Permission To Breathe

Domestic violence can leave behind more than physical injuries. It can also create grief. In this episode of the Permission to Breathe Podcast, Dr. Tammy Isaac explores the losses that can come with domestic violence, including the loss of safety, trust, identity, financial stability, relationships, health, and the future someone once imagined.

Joined by expert contributors Thecia Jenkins, Lexi Oestreich, and Sara Hayes, this conversation examines why leaving can be complicated, what rebuilding life after abuse may require, how domestic violence can affect the body, and why the response survivors receive from healthcare professionals matters.

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In this episode, “Carrying Love, Carrying Loss: Understanding Perinatal Bereavement,” Dr. Tammy Isaac gently explores the sacred grief of losing a baby through miscarriage, stillbirth, or neonatal death. With compassion and clarity, she unpacks the unique emotional, spiritual, and cultural layers of this loss, the role of family, faith communities, and clinical staff in support, and the ways parents continue to honor their babies through coping, rituals, and lasting bonds. This episode is a tender reminder: your grief matters, your baby matters, and your love endures.

In this episode of the Permission to Breathe Podcast, Dr. Tammy Isaac explores the emotional weight of breast cancer and the losses that often remain hidden beneath the pink ribbon. She discusses body grief and physical autonomy, the difficulty of living with uncertainty, changes in identity and relationships, and what it means to grieve the life and future you once imagined. This conversation also explores how family members, friends, caregivers, and communities can better support someone living with breast cancer without rushing them toward positivity or expecting them to be strong all the time.

In this episode of Permission to Breathe, Rev. Dr. Tammy Isaac explores financial grief, the emotional impact of losing financial stability or growing up without it. She examines how money affects security, identity, relationships, dignity, and the future we imagined for ourselves. This conversation also considers poverty, generational disadvantage, survival, shame, and the ways inequality can shape behavior without assuming that poverty causes criminality or excusing harm. When Money Changes Everything: Understanding Financial Grief creates space to acknowledge what financial hardship has taken, interrupted, or never made possible while affirming that our financial circumstances do not determine our worth.<...

In this episode of Permission to Breathe, Dr. Tammy Isaac explores spiritual bypassing in grief and the harm that can occur when prayer, Scripture, religious explanations, or expectations of strength are used to avoid the emotional reality of loss. She examines familiar statements that may sound comforting but leave grieving people feeling silenced, ashamed, or spiritually inadequate. This conversation also addresses self-bypassing, the pressure placed on spiritual leaders and caregivers, and the ways faith communities can unintentionally make mourning more difficult. Drawing from lament, Job’s suffering, and the grief expressed by Jesus, Dr. Isaac shows that anger, doubt, qu...

Grief can become especially complicated when the person who died was also someone who caused hurt, disappointment, conflict, or emotional harm. In this episode of Permission to Breathe, Dr. Tammy Isaac explores what it means to grieve a relationship that held love and pain at the same time. Using Jennette McCurdy’s memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died as a point of departure, this episode examines grief that includes anger, relief, guilt, longing, unfinished conversations, and the loss of what the relationship never became. Dr. Isaac also considers the pressure to remember the dead more favorably than the rela...

Getting older is a blessing, but it can also carry grief. In this episode of the Permission to Breathe podcast, Dr. Tammy Isaac explores the losses and changes that can accompany aging, including changes in the body, independence, identity, relationships, purpose, and our understanding of time. She also addresses the fear of becoming a burden, the grief of unrealized dreams, and what it means to keep living meaningfully as life changes. This conversation offers permission to honor who you once were, make room for who you are becoming, and recognize that gratitude for life and grief over what has...

Can we grieve someone we never personally knew? In this episode of Permission to Breathe, Dr. Tammy Isaac explores parasocial grief, the genuine sorrow that can follow the death of a celebrity, artist, athlete, author, public figure, or online personality. She examines how these individuals become connected to our memories, identities, relationships, and important seasons of life. The episode also considers collective mourning, grief that others may dismiss, complicated public legacies, and why we do not need to apologize for mourning someone whose life and work became part of our own story.

In this episode of the Permission to Breathe Podcast, Dr. Tammy Isaac explores the grief that has often gone unnamed within Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color. She examines how survival, cultural silence, systemic barriers, healthcare mistrust, and institutional marginalization can leave people carrying losses that were never fully acknowledged or mourned. This conversation looks at what it means when grief is pushed to the margins along with the people carrying it, why permission to grieve still matters, and how witness, connection, and honest acknowledgment can begin to change the way grief is held. This episode invites listeners...

