Grief and Light™

"Let's talk about death, because life is urgent." -- Alex Aldarondo

What if facing death honestly is how we learn to live more fully?

In this episode of Grief and Light™, Nina Rodriguez sits down with Alexander Aldarondo Jiménez, an end-of-life doula, educator, and founder of AMORir, Puerto Rico's first end-of-life doula collective. Joining from Puerto Rico, Alex explains what a death doula does, why dying has become so medicalized and transactional, and how communities can reclaim it as something we hold together.

Nina brings her own lens. She recently lost her grandfather in Puerto Rico after he spent time in hospice, and she lost her 32-year-old brother suddenly. Together, they explore what grief-literate, death-literate care could look like.

You will learn:

• What an end-of-life doula (death doula) is and how the role differs from hospice and palliative care
• Why the body knows how to die, and how families can support the process
• Alex's four pillars of death education: social, cultural, legal, and mental
• Why advance directives matter and what happens without one
• How Amorir is redesigning the symbols, language, and rituals of death in Puerto Rico
• How to talk about suicide, awareness, and prevention with nuance
• Why "amar y morir" (to love and to die) can coexist

Alex's question for you: 

Does your family know what you would want at the end of life?

About the Guest

Alexander Aldarondo Jimenez is an end-of-life doula, educator, and founder of Amorir, Puerto Rico's first end-of-life doula collective. His work includes community workshops, end-of-life doula trainings, and a cultural redesign initiative that brings artists and creatives together to reimagine death in Puerto Rico.

Key Takeaways

• An end-of-life doula provides non-medical support: planning, education, emotional presence, and community care circles.
• Most people seek help too late. Planning early, even in healthy years, protects both the dying person and the family.
• Few people know the legal side of death: advance directives, body disposition, death certificates, and inheritance.
• Over-medicalized death is tied to a wider loss of trust in our own inner wisdom.
• Talking about death can feel liberating, even joyful.

Connect with Alexander Aldarondo and Amorir

• Website: amorir.org
• Instagram: @amorirpr
• Facebook: Amorir PR
• Virtual sessions via Zoom are available for people in the diaspora and the U.S. Alex is open to interviews and collaborations.

A Note on Care:

This episode includes a conversation about suicide. It is educational, not medical or mental health advice. Please honor your capacity to engage with this content. 

If you are in the U.S. and need support, call or text 988. 

Outside of the U.S., please call your nearest hospital for local resources. You may also visit findahelpline.com for additional assistance.

Subscribe and Share

• Follow Grief and Light™ wherever you listen. A rating or review helps more people find these conversations.
• Know someone who is caring for a dying loved one or wants to plan ahead? Send them this episode.
• Learn more at griefandlight.com

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Grief and Light is an award-winning, independent podcast exploring the honest, messy, and deeply human experience of loss. We're on a mission to foster a more grief-informed, hopeful world, one conversation at a time. 

🏆 Ear Worthy Best Life Lessons 2026 · TalkDeath Readers' Choice Best Podcast 2025 · Women Who Podcast Awards 2025 Winner · Podground Editor's Pick

New episodes wherever you watch or listen.

Connect with Nina Rodriguez:

• griefandlight.com
• @griefandlight
• Resting Grief Face on Substack

Thank you for listening! 

If this conversation resonated with you:

✅ Share this episode with someone who needs it
✅ Follow Grief and Light so you never miss a conversation
✅ Leave a review! It helps this podcast reach more hearts

Disclaimer: griefandlight.com/safetyanddisclaimers

What happens when grief meets music, community, and the question of what we might do with the pain we carry?

Nina sits down with singer-songwriter, community activist, and Reimagine co-founder Brad Wolfe for a conversation about loss, meaning-making, mortality, and what can become possible when we stop trying to turn away from what hurts.

