Life With Grief Podcast | Grief Support Podcast

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In this episode, I sit down with psychic medium and medical intuitive Julie Ryan, a businesswoman and inventor of surgical devices who learned mediumship and now teaches it.

Julie breaks down how she believes every one of us is already intuitive and how to start connecting with your loved ones in spirit. She also explains how soul contracts and free will can both be true, and what she sees when someone is transitioning, including who shows up first.

We talk about:
✨ How to communicate with deceased loved ones using Julie's "attention, intention" method, and why she believes you don't need a medium to start
✨ What a past life scan is and how Julie uses it to understand what's happening in your life right now
✨ What Julie says to skeptics who think talking to spirit is nuts!
✨ Soul contracts vs. free will
✨ Why Julie believes everyone in our lives is a soulmate, and why she says spirit sees every experience as neutral
✨ The 12 phases of transition from her book Angelic Attendants
✨ Who Julie says shows up first when we die, and why it's always the maternal line
✨ How pets and animals show up at the end of life
✨ Why Julie says you may be "tuned to the wrong channel" when you're grieving, and how to ask for signs
✨ How to invite your loved ones into your dreams
✨ How Julie's view of death changed after watching her own mom transition

If you make it all the way to the end, I truly believe you found this episode for a reason, and maybe your loved ones led you here today. 🫶🏼

Connect with Julie:

• Website: https://askjulieryan.com/
• Social media: @AskJulieRyan
• Free copy of Angelic Attendants: https://askjulieryan.com/request-ebook/

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Have you ever looked around at the people who are supposed to be grieving right alongside you and felt like you're on a completely different planet? Maybe they seem "fine" while you're barely holding it together. Or, maybe you're moving through it while they still seem stuck, and you feel guilty for that, too.

In this episode, I'm talking about the isolating experience of grieving differently than your partner, siblings, parents, or friends, even when you're grieving the same loss. This can happen with the death of a loved one, a divorce, estrangement, infertility, the loss of a friendship or career, or any kind of loss under the sun.

In this episode, I cover:
✨ Why grieving "out of sync" with the people around you doesn't mean something is wrong with you
✨ The real reasons we all grieve differently
✨ What this disconnect does to us emotionally
✨ Three things you can do to feel less alone
✨ How my own experience grieving my parents' deaths differently than my husband's
✨ A gentle permission slip for navigating the holidays when grief styles collide around the table

If you've ever wondered why you're grieving "too fast" or "too slow" compared to someone else, or felt like you have to hide parts of your grief to keep the peace, this episode is for you. And if it speaks to you, I'd love for you to share it with someone who might be grieving a little differently than you, and could use the reminder that there's no wrong way to do this.

Episode mentioned: Understanding Grieving Styles (ep. 218) | https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/218-what-kind-of-griever-are-you-understanding-your/id1688812587?i=1000768376703

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Imagine walking into a prison to sit across from the woman responsible for your children's deaths, bracing to be wrecked for a month, and walking out feeling lighter instead.

That's just one moment from my conversation with Colin Campbell, and it's one I'm still thinking about.

I'm sitting down with Colin, author, playwright, and part-time professor of theater and film. On June 12, 2019, Colin and his wife, Gail, lost their two children, 17-year-old Ruby and 14-year-old Hart, when a drunk driver hit their car on the way to Joshua Tree. Content note: this episode includes conversation about child loss and a fatal drunk driving crash.

In this episode, we talk about:
✨ How Colin and Gail leaned on Jewish mourning traditions
✨ Why we grieve better in community
✨ What it looks like to grieve as a couple
✨ Colin's "grief spiel" and how to tell your friends and family exactly what you need after loss (plus what to do if you don't know yet)
✨ Why so many people are afraid to say the wrong thing to a griever, and how compassion can go both ways
✨ How grief needs and identity shift over time
✨ How living fully can become a tribute instead
✨ Grief rituals that give you agency
✨ How to handle anniversaries, birthdays, and hard days without the pressure to do them "right"
✨ Anger, the desire for justice, and what restorative justice and a victim-offender dialogue actually involve
✨ Why Colin offers grace and compassion instead of forgiveness
✨ How writing a one-person show and his book helped 
✨ Why the more Colin talks about Ruby and Hart, the easier it is to access joy

If you've ever wondered whether the anger, the guilt, or the way you carry your loss can actually change, this one's for you. Press play, and stay for my gentle challenge at the end: how can you be a little more unabashedly joyful today?

Connect with Colin:

• https://colincampbellauthor.com/
• https://www.instagram.com/colincampbellwriter/

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Welcome to a special bonus minisode! This 5-Minute Grief Chat (usually exclusively on YouTube) is all about the second year of loss.

Ever feel like your grief got harder in year two instead of easier? You're not imagining it, and that is a VERY real thing in grief. In this 5-Minute Grief Talk, I'm breaking down why the second year of loss can hit differently than the first, and why that's actually a normal, honest part of the healing process.

