Grief Out Loud

When Kelly S. Thompson and her older sister Meghan were children, they were close. Meghan was Kelly's protector and constant as they moved around as a military family. Things shifted when Meghan hit adolescence and started using substances. Their connection disintegrated and they spent years barely in touch. When Meghan stopped using, they came back together and worked to rebuild trust and repair their relationship. Then, on the same day Meghan gave birth to her second child, she was diagnosed with a cancer that would end her life in less than two years. Kelly became her primary caregiver, going with Meghan to treatment and being with her in the hospital up until the last few moments of her life. Before she died, Meghan made Kelly promise to write their story. Kelly kept that promise with her new memoir, Still, I Cannot Save You.

We discuss:

• The arc of Kelly & Meghan's relationship

• The process of repairing that relationship

• What it was like to care for Meghan after her cancer diagnosis

• Kelly's relationship with survival mode

• Why the grocery store kicks up her grief

• The ways writing helps Kelly cope and stay connected to Meghan

• How Meghan loved Kelly (without condition or hesitation)

• The ongoing heaviness of grief

• Answering the question "How do I keep moving in a world that doesn't have this brilliant human being in it?"

Jamie Thrower is a Queer death doula, end-of-life educator, and grief guide in Portland, OR. She is also the founder of the Queer Grief Club which provides inclusive non-traditional grief support offerings for those grieving both death and non-death losses. Jamie knows from her personal experience of grieving the deaths of her parents and her daughter, Birdie, who she and her wife lost in the second trimester, just how important it is for grief support to be reflective of identity, relationships, family constellations, and community.

We get into:

• Grieving as a queer person right now and the importance of community & connection.
• Why the grocery store is so challenging when you're grieving.
• The origins of the Queer Grief Club and how it's different than traditional grief support.
• How the deaths of her parents and daughter shape the work she does in end-of-life and grief education.
• The importance of queer specific spaces in grief.
• Being queer in the gendered world of baby loss grief support.
• Breaking down the binaries that get created in grief.
• What grief has been saying to Jamie lately.

https://jamiethrower.com

https://www.instagram.com/queergriefclub/

Even though most of us know and accept that grief doesn't have an end point, it can still be surprising to witness how much it impacts almost every aspect of our lives, including our relationships. This was true for Daniel, who was two days away from his 8th birthday when his father died of a brain tumor. When he was a kid, grief impacted Daniel's relationship with a sense of safety and security. As a young adult, it affected what he was looking for in his dating relationships. Throughout his life, it's shaped who and how he feels safe and comfortable connecting with.

We discuss:

• What Daniel remembers about getting the news that his dad was going to die.
• How the enormity of this loss became more real as he got older.
• The challenges he faced with trusting men, which affected his experience as gay man.
• How his coming out process may have been different if his dad was still alive.
• The parallels Daniels found in coming out as gay and coming out as having a parent who died - how both have left him feeling othered.
• How his grief impacted his dating relationships.
• What he's learned from volunteering in a peer grief support group for young children.
• What he's come to understand about grief over time.

What happens when you take a year away from your income generating work to focus completely on grief? This is the question Rebecca Feinglos faced at the end of 2021. Grief wasn't new to Rebecca. She was a teenager when her mother died of brain cancer. On the same day her state shut down due to the COVID pandemic, she got a call that her father had died suddenly. In the ensuing months, she ended her marriage. So, by the time she got to the end of 2021, she was exhausted and empty and unwell. It's common to wish the world would stop and give us a break when someone dies, but we usually dream of escaping from it all. Rebecca did something different - she took a year to delve fully into her grief and along the way she wrote about it on her blog. This experience inspired her to start her organization, GrieveLeave, a community to support others in learning to grieve all of their losses.

We discuss:

• Growing up in the shadow of her mother's brain cancer
• How Rebecca responded to grief as a teen and young adult
• The sudden death of her father the same day the COVID-19 shutdown began
• Rebecca's realization that she needed to do something different
• What she discovered during her GrieveLeave about how to grieve
• The daily practices Rebecca still does to stay connected to her grief
• What she hopes to accomplish with GrieveLeave

Follow GrieveLeave on IG & Fbook.

It's generally accepted that there's no official end point to grief, but what happens when there's also no end point to the questions about someone's death? Charlotte Maya's life changed drastically when she came home from a hike with her two young children to find two police officers and a priest at her house, waiting with news that her husband Sam had died by suicide. In those early days of grief Charlotte dealt with sadness, anger, confusion, and the endless tasks that come when someone dies. She also faced the question, "Why?" Why did Sam do what he did? What was he going through? Why didn't he ask for help? Almost 16 years later, Charlotte and her children have more understanding about suicide, but they've mostly had to accept that they'll never truly know the answer to a question that only Sam could answer.

Charlotte's new memoir, Sushi Tuesdays, chronicles the first few days, weeks, and years of grief and how she learned to take care of her children and herself in their grief.

