Grieving Awake with Joya

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We follow the sound that rose up when I grieved my son in public and the surprising wave of messages from people who said they “never knew that was allowed.” Then I trace the long history of women’s lament, how institutions trained us into silence, and how a simple voice and drum practice can help the body let grief move. 

• a mother’s spontaneous keening at an 18-year-old’s celebration of life 
• why strangers say the sound gives them permission 
• how voice and drum regulate the nervous system through exhale and rhythm 
• Irish keening as a trained role that praises, names lineage, and tells truth 
• how church rulings and Victorian respectability helped suppress loud grief 
• Nordic records that go silent and what that absence suggests 
• Finland’s surviving women’s laments and modern efforts to revive tears 
• Spain’s hired mourners, repeated prohibitions, and a quiet return 
• the core question of what has gone “unsounded” inside us 
• an optional guided ritual to sound a name with drum support 

If you want to grieve out loud, join me every other Sunday for Grieving Aloud live on Zoom. No charge. And you can sign up at grievingawake.com. The link is right there on the home page. I also have a free library there full of practices that I invite you to sign up for to help you move your grief. 

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Grief doesn’t politely arrive. It kicks the door in, rewrites your nervous system, and dares you to make sense of a world that suddenly feels impossible. I’m joined by Steve Ferrara, a former financial CEO and lifelong spiritual seeker, to talk about what happened after his 23-year-old son, Christopher, died in a car accident and why even decades of spiritual study didn’t protect him from breaking wide open.

Steve shares the raw early terrain: the anger, the screaming at God, the physical pain that can double you over at the kitchen counter. Then we get practical about what actually helped him move, slowly, from grief toward gratitude: stream-of-consciousness journaling every day for years, meditation as a refuge, and a single perspective shift that changed everything. Instead of living only inside “what could have been,” he began to look from his son’s side and to relate to him as a present spiritual partner. We also talk about after-death communication as a different language, less about words and more about feeling, intuition, and the quiet sense of presence many grieving people recognize.

From there, the conversation widens into mindfulness and choice: why resisting life intensifies suffering, how we can witness thoughts and emotions without becoming them, and what Steve teaches through coaching about triggers, compassion, and personal responsibility. If you’re searching for grief healing, continuing bonds, coping with loss, or a spiritual approach to bereavement that stays grounded, this one is for you. Subscribe, share with someone who needs it, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

Find him at stevenferrara.com

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Grief can make the world feel smaller overnight, but it can also reveal a bigger reality you didn’t know how to name. From the Helping Parents Heal Conference, I sit down with Nicole Newman, a medium, teacher, and bereaved mom living in Maui, to talk about what happened after her son died and why so many people report after-death communication.

Nicole shares how her journey began with something simpler than “hearing a voice.” She calls it communing: lying down, getting quiet, asking for help, and feeling a vibration of peace that steadies a wrecked nervous system. We dig into how mediumship can be learned as a skill, how the clairs can show up as subtle shifts in mood, temperature, memory, or awareness, and why most of us miss what’s happening because we’re trained to second guess ourselves.

We also explore big ideas in grounded language: oneness, distance not mattering, and a powerful reframe of doubt and trust. Nicole explains why “closure” never fit her, and why continuation of relationship can be the real medicine for grieving parents. If you’re curious about spiritual connection, consciousness, grief healing, and practical ways to feel supported again, this conversation offers a calm, honest place to start.

If this resonates, subscribe, share it with someone who’s grieving, and leave a review so more hearts can find these stories. What’s one moment you’ve felt presence, peace, or an unexplainable sign?

Nicole Newman is a natural medium, mystic, teacher and healer whose lifelong relationship with Spirit deepened profoundly after the sudden death of her son Avery in 2013.

Following his death, Nicole immersed herself in formal mediumship training and eventually founded Love of Avery Kind, where she now teaches and supports people around the world in developing their own relationship with Spirit, consciousness and intuitive intelligence. Avery remains central to her work, and Nicole experiences their relationship as continuing beyond physical death, including an ongoing sense of co-creation with him from the Afterlife.

Her work explores mediumship as part of a much larger mystery: the continuation of consciousness, our multidimensional nature, and the extraordinary spiritual and perceptual capacities available to us as human beings. She believes these abilities are not reserved for a gifted few, but can be part of our own evolving relationship with Spirit and the Divine.

Nicole continues to study, teach and collaborate with respected mediums and teachers, including renowned UK medium Tony Stockwell. She teaches online worldwide and in person from Maui, Hawaii and Crescent Beach, British Columbia.