Twenty years ago, Brad was playing music at the bedside of his friend Sarah, who was dying from a rare pediatric bone cancer. What began as an intimate act of care became something much larger, eventually inspiring the Sunbeam Foundation and shaping the work Brad would go on to do with Reimagine, a platform and national movement helping people turn toward loss in community and channel that experience into meaningful action.

But Sarah's story is only one thread of this conversation.

Brad and Nina talk about the ways grief can be inherited through family stories, including Brad's experience growing up with grandparents who survived Auschwitz and the lasting impact of his grandmother's testimony. They explore our fear of death and hospitals, the role of music at the bedside, and why expressing pain in the presence of others can create room for connection rather than keeping us stuck.

Brad also shares several of the frameworks that have emerged from his work, including Tap Into Your Purpose, which looks at the intersection of talent, anger, and passion, and the idea of "right-sizing the dream" when life changes what is possible.

Brad shares the stories behind songs including Sarah's Got a Sunbeam, Why Wait, and Cover You in Flowers, along with his Lost Life and Love Mixtapes project.

This conversation isn't about finding a silver lining in loss. It's about asking a different question:

What might become possible when we turn toward pain together?

Because sometimes grief and meaning aren't either/or.

They can both be true.

In this episode

• How playing music at Sarah's bedside changed Brad's relationship with grief
• The connection between music, physical comfort, and emotional processing
• How Sarah's death eventually led to the Sunbeam Foundation
• Growing up with the stories and legacy of Holocaust-survivor grandparents
• What inherited grief can look like
• Why turning toward pain can be different from getting stuck in it
• The role of community in grief and meaning-making
• Brad's Tap Into Your Purpose exercise: Talent + Anger + Passion = Purpose
• Why anger can be information about what matters to us
• What it means to right-size the dream after loss or major life change
• Music, mortality, legacy, and the Lost Life and Love Mixtapes
• Finding ways to channel grief into action without feeling pressured to "do something" with your pain

Meet Brad Wolfe:

Brad Wolfe is a singer-songwriter, community activist, and co-founder of Reimagine, a platform and national movement that helps people turn toward loss in community and transform experiences of grief into meaningful action. He is also a musician with Brad Wolf and the Moon, and his music explores themes of loss, love, mortality, and meaning.

• bradwolfe.com
• IG: @bradwolfemoon

What is Reimagine?

Reimagine is a platform and movement centered on turning toward loss together and creating meaningful action from difficult experiences.

Through free events and a digital platform, Reimagine brings people together around grief, mortality, caregiving, serious illness, death, and other forms of loss. The goal isn't to "fix" grief, but to create opportunities for connection, expression, creativity, and meaning-making.

Nina has been involved with Reimagine as a facilitator for more than three years, making this conversation with Brad an especially meaningful one.

• letsreimagine.org
• IG: @letsreimagine

Right-Sizing the Dream:

One of the ideas Brad shares is "right-sizing the dream."

After a major loss or life-changing diagnosis, the dream we once had may no longer fit the life we're living.

Right-sizing doesn't mean abandoning what matters to us. It means asking what is possible now, given our energy, circumstances, capacity, and reality.

Brad shares the example of a woman living with stage-four cancer who wanted to write a book. When that no longer felt realistic, she created bookmarks that expressed what she was feeling instead. Those small creations became invitations for conversation with other patients.

Sometimes the meaningful thing isn't the biggest thing.

Sometimes it's the thing we can actually make today.

Tap Into Your Purpose:

Brad's Tap Into Your Purpose exercise invites us to consider three things:

Talent + Anger + Passion = Purpose

• What are you good at?
• What makes you angry or unsettles you?
• What are you deeply passionate about?

Rather than treating anger as something to suppress or get rid of, the exercise asks us to consider what our anger might be telling us about what matters to us.

Where those three things intersect can offer clues about where we might want to direct our energy.

There is no requirement to turn your grief into a project or your pain into a purpose. But if you feel called to do something with that energy, this can be one place to begin.

A note for listeners:

This episode includes conversations about childhood cancer, death, the Holocaust, mortality, and grief. Please take care of yourself while listening and pause or step away if needed.

Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: PK2NITARJOCDALYF

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Grief and Light is an award-winning, independent podcast exploring the honest, messy, and deeply human experience of loss. We're on a mission to foster a more grief-informed, hopeful world, one conversation at a time. 

🏆 Ear Worthy Best Life Lessons 2026 · TalkDeath Readers' Choice Best Podcast 2025 · Women Who Podcast Awards 2025 Winner · Podground Editor's Pick

New episodes wherever you watch or listen.

Connect with Nina Rodriguez:

• griefandlight.com
• @griefandlight
• Resting Grief Face on Substack

Thank you for listening! 

If this conversation resonated with you:

✅ Share this episode with someone who needs it
✅ Follow Grief and Light so you never miss a conversation
✅ Leave a review! It helps this podcast reach more hearts

Disclaimer: griefandlight.com/safetyanddisclaimers

Life as you know it can change in an instant, leaving us with more questions than answers.

Welcome to Season 5 of Grief and Light™, a two-time award-winning podcast where grief is met with curiosity instead of clichés, and hope is offered without bypassing pain.

We’re continuing to make room for honest, grief-informed conversations and to challenge the cultural narratives that tell us how grief is supposed to look, feel, or unfold. We’ll explore grief, loss, resilience, post-traumatic growth, identity shifts, and meaning-making while also asking what it means to meet a moment of collective uncertainty and change.

This season, we’re also widening the lens.

Who is asking the questions we need to be asking?

Who is imagining and building the spaces, relationships, and communities that might support us through the shifts ahead?

And what are we creating now that could help us navigate what we don’t yet know?

Because grief isn’t only about what we lose. It can change how we see, what we value, what we create, and what becomes possible.

Whether you’re grieving a person or beloved pet, a relationship, a dream, an identity, a version of your life, or simply trying to make sense of the world as it is, you’re in the right place.

For grief and joy. Love and loss. Heartache and hope. Uncertainty and possibility.

Season 5 of Grief and Light premieres September 29, 2026.

Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and join me for the conversations ahead.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Grief and Light is an award-winning, independent podcast exploring the honest, messy, and deeply human experience of loss. We're on a mission to foster a more grief-informed, hopeful world, one conversation at a time. 

🏆 Ear Worthy Best Life Lessons 2026 · TalkDeath Readers' Choice Best Podcast 2025 · Women Who Podcast Awards 2025 Winner · Podground Editor's Pick

New episodes wherever you watch or listen.

Connect with Nina Rodriguez:

• griefandlight.com
• @griefandlight
• Resting Grief Face on Substack

Thank you for listening! 

If this conversation resonated with you:

✅ Share this episode with someone who needs it
✅ Follow Grief and Light so you never miss a conversation
✅ Leave a review! It helps this podcast reach more hearts

Disclaimer: griefandlight.com/safetyanddisclaimers

What happens when life has already surprised you in the worst possible way?

After loss, staying open to possibility can feel complicated. When you’ve experienced something you never imagined could happen, the instinct to control what comes next can become a form of protection. But what if possibility doesn’t require optimism, certainty, or believing that everything will work out?

In the final conversation of our three-part Summer Shifts Series, Lisa Keefauver and Nina Rodriguez explore what it means to meet life differently after loss.

Together, we look at the space between what happened and what comes next, and consider whether getting unstuck is less about figuring out the future and more about becoming available to what life might still hold.

This conversation explores:

• Why control can become a grief response
• The difference between being surprised by life and being open to surprise
• How loss can change our relationship with uncertainty
• Lisa’s daily practice of wonder through breast cancer, widowhood, and multiple losses
• Nina’s reflections on losing her grandfather after experiencing the sudden death of her brother
• Why possibility is not the same thing as toxic positivity
• What happens when we shift from “I have to” to “I get to”
• Small practices that can help us notice beauty, wonder, and aliveness again
• The role of creativity, curiosity, and agency in life after loss
• How we can make room for joy without asking grief to leave
• The story of Dr. Tasha Faruqui and her family's "suck the joy out of life" motto (Watch their episode here)
• Mary Oliver’s invitation to pay attention, be astonished, and tell about it
• Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s poem “Because Today Vulnerable Feels Alive”

About The Summer Shifts Series:

This episode is the final installment of our three-part Summer Shifts Series, exploring what can happen when we approach life after loss through curiosity, creativity, and possibility.

