GRIEF AND LIGHT

Get Griefy With Us: A Grief Week Roundtable on How Loss Shakes Up Family and Community

• Nina Rodriguez • Season 4 • Episode 97

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What happens when you gather a circle of grievers, creators, and grief-literacy leaders around one table and ask them to tell the truth about how loss has reshaped their families, and their lives?

In this special Grief Week episode of Grief and Light, we find out.

*** Watch the video here. ***

This episode is an offering for anyone navigating family changes after loss, for anyone bracing for the holidays, and for anyone who needs to hear that their grief makes sense, that their story matters, and that connection is still possible even in the midst of heartbreak.

Each year, the first week of December marks Grief Week—a global invitation to slow down, raise awareness, open conversations, and build a more grief-informed world. In honor of this mission, Nina Rodriguez brings together members of the Get Griefy Small Business Collective for a roundtable conversation that feels equal parts honest, tender, and unexpectedly uplifting.

From the moment the mic turns on, the episode unfolds like a shared living room, where stories overlap, tears sit beside laughter, and the complexity of grief is met with curiosity instead of fear. Together, Nina and her guests explore how loss ripples through families: the shifting dynamics, the roles we grow into (or out of), the unspoken tensions, and the surprising places where connection begins to mend what grief has fractured.

What emerges is not just a conversation, but a reminder:
Grief may isolate, but community brings us home to ourselves.
Through creativity, storytelling, mutual witnessing, and the simple act of speaking honestly, this group shows what’s possible when we don’t grieve alone.

Connect with our guests & their offerings:

Hosted by: Nina Rodriguez

Grief Support Resources for the Road:

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Thank you for listening! Please share with someone who may need to hear this.

Disclaimer: griefandlight.com/safetyanddisclaimers

You feel that void and you feel that absence. And yes, that ripple effect continues as life marches on and I experience new things. That empty seat is always going to be at my table. And so while it gets easier to accept and understand, and I do feel this connection in a strange way, still, it doesn't fill that physical void. It does evolve, but it is something that continues to echo through eternity. You just lost your loved one. Now what?

Welcome to the Grief in Life podcast where we explore this new reality through grief-colored lenses. Openly, authentically, I'm your host, Nina Rodriguez. Let's get started. Hello and welcome to Grief in Light and a very special episode for Grief Week. What is Grief Week, you ask? It is celebrated in the first week of December. It's a time that we take to honor and reflect and connect around the experience of loss.

because we are in the happiest, griefiest season of all. If you're new here, my name is Nina Rodriguez. Welcome. And today we are doing something very different, even for me. We're hosting a round table style conversation with a group of incredible grievers who are also grief leaders and professionals, all members of the Get Griefy Collective. What is the Get Griefy Collective, you ask? You're going to find out in a second.

We are going to be exploring questions that touch so many of us, especially during the holidays, which is how do family dynamics change after loss? And that answer is very different and unique for everybody. So you're going to hear from different perspectives of people who have lost different family members. It's important to talk about this because

Grief can feel so lonely and isolating, especially during the holidays and bringing this perspective from different walks of life could be really helpful. So let's get into it. I'm going to start with Kara. Welcome to Grief and Light. Welcome back to Grief and Light. Excuse me. tell us about that Get Griefy small business collective and how are you today? my gosh, Nina, this feels like I'm coming home. love anytime I get to spend time with you ladies, it just

It's the best, it really is. And for those of you guys that don't know, we have a few of us met in person and it's amazing what the internet can do, truly, for griefy people especially. So yes, my name is Kara Sanchez and I am the creator and founder of Get Griefy Magazine. And truly when I started this, I just wanted a platform that was visual, where we could come together and share all of our grief and our thoughts.

things that we've learned along the way that would help others in their grief experience. And I learned that so many of us have pivoted in our life journey. And it's not like we grew up deciding that, I really want to be a grief podcaster or I really want to be a grief author or anything like that. just, happens because we experience it. And so I wanted to create a space for those types of people to connect and work together and collaborate.

And that's exactly what we do. And of course we work on things together for the magazine, but we create content together. And just through the power of community, we are doing things like this, which is so incredible. So I'm just so honored and thrilled that today we are all here to sit down and chat and have this shared mission and goal of talking about grief together. So thank you for also creating the space for us, Nina.

Yeah, this is one big giant family here and we all really do support each other and it's just beautiful. I love it. That's the best. I think I speak for all of us when I say thank you for creating the space and for fostering this amazing community. You have such a skill and a talent and your social media game is incredible, unparalleled. So thank you so much for all you're doing. If somebody wanted to join the Get Griefy Collective and read about the magazine, where would they do that?

All of the information's on Get Groovy's website, getgroovymagazine.com, and there is a page for the collective, and there's also a directory where everyone in this panel is featured on the directory as well, and all of your links are there. So it's a networking group and a family vibe, and just so much collaboration. It's fun. It's a blast.

Collaboration is the name of the game and that's what we're doing here. And I would like to welcome next Charlene all the way from Portugal. Thank you so much for joining us from across the pond, if you will. Tell us a little bit about what you do and what brings you to this griefy world. Thanks so much. Yes, I'm thrilled to be connecting with you through grief, through the internet. And I'm originally from New York City, but I am now based in Lisbon, Portugal.

I'm a grief coach, a TEDx speaker, and author of Curating Grief, a creative guide to choosing what to keep after a loved one dies. After my mother died suddenly in 2013, I really leaned into my creativity to really guide myself through grief. But when I decided to help other people, I also brought in creativity and in particular the lens of curating and the metaphor of exhibitions.