Website: loveofaverykind.com
In Canda:  www.loveofaverykind.ca

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/loveofaverykind
Instagram: @loveofaverykindn

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The ICU is supposed to be the end of the story, but for Holly it becomes the beginning. After catching COVID in 2021, her oxygen crashes, her organs start to fail, and she’s rushed from the ER to the ICU with slim odds of survival. What follows isn’t just a medical crisis, it’s a consciousness-shaking account of out-of-body experiences, a near-death experience, and the confusing, painful reality of waking back up in a body that’s still fighting to breathe.

We talk through the moments she remembers with startling clarity: traveling down hospital corridors, sensing other patients near death, and arriving at a stadium of light filled with thousands of beings. She describes the return of vivid senses after losing them in the ICU, the feeling of “all knowing,” and angelic music so beautiful she calls it the best concert she’s ever heard. Her life review shows only the good, and later she receives a message that reframes judgment and grief: “Love them where they’re at.”

Then we go where most NDE conversations stop: the aftermath. Long COVID, PTSD, and stacked losses in her family trigger what she calls two years of hell, until surrender, IANDS (the International Association for Near-Death Studies), and a hypnosis session reveal more of the missing puzzle, including her eerie “kidnap” feeling and an encounter in the “in-between.” If you’re navigating grief, trauma recovery, spiritual experiences, or big life purpose questions, this conversation offers both wonder and tools you can actually use. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review with the part that stayed with you most.

You can Find Holly at neardeathshift.com | internationalretreatassociation.com 

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The life you want might not be blocked by a lack of discipline, clarity, or ambition. It might be locked behind grief you’ve never been allowed to feel. We go deep on the “unmet self” the truest part of us that learned it wasn’t safe to exist and the “unlived life” that forms when we adapt to belong, survive, and be loved. When that aliveness gets buried, it doesn’t disappear. It shows up as pressure, chronic dissatisfaction, resentment, envy, numbness, rage, restlessness, addiction, or the nonstop urge to reinvent your life from the outside.

I share how grief can become the doorway back through that entire sequence, including my own experience of compound grief while grieving my son and encountering deeper griefs for the mom I never was, the life I never lived, and the self that would have lived it. We also talk about why shadow work is grief work, not a project to “fix” your flaws, but a process of asking what a part of you had to give up, what she never got to become, and what needs to be grieved so she no longer has to stay buried.

Then we bring it into the body: how the nervous system and the vagus nerve prioritize safety over goals, why you can’t positive think your way into freedom, and how self-kindness becomes a real somatic practice. I tell a practical story about integrity, temptation, and the quiet damage of secrets, because being a safe space for yourself is built in moments like that. We end by widening the lens to collective grief, generational patterns, and what becomes possible when we move from grieving awake into living awake. Next week, a near-death experience story from Holly Porter is on the way.

If this resonates, subscribe, share the show with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find this conversation.

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Grief can turn your inner world into a courtroom where your ego argues, your heart breaks, and your spirit quietly waits to be trusted. I’m Joya, and I share the moment everything changed for me: after my son Weston left his body, I began receiving him within 24 hours and spent months learning to trust what I was hearing and feeling. What follows is both tender and intense, because it’s not just a story about loss, it’s a story about learning to stop abandoning myself.

I read from my journal a channeled conversation with the Magdalene frequency, including a prayer that asks to be led from darkness to light. We explore why doubt pushes us to seek external validation, and why the ego panics when it cannot control grief. The core metaphor is unforgettable: the ego is a wild horse. You don’t tame it by force or self-hate. You love it into service so it can partner with your soul, your body, and what you hold sacred. Along the way, we talk forgiveness, shame, integrity, and how judgment often hurts most when it’s self-inflicted.

Then Weston “drops in” with teachings on trust, grace, heart-brain coherence, and what it means to feel separation while remembering love. Whether you approach this through spirituality, mindfulness, or grief healing, you’ll leave with practical tools you can use anywhere: the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding practice, awareness in your hands and feet, breathing into sensation, and “name it to tame it” emotional labeling to calm the nervous system.

If this supports you, subscribe, share it with someone grieving or waking up, and leave a review so more people can find it. What part of you is ready to be loved into surrender rather than forces into compliance?

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Regret can masquerade as wisdom, but a lot of the time it’s just unexpressed grief looking for somewhere to go. I share a “Magdalene download” that hit me hard: grief is tied to love and to regret, and when we’re aligned with truth, grief can stay clean. It becomes a pure sadness for what’s no longer here, without collapsing into the mental loop of wishing the past could be undone.