✨ Why year one runs on adrenaline and shock (and why that fades)
✨ The loneliness that creeps in once everyone else has "moved on"
✨ The identity question that shows up in year two: who am I now?
✨ Why the guilt around "still grieving this hard" isn't a red flag
✨ What the second year is actually asking of you

If you're in your second year of grief and wondering why this feels harder than you expected, this one's for you.

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"You can't be sad forever." A professor said that to Shelby two months after her mom died, and I'm still not over it on her behalf.

Whether you're the one grieving or the one trying to support someone who is, the words we use can make a person feel seen or completely unseen in a split second. In this episode of Life With Grief, I'm sitting down with grief coach, author, and podcaster Shelby Forsythia to talk about what to say (and what to skip) when someone is grieving, how to talk to yourself with more compassion, and the three simple phrases from her new book, "Of Course I'm Here Right Now".

We also get into Shelby's own story of stacked losses, the unexpected moment that finally cracked her grief open, and the three permissions to grieve from her book Permission to Grieve.

In this episode, we dig into:
✨ Shelby's story of cumulative loss
✨ What did (and didn't) help her cope back then
✨ "The Day of the Stolen Wallet": the lightning-bolt moment that finally let Shelby grieve her mom
✨ The three permissions to grieve
✨ Why "losses become gains" doesn't have to mean toxic positivity, and why grief is a creative act
✨ The three stories almost every griever tells themselves
✨ What to say to someone who is grieving instead of platitudes
✨ Why cracking a window beats an "Extreme Home Makeover" when you're supporting a grieving friend
✨ How to rewrite hopeless thoughts

Press play, then send this one to the person in your life who keeps saying the wrong thing (or nothing at all).

Connect with Shelby:

• https://www.shelbyforsythia.com/
• https://www.instagram.com/shelbyforsythia/
• https://www.shelbyforsythia.com/grief-grower-podcast
• https://www.shelbyforsythia.com/of-course-im-here-right-now

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Grief has a sound. Or more accurately, it has an absence of sound... and that silence after loss is a completely different kind of quiet than anything you've known before. 

In this episode, I'm getting honest about why the silence after loss feels so deafening, why it can bring up some of our darker and scarier thoughts, and why—as uncomfortable as it is—learning to sit with it is actually one of the most important things we can do for our healing.

I'm pulling from my own experience losing my mom and dad six months apart, and why I've come to see it as one of the strangest, most twisted gifts of this whole grief journey. Plus, I'm giving you a few gentle tools to help you start sitting with your own silence instead of running from it.

We also talk about:
✨ Why silence after loss isn't just "quiet", it's a deafening absence of the person (or pet) who used to fill that space
✨ How losing my parents six months apart taught me two completely different versions of this silence
✨ Why our thoughts can get dark and scary in that silence, and why that's actually a normal part of grief
✨ The surprising gift of learning to hear your own voice again after losing the people you always went to first
✨ Why avoiding the silence often makes it louder, and how to start building a relationship with it instead
✨ My four go-to tools for sitting with the silence
✨ The balloon analogy that changed how I think about letting grief out little by little instead of all at once

If the silence in your own home or your own head has been feeling deafening lately, I hope this gives you some language for it and a few small ways to start easing into it instead of running from it.

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What do you do when loving your baby means having to say goodbye to him before he's even born?

In this episode I sit down with Rosanna Brown, who takes us inside one of the most misunderstood and least-talked-about kinds of loss there is: TFMR, termination for medical reasons. At her 20-week scan, Rosanna and her husband learned their son William had a condition that meant he would never survive outside the womb, and in the space of 24 hours, they were faced with a choice no parent should ever have to make. 

Rosanna is sharing all of it with us today, the diagnosis, the decision, the days she spent with William after, and the grief, guilt, and judgment that still live alongside her love for him.

✨ How a routine 20-week "gender scan" turned into the day Rosanna says she died right along with the version of herself she used to be
✨ William's diagnosis, CHAOS syndrome and hydrops fetalis, and the impossible choice Rosanna and her husband were given
✨ The complicated, guilt-soaked relief that comes with ending your child's suffering
✨ Rebuilding an identity after a loss like this, and why Rosanna doesn't want the old version of herself back
✨ The friendships that fell away, and the unexpected people who showed up for her instead
✨ Grieving differently than her husband did, and what that taught her about holding space for someone else's version of grief
✨ The legal and political reality surrounding TFMR, and how it adds a layer of judgment to an already devastating loss
✨ Her book, The Silence of TFMR, why she wrote it, and why she hopes it ends up in the hands of every parent facing this diagnosis

If you've ever had to make a choice no one should have to make, or you love someone who has, I hope this conversation helps you feel a little less alone in it.

