Unparented

You organize the family gathering, check on everyone else, and show up when you're needed. But when someone asks what you need, you aren't sure how to answer.

In this episode of Unparented, Robert DelFave explores the gap between managing your responsibilities and feeling supported after losing a parent. Through a hypothetical anniversary gathering, he considers what might be happening beneath “I'm fine” and how asking for help can begin with one specific difficulty.

Robert also shares his experience with therapy and explains what grief coaching can involve, where coaching and therapy overlap, and why a pr...

Having a spouse, children, and a family of your own does not remove the desire to call your parents.

In this solo episode, Robert reflects on losing his father at fourteen and his mother at twenty-six. He talks about missing his parents during his daughters’ milestones, but also during the ordinary moments: driving home after a difficult day, sharing good news, or wanting to ask what he was like as a child.

Robert also explores the adult relationship with his parents that he never got to experience. He considers how early parent loss shaped his ne...

Ten years. That's how long I stayed away from Rochester, the place where I grew up, where my parents died, where my grandparents finished raising me after everything fell apart. I told myself there was nothing left for me there. But the truth? I was running.

This episode is different. It's just me. No guest, no interview. Just me telling you about what happened when I finally went back. I took my wife and daughters to Rochester for the first time. I showed them the house I grew up in, the door I took apart as a...

This week, I'm talking with Liam J. Wakefield, a psychotherapist, counseling lecturer, and former British Army soldier who's built his entire practice around a question most of us avoid: what happens when the person you were completely falls apart?

Liam lost his mother to abandonment as a child, went to war at 21, and was medically retired from the military after a chronic illness dismantled the identity he'd spent years building. He's faced grief not just from death, but from the loss of self: the fracturing that happens when the architecture of who you are can no longer...

This week, I'm sitting down with Erica Richmond, a writer, grief guide, and founder of Open Sky Stories. Erica lost her ex-husband to suicide when their kids were just seven and ten. Eleven years later, she lost her dad. She's been living in grief for over a decade and has learned that the only way through it is to let it be as messy as it needs to be.

What stands out about Erica is how she's held space for her kids to grieve in their own ways. They made a Lego figurine of their dad and...

This week, I'm sitting down with Sylvia Wolfer, a grief-informed practitioner who has experienced loss on a level that's hard to wrap your head around. She lost her father at seven. Her younger brother at 17. Her older brother at 40. And then her mother a few years later. From a family of six, only Sylvia and one brother remain.

What makes this conversation different is how Sylvia has turned all of that loss into something she can actually use. Not just for herself, but for others. After years of being ambushed by grief triggers, she got angry. Not...

This week, I'm sitting down with Arnold, a former corporate executive turned brain fitness coach, to talk about what it means to grow up in a home where love wasn't really on the table. His father was a military officer who brought command and control into every corner of family life. His mother, numbed by decades of SSRIs, seemed to exist in her own world. A coach once told Arnold he was "the man who grew up without love," and that phrase hit him like a freight train.

Arnold lost his father at 41. He describes it as...

This week, I’m sitting down with journalist, author, and former CNN Senior Copy Editor John DeDakis to talk about the kind of loss that rearranges everything you think you know about yourself. John lost his mother first. Years later, he watched his father take his final breath right in front of him. He describes the aftermath as feeling “orphaned at 45,” and it became the moment that forced him to confront grief in a way he had avoided for years.

John walks through what it felt like to lose the last parent, how childhood memories hit differently once t...

In this episode of Unparented: A Dead Parents Club Podcast, I sit down with Alan Lazaros, CEO of Next Level University, a global top 100 podcast dedicated to helping others level up in life, love, health, and wealth. Alan lost his father in a car accident when he was just two years old, a loss that created deep pain and a sense of disconnection that would shape his entire journey. Decades later, after surviving his own near-fatal car accident, Alan found himself questioning everything: his choices, his identity, and the trajectory of his life. Instead of running from grief, he...

What can surfing teach us about grief, resilience, and learning to live in the present?

In this episode of Unparented: A Dead Parents Club Podcast, I sit down with Angie Hawkins, author of Running in Slippers and a coach helping high-achieving women let go of external validation. Angie lost her dad in 2017, a loss that sent her into the deepest grief she’d ever known and ultimately into a journey of healing, transformation, and connection with her father on the other side.