So I use that lens of curating across my grief work now, which includes presenting exhibitions about grief and loss, often featuring the belongings and meaningful objects. And I also work one-to-one. I have a course called Sorting the Stuff of Life and Loss. I'm just really obsessed by like our interactions with the belongings and the roles that they might play for us, whether it's actually something that a person left behind or something that just reminds us of them.

So I'm so glad to be here and talk about this topic because, ooh, a lot comes out of family dynamics when we talk about this stuff. Absolutely. And for our listeners and anybody watching, as we're introducing ourselves and you're getting to know about each person, getting to know a little bit more about each person, I just want you to notice how

Each one of us has taken our grief and done something completely different with it and how it's manifested. Grief doesn't have to look any one particular way. It just is about honoring the way that you choose to make meaning if you choose to make meaning of it at all. And these are some examples through our own lived experience. So thank you, Charlene. I love the concept of curating grief. And next I see Angie. Welcome. Tell us about your.

Yeah, and I featured these stories before. Again, I will be linking them if you want to get to know a little bit more about each speaker. I will be linking the episodes that we recorded so you get to know more about each of our stories in the show notes. Yes, thanks again, Nina, for having me on. A second time on your podcast, I am Angie Hansen and I am the owner and creator of Butterflies and Halos. I am a Grief Forward Stationery company.

And this all bloomed out of my loss of losing my son and my husband and my brother all within two and a half years. And I really was just trying to find a way many years down the line, how can we show up for our friends and how can we walk along beside them without trying to fix them? I had all the tools and the words for the people that didn't have the words. So I started creating my line of

grief cards. And then I've also authored my book chapters of resilient heart. And that's my memoir of all my amazing people, their lives, their legacy, and their stories of death. And then I've co authored a couple anthologies as well. The writing experience and the journey. Most of those anthologies have came about through the Get Griefy Small Business Collective. I met and was introduced through a few of those people. So

I really encourage people to start connecting and collaborating with people because there is more out there for everybody. And this is just the beginning of the movement of people understanding what grief is and how are we going to change the narrative that everyone's speaking about it. I'm also a certified grief coach and I'm just a lover of all of you.

Same, same. Kara and Angie and I had the opportunity to meet earlier this year in New York City, which was really special and speaks to the Power community. I cannot wait to meet you, Amanda, Charlene, and Liz in person and give you the biggest hug because that's also part of why we're all saying, yeah, I lost my son and my brother and my mom and all this and smiling about it because we've been able to support each other and do the things that also nourish us in life after loss.

With that said, Liz, would you like to introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about your work and your recent book. Sure. So my name is Liz Quinn, and I am a podcast host of the Healing Hearts podcast, very similar to what Nina does here at Grief and Light, share stories of loss and grief and anyone who wants to share.

can share. Also, like Angie, I have written in a couple of anthologies as well. I just recently released Held in Our Hearts, a book about connection through pregnancy and infant loss. Eight women who have shared their stories of loss of pregnancy or an infant or miscarriage. And then throughout the book, there's also lots of other opportunities for you to just connect with yourself and with your baby. It's something that was really close to my heart because 17 years ago, we lost our

our firstborn daughter, Olivia. And so I've been in this space since then. About 10 years after that, my parents both passed away within two years of each other. Losing my parents cracked open my griefness per se and made me realize that I wanted to do something more with it. And that's how the Healing Hearts podcast started and that idea of wanting to write my first real writing experience.

was for Get Griefy, the magazine. When I found Kira on Instagram and she was like, I'm starting this magazine, I interviewed someone and just, so, you know, it's just amazing what one real can do and then brings you to all of this. Most of my season two of the Healing Hearts podcast is literally the people from Get Griefy Collective, because you can just go in there and say, I need podcast guests. And they're like, sure, I'm in. And it's wonderful.

Thank you, Liz, and congratulations on the book and your podcast and everything. I've had the honor of being on your podcast as well. So I might link that conversation too. Thank you so much. And Amanda, you were actually one of the first people I connected with through finding, I think Liz, you just said it all started with real. And I think that's literally how I connected with most of you. So Amanda, think I did see one of your reels or your posts like two or three years ago at the very beginning. And you were one of my first guests.

and have been a friend since. So welcome back and tell us a little bit about you, your book, your podcast, all the things. Thank you, Nina. Happy to be here with all of you. I'm very blessed. feel very lucky to have had my grief turn into this. That's how it all started for me was I wrote my book because I needed a place to put my grief.

I had gone through this crazy experience with my grief and my marriage and my world was blowing up and went through all this healing, generational dysfunction. And then I just was like compelled to write my book. And I started posting reels and my book and Nina got in touch with me and we just started messaging and we just hit it off, you know, because we both know sibling loss of our beloved brothers, you know, we just love so much. So, and then Nina came to my zoom launch party for my book and I was like, who is this girl?

I was like, why is she so interested in what I'm doing? My best friends aren't even as interested in what I'm doing. Because you feel the pain, right? You understand the pain and we connect. That's how we bond and we connect through that. So that's how it started for me. And then my podcast, Soul Rising, came as right before I launched my book. I was like, oh, I love podcasting. I love to talk.

And in the beginning, was me and my friend just doing it, and then she had to leave. So then I started interviewing people and I just met so many great people and same, I'm always saying that. I know them from the Get Greedy Collective, you So it's really, it's really awesome. This whole community that you've built, Kara, thank you so much for like following that nudge in your heart, you know, and listening to what I believe spirit wants us to do and our people want us to do. And then I started coaching. I do writing coaching. I do grief coaching. I call it loss and empowerment coaching.

