Grief Out Loud

From an early age, Ami Baio was curious about death and grief. As a game designer and the creator of Pink Tiger Games, she eventually turned that curiosity into Proof of Life, a conversational game about death, grief, and talking about what matters most to the people in our lives.

In a professional and personal overlap, as Ami was finishing the game, her father was dying of cancer.

Ami's relationship with her dad had changed dramatically over the course of her life. After her parents divorced when she was five, she and her father became separated from each other, and their relationship was complicated for many years. In 2010, Ami reached out to apologize for the distance she had created between them and to acknowledge the effort and love her father had put into their relationship. Years later, her father offered an apology of his own.

When he became ill, Ami and her siblings found themselves navigating the uncertainty of his cancer diagnosis while her dad remained determined to live. Conversations about death were difficult, but Proof of Life eventually gave the family another way to talk, laugh, remember, and connect.

Ami also shares what it was like to be with her dad when he died, the playlist he created for his own funeral, the waves of grief that followed, and the unexpected ways music, memories, humor, and even dancing have helped her stay connected to him.

In this episode, we talk about:

• Two powerful apologies between Ami and her father
• Making Proof of Life while her dad was dying
• Using a game to open conversations that were otherwise difficult to have
• Being with her dad in the final days and at the moment of his death
• The playlist her dad created and the role music played in his final days
• The waves of grief that followed his death
• Finding room for joy, silliness, and fun in the midst of grief
• Staying curious about the people we love — even when we've known them our whole lives

Ami Baio is the creator of Pink Tiger Games, which makes conversational games designed to bring people together through curiosity, connection, humor, and reflection. Follow on IG - https://www.instagram.com/pinktigergames/?hl=en

In this episode, we talk with Kelly and Miguel Cervantes about their daughter Adelaide, who lived with epilepsy and complex medical needs. Kelly and Miguel share what it was like to parent a child who couldn't speak or move but who still made her preferences known – including smacking her brother when she was done playing and loving anything by Frank Sinatra. They talk about the very different roles they occupied during Adelaide's life: Kelly as a full-time caregiver who became fluent in her daughter's medical world, and Miguel, who moved in and out of that world while performing eight shows a week as Alexander Hamilton in Chicago.

We also talk about grief that followed when Adelaide died in 2019, just before her 4th birthday. Kelly describes the secondary loss of her identity as a caregiver and Miguel talks about what it meant to step onto a stage each night and, at times, find his own grief story overlapping with Hamilton's. Both parents reflect on how differently they grieve — Kelly's grief as something that pours out in what she calls "werewolfing," and Miguel's as private and internal — and how learning to recognize and support those differences became a turning point in their marriage. They close by talking about their son Jackson, and what they've learned about supporting a child who grieves on his own terms.

We discuss:

• Adelaide — her personality, her humor, her love of Sinatra
• The different roles of parent and caregiver
• Miguel's experience moving between the hospital and the Hamilton stage
• "Werewolfing" — Kelly and Miguel's very different ways of grieving, and how they learned to support each other in those
• Secondary losses: grieving an identity, a routine, a sense of purpose, alongside grieving Adelaide
• Finding meaning through advocacy, writing, and music in Adelaide's honor
• Parenting their son Jackson through his own grief, and learning he needed support that didn't come from them

About Kelly and Miguel Cervantes: Kelly Cervantes is a writer and advocate whose books include Normal Broken and The Luckiest. She serves on the boards of CURE Epilepsy and the Undiagnosed Diseases Network Foundation. Miguel Cervantes is an actor and singer known for originating the title role in the Chicago production of Hamilton.

Kelly and Miguel will be joining Dougy Center in Portland, Oregon, on October 27th, 2026, for our Focus on Hope luncheon. Visit dougy.org/hope for details.

Sometimes grief and how it shows up is obvious. Other times we might not recognize our experience as grief until something shifts our perspective. This was true for Juniper Wong, MSW, LICSW, a therapist who specializes in supporting those who are grieving through self-compassion, mindfulness, somatic experiencing, and Internal Family Systems (IFS).