Angie shares how surfing became more than a daily practice in Hawaii, it be...

What happens when you lose your mom at just 18 years old, before you’ve even had the chance to figure out who you are?

In this episode of Unparented: A Dead Parents Club Podcast, I sit down with Lisa Espinosa, a writer, speaker, and certified grief and loss counselor, to talk about the life-altering experience of losing her mom as a teenager. Lisa shares how her mom’s death from lung cancer shaped her early adulthood, what it taught her about love, presence, and faith, and how it later influenced the way she mothered and now “Mimi’s” her o...

What happens when your children lose their mom before they’re old enough to remember her?

In this episode of Unparented: A Dead Parents Club Podcast, I sit down with Sean Foster, host of The Next Minute, to talk about what it means to raise two boys in the shadow of grief. Sean’s wife, Taylor, died in 2020 just 12 hours after giving birth to their youngest son, leaving him a grieving husband and single father overnight.

Sean shares the reality of carrying not only his own grief but also the grief of his sons, helping them...

What happens when you lose both parents as an adult, one unexpectedly and one during a pandemic?

In this episode of Unparented: A Dead Parents Club Podcast, I sit down with Zulma Williams, better known as @theswearingtherapist, to talk about grief in its rawest form. Zulma shares her story of losing her mom and dad within seven years, navigating cancer, depression, and abusive relationships, and still finding her way back to resilience.

She reminds us that grief is love with nowhere to go, and that there is nothing to “get over.” Instead, we can choose how...

Becka lost both of her parents before turning 30. In this conversation, she shares how grief reshaped her sense of identity, the isolation of feeling “orphaned” as an adult, and the surprising gifts that loss can bring. We talk about therapy, comparison, and learning to linger in moments of grief.

Learn more about Robert DelFave’s grief coaching and writing

Website: robertdelfave.com
Grief coaching: robertdelfave.com/coaching
Schedule a complimentary Grief Map Session: Book a Grief Map Session
The Other Side of This: robertdelfave.com/book
Contact: hello@robert...

Grief is not one-size-fits-all. Therapist Lydia Lomahan joins me to talk about why grief is an extension of love, how cultural scripts around loss can create pressure, and what it means to hold space for grief without trying to “fix” it. This conversation is for anyone carrying loss, trauma, or big emotions that don’t fit neatly into a box.

Learn more about Robert DelFave’s grief coaching and writing

Website: robertdelfave.com
Grief coaching: robertdelfave.com/coaching
Schedule a complimentary Grief Map Session: Book a Grief Map Session
The Othe...

John was adopted at birth, and after losing his adoptive dad, he found himself navigating two stories at once: grief and identity. In this episode, we talk about what it means to lose a parent, how adoption shaped his grief, and the search for connection with his birth family.

Learn more about Robert DelFave’s grief coaching and writing

Website: robertdelfave.com
Grief coaching: robertdelfave.com/coaching
Schedule a complimentary Grief Map Session: Book a Grief Map Session
The Other Side of This: robertdelfave.com/book
Contact: hello@ro...

What happens when you grow up without parents and then become one yourself? In this episode of Unparented: A Dead Parents Club Podcast, I share how losing my dad at 15 and my mom at 26 shaped the way I parent my own kids. From the fear of dying young like my father, to breaking cycles of grief and trauma, this is a raw look at becoming the parent I never had.

Learn more about Robert DelFave’s grief coaching and writing

Website: robertdelfave.com
Grief coaching: robertdelfave.com/coaching
Schedule a co...

When I lost my dad at 15 and my mom at 26, grief became the story I couldn’t escape. In this first episode of Unparented: A Dead Parents Club Podcast, I share my journey of losing both parents, the loneliness of navigating life without them, and how therapy and faith have helped me carry the weight.

Learn more about Robert DelFave’s grief coaching and writing

Website: robertdelfave.com
Grief coaching: robertdelfave.com/coaching
Schedule a complimentary Grief Map Session: Book a Grief Map Session
The Other Side of This: robe...