I also call it energy infused coaching because I create packages for people with reiki, with tapping, with chakra balancing, with kind of like all the things, not just talking because our grief and trauma, because a lot of our grief is traumatic, it lives in our body. So I feel that like talking about it sometimes makes it worse. Like sometimes when I'm talking with people, they get triggered. And so I, then I'll switch over.

into some breath work, some meditation, some grounding, like just connecting with your body and yourself and kind of releasing all of that. So I say grief is a gift and I always caveat that with the people who just lost somebody probably would want to punch me in the face for saying that. But when you get a little bit of time out, you see how for me personally, I found myself in my grief. Like I found my true self. I think I feel like I was hiding like all those years and I just...

We just don't have the bandwidth for the BS, you know what I mean? Like we just become authentic. Like something happens without us even trying really, at least for most of us, I think, and for us in this space, right? So I'm glad to be here. Thanks, Nina, for doing this. Absolutely. And grief cracks us open and we grow capacity in many other areas, but BS is not one of them. And Amanda, you have some retreats coming up and your first international retreat. I don't know if you want to mention it.

We do one day retreats here in Castle Rock where I live in Colorado and yearly retreats at Mount Princeton Hot Springs, which is in Buena Vista, Colorado. It's Southwest Colorado. It's really beautiful. It's really this very, very special part of the country. And then we're doing our first international retreat in Tulum, Mexico in April, the last week of April, 2026. And it's going to be amazing. It's in this like private gated villa. It has like a full service staff. I'm like.

Really? Like what's going on here? Like, is this like my life? Like, yes, it's grief focused, but it's not, it's kind of morphing into grief and loss and all the things. And a lot of people have lost themselves just through life happening, not necessarily the loss of a person. Loss comes in all those different ways, loss of jobs, relationships, wishes, moves, all the things. And I think a lot of women in our age group are really waking up and searching for themselves. So we're helping people find their identity that was once lost. Well,

that'll be also linked. And I just wanted to give everybody a sampler of who's in the room with us, our different offerings. And for the record, Amanda, I was all about your book because I was looking for resources on adult sibling loss and there was like nothing back then. And so when I saw your book, I was like, who is she? I need to know, I need to read this book. I need to know about this. So thank you for being, I don't know if it was the first voice, but one of the first voices that I remember in searching for information about adult sibling loss.

Thank you all for introducing yourselves. like Amanda mentioned, I lost my brother Joseph, he was my only sibling. So that's where my initiation, if you will, into the grief space came from. But we're here to talk about how all these losses ripple out into our lives personally, into our family structure, whether that is our relationship with our parents, with our children, with our spouse, how all that changes at such a fundamental level.

And this is airing again in December. So you have the added layer of the holidays and tradition, loss of tradition, change in tradition. So we're going to talk about all that. Kara, I'm going to go to you. What has been the hardest part of navigating family after loss? The circumstance in which my mom passed, she passed unexpectedly. She was on vacation in Italy and I was in the NICU with my youngest born daughter and she was five days old. So.

Having experienced brand new life, one of the happiest moments in my life, then completely paired with the opposite, was such a shock to my system. In addition to that, my mom and I, we had always had a very good relationship, but when I became a mom with my firstborn, we were just butting heads a lot. We were bickering about things that now, looking back, I'm like, this doesn't matter, right? And it does not affect my love for her in any way, but...

I will say that we were definitely in a time of like trial and tribulation and we were in some growing pains. And for me, it's hurtful to know that when she passed, we weren't always on the best terms at that point. And so there's just so many things that went through my mind when she passed of initially my dad calling me and letting me know that she had passed and...

instantly having this gut feeling of regret. my goodness, why did I spend the last two years arguing with my parents, right? Or having this sense of guilt because two years prior, my mother-in-law had passed away and realizing that maybe I didn't handle that the best with my husband. And then realizing quickly that my dad just lost his spouse and I have to be there to take care of my dad.

my brother who's younger than me, I'm like taking over this matriarchal role. So like at once I got hit with all of these very profound realizations of how much my life had truly shifted in an instant. And it's overwhelming. It's a lot to try to tackle all at once. And then of course your postpartum brain kicks in and you're just emotional because of.

the fact that you just had a baby, but then you're also extra emotional because your mom just died. So I just feel as if having to face all of those realities at once is probably one of the most jarring and alarming things about a sudden loss because you don't have time to process them. You named the matriarchal aspect of it even as recent as your brother just got married and you, I imagine, had to show up as...

yourself as a sister and also in representation of your mother, I would imagine, right? Yeah, for sure. And those are just impossible shoes to fill. You feel that void and you feel that absence. And yes, that ripple effect continues as life marches on and I experience new things. That empty seat is always going to be at my table, right? And so while it gets easier to accept and understand, and I do feel this connection with her still in a strange way, but

It still, doesn't fill that physical void. And so it does evolve, but it is something that continues to echo through eternity. It's always going to be there for sure. Thank you for sharing. And Charlene and Liz, you both lost your mothers too. And Liz, you lost your both parents. So can you relate, I would imagine, to what Kara is saying and how does that look like in your experience and in your life? Taking on different roles. I was the kind of the baby in the extended family.

I was the youngest of all the cousins. So often I was quite protected. So when my mother died, I was suddenly exposed to so much, right? There was so much that people could not protect me from. And my mother was my greatest protector. And I often say, tell me about your relationship and your experience dealing with the belongings after your person died.

And that reveals to me so much about your relationship with your person, your relationship with grief, and the family dynamics. And it varies so much. So as I said, I was the baby in the family. I'm also an only child. My parents had bitterly divorced. And even though my aunt was my co-executor for my mother's estate, I knew that all the decisions were going to be up to me. So that was my burden.

