lingering sense of shock that many people recognize but rarely say out...

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One small decision can become a lifelong memory. I sit down with Sandi Moran Brafford as she returns to the days surrounding the sudden death of her youngest son, Rich, and tells the story with a honesty that’s both tender and blunt. She shares what it felt like to cancel a simple lunch plan because she was new at work, then wake up to a family emergency that would change everything. If you’ve lived through sudden loss, child loss, or complicated bereavement, you’ll recognize the shock, the numbness, and the way ti...

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Some losses don’t arrive like a thunderclap. They slip in quietly when you realize you don’t live there anymore, you don’t talk to those friends anymore, or you’ve outgrown a version of life that once felt permanent. That kind of change can bring real grief, even when nothing “tragic” has happened. 

Spend time with words that help many people breathe again: readings from Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet --on Joy and Sorrow, and on Time. When Gibran writes that joy and sorrow are inseparable, it challenges the way we try to s...

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Death has a brutal way of time-traveling us back to the losses we swear we’ve already “made peace with.” I’m joined by my friend of more than 60 years, Sandi Moran Brafford, a writer who has been blogging for decades about the stories we carry and the ones that break us open.

Sandi reads a short, devastatingly honest blog post she calls “Sad Stories,” written after the loss of a dear friend and after hearing about a 19-year-old killed in a tragic car accident. Those fresh deaths reopen her own life-alterin...

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Grief advice is everywhere, and a lot of it sounds comforting until you try to live inside it. We keep hearing that grief moves in stages, that time heals all wounds, that you have to “let go” to move on, that grief only counts when someone dies, and that strong people stay composed. Those ideas can turn a natural human response into a private test you feel like you’re failing.

Here, we talk about why the five stages of grief became a cultural script, what Kübler-Ross actually meant, and why rea...

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A line of fire trucks and police cars can feel like “something happening to someone else” until it’s parked on your own street; a stunned neighborhood, and a question that wouldn’t let go: what happened across the street, less than fifty yards from our ordinary lives?

I share the story of a little boy who suffered in ways no child should, behind a house that looked like any other from the outside. As the details surface, we sit with the heartbreak of not knowing his name, the heaviness of realizin...

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Some of the most common grief “comfort” assume faith, and when the person you’re supporting doesn’t share that worldview, those attempts can land like distance instead of love. Learn how to show up for non-religious grief with honesty, steadiness, and zero agenda. I

Discover who secular grievers are and why this group is growing, then name what can be missing when religion isn’t part of their life: a ready-made narrative, familiar mourning rituals, built-in community, and shared language for loss. Here is a practical framework for grief support that works...

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Love shows up most clearly when it hurts. When grief strips away the noise, we’re left staring at the one thing we can’t measure and can’t replace: the love that remains after someone is gone. We welcome you back to Solace, Soul Plus Grief with a gentle invitation into prayer, reflection, and spiritual companionship for the grieving heart. 

We move through a poetic meditation on the divine name, light, and the unsettling idea that only in us can God feel “lost” enough to ask questions. From there, we ask a blunt...

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What part of grief are you learning to meet gently?

Grief can make you feel like you’re failing at something you never volunteered for. When the tears rise up, or nothing rises up at all, the mind starts grading you: too emotional, not emotional enough, too attached, still stuck.  Those familiar thoughts offer a different frame, inspired by mindfulness teacher Sean Fargo: grief isn’t a problem to solve. It’s a natural expression of care, the heart’s response to meaningful change.

Reflect on Fargo’s experience at a retrea...

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Grief can make you feel like you’ve been exiled to a place no one else has ever been. When people try to help by saying “I know exactly how you feel,” it can land like a second loss, because your pain is not a template. I’m Candy Lucas, a chaplain and spiritual director, and I want to slow down with a part of the Bible that refuses quick fixes: the Book of Lamentations.

We walk through why Lamentations may be one of the most pastoral books in Scripture for Christia...

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Grief shows up like a power outage in the middle of ordinary life: the silence after the phone call, the empty chair, the moment you realize the world has kept moving while yours has split open.  We turn to theologian Karl Rahner for language that doesn’t flinch at that darkness or try to hustle you into feeling “better.” He offers a way to tell the truth about love, death, and the ache that follows.

Walk through Rahner’s view of the human person as “spirit in the world,” grounded in bodies and ti...

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Sometimes grief has a way of making us feel like we’re doing faith wrong, especially when we can’t “move on” or wrap our pain easily. On Good Friday, refuse to rush. Sit at the cross and let what is heavy be heavy, making space for the losses that can be named and the quiet ache that cannot. 

