By far one of the hardest outcomes to accept about the holidays after the death of a loved one is that tradition needs to be changed or skipped. Traditions your loved one used to be involved with have to change and even those they weren’t a part of may seem entirely too difficult to manage. The worst thing you can do is set your holidays on autopilot and hope things work themselves out. Not only does this put you at risk of being majorly blindsided by your grief, but it also takes away from your traditions. In this episode of the What's Your Grief Podcast we discuss how to handle holiday tradition after the death of a loved one.

People tend to have a lot of expectations about the holiday season.  This is true during times of peace and during times of turmoil. After the death of a loved one, grieving people continue to have expectations about the holiday season. Sometimes these expectations are based on past ideals that have become impossible to replicate since someone integral to existing ritual and tradition has died.  Sometimes these expectations are based on anxiety and worst-case-scenarios.  And sometimes they are based on pressures put upon us by ourselves and by others.  In this episode of the What's Your Grief Podcast we will discuss the way our holiday expectations are shaped after the death of a loved one, how rigid expectations can set us up for failure, and offer tips for managing expectations at the holidays.

P.S. - we are aware that the sound quality in the last few (forty-five?) episodes has been less than wonderful.  We've recently ordered new (and improved!) recording equipment so next time you hear from us it will be much more pleasant to listen to (fingers crossed).  We appreciate you sticking with us through our podcasting growing pains.

In this special edition of the What's Your Grief Podcast Litsa and Eleanor discuss the recent Gilmore Girls revival. Not your typical gossip session, this discussion focuses specifically on the grief themes the hosts observed throughout the four episode season.

'Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life' meets up with the Gilmore women a decade after the original series ended and four months after the death of spouse, father, and grandfather Richard Gilmore. True to life, each character handles grief in their own unique way.

P.S. There will be a few spoilers.

The intersection between grief support and funeral homes

Have the Talk of a Lifetime: Conversations around family history, legacy, and how people want to be remembered 

Talk of a Lifetime cards and conversation starters

New book: When Someone Dies: A Child-Caregiver Activity Book

Child Grief Awareness Month: November is Child Grief Awareness Month

This is Us

In this episode of the What's Your Grief podcast we discuss the new grief website, Grief in Six Words, adjusting to the school year after a death, answer a reader's question about grief counseling and discuss a few times that grief has made us feel like mean and ugly people.

• Minute 0:00 - 3:00: Introduction
• Minute 3:00 - 10:00: Grief in Six Words Website
• Minute 10:00 - 15:30: Update on the WYG Bookclub
• Minute 15:30 - 21:30: Adjusting to the school year after a death
• Minute 21:30 - 26:30: Reader Question
• Minute 26:30 - 33:00: A few of the times grief has made us feel like ugly or mean people

If you have a grief question that you would like to hear answered on the podcast, or a recommendation for a resource, book, song, movie, etc, please email us at [email protected]

Welcome to Season 2, Episode 1 of the What's Your Grief Podcast. This season we're going to shake up our format a little and cover several different topics during each 30 minute episode. In this episode we talk about some of the new resources WYG has to offer; grief reading and movies; and we discuss the concept of loneliness in grief.

• Minute 0:00 - 5:00: Introductions
• Minute 5:00 - What's new with WYG
• Minute 10:30 - Resource shout out
• Minute 12:15 - Grief books and movies
• Minute 16:00 - The unique loneliness of grief

If you have a grief question that you would like to hear answered on the podcast, or a recommendation for a resource, book, song, movie, etc, please email us at [email protected]

Notes Page: http://www.whatsyourgrief.com/forty-one/

It stands to reason that how a person feels about life and death, in many ways, will impact the way they grieve.  Perhaps they hold on tightly to their pain for fear that if they let go their loved one’s life will be forgotten or meaningless.  Perhaps they refuse to fully face their grief because it makes them uncomfortable to think about death. Perhaps they find comfort in their beliefs, or perhaps they question their faith when they don’t feel comfort.

We should really talk more about how attitudes about death impact grief. Perhaps it feels selfish turning the lens on one's own life and mortality, when they feel they should only be thinking about their loved ones life and death.  However it’s logical that these two things would be interconnected and that thoughts and feeling around one's life and mortality would arise at the time of a loved one’s death and as a part of grief in the future.

Show Notes: www.whatsyourgrief.com/forty/

When something sad, bad, or anxiety producing happens in the life of someone we care about, our immediate instinct is to comfort.  Of course it is – we’re good people!  And often this instinct is useful because comforting is exactly what the situation calls for; for example a child’s bruised knee or a nervous first day on the job are both situations where a “there, there, you’ll be okay” goes a long way.

However, in the early days of grief, there is very little anyone can say to take away a griever’s pain and there is very little value in summing up the situation with a positive or inspiring platitude. So, we suggest people hoping to providing support.  In this video podcast, we outline what this new conceptualization means.

What have you stopped doing since experiencing the death of your loved one?  More specifically, what do you no longer do that you used to previously enjoy or find fulfilling? These may be things that you stopped doing them because you don't have the time, they require too much effort, they remind you of your loved one, or they seem less fun.  These are things like walking your dog in the evening, going to church on Sunday, getting a hair cut, cooking dinner a few times a week, art, listening to music, coffee with a friend, journaling, finding daily gratitudes, new hobbies, 20 minutes of exercise, going to the movies, reading, going on a vacation, scrapbooking, building something, volunteering.

Now what if I told you that by deliberately deciding to do these things again, or by choosing new things to try, that you might start to feel a little bit better? Or that by doing these things you were actually, in many ways, coping with your grief?

As if parenting we’re hard enough, you’ve recently experienced the death of someone you love. You’ve done your best to shelter your children from death, loss, and grief for their entire lives, and now it seems you have no choice but to allow these frightening realities into your family home.  Even if your child is not directly impacted by the loss, the pain of one family member often affects the family as a whole. In order for you, the parent or guardian, to be an engaged, patient, consistent, and loving presence, you have to deal with the intense emotional, mental, and physical impact of grief.  In this episode of the What's Your Grief podcast, we discuss the reasons why grieving parents and guardians tend to put their own grief on the back burner and we provide a rationale for why and how you should find time to cope with your grief related thoughts, emotions, and experiences.

Show Notes: www.whatsyourgrief.com/thirty-five