Other people, a lot of my clients, unfortunately conflict with their siblings is actually one of the most challenging parts of dealing with the estate and the belongings, right? It's like I had no one really to consult with. Other people have way too many voices kind of giving their opinions. And I think we all know weddings, funerals, all the crazy comes out. All the opinions come out. So I find it really fascinating how

So much of what we talk about, about being difficult for grieving people surfaces in those instances. Yes, I encounter different styles of grieving. I'm not much of an emotional processor. Other family members are way more emotional processors. And neither of us really knew what to do with the other one. And I think we were both disappointed in each other in various ways. And then as I figured out in the two years or so after my mother died what to do with her house and all her belongings, I realized

we also have different relationships with stuff. We often assign different levels of meaning to these items and so much conflict can come out of that difference. So that's where all my conflict manifests in my husband not understanding why did I want to keep all of my mother's things, right? Why did I not want to just throw it all in a dumpster, right? He didn't get it.

And that caused so much strain. But we're good now. We're good now. I always like to tell people, 10 years on, we're good. You touched on a really important subject of those expectations on how we're supposed to grieve or how we should grieve or shouldn't grieve. And perhaps there was a dissonance between what you were feeling and what your husband expected or what other people around you expected.

And getting to a point of agreement takes a little bit of time. Like you said, it was like that two-year mark when you're like, OK, I'm ready to do this. And that piece by piece of either releasing or selling or keeping, it takes time. Thank you for sharing that. And Liz, tell us a little bit about your experience as well, having so many dynamics play out at once.

Yeah, so my parents died two years apart. My dad died in 2018 and my mom died in 2020. To have them pass away so short together, you feel like that you're that orphan kind of feel. And I have an older brother and sister. I am the youngest. They are seven and 10 years older than I. They were grown and starting to have families of their own as I was still in high school. So relationships just with who we were as with our parents.

was different. I'm grateful that we did not have those opinions of how things should be taken care of. For the most part, my brother and sister and I all just agreed that, you know, this sucks and we're sad and we know we have to deal with the estate. We all lived in different states. My brother was closest to where my parents had passed. So he took care of all the estate stuff. And I remember wondering what that would feel like.

because I can only imagine how heavy that felt. Unfortunately, my parents didn't have a will. They left us with a pretty heavy deficit of a mortgage and credit card and all of these things. And my sister and I didn't have to do anything with it. And I can only imagine what he felt, the dynamic that he just took that on for us. I'm forever grateful for that. That was something that he did after my dad died. When my mom passed away, she was actually really easy to take care of because we'd all taken care of it after.

with my dad. I think the hardest thing that for us and just kind of navigating it after is that we all grieve differently. You know, we all talked about that there's emotional processors, there's doers and it just, you know, pour themselves into something. And I'm definitely an emotional processor. There are times that even with not just my parents' death, but also like after losing Olivia, my husband, we were still, we were freshly married.

He had the best year of his life in college, got straight A's. And I remember thinking he didn't grieve her. He didn't understand what we were going through. And so it's kind of the same thing that we all grieve differently. You may see someone doing one thing and another one crying their eyes out. They're both grieving something. Thank you, Liz. I have a couple of follow-up questions. Would you say your siblings stepped in a parent-like role in your life just because they were older than you? I would say my sister, yes.

has definitely been that for me because I am raising children without my mom. With her being 10 years older than me, there are often times that I will text her and just be like, my daughter's driving me crazy and how she knows how crazy it can be and feel. So unfortunately, I've never been super close to my brother. So he definitely hasn't stepped into that role. He's just my brother and I know he loves me. Yeah. You touched on having those ends of life.

plans together. It is so incredibly helpful. So if you're listening, watching, let this be your sign to please, please, please take care of the wills, the estate planning. It's a hard conversation, but what's harder is having to deal with this and not having a plan in place. And you're never too young or too old to be able to start these processes. So let that be your sign. Angie, I'd love to hear from you. I know you experienced very close losses in a very short amount of time. So start wherever you'd like. I don't even know where to start sometimes, but

I have an older sister and then it's me and then my brother Seth who passed away and then my younger brother Nathan. So my brother Seth and I were kind of in the middle anyways and he was six years younger than I was. But my brother Seth and his wife, we had a farm. They lived on our property with us. And so I was very, very close to my brother and his wife, Joey.

Prior to my brother even getting sick, I was kind of like his caretaker. He moved in right when he was diagnosed with his brain tumor. And my parents are divorced, so they do not get along at all. So there's that whole dynamic. So I was just put into that position to be his caregiver before he...

He met his wife. We just kind of did it together. And then, you know, my whole life imploded because my son died in 2000. Then my husband was diagnosed with cancer and then he died. And my brother died exactly two months after my husband. So when all of that happened, really our whole family was just shook to the core. It was really impossible to lean on anybody in our family. I didn't know who to turn to. After my husband died,

My brother was like, Angie, I'll be there for you. I'll take care of you. You know, I live here. I'll help you with everything on the farm because I was in panic mode. And, and then he got sick and he died two months later. So he never got to do those things. So I, I also felt like I lost a lot of broken promises that death created. And as a family unit, we were all there together, but we were all grieving so differently.

but the same. And so it was hard to lean on anybody in our family. I couldn't lean on my mom because she had just lost her son. She had just lost her son-in-law. We were still all reeling from losing Garrett, my son, their grandchild. That was such a hard hit for us. When Garrett died, none of us were prepared for any of it. But I was blessed enough to have a great community of friends. And so

That is kind of where I even turn to a lot of them, but even my friends after my brother had died, they kind of, I mean, they told me some of my best friends were like, Angie, we don't even know how to help you anymore. You know, we don't even know what to do. And I'm like, I don't know what to do. Nobody knew what to do. We all just stood together. I honestly, in my mind, that period was so...