Juniper shares how caring for her father during the final weeks of his life changed her understanding of grief, sparking a recognition of how much of her own life had been shaped by the loss and grief passed down her family line. Becoming a mother led Juniper to see connections between her own fears and those of the women in her family line, fears that were rooted in loss. She describes using meditation, movement, writing, and even imagined conversations with ancestors as ways of making sense of what she was carrying.

All of these personal experiences with grief inform the work Juniper does to help others name and work with their grief - including Happy Hour for Sad People, a monthly gathering through Grounded Grief in Portland, Oregon, where laughter, dark humor, tears, and connection can coexist.

We Discuss:

• Recognizing how grief often underlies other challenges like anxiety and depression
• How caring for a dying parent can transform a relationship
• The grief that can surface when someone no longer has the energy to keep it buried
• Ancestral grief and the losses we may carry without knowing their origins
• Ambiguous loss and "the loss that doesn't get a funeral"
• How pregnancy and motherhood opened up a new understanding of family grief
• Rituals for staying connected to people who have died
• Making room for laughter and dark humor alongside grief
• Creating less traditional spaces for people to gather around loss

Follow Juniper on IG - https://www.instagram.com/iamjuniperwong Substack - https://substack.com/@juniperwong Grounded Grief - https://www.groundedgrief.com/

When Frank Flores's younger brother Marcelo died suddenly at 23, Frank found himself in an unfamiliar role: identifying his brother's body, navigating paperwork, and figuring out how to bring him home to the U.S. from Mexico. There was little room for grief. Instead, Frank went back to work - and then worked even more.

Five years later, Frank's father died during COVID. Once again, grief was crowded out by the bureaucracy of death: bank accounts, debts, paperwork, family responsibilities, and the messy, exhausting task of untangling a life after death. Frank describes this as a "mountain of paperwork stacked on top of our grief."

It took years for Frank to recognize how staying busy prevented him from being with his grief. That realization eventually became part of the inspiration for FamiliaLista, a bilingual resource designed to help people organize the information family members need if someone becomes unable to speak for themselves—or after they die.

In this conversation, Frank talks about the deaths of his brother and father, the pressure he felt to be strong for his family, cultural discomfort with talking about death, and how he's making more space for grief. He also shares his hope that preparing for death can be understood not as morbid or inviting death, but as an act of love.

We Discuss:

• Frank's relationship with his father and younger brother, Marcelo
• Being responsible for identifying his brother's body and bringing him home
• The logistical work that can accompany sudden death
• The different experiences of an unexpected death and an anticipated death
• The pressure to be strong and "fix" things for other family members
• How grief can change and evolve over many years
• Cultural beliefs and taboos around talking about death
• The importance of preparing for the practical realities of death
• Frank's creation of FamiliaLista as a way to help families navigate those realities
• Reframing end-of-life preparation as an act of love

Follow FamiliaLista on IG - https://www.instagram.com/familia.lista

What if we thought about death not as something that needs to be handed over to institutions, but as something that communities could face together?

In this episode we talk with Crystal Meneses, a death worker, spiritual counselor, hospice chaplain, artist, musician, and longtime community caregiver. Crystal's path into death work began with watching a recording of her grandfather's funeral in the Philippines, which sparked questions around being able to one day provide a similar ceremony for her father. Questions that inspired her work to help us rethink how we approach death and dying.

Crystal and Jana explore the cultural differences in how death and grief are understood, including what Crystal has learned from her Filipino and Indigenous connections. They talk about the possibilities of caring for someone at home, tending to their body after death, creating rituals, and making intentional choices around end-of-life.

Crystal also shares what she's witnessed in the communities she serves - including elders, caregivers, young people, and people in prisons and other institutional settings - and the many ways grief goes unsupported.

Throughout the conversation, Crystal returns to the importance of relationship: building networks of care, making room for different spiritual beliefs and identities, and practicing togetherness in a culture that often treats death as something to manage alone.

We Discuss:

• Crystal's two grandmothers and the different cultural relationships she experienced with death and grief
• What it means to "bring death back into the hands of communities"
• Crystal's own hopes for her end-of-life care & how she cares for herself in this work
• Supporting children and teens through art and music when grief is difficult to put into words
• Indigenous, multicultural, and multispiritual approaches to grief and death
• The systemic barriers that make care and connection more difficult

Crystal reminds us that there isn't one right way to grieve, to die, or to care for someone who is dying, and that we may have more choices than we've been taught to believe.