In this episode of the Permission to Breathe Podcast, Dr. Tammy Isaac explores the neuroscience of spirituality at the end of life and in grief care. Through four bedside stories, she examines how prayer, sacred memory, ritual, theological meaning, storytelling, and human connection can interact with the brain and nervous system during illness, loss, and uncertainty. This episode explains why grief is not only emotional but also physiological, how attachment and stress systems respond to loss, and why spiritual practices may help the body move toward greater regulation. It also expands the meaning of spiritual care beyond religious language...

In Part Two, Dr. Tammy Isaac moves beyond the physical process of dying to explore the emotional, relational, cultural, and spiritual experiences that may surround the end of life. The episode discusses grief that can begin before death, the changing roles experienced by patients and families, and the importance of viewing the five stages of grief as a framework rather than a fixed sequence. Dr. Isaac also examines how culture and spirituality shape beliefs, rituals, family involvement, and expressions of grief. The conversation concludes with dignity, meaningful activity, legacy, and the importance of continuing to see and honor the...

In Part One of this two-part series, Dr. Tammy Isaac explores why conversations about death and dying are often avoided and why understanding the dying process matters for patients, families, caregivers, and healthcare professionals. The episode examines the shift from cure-centered care to care-centered care and invites listeners to consider the question, “What matters most to you now?” Dr. Isaac also explains several physical changes that may occur as death approaches, including withdrawal, decreased appetite, weakness, changes in breathing, restlessness, symbolic language, and reduced responsiveness. This episode helps listeners better understand what may happen as the body begins to slow...

In this episode, Dr. Tammy Isaac reflects on the emotional weight that can come when a woman senses she has something meaningful to offer but encounters resistance from institutions, workplaces, faith communities, or other leadership spaces. This conversation invites listeners to recognize the grief that can arise from being overlooked, from having to constantly prove one's capability, and from watching opportunities pass by despite preparation and readiness.

Rather than dismissing these experiences, this episode encourages women to acknowledge the emotional impact while continuing to honor the calling they carry.

Leadership is often celebrated for its influence and impact, but the emotional weight behind it is rarely discussed. In this episode, Dr. Tammy Isaac explores the grief many women carry in leadership spaces. From invisibility and dismissal to isolation, overextension, and self-doubt, women have often led while navigating pressures that question their authority and contributions. This conversation honors the women who guided movements, families, and communities while carrying the quiet emotional cost of leadership and invites today’s women leaders to recognize that their experiences are part of a much longer story.

This episode examines how grief shows up in the lives of women and why healing can be understood as historical work. When a woman begins to acknowledge her grief and care for her emotional life, she may also be interrupting patterns that have moved quietly through families and communities for generations.

Healing does not erase grief, but it changes how grief is carried and expressed. Through honest reflection, women can create space for emotional truth, rest, and care in ways that may not have always been possible for those who came before them.

This Women’s History Month episode explores the hidden cost of survival carried in women’s bodies across generations. While history highlights milestones and achievements, it rarely acknowledges the physiological and emotional toll of exclusion, invisibility, labor without recognition, politicized bodies, and normalized grief.

In this episode, Dr. Tammy Isaac examines how chronic stress, silencing, and endurance shape the nervous system. She discusses how patterns such as hyper independence, over functioning, difficulty resting, and constant vigilance may not be personal flaws but learned survival responses shaped by historical and cultural realities.

Black excellence is celebrated. Strength is admired. Success is applauded. But what happens when being exceptional becomes exhausting? In this episode, we explore the emotional cost of always being strong as Black people. We name the grief beneath high performance, the pressure to represent, and the quiet depletion that can hide behind achievement. Success can change your circumstances, but it does not automatically heal what survival required.

Black History Month celebrates brilliance, culture, leadership, and legacy. But what about the grief that never made the headlines?

In this episode, Dr. Tammy Isaac explores the inherited weight carried by Black people across generations. From survival patterns shaped by history to the emotional labor embedded in daily life, this conversation names what often goes unspoken.

Together we examine how silence, strength, and ongoing stress shape emotional and physical health today. This is an invitation to honor both the glory and the grief, and to consider what healing might look like for this generation.

Loving again after loss can feel confusing. You may want connection while also feeling hesitant. You may miss closeness and still feel afraid of what it could cost you. For many people, love after grief does not arrive with confidence. It arrives with questions, caution, and a guarded heart.

In this episode of Permission to Breathe, we explore what it means to consider loving again while still carrying the fear of loss. Not by forcing readiness. Not by offering formulas. But by telling the truth about how grief reshapes love, trust, and the body.

