As Long As I'm Living

Medical bills, death certificates, police reports, oh my! Just when you think you've seen it all after the death of your child, the paperwork starts rolling in. This episode is a straight up RANT about all of the freaking forms we've had to fill out since our sons died. So many, in fact, that Judith is on a first-name basis with the chief medical examiner for L.A. County. 

It adds insult to injury, to have to write in plain text on form after form: Son (Deceased). 

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Follow As Long As I'm Living on Instagram at @aslongasimlivingpodcast, send us an email at [email protected], or visit us at anchor.fm/aslongasimliving! We would love to hear from you!

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As Long As I'm Living is a podcast about life, love, and laughter after infant loss. Judith and Alina are rebuilding Happier Ever After one day at a time despite excruciating grief and trauma and offering support to grievers of all flavors, but especially those who have lost a baby to SIDS, infant death, birth accidents, stillbirth, TFMR, ectopic pregnancy, or miscarriage.

Quinn turns 2 today, so I am releasing a short bonus episode. First, Judith and I talk together about this day, then I pay a special tribute to my very special boy.

If you'd like to honor Quinn with us, please light a candle in his honor today. Thank you so much for being here and helping keep his memory alive.

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Follow As Long As I'm Living on Instagram at @aslongasimlivingpodcast, send us an email at [email protected], or visit us at anchor.fm/aslongasimliving! We would love to hear from you! 

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As Long As I'm Living is a podcast about life, love, and laughter after infant loss. Judith and Alina are rebuilding Happier Ever After one day at a time despite excruciating grief and trauma and offering support to grievers of all flavors, but especially those who have lost a baby to SIDS, infant death, birth accidents, stillbirth, TFMR, ectopic pregnancy, or miscarriage.

A few weeks ago, we did an Instagram Live where we discussed some grief-specific Would You Rathers. It was so fun, that we thought we would turn it into a podcast episode! The second half is a replay of the Live, but the first half of this episode is brand new Would You Rathers.

This episode is more lightly edited than normal due to it being Quinn's birthday week over here... enjoy listening to us riding the struggle bus. (By the way, we ride it every single episode; I just normally edit it out!)

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Follow As Long As I'm Living on Instagram at @aslongasimlivingpodcast, send us an email at [email protected], or visit us at anchor.fm/aslongasimliving! We would love to hear from you!

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As Long As I'm Living is a podcast about life, love, and laughter after infant loss. Judith and Alina are rebuilding Happier Ever After one day at a time despite excruciating grief and trauma and offering support to grievers of all flavors, but especially those who have lost a baby to SIDS, infant death, birth accidents, stillbirth, TFMR, ectopic pregnancy, or miscarriage.

Judith and Alina opened time capsules recently. For Alina, it was showing Judith a day-in-the-life video she made when Quinn was 3 months old: 35 minutes of feeding, laughing, snuggling, snow shoveling, cooking dinner, and all of the other things you do when you have a husband and a baby. For Judith, it was security footage from a trip her family took to the dog park four days before Aiden's death: 2 hours of silent running film capturing her and her husband and dog interacting with newborn baby Aiden, alive.

In some ways, it felt like the first five minutes of a horror movie, but it also felt so incredibly special. There is something beautiful in the mundane, ordinariness of the lives we lived before. 

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Follow As Long As I'm Living on Instagram at @aslongasimlivingpodcast, send us an email at [email protected], or visit us at anchor.fm/aslongasimliving! We would love to hear from you!

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As Long As I'm Living is a podcast about life, love, and laughter after infant loss. Judith and Alina are rebuilding Happier Ever After one day at a time despite excruciating grief and trauma and offering support to grievers of all flavors, but especially those who have lost a baby to SIDS, infant death, birth accidents, stillbirth, TFMR, ectopic pregnancy, or miscarriage.

