Grief Out Loud

In May of 2024, Christine Passo's beloved dog, Maya Ray, took her last breath in Christine's arms. This wasn't the first time Christine experienced loss or trauma, but the grief she felt and continues to feel for Maya Ray caught her off guard with its intensity and depth. We talk about Maya Ray's last day, how Christine's other dog, Zoe, grieved, and how Christine and her partner are finding ways to continue honoring Maya Ray's life and her place in their family. 

Christine Passo is a coach who specializes in supporting women through life changes, many of which come with grief. She is also the co-author of My Fur Baby Wrote This Book and host of the Unconscious Evolution podcast. 

Be sure to check out our previous episode on grieving for a pet - Ep. 238 "These Relationships Matter."

In honor of Children's Grief Awareness month, we asked kids and teens to talk about grief in their own words. This compilation episode includes clips from children and teens reflecting on their people who died, their varied responses to loss, and what they hope grief will feel like in future. 

Thank you to all the children and teens who contributed to this episode - and to their parents and caregivers for facilitating the recording process. 

Want to learn more?

• Register now for Too Young To Grieve? Dougy Center's Children's Grief Awareness Day webinar. Thursday, November 21st, 2024 - 10 - 11:30 am PST 
• Be part of our #UnderstandGrief campaign
• Follow November's Flip The Script posts on social media

No one is perfect and no one is just one story, but how do you grieve when the person who died was so different than the person you fell in love with? When Jenn met and fell in love with Jesse, she never imagined their relationship would unravel due to his struggles with mental health and alcohol use disorder. Jesse died in 2020 and Jenn's been left to reconcile the man she loved with the one she eventually had to leave. His death also left her unsure where her grief fits in the world of bereavement and how to support their son, whose grief is complicated by the impact his father's illness had on their relationship. 

Dr. Jennifer Vriend is a Licensed Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychologist and co-host of The Coping Toolbox podcast.

Susan Lieu, is a Vietnamese-American author, playwright, and performer. When Susan was 11 years old, her mother died from a routine plastic surgery. After she died, Susan's family stopped talking about her mother, leaving Susan on her own to figure out what happened and how to feel. Susan's debut memoir, The Manicurist’s Daughter, recounts her quest to get to know her mother, avenge her death, and try with all her might to get her family to open up about it all.

Susan is a compelling and accomplished storyteller, co-hosting The Model Minority Moms podcast and speaking at TEDx, the Smithsonian, and at universities and companies across the country. Her memoir is an Apple Book of the Month, most anticipated 2024 book by Elle Magazine and Goodreads, and has been featured on The New York Times, NPR Books, and The Washington Post. Read her press here. 

Follow Susan on IG @susanlieu

It's our 300th episode and this conversation with Maegan Parker Brooks, PhD, is the perfect one to honor that milestone. Maegan is an Associate Professor at Willamette University and a volunteer at Dougy Center where she facilitates a peer grief support group for adult caregivers of teens who are grieving. Maegan is also a daughter and sister, grieving the deaths of her father, her sister Emily, and her mother. In this conversation we talk about grief and estranged relationships, relationships impacted by substance use, non-death losses, memorialization during the pandemic, and all the ways we talk to one another - and ourselves - about that grief. 

Maegan Parker Brooks, PhD is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Civic Communication & Media Department at Willamette University. At Willamette, Maegan teaches courses in Death and Grief Communication and facilitates the Diversity of Loss grief support group. Beyond Willamette, Maegan co-facilitates a group for adult caregivers of grieving teens at The Dougy Center and she recently earned a certificate in Arts-Assisted Grief Therapy at the Portland Institute for Loss & Transition.   

Related Articles: Brooks, Maegan P. "Listening to Grief." Willamette., 1 Feb. 2024, pp. 20-21.  Brooks, Maegan P. “Listening to Layers of Loss.” Journal of Autoethnography, 4, 2 (2023): 174-192.   Want to help us celebrate our 300th episode? Be sure to follow the show and give us a rating/review on whatever platform you use to listen!   Grief Out Loud®  is a production of Dougy Center, The National Grief Center for Children & Families.

Kendra Rinaldi knows a lot about grief. When she was just 21, her sister died in a car accident. Ten years later she had a miscarriage. Ten years after that, her mother died of cancer. Professionally, she is a grief guide and host of the Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray In Between podcast. But she didn't always get grief. When she was 21, she didn't realize that everything she was thinking, feeling, and experiencing after her sister's death counted as grief. In the years since, Kendra's gotten to know her grief well and uses that knowledge to support others.   

We discuss:

• The spectrum of losses Kendra's experienced
  • Grieving her sister's death in a car accident
  • Grieving a miscarriage
  • Grieving her mother's death from pancreatic cancer
• What can be different between a sudden death vs. one from a long-term illness
• Discerning grief from depression
• Writing as a tool for navigating grief and staying connected to her sister
• How Kendra's sister's death shifted family dynamics
• Tri-lingual grieving - and why Spanglish is her favorite language for grief
• How grief is approached differently in the U.S. and Kendra's home country, Colombia
• The origin of the Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray In Between podcast
• The hardest aspect of doing a podcast about grief
• Kendra's recent sneaky grief attack

Follow Kendra on IG @griefgratitudepodcast

Want to help with our special Children's Grief Awareness Month episode? If you have a child or teen in your world who is grieving a death who would like to participate, you can record a voice memo of them responding to one or more of the following prompts and email it to [email protected]

1. When my ____ died, I felt...
2. When I'm missing them, ____ helps the most
3. Today, my grief feels like...
4. In the future, I hope my grief feels...