February is both Heart Awareness Month and Black History Month. In this episode of Permission to Breathe, Dr. Tammy Isaac explores the connection between grief, history, and heart health in African American women. Grief is often understood only as loss through death, yet for many Black women it has been ongoing, layered, and deeply tied to caregiving, chronic stress, silence, and survival.

This episode invites listeners to consider heart health through lived experience, examining how unacknowledged grief and prolonged emotional strain affect the body, particularly the heart. With compassion and clarity, Dr. Isaac creates space to reflect...

Grief does not only come from the loss itself. It often brings unexpected changes to friendships and community. In this episode, Dr. Tammy Isaac explores how grief reshapes relationships, why some friendships fade after loss, and how to grieve those secondary losses without turning the pain inward. This conversation offers clarity, validation, and language for experiences many people feel but rarely name.

Grief does not only bring sadness. It can also bring anger, disappointment, and disillusionment toward God, faith communities, and the institutions we trusted to care. In this episode, we make space for anger without guilt or spiritual shortcuts. This conversation names what many people feel but struggle to say out loud and offers permission to be honest without rushing toward answers.

Some people experience grief through overwhelming emotion. Others experience it through silence. Emotional numbness is a common and often misunderstood grief response, leaving many people questioning themselves when they do not feel what they expect to feel.

In this episode, we explore emotional numbness as a natural response to loss. We talk about why numbness happens, how the body uses it as protection, and why the absence of feeling is not a sign of failure or lack of love. This conversation offers clarity for those who feel disconnected, flat, or emotionally muted after loss and reassurance that...

In this opening episode of Season Four, Dr. Tammy Isaac explores how grief shows up at the edges of time. She reflects on grief as a keeper of time, the permission to acknowledge what the year required of us, and the importance of setting expectations that honor both loss and humanity. This episode also reframes hope, not as pressure or forced optimism, but as something steady that can exist alongside grief.

This conversation is an invitation to move into the new year without rushing healing, minimizing loss, or leaving parts of yourself behind. Grief and hope are...

When loss collides with trauma, grief doesn’t just break the heart, it shakes the body, mind, and spirit. In this episode, Dr. Tammy Isaac unpacks what traumatic grief is, how it differs from other forms of grief, and why it can sometimes lead to complicated grief. She explores the signs and struggles many experience, the hope found in traumatic grief therapy, and gentle pathways toward healing for those carrying this weight and for the loved ones who walk beside them.

Grief isn’t one-size-fits-all. It comes in layers, colors, and textures that shift from moment to moment. From the anger and guilt that often surprise us, to the way grief shows up in the body and spirit, this conversation honors the full terrain of loss. Whether you are grieving a loved one, a dream, your health, or a season of life that has passed, you’ll find space here to name your grief, honor your journey, and breathe through the complexity of it all. This episode is an invitation to release the pressure of “grieving the right way” and instead...

This week on the Permission to Breathe Podcast we turn our attention to a group of people who give so much of themselves, yet often carry their grief in silence: our first responders. Dr. Isaac explores the unique types of grief they carry, the heavy cost of unprocessed trauma, and the pathways toward healing and hope. This conversation will noy only raises awareness but also invites compassion for those who stand on the front lines of crisis every day.

This week, I’m re-sharing one of the most deeply resonant episodes of the Permission to Breathe Podcast as I prepare to present on this very topic at the Clusterbusters Conference.Chronic pain doesn’t just affect the body. It reshapes your identity, your relationships, your faith, and your sense of self. And when healing doesn’t come, grief sets in not once, but repeatedly.

In this episode, we explore:
• What it means to grieve the life you had before pain• Why chronic pain often brings ambiguous and invisible grief• Scientific connections between physical pain and emotional lo...

September is National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, a time to break the silence, remove the shame, and hold sacred space for the pain too many carry alone.

In today’s episode, we open our hearts to the complex grief that surrounds suicide. Whether you’re someone who has lost a loved one to suicide or someone who has struggled with dark thoughts during your own grief journey, this conversation is for you.

We talk openly about:

How people respond to suicide loss

Whether grief can lead to suicidal thoughts

How...

In this episode, “Carrying Love, Carrying Loss: Understanding Perinatal Bereavement,” Dr. Tammy Isaac gently explores the sacred grief of losing a baby through miscarriage, stillbirth, or neonatal death. With compassion and clarity, she unpacks the unique emotional, spiritual, and cultural layers of this loss, the role of family, faith communities, and clinical staff in support, and the ways parents continue to honor their babies through coping, rituals, and lasting bonds. This episode is a tender reminder: your grief matters, your baby matters, and your love endures.