Connect with Crystal on IG - https://www.instagram.com/crystalakinsmeneses/

In 2022, Steph Tupper's two older children, Ali and Joe, were killed in a car crash. Ali was 16 and Joe was 14. Four years later, Steph is still learning how to live with the reality of losing her children while continuing to parent her youngest daughter.

In this episode, Steph talks openly about the devastating night she learned Ali and Joe had died, the ways she continues to feel connected to them, and the complicated process of building a life around an absence that will never go away. She shares what she has learned about community, judgment from others - and herself, parenting after loss, and allowing grief to unfold without a timeline.

In the last four years, Steph has learned how devastating pain and great joy can coexist, and how her capacity to carry grief continues to grow.

We discuss:

• The shock of sudden loss
• Feeling connected to Ali and Joe through signs, memories, and a sense of their presence
• Parenting her daughter while grieving
• The importance of community and finding other parents who have experienced child loss
• The pressure and judgment people who are grieving can face
• Why grief doesn't follow a timeline - and why support shouldn't either
• Navigating anniversaries, holidays, birthdays, and back-to-school season
• Learning to anticipate difficult seasons rather than trying to make them disappear
• Making space for both joy and profound sadness
• What it means to simply sit with someone's grief instead of trying to fix it

Learn more about Dougy Center's grief education & training offerings: https://www.dougy.org/professionals-trainings

When physician and writer Shanda McManus was fourteen, her mother died after living with ovarian cancer. Three years later, her grandmother - the person who became home after that loss - was killed by a drunk driver. Then, while Shanda was in medical school, her younger brother Monir was murdered on Christmas Eve.

For years, surviving meant staying busy. Planning funerals. Managing paperwork. Pushing forward. The grief itself was boxed up, held in place by what Shanda describes as an emotional tourniquet. It kept her moving, but it also kept her separated from memories of her mother, grandmother, and brother - and even from parts of herself.

In this conversation, Jana and Shanda explore what finally made it possible to take off the tourniquet. They talk about how writing became a gentle way back into grief and how reconnecting with that grief also helped Shanda reconnect with the people who had died.

Together they also explore the larger forces that shape grief: the myth of the "strong Black woman," the culture of medicine that rewards emotional restraint, the isolation that follows homicide loss, and the ways race, class, and stigma influence whose grief is witnessed and whose is questioned.

This episode considers what can happen when we stop asking grief to disappear and instead start tending to it - creating space for tears, memories, stories, and relationships that continue long after someone dies.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Growing up in North Philadelphia and the lasting influence of Shanda's mother, grandmother, and younger brother.
• Becoming the family caretaker after her mother's death at fourteen.
• How repeated losses led to decades of suppressing grief in order to survive.
• Why writing Brother Epistles became a pathway back to memory, relationship, and self.
• The unique challenges of grieving after homicide and the stigma that often accompanies violent loss.
• How racism, gender expectations, and medical culture can leave little room for grief.
• What it means to tend grief rather than trying to finish it.
• Finding permission to speak about the people who died as an everyday grief practice.

Connect with Shanda McManus, MD https://www.shandamcmanus.com/ @shandaMDwrites Weatherproof Substack

Learn more about Dougy Center's grief education & training offerings: https://www.dougy.org/professionals-trainings

When it comes to children and grief, there's a lot we misunderstand. Adults might think they are either resilient and unaffected, too young to understand, or irreparably broken by the death of someone in their life. In reality though, their experiences of grief can be just as profound and complex as those of the adults around them.

In this episode of Grief Out Loud, Jana talks with Certified Child Life Specialist Jessica Correnti about what children actually need when someone they love dies. Drawing from more than a decade of working in pediatric hospitals and her private practice, Kids Grief Support, Jessica offers practical ways adults can help children understand death, express their feelings, and develop lifelong coping skills.

Jessica also shares the personal story of going through several miscarriages and the stillbirth of her daughter Maggie. She reflects on how her professional knowledge as a child life specialist shaped the way she and her family included their toddler son in meeting Maggie, how they continue to keep Maggie woven into everyday family life, and why simple, honest conversations help children carry grief over time rather than "move on" from it.