Thank you for considering!

It might be better to ask Canada Taylor what she doesn't do in the realm of suicide prevention, postvention, and grief support rather than what she does because she seems to do just about everything and anything. This is part two of our conversation with her, so if you missed the first, Ep. 297: Honoring A Great Love, be sure to listen. In this episode, we talk about the holistic  approach she takes to suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention. An approach that focuses on building a world worth living in. A world where youth - and people of any age - have their basic needs met and can access safety, community, and true belonging. 

We discuss:

• Some of the professional roles Canada holds
• What is different for grief professionals and educators when the topic of suicide arises
• The changing landscape of suicide prevention & postvention
• How systems and institutions can create barriers to more humane and effective interventions
• What we still don't know when it comes to suicide
• How stigma, shame, and isolation contribute to suicide - and the harm they cause for those left behind
• Risk factors for youth suicide, especially for BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ youth
• Protective factors like belonging, safety, and community
• Why cultural & community specific prevention & intervention strategies are necessary
• What the headlines get wrong about youth suicide
• The pockets of hope Canada's come across in the field

Since 2005 Canada Taylor has worked in behavioral health care serving youth and adults, with a focus in deathcare and helping families navigate grief, loss, and trauma amidst crisis. Relational, restorative, and transformative approaches are key underpinnings to Canada’s holistic, integrative philosophy to creating change and healing for all. Currently she is the Suicide Prevention Coordinator and Postvention Response Lead for the Multnomah County Health Department. Canada was honored with the Trillium Health Mental Health Hero award in 2021 and Multnomah County's Committee Choice Award in 2024 for her work in grief and suicide prevention. Grounding spaces in humor, authenticity, and vulnerability are essential to Canada’s professional and personal life, and especially her work in suicide prevention.   

Organizations we reference:

School Crisis Recovery & Renewal Network (SCRR)

SAMSHA Black Youth Suicide Prevention Coalition

National Suicide Prevention Month

If you are someone you know is struggling, please reach out

Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: 988

Trans Lifeline: 877.565.8860

YouthLine: 877.968.8491 

BlackLine: 800.604.5841

LGBTQ National Hotline: 888.843.4564 

The Trevor Project: 866.488.7386

Twelve years ago today - August 30th - Canada Taylor was having an amazing night. She and her husband Rick were sitting outside, talking about life and work and dreams for the future - their future. Then everything changed. Rick had a medical event, and Canada became his first responder. Hours later, she became his widow. In the twelve years since, things continued to change. Canada's two sons grew up and grew into their grief. She changed the course of her career - moving from behavioral health to suicide prevention and grief justice. Throughout all these changes, Canada has found ways to honor who Rick was in this world and the love they share.  

We discuss:

• What Canada's husband saw in her that no one else did
• The last day they spent together
• Being a first responder for Rick & the trauma that brought
• Supporting her two children 
• The challenge of finding culturally relevant grief support for her kids
• How difficult it was to find skilled support for herself
• A preview of how grief informs the work Canada does in the realm of suicide prevention & postvention
• How Canada plans to honor the anniversary of Rick's death this year

Connect with Canada on IG @canadalauren and Linkedin

When Barri Leiner Grant was 28, her mother Ellen died suddenly. Barri was hit with intense grief, but back then the expectation was to hurry up and get back to work and life. She didn't have the time, space, or tools to acknowledge and attend to grief. Over the past 31 years, Barri and her grief have gotten to know each other on a deep level. In this long-term relationship, she's learned that her grief gets louder each time she reaches a new milestone or faces a transition. Even with that knowing, the grief can still find ways to catch her off-guard. Recently, one of those times was watching her daughter turn the same age Barri was when her mother died. 

We discuss:

• How Barri's mom, Ellen, was a woman before her time
• The day her mother died and the last sounds she heard
• What the early days of grief felt like
• The untenable expectation to get back to "normal"
• Finding Hope Edelman's book, Motherless Daughters
• The grief tending tools Barri turned to over the past 31 years
• Her daughter turning the age Barri was when her mother died
• The newer grief of being a caregiver for her father who has dementia
• How The Memory Circle came to be and Barri's work as a grief coach
• One of Barri's favorite ways to engage with grief - writing

Barri Leiner Grant is the founder and Chief Grief Officer™, of The Memory Circle for grief support--a place and space she created in 2019, for those learning to live with loss. She left a longtime career as a journalist and motherloss peer guide, to pursue full-time work and training as a Certified Grief Coach and Educator. Connect with Barri on Instagram and Substack. 

Sometimes we can't really begin to understand grief - ours or anyone else's - if we don't have space to talk about the death. The context surrounding how someone died matters and can shape our grief in meaningful ways. This was true for Kari Lyons-Price, MSW, who was a caregiver for her parents, Hal and Sylvia, for many years. They died three years apart, her dad in 2019 and her mom in 2022, and the circumstances of their deaths greatly impacted Kari and her grief. 

We discuss:

• How her parents lived - and how they each died
• Why their death stories matter when it comes to grief
• The anger and resentment in the immediate aftermath of her father's death
• What she's done to come to terms with the circumstances of each of their deaths
• The role advocacy and education in the realm of care facilities played in that process
• Making decisions about her mother's care in light of how her father died and the pandemic
• The ongoing, slow nature of grief when someone has a long-term degenerative illness
• What it's meant to no longer be a caregiver for her parents
• Overcoming her family's narrative of autonomy and learning to accept support in grief
• Where Kari finds her foundation now