Part 1: Living Into the Questions (replay)
What if you didn’t need answers to move forward?

Part 2: Shifting Our Stories (replay)
What story are you still carrying, and what might you write instead?

Part 3: Meeting Life Differently
How are you letting life surprise you?

Together, these conversations explore a different way of thinking about getting unstuck:

LOSS → IDENTITY DISRUPTION → STUCK STORY → CURIOSITY → CREATIVITY → POSSIBILITY

A note from Nina:

After loss, we can spend so much energy trying to figure out how to move forward that we forget something important. We don't have to know what comes next in order to begin meeting life differently.

Possibility isn't a promise that something good will happen, but a willingness to notice, wonder, try something without knowing where it leads, and letting life surprise you.

And sometimes, that is enough for today.

What might become possible if you stopped asking yourself what comes next and started asking what is here now?

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Grief and Light is an award-winning, independent podcast exploring the honest, messy, and deeply human experience of loss. We're on a mission to foster a more grief-informed, hopeful world, one conversation at a time. 

🏆 Ear Worthy Best Life Lessons 2026 · TalkDeath Readers' Choice Best Podcast 2025 · Women Who Podcast Awards 2025 Winner · Podground Editor's Pick

New episodes wherever you watch or listen.

Connect with Nina Rodriguez:

• griefandlight.com
• @griefandlight
• Resting Grief Face on Substack

Thank you for listening! 

If this conversation resonated with you:

✅ Share this episode with someone who needs it
✅ Follow Grief and Light so you never miss a conversation
✅ Leave a review! It helps this podcast reach more hearts

Disclaimer: griefandlight.com/safetyanddisclaimers

Grief has a way of convincing us that loss must mean we did something wrong.

That if we had prayed harder, loved better, been more vigilant, or been more faithful, our person would still be here.

One of the most common questions I hear from grieving people is some version of:

“We didn’t do anything to deserve this. Why did this happen to us?”

Behind that question is often something heavier than grief: guilt, self-blame, and the belief that we should have been able to prevent the loss.

But grief is not karma.

Loss is not punishment. Tragedy is not a moral verdict. And your loss does not mean you did something to deserve it.

In this solo episode of Grief and Light™, we explore the complicated relationship between grief, guilt, responsibility, and control. We look at why our brains search for something we could have done differently after a death, and what happens when we confuse personal power with the fantasy that we can control everything.

Grief asks us to live inside a paradox:

✨ We are powerful beings, AND we do not have power over everything. ✨

If you have found yourself stuck in the “if only,” “what if,” or “I should have” loops after a loss, this episode is for you. Whether your loss happened recently or years ago, you are not required to punish yourself in order to prove how much you loved someone.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why the brain defaults to “What did I do to deserve this?” after loss
• The connection between grief, guilt, self-blame, and the need for control
• The difference between sovereignty and the fantasy of total control
• Why tragedy is not a referendum on your goodness
• How the “if only” and “what if” loops can keep us stuck in grief
• Dr. Tasha Faruqi, physician and author of Keep Your Head Up: A Mother’s Story of Chasing Joy in the Face of Grief
• The Serenity Prayer as a framework for living with what we can and cannot change
• Ho'oponopono and the complicated role of forgiveness in grief
• How to begin releasing self-punishment without minimizing your loss

Mentioned in this episode:

• Grief Is Not Karma from Resting Grief Face
• Keep Your Head Up: A Mother’s Story of Chasing Joy in the Face of Grief by Dr. Tasha Faruqi
• The Serenity Prayer
• Ho'oponopono

If you are grieving a death, navigating bereavement, or struggling with guilt after loss, consider this your reminder: nothing is wrong with you for thinking these thoughts, AND you do not have to keep punishing yourself to honor your love.