I don't have a lot of memory from it. I've lost a lot of like, how did I get from April 7th, 2009 when my brother died to like say August 1st of 2009? I don't know what happened there. I don't know how I even managed to move forward each and every day. And I mean, I know one of my saving graces was my daughter, Gracie. And you know, she was six at the time, you know, and turned seven in between all of that, but.

She was my saving grace every single day. you know, it's like with Liz, you know, how you said and Nina, it's so important to have plans in place. It's so important to spend the minimal amount of money you can for life insurance, whether it's on your children or if it's on your spouse or anybody. My father-in-law was an insurance guy, so we always had life insurance, but having everything in place.

was very helpful because our family didn't have to struggle with any of those decisions, anything, even though, like I said, my parents, their dynamic were not good. Downright awful. Like, you know, like when I talk about wanting to throat punch people, I want to throat punch both my mom and dad during that time period because I'm like, you two need to step up and be the adults here. And I felt like I was the one doing it all. And I'm the one that had...

I hate to say it sometimes, the greatest loss I felt like at the time. I'm like, I've lost so much. They lost just as much. But here I am trying to hold it together. luckily we were all smart enough to have things in place where nobody had to fight about any of that stuff. Thank you. Your story is compounded loss over compounded loss in such a short amount of time. So if somebody is relating to that in this moment and there's that like

I don't know how I got through that. Let Angie's story be that example of you can get through it and it's going to be a blur looking back on it probably, but you can get through one foot in front of the other. And one thing that stood out to me was the feeling of the loss of promise. And that definitely feels like those secondary losses of this is not how I saw my life playing out and some kind of life contract has been broken. Amanda, I'm going to you. I know that you

experience the loss of your brother, but there was also other experiences in your life and with your marriage that were non-death related losses. I completely feel like I was in like a blackout for like a long time. So my kids were four and six when my brother died. We moved to Colorado three years before that. And in that span of three years, I had two aunts, both of my mother's sisters, my

first cousin, one of my aunt's daughters, who was the closest to me. I was also the youngest. I was always the youngest of all the cousins running around, and Kim was the closest one to me at the time. And then my mother's cousin, who I was close with as well. So we had five losses under.

within three years, and my brothers was the last. And then, like I said, we had just moved to Colorado, and that was a loss in and of itself. That's when I really learned about identity loss and how I was so wrapped up in being a New Yorker. I really didn't realize that. And my friends and just the places and the streets and the familiarity of all the things, like when I moved out here, it was just like, whoa, like, who am I? And I was nine years sober at this time, so I'd been doing all the self-reflection. I thought I knew myself, and it was a big awakening, a big wake-up call for me.

to find myself and then Jeremy dies and then, and didn't deal with any of the grief before that. I don't think I really even spoke the word grief. I really don't think it was even in my repertoire of awareness. I had a boyfriend who died when we were both eight months sober. Nobody said, are you grieving? You know, what's your grief like? Like it just never occurred to me that I was like grieving. So I had met my husband about five months after that boyfriend died.

And I really had no business getting into a relationship so quickly. I was also only a year sober. And I was grieving Mike, but I didn't know I was grieving Mike. And I kind of just went into this new relationship looking for a savior, which is what I learned years later. The poop, it's the fan when Jeremy dies. Five months later, I tell my husband, again, another five months. I have a pattern with five months. I really can only handle it for five months until I want to split and run and change how I feel. Tell my husband, I don't love you. I don't think I ever loved you.

And he was like, what? And like, we had been having some problems. My husband's a 9-11 first responder. He, I want to say had PTSD. He's done so many different therapies and he's just a different person. But anyway, he was like, your brother just died. Do you think that might be creating these feelings? At this point now I'm 12 years sober. He's 22 years sober. And we know that there's usually more going on under the surface than presents. So he's like, what about, why don't we go to marriage counseling? And I had been seeing somebody for a few months from my grief.

for Jeremy. And she was like, I'm also a marriage counselor. I was like, So I actually think a lot of these losses tied into a lot of divorce and relationship issues. Anyway, we go to marriage counseling, unravel this whole story. Like I mentioned, the generational family dysfunction. I had this kind of unconscious messaging going on that everybody leaves you, everybody hurts you. That's what my book is called, Trust Yourself to Be All In, Safe to Love and Let Go, because it's not about necessarily being all in with somebody else, although I was never able to. It was about being all in with myself.

knowing myself, loving myself enough so that I can then love somebody and accept their love. I really wasn't ever able to receive love. And that's what I learned. We went through it. It was a nightmare. It was terrible. And we were in counseling for about a year and a half. COVID hit. We were going to do it on Zoom. He didn't want to do it on Zoom. So we did something called a MAGO relationship therapy, which is basically that we sense these unconscious traits about our caregiver.

either some good, but mostly the ones that were the traits that they could not fill our needs. We sense those in our partner. It's kind of like you marry your father or mother type of deal, right? Like that's kind of the idea. So we go through a lot of healing. We get very honest about who we are, about our childhoods, about all this stuff. And yeah, so that's also how the grief was a gift. But I feel terrible because during that whole time, I feel like I was emotionally unavailable with my children.

I can't protect them from all their lessons that they have to learn, but I'm hoping that later in life they're not like, you were there, but you were not there. So we'll see how that all plays out. Maybe we could hop on here in about 10, 15 years and I'll let you guys know. Yeah, so my grief definitely rippled out big time, big time. Definitely part two is gonna be with the kiddos 10 years from now to see how they're doing. Be like, how did this all affect you?