Connect with Rosanna

• https://watkinspublishinglinks.com/the-silence-of-tfmr-landing-page
• https://www.instagram.com/thesilenceof_tfmr/

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Twenty-five years ago, Tara Bane's husband Michael kissed her goodbye, walked out the door, and never came home. He was working on the 100th floor of the North Tower on September 11, 2001. In this episode, Tara opens up about that day, the years of grief that followed, and how she eventually rebuilt a life she's proud of, including surviving the sudden loss of her mother just six years later, at only 19 years old.

We talk about what it's really like to grieve a loss the whole world witnessed, why "moving on" timelines do more harm than good, and how art therapy (even when the art itself is ugly and unrecognizable) can become one of the most powerful tools for processing trauma.

In this episode, we cover:
✨ What it was like to lose Michael on 9/11 and the surreal days of not knowing if he survived
✨ Why shock, denial, and adrenaline are the body's way of protecting us in acute grief
✨ The societal pressure to "move on" and how it shows up in the well-meaning things people say
✨ Coping with two major losses ten years apart
✨ How yoga and movement gave her moments of presence when grief felt all-consuming
✨ Why her first attempt at art therapy after 9/11 produced painting she didn't even recognize
✨ The Garden of Reflection memorial she co-created
✨ Remarriage, motherhood, divorce, and what it means to keep your heart open after loss
✨ Why she waited 25 years to write her memoir, Evolution of a Heart
✨ What she wants every griever to know about grief having no expiration date

Wherever you are in your own grief journey—whether it's been weeks or decades—I hope Tara's story reminds you that healing isn't linear, and your heart can stay open even after the worst has happened.

Connect with Tara:

• https://www.instagram.com/evolutionofaheart/
• https://www.tarabane.com/

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Have you ever looked at a relationship that used to feel like home and suddenly felt like you were speaking a different language? That disorienting shift is something I hear about constantly from my clients, and it's something I lived through myself in the years after losing my parents.

In this episode, I'm talking about outgrowing relationships after loss. That strange, often guilt-inducing experience of growing and evolving so much through grief that some relationships simply can't hold who you've become anymore. This isn't about blame, and it's not about anyone doing anything wrong. It's about misalignment, and giving yourself permission to lovingly release what no longer fits.

Here's what we cover:
✨ Why some people show up for us after loss, and why even the ones who DO keep showing up can start to feel farther away than ever
✨ How grief can compress years of personal growth into just months, and why that pace mismatch creates real distance in our relationships
✨ What it means to "stay the same but become a different person" after significant loss
✨ Why some relationships flex and grow with you, while others were only ever built for who you used to be
✨ How to release relationships with love instead of resentment, and why you're allowed to grieve even the ones you're choosing to let go of

If this one resonates and you want to go deeper, I've got two related episodes for you, too:

🎧 Episode 26 — 10 Ways to Set Boundaries in Your Grief: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/026-10-ways-to-set-boundaries-in-your-grief/id1688812587?i=1000631914708

🎧 Episode 192 — Navigating Relationship Changes & Outgrowing Friendships: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/192-navigating-relationship-changes-outgrowing-friendships/id1688812587?i=1000748896282

Wherever you are in this right now, I want you to know you're in a beautiful season of becoming, and becoming sometimes means outgrowing... even the people you love.

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There's a specific kind of grief that comes from losing a child. It's out of order, it defies everything we think we understand about life, and it changes you in ways that are almost impossible to put into words.

In this episode, I sit down with Teresa Davis—grief mentor, author, registered nurse, and host of The Grief Mentor Podcast—to talk about the loss of her son Andrew, a corporate pilot who died in a plane crash in 2018 at just 32 years old.

Teresa doesn't hold back. We talk about the complicated feelings that come with losing someone doing what they loved, what it actually looks like to wrestle with your faith after devastating loss, and why grieving as a family is so much messier—and so much more possible—than we're led to believe.

We dig into:
✨ Andrew's story: who he was, his path to becoming a corporate pilot, and the accident that took his life
✨ Why grief should never be compared, and what it means to hold space for the very specific relationship you lost
✨ The complex feelings of losing someone doing what they loved most, and how Teresa made peace with it
✨ A year spent wrestling with God, how her faith cracked wide open, and how she found her way back
✨ Understanding grieving styles
✨ The boundary work that changed everything for her
✨ How counseling and EMDR helped her heal from the PTSD of losing Andrew so publicly
✨ Navigating grief as a family: marriage, surviving children, and the unspoken expectations that quietly create distance
✨ How her pain became purpose through The Grief Mentor Podcast and her signature program, The Grief Roadmap

If you've ever felt like grief made you a stranger to yourself, or to the people you love most, this conversation is going to feel like an exhale.

Connect with Teresa Davis:
🔗 https://thegriefmentor.com/
🔗 https://www.instagram.com/griefmentor/

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