Find more grief support, resources, and episodes at griefandlight.com.

To grieve fully is to live fully.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Grief and Light is an award-winning, independent podcast exploring the honest, messy, and deeply human experience of loss. We're on a mission to foster a more grief-informed, hopeful world, one conversation at a time. 

🏆 Ear Worthy Best Life Lessons 2026 · TalkDeath Readers' Choice Best Podcast 2025 · Women Who Podcast Awards 2025 Winner · Podground Editor's Pick

New episodes wherever you watch or listen.

Connect with Nina Rodriguez:

• griefandlight.com
• @griefandlight
• Resting Grief Face on Substack

Thank you for listening! 

If this conversation resonated with you:

✅ Share this episode with someone who needs it
✅ Follow Grief and Light so you never miss a conversation
✅ Leave a review! It helps this podcast reach more hearts

Disclaimer: griefandlight.com/safetyanddisclaimers

What stories are you still carrying, and what might you write instead?

In Part 2 of the Summer Shifts Series, grief educator and Grief and Light™ founder and host Nina Rodriguez joins author, grief educator, and Grief Is a Sneaky Bitch host Lisa Keefauver, MSW to explore how creativity can help us notice and shift the stories that keep us stuck after loss, grief, and major life change.

Building on Part 1's invitation to live into the questions, Nina and Lisa turn toward creativity. Not creativity as productivity or performance. Creativity as discovery.

They explore what happens when we loosen the pressure to be "good" at something and instead get curious about what might emerge. They talk about the difference between saying "I'm bad at this" and "I don't have a lot of practice at this," why our "I am" statements are worth questioning, and how creating a little distance from a difficult emotion can change our relationship to it.

Lisa also shares a poem she wrote during her cancer treatment, "What Cancer Couldn't Kill," and explains how writing about a difficult experience in the third person became a creative practice in self-compassion.

Throughout the conversation, Nina and Lisa offer low-stakes creative practices for shifting a story that no longer fits, including timed writing, third-person writing, reframing "I am" statements, noticing sticky words, and collecting evidence of small changes.

If you're navigating grief, a career pivot, an identity shift, or a season when the old story about who you are no longer quite fits, this episode offers playful, practical ways to get curious about what else might be true.

What you'll learn:

• What "sticky stories" are, where they come from, and why they can become limiting
• How to think about creativity as discovery rather than production
• Why "I don't have a lot of practice" can be a more useful story than "I'm bad at it"
• How reframing "I am" statements can create space around difficult emotions
• Two timed writing prompts you can try, including "If only..." and the apology you never got
• How writing about a difficult experience in the third person can create distance and invite self-compassion
• The "sticky word jar" and how it can help you notice limiting language
• How to use the freeze-reframe practice when something feels stuck
• Why collecting small evidence of change can shift the story we tell about ourselves
• What it means to witness someone's story without immediately offering advice or feedback

Some questions explored in this episode:

• What is a sticky story?
• How can creativity help with grief or a stuck season of life?
• How can I reframe an "I am" statement?
• What is the sticky word jar?
• Why write about a difficult experience in the third person?

About the Summer Shifts Series:

A three-part live conversation series exploring what becomes possible when we embrace curiosity, creativity, and the unexpected after loss and life's unexpected pivots.

✨ Part 1 | Living Into the Questions
Theme — Curiosity | Watch Here

✨ Part 2 | Shifting Our Stories
Theme — Creativity | Watch Here

✨ Part 3 | Meeting Life Differently
Theme — Possibility | Join Live

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Grief and Light is an award-winning, independent podcast exploring the honest, messy, and deeply human experience of loss. We're on a mission to foster a more grief-informed, hopeful world, one conversation at a time. 