Actually, you touched on something that leads into the next part of the conversation, which is the epicenter of the earthquake, the earth-shattering moment that changes everything. Then what, right? Like, how does that arc play out? And we can't tell our whole story in 15 minutes, but just touch on at what point did you understand this grief thing has and will continue to change my life, my family?

probably forever and ever, or at least a lot longer than we realize, and at what point did something click and you decided to do something with your grief, so make meaning. And what I mean specifically is in each of our cases, in the way that we talked about during the introductions, that became, you know, Get Griefy Magazine, Curating Grief, a book, a podcast, all these things. So let's talk about that arc of growth. Kara, I'm going to you next. Insert in there, if it was also...

driven by something that surprised you about grief in terms of disappointment. So one example that I'll give is like, you I was disappointed in the people who I thought would show up for me and didn't. And I was surprised by the people who actually showed up and I expected absolutely nothing from them. And also the moment that you realize grief is here to stay and what do I do with all of this now? I think for me, I needed something to occupy my mind and my hands and

Because I was on maternity leave when I was grieving that acute phase of grief, I ruminated on the fact that my mom and I, maybe she left the world on not the best terms and there was just so many conversations we didn't get to have. And so for me, what started this whole creativity process or channeling my grief into something productive was like a guided journal that I created. And the whole purpose of it was

like an emotional will, like we talk about, you know, wills for our possessions and making sure we have life insurance and things like that for, to cover the monetary things. But like, what about your heart that gets left shattered, right? And so I wanted to create something that we can leave down messages of love, advice, and support for our loved ones.

in the process of talking about the journal that I had created online, that's how I started to connect with different types of griefy people. And I think Angie might've been one of the first people I connected with, because I was like, she is stationary and that's really cool. That's how she channeled her grief. And I was really quick to realize my situation was not unique in the sense that I had suffered a great loss. So have all these other people and they've also channeled their grief into something more powerful and more purposeful.

And I think it was just an epiphany moment. Many of them happened in the shower. I don't know what it is about water, but it just like comes down and it hits you in the head. And you're like, I need to amplify this because unfortunately I feel like the only time grief gets touched in the media, it's like when it happens to famous people and that's not relatable. Of course, grief is grief and they're still just as sad as anyone else. But for some reason,

someone grieving in a mansion who's famous and has access to all of, like, that's just not the same. And I don't think that the normal everyday person can truly relate to what they're saying. And so I wanted to create something that highlighted and amplified the everyday griever, the people that are inspiring, and people who have learned a lot about grief, learned about life and grief. And

create something that was community driven, although I started it and I created it, it's not my magazine, it's everyone's magazine. And everyone has a piece of the pie and everyone has an opportunity to share. that's the part that I think is really important is that we're all here sharing all of the situations that we've lived through and all of the different dynamics and the different epiphanies that we have had through grief. And

that all gets channeled into the magazine. Every page that you flip into, someone's able to see a different slice of life, a new perspective. And so for me, that was why it was so important to start it and just continue doing it because you learn something new every day. I'm learning something right now in these conversations and it's so meaningful and so purposeful. And so that's why it's a long journey, but you truly do learn something every step of the way.

100%. And I'm so curious, how did your husband receive that? And did your girls understand what you are doing? is she like, have aunties who get on a quarterly call and you're always talking to? How does that play out with your family in the beginning and now? So my husband is the opposite of me. Like, he also suffered a very similar loss. He lost his mom. He's the type of person that he's in the military. So that describes his personality in a nutshell.

He's very much, this is a fact of life and we move forward. And so he doesn't need all of the creativity and he doesn't need to busy his mind. Like he's just very much type A, like this is how it is. But he's very supportive and he understands why it is that I'm doing this. And he also understands that as a previous educator, I guess previous, I don't know how to say it. I still work in education, but I'm not in the classroom anymore.

He understands how this kind of all ties together, right? And I would say with my girls, I do think that they're still quite too young to understand exactly what it is that I'm doing, but they do understand that I talk about grandma Laura and grandma Abby all of the time. And it's just really cute sometimes to see the things that they've picked up on. For example, at my brother's wedding, all of the flower girls were together and they saw a little ladybug outside and I just heard my daughter, she goes, that's my grandma.

And so it's things like that where it's like, okay, they still have a grandma. It's just different, right? And so I think that that for me is one of the most special pieces of this is that I'm creating a space where it's normal to talk about death and dying for them, but it's not scary for them because they see it as grandma's in the sky or grandma's in the ladybug or grandma's always around them. And so as much as it breaks my heart that they don't have

grandmas in their life. They have so many people that still love and care for them and they have the legacy of their grandmas that we still get to carry on for them. That's so beautiful and I don't know what it is about grandmothers or mothers. I've talked to as many people and the kids see their grandma in a ladybug. I don't know why this seems to be a thing but I absolutely love it that they feel that point of connection even though they maybe don't understand the entirety of what happened.

but you keep that as something beautiful, lighthearted, and a point of connection. And I know, Liz, you bring Olivia into your heart and everything that you do. And actually, cute story, when I was editing Liz's podcast episode, I was in the middle of one part where she says, and then that's when I realized we had to let Olivia go. The moment that piece, that sentence comes out, as I'm editing it,

I get this spam text that says, hi, it's Olivia. And I literally froze. I got chills all over my body. I took a screenshot. sent it to Liz and I was like, Liz, cannot make this up. Like I'm literally in the middle of your episode when you just said this and I get a text with that. It just felt very serendipitous. So with that, you touched on you and your husband not grieving the same, perhaps having a little bit of differences. So.