What if the hardest part of birth comes after the baby arrives? In this heartfelt episode of Permission to Breathe, Dr. Tammy Isaac holds sacred space for the grief that often lingers quietly in the postpartum season. This is the grief no one warns you about the kind that comes with lost identity, unmet expectations, and the emotional weight of becoming a mother.

We explore the difference between postpartum grief and postpartum depression, name the unseen losses new mothers carry, and offer tender, practical strategies for healing. For those supporting someone in postpartum grief, we share ways...

Caregiving is one of the deepest acts of love and one of the heaviest burdens to carry. In this episode of Permission to Breathe, Dr. Tammy Isaac opens a tender and honest conversation about the grief that lives within caregiving. From the compassion and drive that lead us to care whether by calling or by circumstance , to the physical, emotional, and spiritual toll it takes, we explore the risks and rewards of walking this path. You’ll hear about the ways caregiving can challenge your faith, why finding an anchor is essential whether or not you’re a person of f...

In this powerful episode, Dr. Tammy Isaac pulls back the curtain on the hidden grief nurses carry, grief that goes far beyond patient loss. From the emotional toll of repeated trauma to the personal heartbreak nurses often carry in silence, this conversation explores the cost of caregiving in a profession that rarely pauses to process pain. Dr. Isaac shares the emotional, physical, and spiritual weight nurses bear and the critical but often overlooked role chaplains can play in supporting them. She confronts the barriers that prevent nurses from receiving emotional care and offers practical ways healthcare systems can respond...

Grief isn’t reserved for cemeteries. It shows up in courthouse corridors, unread text threads, ghosted group chats, and phone calls that never come. In this episode of Permission to Breathe, Dr. Tammy Isaac names the hidden heartbreak of relationship grief; the ache that follows divorce, infidelity, friendship break-ups, sibling estrangement, and the painful distance between parents and adult children.

There’s a kind of grief that doesn’t follow a funeral. It shows up in headlines, policies, and silence. It lives in your body. It weighs on your spirit. It’s political grief and it’s real.

In this episode, we name the grief that comes from systemic betrayal and collective sorrow. Dr. Isaac explores protest as mourning, rest as resistance, and the sacred power of community. If you’ve ever felt heartbroken over the state of the world, this one is for you.

This week’s episode, “Grief, Glory, and the Cost of Freedom,” holds space for the complexity of Juneteenth, BIPOC Mental Health Awareness, and the Fourth of July all through the lens of intergenerational grief, truth-telling, and sacred resistance. We’re talking about the weight of inherited sorrow, the beauty of dancing through pain, and the kind of rest that becomes revolution.

In this heartfelt episode, Dr. Tammy Isaac welcomes guest LaShanna More, who shares her deeply personal story of losing her mother as an adult. With honesty and grace, LaShanna reflects on how her mother’s passing left a profound void in her life, even as a fully grown woman. Together, we explore the emotional weight of adult grief, the way roles shift when daughters become caretakers, and the ache of no longer being someone’s child. This conversation offers spiritual insight and gentle reminders that you can be strong and still shattered, grown and still grieving. Whether you’ve lost y...

In this powerful episode of A Seat at the Table: Stories of Mother Grief, Dr. Tammy Isaac welcomes guest Likeythia Blackmon, who shares the deeply personal story of her mother’s tragic accident—an incident that forever altered their relationship. Though her mother survived, the woman Likeythia once knew was never the same. Together, we explore the complex layers of ambiguous grief, the emotional weight of becoming a caregiver, and the quiet ache of loving someone who is still physically present but mentally and emotionally changed. This episode creates space for tears, honesty, and spiritual reflection—reminding us that we can...

In this powerful episode of A Seat at the Table: Stories of Mother Grief, Dr. Tammy Isaac welcomes guest Rebecca Foster, who vulnerably shares her experience of losing her 13-year-old son to leukemia at the age of 21. Rebecca’s story is one of deep pain, enduring love, and the sacred promise she made to her son before he passed: “Don’t forget me." Together, we explore what it means to live after such a devastating loss—the regrets, the loss of identity, and the struggle to find direction when grief has taken over your purpose. Dr. Isaac reflects on the spir...

Series: A Seat at the Table: Stories of Mother Grief

In this deeply personal opening to the A Seat at the Table mini-series, Dr. Tammy Isaac shares her own sacred story of loss—the day her birthday became the same day her mother passed away. With tenderness and spiritual insight, she reflects on what it means to hold both joy and sorrow in the same breath, how grief shaped her calling as a chaplain and writer, and the anchors that have kept her steady in the storm. This episode honors daughters who are grieving, women who’ve been...