🏆 Ear Worthy Best Life Lessons 2026 · TalkDeath Readers' Choice Best Podcast 2025 · Women Who Podcast Awards 2025 Winner · Podground Editor's Pick

New episodes wherever you watch or listen.

Connect with Nina Rodriguez:

• griefandlight.com
• @griefandlight
• Resting Grief Face on Substack

Thank you for listening! 

If this conversation resonated with you:

✅ Share this episode with someone who needs it
✅ Follow Grief and Light so you never miss a conversation
✅ Leave a review! It helps this podcast reach more hearts

Disclaimer: griefandlight.com/safetyanddisclaimers

What if you didn't need answers to move forward?

What if the questions themselves are where life begins to open again?

In the first conversation of the Summer Shifts Series, grief educator and Grief and Light™ founder and host Nina Rodriguez joins author, grief educator, author, and Grief Is a Sneaky Bitch host Lisa Keefauver to explore what it means to live with the questions grief leaves behind rather than rushing toward resolution.

After loss, we’re often told to find closure, make meaning, move forward, or figure out what comes next. But grief rarely follows a neat narrative. Sometimes the more honest practice is learning to stay curious about what we don't yet know.

Together, Nina and Lisa explore living into the questions as a practice for navigating grief, life transitions, and uncertainty. They talk about the stories we inherit and internalize, the language that can quietly keep us stuck, and how curiosity can create room for wonder and possibility again.

They explore the five small but powerful words that can signal we're getting caught in a story — should, always, never, but, and shouldn't — and discuss how narrative therapy can help us notice the stories we're telling without assuming those stories are the whole truth.

They also introduce the constellation metaphor, imagining the stories we tell about ourselves as constellations in the night sky, and how zooming out can help us notice evidence, experiences, and possibilities that an old story left out.

Along the way, Nina and Lisa share poetry from Gregory Orr, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jack Gilbert, and Mary Oliver, and reflect on the questions that have helped them continue building lives after profound loss, including sudden sibling loss and widowhood.

If you're navigating grief, a major life transition, or a season of uncertainty, this conversation offers language and perspectives for staying with the questions rather than forcing yourself to find an answer.

In this episode, you'll explore

• What it means to live into the questions after loss
• Why grief doesn't always need resolution or a tidy answer
• The "sticky stories" that can keep us feeling stuck in grief
• Five words that can signal you're caught inside a limiting story
• How narrative therapy can shift the way we understand our experiences
• The constellation metaphor and how changing our perspective can reveal overlooked evidence
• Why poetry can sometimes hold what ordinary language cannot
• How curiosity can coexist with grief and uncertainty
• What it means to stay connected to aliveness after loss
• Two questions to carry with you this week: What stories am I holding onto? and What do I already know?

Some questions explored in this episode

What does "living into the questions" mean in grief?

What are "sticky stories"?

What is the constellation metaphor?

How can poetry help us live with difficult questions?

About the Summer Shifts Series:

A three-part live conversation series co-hosted by Nina Rodriguez and Lisa Keefauver exploring what becomes possible when we embrace curiosity, creativity, and the unexpected.

✨ Part 1 | Living Into the Questions
Theme — Curiosity

✨ Part 2 | Shifting Our Stories
Theme — Creativity

✨ Part 3 | Meeting Life Differently
Theme — Possibility

Replays of the Summer Shifts conversations are available on the Grief and Light podcast.

A question to carry with you:

What question are you willing to live into instead of trying to answer?

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Grief and Light is an award-winning, independent podcast exploring the honest, messy, and deeply human experience of loss. We're on a mission to foster a more grief-informed, hopeful world, one conversation at a time. 

🏆 Ear Worthy Best Life Lessons 2026 · TalkDeath Readers' Choice Best Podcast 2025 · Women Who Podcast Awards 2025 Winner · Podground Editor's Pick

New episodes wherever you watch or listen.