This week, we are talking Mom Guilt, and specifically Loss Mom Guilt. It's really hard to balance competing needs for your time when you have an alive child, and WOW is it even more challenging when you have a dead child. We discuss sharing our energy between alive and dead kids, comparing ourselves to other loss moms, and prioritizing our own health over our dead kids' "needs."

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Things we talk about in this episode:

Aiden is 1 | As Long As I'm Living

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Follow As Long As I'm Living on Instagram at @aslongasimlivingpodcast, send us an email at [email protected], or visit us at anchor.fm/aslongasimliving! We would love to hear from you!

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As Long As I'm Living is a podcast about life, love, and laughter after infant loss. Judith and Alina are rebuilding Happier Ever After one day at a time despite excruciating grief and trauma and offering support to grievers of all flavors, but especially those who have lost a baby to SIDS, infant death, birth accidents, stillbirth, TFMR, ectopic pregnancy, or miscarriage.

Alina has talked about EMDR a lot on the podcast, and today we are finally going to talk all about it with Rebecca Munini, Alina's trauma therapist!

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, and it is an evidence-based trauma treatment modality that changed Alina's life. Every week for a year, Alina sat in Rebecca's office and reprocessed the trauma of finding Quinn dead (...and many other things). 

What is EMDR? What is trauma, how does it manifest in the body? How is trauma different than grief, and how can they intersect? What does the process of EMDR look like? Is EMDR right for me? How do I find an EMDR therapist? Rebecca answers these questions and more!

You can find Rebecca here.

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Things we talk about in this episode:

- Francine Shapiro and the history of EMDR

- "Traumatic grief is a sense-losing event..." - Glenda Dickonson

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Follow As Long As I'm Living on Instagram at @aslongasimlivingpodcast, send us an email at [email protected], or visit us at anchor.fm/aslongasimliving! We would love to hear from you!

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As Long As I'm Living is a podcast about life, love, and laughter after infant loss. Judith and Alina are rebuilding Happier Ever After one day at a time despite excruciating grief and trauma and offering support to grievers of all flavors, but especially those who have lost a baby to SIDS, infant death, birth accidents, stillbirth, TFMR, ectopic pregnancy, or miscarriage.

What is perfectly normal in grief? Pretty much everything.

Listen as Alina and Judith chat about page 10 in Megan Devine's How To Carry What Can't Be Fixed (the companion journal to the MUST-READ It's OK That You're Not OK). This page covers some symptoms and side effects of grief, e.g. forgetting your keys, memory loss, digestion problems, and interpersonal issues. 

What else is perfectly normal for you in grief? Check our Megan's hashtag #perfectlynormal or her Instagram account @refugeingrief for more!

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Things we talk about in this episode:

- Amateur Hour | As Long As I'm Living

- Consolation Prize | As Long As I'm Living

- Executive dysfunction, illustrated

- Judith's sneakers: Pair 1 (not purchased), Pair 2 and Pair 3 (purchased)

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Follow As Long As I'm Living on Instagram at @aslongasimlivingpodcast, send us an email at [email protected], or visit us at anchor.fm/aslongasimliving! We would love to hear from you!

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As Long As I'm Living is a podcast about life, love, and laughter after infant loss. Judith and Alina are rebuilding Happier Ever After one day at a time despite excruciating grief and trauma and offering support to grievers of all flavors, but especially those who have lost a baby to SIDS, infant death, birth accidents, stillbirth, TFMR, ectopic pregnancy, or miscarriage.

Oof... this one is a doozy. This episode kicks off with a few minutes that Alina recorded on a bad, bad day. She felt loneliness, grief, despair, anger, and so many other things. Afterwards, Alina and Judith discuss these feelings, specifically how after your child dies, any other joy in your life can feel like a consolation prize. But is it?

Is the joy we are able to feel sometimes now a cheap plastic consolation prize? Or have we somehow dug up some genuine gold from the ashes of our razed lives? Listen to hear our thoughts.