We discuss:

• What child life specialists do and why every family facing illness, injury, or death could benefit from their support.
• How Jessica's own experiences with pregnancy loss transformed her understanding of grief.
• Why "at least..." statements often leave people feeling more isolated.
• How to prepare children for difficult experiences using clear, concrete language grounded in the 5 senses.
• Why grief conversations don't need to be one big talk but can unfold through hundreds of small moments over time.
• Why children aren't just naturally resilient, but need support to become resilient.
• How coping strategies evolve throughout grief, for both children and adults.
• The ways Jessica continues to parent Maggie through her work, writing, and advocacy.

Jessica is the founder of Kids Grief Support and author of The ABCs of Grief children's book series, resources that help children and families better understand grief, emotions, and coping.

Learn more about Dougy Center's grief education & training offerings: https://www.dougy.org/professionals-trainings

For many, September 11th is a shared, historical tragedy. But for today's guest, it is a personal anniversary - the day his father died.

David Ferrugio was twelve years old when his dad was killed in the World Trade Center. Twenty-five years later, his grief continues to unfold - from recently sitting with his father's forensic file at the 9/11 Memorial to hosting his own podcast, DEAD Talks, where he invites people into honest conversations about death, grief, and what it means to keep living.

In this conversation, David reflects on carrying his private grief through such a public loss. We talk about what it was like to be so young when his dad died, the memories he's held onto, and the new stories he's discovered through other people who also knew his father.

David talks about the ways grief found expression before he had words for it - from watching footage of the attacks over and over, to blasting Linkin Park while wearing himself out with a punching bag, to eventually finding his voice through podcasting and writing.

We discuss:

• What he remembers about 9/11 and getting the news his father died
• Sitting with his father's forensic file twenty-five years later
• Carrying personal grief through a public tragedy
• How memory, trauma, and grief intersect
• Finding connection through stories about the person who died
• Why grief doesn't always begin with words
• The role of movement, music, humor, and curiosity in living with grief
• What talking with hundreds of people about grief has taught David about compassion, uncertainty, and hope

Learn more about David, his podcast DEAD Talks, and his upcoming book, You're Not Dead Yet: How Grief and Loss Can Teach You to Live.

Note: This episode contains some salty language. Listen with care.

What happens when grief isn't an exception, but a constant presence?

In this episode, Jana talks with researcher and educator Nora Gross about her book, Brothers in Grief: The Hidden Toll of Gun Violence on Black Boys and Their Schools, which follows the two years she spent embedded in a Philadelphia boys' high school where students were grieving repeated losses from gun violence. Through interviews, observation, and simply showing up, Nora witnessed how grief shapes friendships, school life, ideas about the future, and the social constraints Black boys face when it comes to grief.

Nora also shares how her own experiences of grief - including the death of her mother from cancer while Nora was finishing her Ph.D. program and the deaths of three students in her first year of teaching—influenced the questions she researched and continue to shape her understanding of grief today.

We discuss:

• How cumulative loss changes young people's expectations for the future.
• Why grief often remains invisible in schools, even when nearly everyone has experienced loss.
• The unique pressures Black boys face around expressing - and not expressing - emotion.
• The difference between the "easy hard," the "hard hard," and the "hidden hard" phases of communal grief, particularly in a school setting.
• Why curiosity, rather than fixing, may be one of the most powerful ways we can support young people who are grieving.
• How listening deeply can become an act of care.

Nora Gross is a sociologist of youth, race, and education and a documentary filmmaker. She is Assistant Professor of Education at Barnard College, Columbia University and received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in Sociology and Education.

Nora uses qualitative, multimodal, and participatory methods to understand the ways youth develop and protect their inner lives in the face of external constraints. She has published on issues related to racialized masculinity for both Black and white boys, grief and loss, political polarization in schools, teens' social media use, youth resistance and emotional solidarity, and school supports for vulnerable youth. She has also produced several documentary films focusing on the lives of Black boys and men.

Nora is the author of the award-winning ethnographic book, Brothers in Grief: The Hidden Toll of Gun Violence on Black Boys and Their Schools (University of Chicago Press, 2024), as well as co-editor of Care-Based Methodologies: Reimagining Qualitative Research with Youth in US Schools (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022).

You can learn more at www.noragross.com & https://www.brothersingrief.com/