Connect with Nina Rodriguez:

• griefandlight.com
• @griefandlight
• Resting Grief Face on Substack

Thank you for listening! 

If this conversation resonated with you:

✅ Share this episode with someone who needs it
✅ Follow Grief and Light so you never miss a conversation
✅ Leave a review! It helps this podcast reach more hearts

Disclaimer: griefandlight.com/safetyanddisclaimers

Why can grief feel unexpectedly heavy during the summer?

While the holidays are often recognized as difficult for grieving people, the quieter shifts of summer can bring their own wave of longing, nostalgia, and remembrance. Longer days, changing routines, family traditions, vacations, and returning to familiar places can amplify the absence of someone we love or remind us of the life we once had.

In this solo episode of Grief and Light™, host Nina Rodriguez reflects on returning to her childhood home in Puerto Rico nearly seven years after the death of her brother, Yosef. Through personal storytelling, she explores her mother's beautiful phrase, "collapsing timelines," the experience of feeling the past and present at the same time, and why grief isn't only about the people we've lost. Sometimes we grieve entire seasons of life, former identities, places that shaped us, and versions of ourselves we thought would always remain.

Drawing on her own lived experience, grief-informed work, and the wisdom of poet Rainer Maria Rilke, Nina shares why healing is often less about finding answers and more about learning to live the questions. This conversation offers compassionate support for anyone navigating bereavement, sibling loss, life transitions, nostalgia, or the ongoing process of rebuilding life after profound loss.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why grief can feel different during the summer months

• How returning home can awaken memory, nostalgia, and unexpected emotions

• What "collapsing timelines" means and why familiar places can feel emotionally complex after loss

• Why we often grieve more than the people we've lost, including former identities, relationships, and seasons of life

• How living the questions can foster resilience, self-compassion, and post-traumatic growth

If this conversation resonates with you, you're warmly invited to join Nina Rodriguez and grief educator, author, and speaker Lisa Keefauver for a live three-part Substack "Summer Shifts Series" exploring curiosity, creativity, and possibility after grief and life's unexpected pivots.

Read the full essay and access the live series information here.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Grief and Light is an award-winning, independent podcast exploring the honest, messy, and deeply human experience of loss. We're on a mission to foster a more grief-informed, hopeful world, one conversation at a time. 

🏆 Ear Worthy Best Life Lessons 2026 · TalkDeath Readers' Choice Best Podcast 2025 · Women Who Podcast Awards 2025 Winner · Podground Editor's Pick

New episodes wherever you watch or listen.

Connect with Nina Rodriguez:

• griefandlight.com
• @griefandlight
• Resting Grief Face on Substack

Thank you for listening! 

If this conversation resonated with you:

✅ Share this episode with someone who needs it
✅ Follow Grief and Light so you never miss a conversation
✅ Leave a review! It helps this podcast reach more hearts

Disclaimer: griefandlight.com/safetyanddisclaimers

What happens when grief isn’t as heavy as it once was? 

This candid, multi-voice conversation explores what it means to live fully after loss.

While much of the grief space centers on surviving, this roundtable makes space for what comes after the initial sorrow that follows loss and life-altering change, when life begins to expand again, often in unexpected ways. 

Together, grief and resilience leaders, podcasters, and grief-informed creators explore meaning-making, post-traumatic growth, and the nuanced reality of carrying grief while also reclaiming joy, purpose, and possibility.

This is the conversation for everyone who needed to know grief shifts, that joy and aliveness are possible, and for everyone who's arrived at lighter and isn't sure what to do with that.

Rather than framing this as “moving on,” the conversation centers the complexity of living in the both/and, where grief remains, but no longer defines every moment. 

Speakers will share personal and professional insights on post-traumatic growth, identity reconstruction, and the ways life can expand after loss without abandoning love for who or what was lost.

The discussion challenges the idea that grief must remain all-consuming to be valid, while offering language, permission, and perspective for those who are beginning to feel moments of lightness again, or long to believe that’s possible.