When did you get to a point or how did you get to a point of mutual understanding that you grieve differently and you carry Olivia forward a little bit differently? Therapy. I mean, honestly, it was those first like, so those first few weeks, those first like eight weeks where you're just like numb and lost and you're not sure how you got out of bed and you're continuing to do the things. I mean, really, you just don't. Like I said, he went on and had.

the best semester of his college career right after we lost Olivia. And I spent most of my days crying on the couch. But eventually we were suggested to go to therapy. And at first I started by myself. Eventually Nathan went with me. And through that, I learned that grieving, we just do it differently. And that's one of the things he did say in therapy is that I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to do for you. I didn't know what to do for me. I didn't know what to do for our little family.

And so he poured himself into the only thing he knew he could control, which was his schoolwork. And that makes a lot of sense now. Then it definitely just felt like he didn't care. And I know that's not true because I know he loved her and missed her and all the things. So eventually we just, we just let ourselves grieve the way we needed to grieve. And then we were able to come together and start to grieve her together. We've always been on the same page of

Olivia is always going to be present and very much in our lives. She was our firstborn child. So when we went on to have her siblings, they truly know about her and who she is. And she has her pictures up on the wall, all of the things. You talk about your daughters talking about grandma's a ladybug. We associate Olivia with a butterfly. And more often than not, if my youngest is playing with a butterfly, he will say he's playing with his sister.

I actually have it on video. He's playing with this beautiful little white butterfly. And I'm like, what are you doing? And he's like just jumping along with this butterfly. And he's like, I'm playing with Olivia. Leave me alone. And so it's precious and wonderful. Kara, you'd mentioned how you grieved your mom and how your husband grieved his mom. You my mom died in 2020 when my husband's mom died last year. You know, and very much she was very, he was just like, well, I knew she was going to die eventually. So.

It's just what it is. We just move forward. I'm still over here doing all the things in honor of my mom. You know, so, yeah. It's different, definitely. And at what point did you decide, I want to start this podcast. I want to write. I want to do all these things. Really, after we lost Olivia, we were just really focused on that. What do we do now? You know, so I didn't channel a lot of that into after I lost my parents. And kind of similar to what Amanda had said,

I don't think I truly grieved, like really grieved Olivia until I was more in this space and was able to really talk about it. know, Olivia was 17 years ago and it was still taboo-ish to talk about the death of an infant or pregnancy loss, where now I'm very grateful that there's, you know, collaborations and get griefy and there's so many lost moms out there trying to do things as well. So after I lost my parents,

I went on this health journey. I wanted to be more for my kids than what I was. It's so much more than just losing weight. It's a transformation of life. so layers of myself and my grief started to peel off. And I started to realize that I wanted to do something with what I had. Your podcast was one of the first podcasts I listened to after getting into a space where I felt I could listen to podcasts.

you were probably one of the first inspirations for me to be like, maybe I can do this. And then just watching more and more people as I got more involved with Get Griefy and seeing more people do things with their grief made me realize I couldn't. So one day I just decided to rip the bandaid and do it. And then just kind of continued since then. And I just keep ripping the bandaid off because imposter syndrome is real. It gets in your head. You tell yourself you can't do it and...

Eventually you just have to say, no, you can. And then you do. And then you're like, my gosh, what else can I do? So. Yes. And you've done a beautiful job, created an amazing space. And I know other people are receiving your messages beautifully as well, kind of the same way that you did in the beginning. Charlene, I'm going to you. Your experience is different because you were an only child. Did something surprise you about the way people showed up or didn't? And at what point did you decide, I want to create the space where grief is processed through?

curation. Yeah. I you kind of spoke earlier about how the people you thought would show up didn't quite in the way that you thought they would. And then other people showed up unexpectedly. I definitely found that. People who were my elders, who I thought would be like the wise ones to guide me through, they were so devastated by the loss. It was really sudden and unexpected. No one saw it coming.

So they were really just deep in processing their own shock and grief. So my cousins were great. I was able to call my cousin who lived a couple of hours away in Albany to like take care of some of the basics of I can't throw away the soy sauce in my mom's kitchen. Can you please come and do it for me? And she is kind. She is calm.

and she's competent. And those are the three words I assigned to like, okay, this is the kind of help I need. You can be kind, but if you're not calm, you're not gonna be good for me. And my husband wasn't really that kind. He was really quite frustrated by how long it was taking me to deal with the house. And often we can talk about the disappointment that comes from these mismatches and expectations.

with family members and people in our lives. And I think it's very common to feel betrayed. Whether it's you promised to take care of me, you promised to be there, and you weren't there in the way that I needed you. So I think often it can feel like a breaking of vows, especially in a partnership. But there did come a point where I was just drowning in so much resentment that I felt so betrayed, I felt so lonely.

But then I think I also came to the point of saying, I don't want to live with someone's resentment.

Often as grieving people, we do come to a point where we ask, actually, how do I want to live the rest of my life? So then my options were either do something about the resentment or get divorced. And when I give talks, I often kind of joke about like, yes, I consider divorce when my husband said, just throw it all in a dumpster. And when I said that during my TEDx talk here in Lisbon, someone in the audience said, damn right.

I don't think it made it to the recording, but I was tempted to laugh because I think people get it, right, of why that might be so hurtful for a grieving person. But because I decided I did want to stay married to him, I found that I was able to find a path through understanding him more, partly through better understanding his relationship with stuff and with belongings.