Start at a tomb in John 11, where the shortest line in Scripture becomes a lifeline: "Jesus wept". Not a polite tear, but real mourning. That moment reshapes Christian grief and pastoral care because i...

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There’s a word for losing a parent. There’s a word for losing a spouse. But when a sibling dies, many of us are left with a strange, aching blank, and that cultural silence can make the grief feel invisible. We sit with that truth and name what so many people carry quietly: sibling loss is not “less than” other losses, and it deserves space, language, and care. 

Why are siblings often treated as forgotten mourners and how that plays out at funerals, in family conversations, and in the month...

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You know that split second after a vivid dream where it still feels real, like the person is still there? That’s the doorway we walk through today, because grief often behaves exactly like that: irrational, symbolic, and completely untethered from clocks and calendars. I

We talk about how both dreams and bereavement collapse time the past becomes present and the dead feel alive. Rather than treating that as weakness, we name it as the mind doing what minds do: trying again and again to metabolize a loss it cannot fu...

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Grief can be loud, but it can also be quiet enough to hide in plain sight. Sometimes it settles into the corners of our lives like dust we promise we will deal with later, when we have more time, more strength, or fewer responsibilities.  What happens when we keep postponing mourning, and why the “later” we wait for rarely arrives on its own.

Start with a simple image that opens a big question: who and what lives at the corners of our lives? From there, we look at the corners where grief...

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Grief rarely follows our plans, and neither does love. We step into scripture using Ignatian imaginative prayer and walk alongside Jesus as the caravan grows, the chores pile up, and friendship matures through late-night talks and hard truth. When a stranger brings the unthinkable news—John has been beheaded—the scene turns to lament: a howl in the dark, a body received with care, linen and balm prepared, prayers whispered at a rocky graveside. Rather than rush toward answers, we sit in the holy weight of mourning and notice how faith breathes through pres...

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Happiness showing up in the middle of grief can feel like a breach of loyalty. We talk honestly about that knot in the throat—the moment a new baby, a friend’s engagement, or a quiet sunrise stirs warmth while your heart is still heavy—and we offer a way to hold both truths without apology. Drawing on Scripture and lived experience, we explore whether joy follows sorrow, lives inside it, or both, and why that tension is normal, human, and often holy.

We reflect on verses like “weeping may last for the...

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What if the center of your grief isn’t emptiness, but a voice that calls you "Beloved"? We explore a quiet, radical shift inspired by Ruben L. F. Habito’s Zen and the Spiritual Exercises, bringing Zen attention and Ignatian prayer together to meet sorrow without shame. Instead of ranking life by wins and losses, we invite you into a gentler metric—inner freedom rooted in identity rather than performance.

We walk through the baptism of Jesus as a living scene, not a distant story. With sensory imagination and simple breath, we ste...

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Grief can make the world feel loud and far away, yet there’s a quieter path that helps us hear what the heart is trying to say. We invite you into a reflective, conversation inspired by Mark Nepo’s "Seven Thousand Ways to Listen", exploring how care and kindness live beneath the ideas of fairness and deserving. Rather than trying to outpace loss, we focus on how love asks us to hold nothing back, how it lets beauty in even while we hurt, and how the simple practice of listening can help us endu...

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Loss can make the world feel smaller, but something larger than sorrow keeps breaking through: a steady love that refuses to leave. We open a gentle path through grief by walking the terrain of Lent and Easter—naming the desert honestly and listening for the first hints of dawn. Along the way, we draw on Rumi’s striking line about love and separation and on Romans 8:35, asking what it means to be held when everything else feels unsteady.

Together we reflect on how Lent becomes less a ritual and more a refu...

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Some losses hit the national bloodstream and leave us reeling. The impact ripples beyond family and friends to anyone who sees their own hopes reflected in that life. We sit with that shock and name what it does to trust, to community, and to our sense of moral ground. Rather than drowning in  numbness, we slow down to ask what faithful, human grief looks like in public.

We talk frankly about the sanctity of life and why no cause, no grievance, and no ideology justifies taking it.  Wrestle with how to ho...

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The bells are quiet, the colors turn to green, and the calendar says ordinary time—yet your heart still feels anything but ordinary. We lean into that tension and talk honestly about the everyday weight of grief: the way a scent can stop you in a doorway, how an empty chair can crowd a room, and why the ache itself can be a sign that love is alive and doing its work. With clear, gentle language, we name what so many feel but hesitate to say out loud.

We explore how cu...