Conversations About Living with Grief
What's something that you delight in right now— big or small— something that just the DOING of it brings you some joy? For me, it's the podcast series I've started with my friend Ginny Gay called “Something to Normalize.”
We’ve been so lucky to release this special series of conversations on “The One You Feed” (recognized by Oprah, Apple Podcasts, and Huffpost as one of the best health and wellness pods of all time!). In our last two episodes, we talked about living with grief. Both Ginny and I were able to be present during the death process of our closest people, and it profoundly impacted our lives.
For me, my person was my grandma, and while she’s been gone for over eight years, I still feel her presence, and her loss, in everyday life. For Ginny, her person was her mom, and she lost her after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease about six months ago.
Grief is a long road, and we view it from these two angles— the direct aftermath and looking back into the past.
Our first conversation is all about our stories of losing loved ones. In the second episode, we talk about the strategies we’ve gained through personal experiences and the research we’ve each done to learn about living with grief in the aftermath of loss.
Whether you’ve experienced loss in your life and are learning to cope, or you still get to hold your loved ones close, these conversations will help you to live a richer life through highlighting the connections between love and loss, and the ways they make us feel more alive. And if you are looking for more resources on being with grief and sadness, try out my mindfulness practice “Dealing with Sadness and Grief.”
Here’s more about the episodes:
How to Navigate Grief: Our Stories of Love and Loss (Part 1) with Ginny Gay & Brandi Lust
In this special two-part episode of Something to Normalize, Ginny and Brandi each share their stories of losing someone central to their lives and the grief that followed. Grief can be a complex, unpredictable, overwhelming, and isolating experience. And there are so many misconceptions about what it “should” be like. What’s worse than grieving the loss of someone you love and then feeling isolated or wondering if the way you’re grieving is somehow wrong? In this episode, Ginny and Brandi explain how there’s no wrong way to grieve. We can accept our experience, and find a bridge of connection so that we’re not alone in navigating this universal, human experience.
In this episode, Ginny & Brandi discuss how to navigate grief and:
What it means to say that grieving is a non-linear process
What grief can look like when the relationship was complicated
How to offer compassionate support to grieving loved ones through active listening and empathy
The wide range of emotions that are possible during the grieving process
Myths and misconceptions about grief, including the “stages of grief”
The intrinsic bond between grief, love, and impermanence
LISTEN HERE
How to Navigate Grief: Myths, Truths, and Practical Advice (Part 2) with Ginny Gay & Brandi Lust
After the loss of someone we love, we’re inevitably faced with the question, “How do I live with this grief?” In this episode of “Something to Normalize,” Ginny and Brandi offer some answers to this question. Through research and personal experiences with grief, they share strategies, powerful bits of wisdom, and practical tools they’ve discovered. They also discuss how they’ve applied these tools in their own lives, and what was most helpful in their process. This is the second in a two-part series on grieving. Click here to listen to part 1.
In this episode, Ginny and Brandi discuss:
How grief is more than just the loss of a person; it is also the loss of our identity as it relates to that person
What opportunities grief offers us— like forming a new relationship with the memories of a loved one
How rituals can have an important role in helping us process our grief
Ways to navigate the ever-changing nature of grief