We discuss:

• The early days of grief
• The shock of Sam dying of suicide
• Searching for an answer to "Why?"
• How anger was a part of grief
• What Charlotte's two children needed in their grief
• Falling in love again and blending a family
• Learning to parent her stepsons who were also grieving
• How Sushi Tuesdays, Charlotte's dedicated day for self-care came about

If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out for help. You can call the National Crisis Line at 988 or text Hello to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.

"What was your dad like?" It's a simple question that's not easy to answer when you had a complicated relationship with the person who died. Claire's dad died of a stroke almost four years ago and one of the first emotions she felt was relief. Relief that she wouldn't have to worry if he would want to walk her down the aisle when she got married. Relief she wouldn't have to wonder how he'd act in the future. She also felt deep grief and sadness about the relationship they never got to have. Claire's dad was brilliant. He loved music. He was extremely active. He was also emotionally abusive to Claire and her mom. This reality adds layers of complexity not just to her grief, but to navigating other people's assumptions about what their relationship was like.

We talk about:

• Grieving when the relationship was complicated
• Secondary grief & remorse
• Forgiving herself & trying to better understand her dad
• Continuing to work on their relationship, even after his death
• Finding ways to stay connected to her dad
• Planning a wedding and balancing how to honor his memory

When her father died of cancer, a few days before her 18th birthday, Laurel Braitman started running. Running towards the academic and professional accomplishments her father pushed her to achieve and running away from the intense shame and guilt she carried about their last conversation. It wasn't until her 30's that Laurel stopped running long enough to face her greatest fear: feeling her feelings.

Laurel's newest book, What Looks Like Bravery: An epic journey through loss to love, chronicles her quest to connect with grief and how it led to the biggest adventure of all - opening up to love.

In our conversation we delve into:

• Growing up with her father's illness and the threat of him dying

• Running from guilt & shame in grief

• Overachieving as a coping mechanism

• Wanting to be a "geriatric kid" at Josie's Place, a peer grief support program for children & families

• What Laurel learned about grief from being a volunteer facilitator in that program

• Learning a new way of being in the world & staying open to love

• Having a "cosmic do-over" in helping her mom at the end of her life

• The co-existence of love and sadness

At the age of 27, Dr. Peg Sandeen faced an impossible request. Her husband, John, who was dying from HIV/AIDS, told Peg that he couldn't stand the pain anymore and wanted her to help him end his life. It was the early 1990's though and there was no legal avenue for Peg to help John in his wish to die with the dignity he had in life. Peg went on to get both a Master's and Ph.D. in social work. Throughout that time, the memory of John's last wish motivated her to work towards changing the landscape for people facing the end of life. Dr. Sandeen is now the Executive Director of Death With Dignity, working in end-of-life advocacy and fighting for medical aid in dying laws across the U.S.

In our conversation we discuss:

• Meeting and falling in love with John
• Getting the news of John's HIV diagnosis
• How Hannah and John talked with their daughter Hannah about her father's illness
• The shame and stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS
• Caregiving for a dying husband as a young mother and wife
• The current state of right to die laws across the U.S.
• Moving from an intellectual to emotional understanding of grief
• Learning to support Hannah in her grief

Dr. Sandeen's HuffPost article: My Husband Asked Me to Help Him Die. I Couldn't Do It - and My Life Changed Forever

Meet Me Where I Am, a new film by Grant Garry, explores the topic of grief through individual stories of loss, love, and hope. The film aims to normalize grief in our culture and explores how we can actively participate in helping others through grief. Grant has always been curious about grief, from his first experience when his grandmother died when he was a teenager to his most recent loss, the death of his uncle. Meet Me Where I Am is the culmination of that curiosity, and a dedication to ensuring we all feel better equipped to talk about grief.

Follow Meet Me Where I Am on Instagram to see clips from the film (@meetmewhereiamfilm).

Colin Campbell is a lot of things - writer, husband, friend - but the role he identifies with most is being a father. So, when his two teenage children, Ruby & Hart, were killed by a drunk driver in 2019, Colin was lost and terrified. Who was he without his kids? How would he survive the intensity of grief? Soon after their deaths, well-meaning friends and family would say, "There are no words," but for Colin, this phrase wasn't comforting. It left him feeling more alone because what he really needed were words. Words so he could talk about Ruby & Hart. Words to help articulate his pain. And words from others who shared what they remembered and missed about his children. Colin's book, Finding the Words: Working Through Profound Loss With Hope and Purpose, outlines the words and actions that helped him stay close to Ruby & Hart while learning to live in a world without them.

Topics in our conversation:

• How Colin continues to honor and remember Ruby & Hart
• The rituals and routines that were helpful in the early days of grief
• How Colin navigates guilt and anger
• Learning to lean into the pain
• Finding ways for joy to live alongside grief
• The myth that the death of a child leads to divorce
• How Colin continues to embody being a father

Colin's article in The Atlantic - What Losing My Two Children Taught Me About Grief