Andre is a supervisor and licensed funeral director at Roupp Funeral home. He believes that funeral ceremonies are a time of remembrance and celebration of a loved one's life, each person has a life story, and each family has a story, part of his work is to help each family remember and celebrate those stories in their own personal manner.

Our world is full of chaos and life is filled with uncertainty and worries about the future, but if you stay stuck in those thoughts and worry, then that fear will leave you feeling powerless over where you want to go in life, and worry, will lead you on that downward spiral. Uncertainty is a natural part of our lives and while we have control over many things, we simply cannot control everything that happens to us or our loved ones.

We humans are social creatures by nature and most of us crave intimacy, friendships, companionship, or just having a good connection with others. So when we can no longer see or speak to someone we care about, those memories and the pain of their absence can sit heavily in our hearts, and we don't want it to negatively affect our home, work, or our health.

Anxiety that follows a loss is very real and often overlooked, I remember going through bouts of anxiety after my dad, brother, and mum all died within eight months of each other, but for the longest time I didn't connect it to my grief because it hit me some time after they had died.In this episode I offer some suggestions of what you can do to help manage your anxiety because, there are many ways to calm, inform, and change the way you think and feel.

Sheena is a lifelong student of well-being and a certified yoga teacher. After the death of her parents, sister, and best friend, Sheena was led to integrate her yoga practice with her grief. She has created a beautiful offering called 'yoga for living with loss' which uses a variety of breathing practices and gentle yoga movements to help you to navigate through loss... without getting lost.

February brings with it love, and those signs are everywhere, in the local supermarkets, card stores, jewelry stores, and flower shops. Most of them are all filled with beautiful red and pink hearts, and pictures of Cupid trying to spread love and chocolates to each and everyone of us. When your loved one has died, unfortunately all of this Valentine's fuss, only reinforces who and what you are missing.

February 1st-7th will mark the fourth annual National Gun Violence Survivors Week, which focuses on sharing the stories of gun survivors who live with the trauma of gun violence every day. Calandrian Kemp is a gun violence survivor who has joined me on this episode to talk about her grief, her work, and her life.

At times it can be hard to find the right words to say to a person who is grieving. And when it comes to grief support, words can either heal and connect us or they can shut the griever down and hurt them. It is not helpful to minimize people's grief with statements of comparison, people need to be allowed to express the depth of their grief without feeling that they shouldn't feel as bad as they do.

As a grief recovery coach I've learned that many people become good at holding onto and trying to hide their emotional pain. Some people have unresolved loss of trust from childhood experiences that keeps them on a perpetual state of being okay with their pain, and sadly it becomes a permanent condition in their life.

There is no right or wrong way to grieve and thank goodness there are ways to support the grieving process, and mindfulness is one of them. Choosing to live in the past or the future not only robs you of the enjoyment of today, but it robs you of truly living in the only important moment... which is now.