Grief Out Loud

When Emily Bolcik's boyfriend, Dan, died suddenly in 2021, her world split into before and after. In the before, she and Dan were on the precipice of exciting life adventures. In the after, Emily found herself navigating the shock of his death, the trauma of finding his body, and a world that seemed to expect her to move forward before she could even begin to understand what had happened.

Emily is the author of I Found My Boyfriend's Dead Body on the Floor and Then Tried to Be Polite and Never Bring It Up Again. In this conversation, she talks about the messy, complex, and often unexpected realities of grief: feeling embarrassed by the depth of her pain, finding connection with people who have experienced similar losses, and learning how to be present with someone else's grief without trying to fix it. She also reflects on how creativity, humor, spirituality, and her volunteer work at Dougy Center with children who are grieving continue to shape her life.

We Discuss:

• The shock of sudden loss and the experience of finding Dan's body
• Connecting with people who have experienced a similar loss
• Why it can be hard to talk openly about the circumstances of a death
• The complicated feelings of shame and embarrassment that can accompany grief
• What it means to support someone who is grieving, even when you don't know what to say
• How writing, creativity, humor, and spirituality have helped Emily navigate life after loss
• Emily's experience volunteering at Dougy Center and supporting children who are grieving
• The importance of continuing to look for the people, resources, and spaces that feel supportive

Emily's book is available through the link in her Instagram bio (@emilybolcik).

When Nina's mom, Shawn, was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, everything changed - and rapidly. Nina, who was in her mid-twenties, stepped into a caregiver role, learning to navigate medical appointments, medications, and the realities of her mom's declining health while also trying to deepen their connection.

In this conversation, Nina reflects on how facing the reality of her mom's death brought them closer, allowing some of the barriers in their mother-daughter relationship to come down. As Shawn's ability to speak diminished, Nina discovered that connection doesn't always require words. They shared time, music, and even moments of laughter.

Nina also talks about the unpredictable nature of grief, the unexpected moments that bring her mom to mind, and the signs that help her feel connected, from a perfectly timed collection of soup photos to bald eagles appearing in unexpected places. A year and a half after losing her mom, Nina has learned that grief doesn't simply vanish - but neither does joy.

To learn more about Dougy Center's peer grief support groups for young adults, visit www.dougy.org

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