We move through a teaching from the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and unpack the ideas of “the good” and peace as a return to origin. I explore the Aramaic roots that reshape the conversation: tabah as true natural harmonious oneness with God, bisha as unripeness and the illusion of separation, and shlama as wholeness and restoration. If you’re drawn to Mary Magdalene teachings, spiritual healing, or the meaning of peace beyond positive thinking, this offers language for what your body may already know.

Then we get practical and embodied. I talk about discovering how hyper-rationalization can be a trauma response, what it’s like to live up in the head, and why grief often has no words. That’s where sound comes in: vocal expression, “sounding the body,” and letting the energy move until it completes and softens into breath, tears, and calm. We close with a guided inner sanctuary practice to witness intrusive thoughts, choose wholeness over separation, and return to the heart. If this supports you, subscribe, share it with someone who’s carrying quiet grief, and leave a review so more people can find this work.

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Grief can hijack your mind so completely you reach for a loaf of bread instead of your wallet and then wonder if you’re losing it. This shocking experience sent me searching what was happening to my brain. I’m Reverend Joya Sosnowski, and I’m naming what most people never get taught: grief is the process of losing someone or something foundational, and it can also be the process of rewiring your identity as your reality changes.

We talk about what happens in the brain during grief, including why your sense of self can feel unplugged and why grief brain fog is so common. From there, I share the first four foundations of Grieving Awake: present moment awareness, radical acceptance, self-kindness, and non-resistance. You’ll hear how emotions move like waves, why the body’s chemistry supports release through tears, and how “pain multiplied by resistance creates suffering” becomes a real-life map for surviving the hardest moments.

I also introduce what I call the second grief: the argument with the loss, the endless what-ifs and self-blame that deepen the wound. To help you come back into your body right away, I guide a simple 5-4-3-2-1 grounding practice and a heart-centered self-compassion mantra you can repeat when your inner critic gets loud. We close with a short practice and an invitation to keep walking this path with support.

If this resonates, subscribe so you don’t miss the next practice, share this with someone who needs a steadier breath today, and leave a review so more grieving hearts can find Grieving Awake.

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Grief can feel like the floor drops out, but what if it’s also the moment your real life starts asking for your attention? I’m rebranding the podcast as Grieving Awake because grief is no longer a side topic for me, it’s the doorway I’ve been walking through. I talk about why I missed last week while finishing my book, and why this next season needs to match the truth of what I’m here to share.

Grief isn’t only about death. It shows up after divorce, betrayal, career disillusionment, spiritual awakening, and any experience that shatters your identity and the world you thought you lived in. The heart of my message is simple and loud: grief dismantles your identity. It rewires you. And the way you move through that initiation shapes who you become. We also name the trap of spiritual bypassing and “high vibe” pressure, and make space for a more grounded kind of joy that can coexist with pain.

I share the tools that help me stay conscious inside grief: daily meditation, mindful self-compassion, non-attachment, radical acceptance, somatic practices, and expressive arts. We explore how building nervous system safety creates a container for your feelings and naturally realigns your external world. I’m also opening the door to future conversations on after-death communication, near-death experiences, and the science of consciousness, because I don’t believe science and mysticism are separate, they’re both reaching toward the same mystery.

If you’re navigating trauma, addiction patterns, or the sense that your old self no longer fits, press play and walk with me. Subscribe, share this with someone who’s grieving in any form, and leave a review so more people can find Grieving Awake.

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Your identity can feel solid until life interrupts the script. When reality changes fast, through death, heartbreak, illness, or even the quiet realization that you don’t want what you used to want, your brain’s predictions get scrambled and your sense of self goes with it. I talk about what “identity rebirth” actually means, why so many people are feeling an identity crisis right now, and how disruption can become a doorway instead of a dead end.

We dig into the neuroscience idea of the predictive brain and how repeated thoughts shape your wiring, your nervous system, and the life you build next. I share why grief is more than death, it’s the loss of anything meaningful, and how the mind can accidentally get stuck rehearsing the worst day. From there, I offer a grounded path for grieving awake: staying in the present moment, practicing radical acceptance, and treating yourself with real kindness when the ego is panicking and everything feels messy.

You’ll also hear the core practice I lean on to rebuild from the inside out: choosing a truth that lights you up, holding faith in your heart, and building trust through action in your gut and nervous system. We zoom out to purpose and collective consciousness too, including the reminder that purpose doesn’t have to be big or public. Sometimes it’s as simple as dancing in your garden and meeting each moment without masks, steady in who you are and flexible in how you respond. If this resonates, subscribe, share it with someone walking through change, and leave a review with the one truth that lights you up right now.

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