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Things we talk about in this episode:

- A Day in the Life of a Grieving Mom: Evening, Morning, and Night

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Follow As Long As I'm Living on Instagram at @aslongasimlivingpodcast, send us an email at [email protected], or visit us at anchor.fm/aslongasimliving! We would love to hear from you!

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As Long As I'm Living is a podcast about life, love, and laughter after infant loss. Judith and Alina are rebuilding Happier Ever After one day at a time despite excruciating grief and trauma and offering support to grievers of all flavors, but especially those who have lost a baby to SIDS, infant death, birth accidents, stillbirth, TFMR, ectopic pregnancy, or miscarriage.

In this episode, Judith and Alina are joined by memoirist and loss mama Katie Joy Duke. This is a thoughtful interview about the power of grief, healing, and connecting to our lost loved ones in the stars.

Her daughter Poppy was stillborn in 2015, and she turned straight to the page to process her grief and found solace and meaning in the community that followed her journey. Just as her dreams of becoming a published author were coming true, she was diagnosed with Stage IV, metastatic breast cancer on March 18, 2022.  She is currently receiving chemotherapy and hopes to write her second memoir about her experience healing from yet another unexpected life challenge.

She lives north of Seattle with her husband, daughter Moxie, and scruffy dog Wilson. She accesses power with yoga, serenity through meditation, and joy through song and dance. She believes that laughter is the best medicine, and vulnerability is her superpower.

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We discuss suicide in this episode.

If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts and think you may be a danger to yourself, please reach out immediately to the National Suicide Prevention hotline (800-273-8255) in the U.S.

Linked here are additional resources in the United States. Linked here are resources for Canada. Linked here are resources for the U.K. Linked here are resources for Australia. Linked here are global resources.

You are not alone.

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Things we talk about in this episode:

- Signs

- Grief Needs a Witness, an Interview with Dr. Denise Mandel | As Long As I'm Living

- Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

- Breath | Radiolab

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Follow As Long As I'm Living on Instagram at @aslongasimlivingpodcast, send us an email at [email protected], or visit us at anchor.fm/aslongasimliving! We would love to hear from you!

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As Long As I'm Living is a podcast about life, love, and laughter after infant loss. Judith and Alina are rebuilding Happier Ever After one day at a time despite excruciating grief and trauma and offering support to grievers of all flavors, but especially those who have lost a baby to SIDS, infant death, birth accidents, stillbirth, TFMR, ectopic pregnancy, or miscarriage.

Alina here! Our very own Judith went live on Instagram a few weeks ago with Aimee from I Was Supposed To Have a Baby to talk about Aiden's death, the immediate aftermath, and how her grief has evolved over time. When I say I was BEAMING watching this episode... that is an understatement. I am so proud of her for sharing so openly in such a large public forum. She honors Aiden's life and legacy beautifully, and she gives great concrete tips for grievers and those supporting grievers.

You can actually WATCH this episode if you want to, and in fact I'd recommend it! Linked here.

IWSTHAB is a well-loved account in the "dead baby Instagram" space (as we call it), and although their content is excellent and appropriate for people of all faiths, there is a particular focus on Judaism and the intersection of faith and infertility/loss. This is a great one to listen to (in addition to Crisis of Faith) if you have been curious how Judith's religion has impacted her grief process. Judith and Aimee do a good job of translating into English for those of us who may not know Hebrew, but if you are confused by words like shema, shomer, frum? I've got you covered. Click here for a glossary!

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Things Judith talks about in this episode:

- Our grief retreat

- Ready or Not | As Long As I'm Living

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Follow As Long As I'm Living on Instagram at @aslongasimlivingpodcast, send us an email at [email protected], or visit us at anchor.fm/aslongasimliving! We would love to hear from you!

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As Long As I'm Living is a podcast about life, love, and laughter after infant loss. Judith and Alina are rebuilding Happier Ever After one day at a time despite excruciating grief and trauma and offering support to grievers of all flavors, but especially those who have lost a baby to SIDS, infant death, birth accidents, stillbirth, TFMR, ectopic pregnancy, or miscarriage.