(Video is an event replay.)

SPEAKERS:

NINA RODRIGUEZ | Founder, Host, Grief-informed guide | GRIEF AND LIGHT

@itsnrodriguez

KERA SANCHEZ | Editor-in-Chief, Get Griefy Magazine @getgriefymagazine

BLAIR KAPLAN VENABLES | Grief + Resilience Expert, Speaker & Author | The Global Resilience Project

 @blairfromblairland

TARA ACCARDO | Grief and Soul Purpose Coach and host of the ‪@lifewithgriefpodcast‬ x @lossesbecomegains

IMOGEN CARN | author, speaker, breathwork facilitator and co-founder of ‪@goodmourningpodcast‬ x @healwithim

A video version is available on Y0uTvbe. ;)

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Grief and Light is an award-winning, independent podcast exploring the honest, messy, and deeply human experience of loss. We're on a mission to foster a more grief-informed, hopeful world, one conversation at a time. 

🏆 Ear Worthy Best Life Lessons 2026 · TalkDeath Readers' Choice Best Podcast 2025 · Women Who Podcast Awards 2025 Winner · Podground Editor's Pick

New episodes wherever you watch or listen.

Connect with Nina Rodriguez:

• griefandlight.com
• @griefandlight
• Resting Grief Face on Substack

Thank you for listening! 

If this conversation resonated with you:

✅ Share this episode with someone who needs it
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In a world where grief is often tied to family ties and romantic relationships, the loss of a friend can feel isolating and unrecognized.

Hannah Rumsey is a writer, certified Grief Educator, and the founder of Friends Missing Friends. After losing her best friend Lauren in 2015, Hannah went searching for support and found almost nothing. No grief groups. Not even a Google search result that addressed her experience directly. What she found instead was disenfranchised grief, a term that changed everything.

In this episode, Hannah and Nina explore why friend-loss is one of the most overlooked and invalidated forms of grief, and what it costs us when we leave it out of the conversation. Hannah shares the story of how she found out about Lauren's death (through a birthday post on Facebook), what it took to sit five feet away from the man responsible for her friend's death during his trial in Spain, the stunning sign she received from Lauren through her phone, and why she believes Lauren has been pulling strings from the other side ever since.

They also talk about the false hierarchy of grief, what it means to question whether your own loss "counts," and why being around people who simply believe you — without explanation or qualification — can be one of the most healing experiences a friend-loss griever can have.

In this episode:

• What disenfranchised grief is and why friend-loss fits squarely inside it
• The false hierarchy of love (and grief) our society has built
• Why finding out about a friend's death through social media is more common than we think
• The Netflix documentary The Predator of Seville and Lauren's story
• How Hannah sat in the courtroom five feet from the man who killed her friend
• The moment Lauren's photo appeared on Hannah's phone, updated by Lauren
• Why friend-loss grievers feel pressure to qualify and explain their own loss
• How grief rituals can be personal, messy, and entirely your own
• The Friends Missing Friends Collective, an online community for friend-loss grievers
• What Hannah would say (and not say) to herself on the day she lost Lauren

Connect with Hannah Rumsey:

• Friends Missing Friends (website, online membership, and podcast): friendsmissingfriends.com
• IG @friendsmissingfriends
• Netflix documentary: The Predator of Seville

If you've ever lost a friend and felt like you had to explain why it mattered, this episode is for you.

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Grief and Light is an award-winning, independent podcast exploring the honest, messy, and deeply human experience of loss. We're on a mission to foster a more grief-informed, hopeful world, one conversation at a time. 

🏆 Ear Worthy Best Life Lessons 2026 · TalkDeath Readers' Choice Best Podcast 2025 · Women Who Podcast Awards 2025 Winner · Podground Editor's Pick

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Connect with Nina Rodriguez:

• griefandlight.com
• @griefandlight
• Resting Grief Face on Substack

Thank you for listening! 

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Disclaimer: griefandlight.com/safetyanddisclaimers