What aspects of the way that he grew up, like moving a lot, losing things when they would do international moves, how did that influence his relationship with stuff? How is the fact that he is the oldest son in a family of five siblings, how is that different than my experience as an only child? And I think getting that perspective shifted everything for me. What I saw as betraying me, letting me down was, yeah.

as someone else has mentioned, right? His inability to meet me in my pain, to know what to do. I mean, I had had a lot of therapy by the time my mom died. And he was not a therapy person, right? So I had a lot more emotional skills. He had different coping skills. And I often find that in my curating grief work, sometimes curating, whether it's actually curating an exhibition about your person or to just use the imagination.

about like, how would I curate an exhibition? Sometimes it is about honoring the person that we lost. But just as much I find that it's helpful for maintaining the relationships that we still have. Because I actually did curate an exhibition about my mother. That is how I very much processed my own grief and figured out how to empty out her house. But I also offered that question of like, what would you curate in an exhibition about your person?

because it allows people to realize, yes, of course, my aunt would curate something totally different for my mother. My husband knew my mother. He would choose totally different things. You lose a sibling and your parent would choose a very different selection maybe than what your other sibling might choose. And I think giving ourselves that distance to say, what if we are all curators after a loved one dies?

And as the curator, we get to choose what's important. We get to reclaim the narrative about our person. And I just find that so incredibly powerful, like as a grieving person, right? We're often experiencing so much that's outside of our control. So because I use that lens of curating for me and it changed everything, I was like, I need to tell more people. So like, let me write a book.

there's a short film. okay. I'm gonna restart my podcast, you know, all the ways. But that's, yeah, I think sometimes when we get into grief work, it can feel like we're like grief evangelists. And I don't usually like to have that energy, but I am like, let me tell you about the lens of curating. It might change your life and your relationship with your person and the people who are still in your life.

Well, it sounds like that was a very powerful and meaningful way to reclaim your sense of agency, not just after the loss of your mom, but potentially the loss of your marriage and your relationship and life as you knew it. So thank you for sharing that. And I'm becoming aware of the power of our relationship with things, because even as I'm thinking, know, now, you know, I still feel like I'm Joseph's sister and all the things, but the reality is I'm also the remaining child and I will likely...

everything goes in the natural order, have to get rid of my parents' stuff by myself, bury them alone and all the things. And I've noticed whenever my dad says, look, I bought XYZ stuff, right? And he presents an item. It could be anything. I don't care what it is. All I see is, is that something I'm going to have to get rid of after you die? That's all I see. And sometimes I have to like reel it back in and be like, let me share his joy with whatever he just got. But I'm like, why are you hoarding stuff for me to throw away?

So it's interesting how something seemingly so quote unquote like insignificant is actually tied to that potential sense of resentment that we don't even know we're holding. So thank you for bringing that up. Angie, I'm going to you. Yeah, for me it was, honestly, I had all my people with me supporting me, walking alongside me. It's almost 20 years since my son died, since Garrett died. He died in 2006 when we didn't have all of this stuff and all the platforms and all the knowledge.

actually. And then, you know, it's been almost 17 years for my brother and my late husband. But honestly, for me, all the support after I'm remarried. So, you know, I'm a remarried widow. And it really happened kind of after 2020, after the COVID years, when I started really sitting there thinking, Gracie went off to college.

And I became an empty nester then. And so again, my life had changed completely. My husband that I'm married to now, Chance, we'd sit there, you know, and we'd talk about things. I'd talk about greeting cards. So for that example, I'd be like, why? Why do we send greeting cards? If my best friend lost her spouse, I'm not going to send her a card that says, I'm so sorry for your loss or with deepest sympathy, because that is not how we communicate with each other.

we communicate and snark and sarcasm and just like, you know, we love each other so much. And so I'm like, why can't we just create words that we would say to each other? And Chances like, well, like what would you say? And so I'm on my phone app notes and I'm creating all these things, you know? And like the very first one that I created was the one that says, I don't know what to say. Let's go eat one of those damn casseroles. Like that's what I would give to my best friend if her spouse died, right? And she would be like,

hell yeah, let's go. You know, so that's, that just kind of is like an icebreaker. It's acknowledging it. It's not fixing her. It's not doing anything. And so I started Butterflies into Halos in 2022. And I started writing my memoir in 2019, but there was still just this edge of uncertainty within myself of who wants to read about death and dying and all this.

you know, because I still didn't think in 2019 that there was this movement that we're trying to create about the grief. And so then, you know, I tabled that. And then after I started Butterflies and Halos, I was getting such great response from people about my cards and how my words mattered. And so was like, you know what? My words matter. I'm going to finish my book. And my husband Chance and my daughter Gracie, they were 100 % on board.

They're the ones that pushed me. They were like, do it, do it, do it. So that's how I kind of, I just started doing that. And then I had the support of all my friends in my community and they were just like, why wouldn't you do this, Angie? This is amazing. And it was the reassurance that I felt like I needed to create this. And I'm so happy where I'm at today with all of it.

Thank you. And I'm glad you did because not only did it lead to all of this connection, but your story really helps a lot of people through because you have created some things beautiful, including a product line and all the services and your books, everything you offer. Amanda, I'm going to go to you now. Tell us about your arc. I know that you talk about it in your book and also that you don't just focus on grief. There's a lot of what you touched on earlier, which is the energetics and this concept of trying to channel the unseen into

making this world a better place. So how did your arc evolve and where are you now? It started... So, okay, so Jeremy died in 2018. Marriage blows up. We go to counseling. 2020 hits. We spent a lot of time at home because of my husband's chronic respiratory illness from being a 9-11 first responder. I didn't say before. It's kind of... I leave this part out for some reason, but...

What actually had happened with us was my, don't love you, was really, I'm afraid you're going to die. And that really drives a lot of my work about how loss can tend to separate us and divide us. And then that is kind of overarching underbelly of my book and in my introduction, and I talk about the division and disconnection, not just from grief, but during 2020, what happened during COVID really disturbed me. So during 2020, we were home a lot. I spent a lot of time alone.

Like a lot of time, a lot of hadn't, you my husband and my kids, but like, I would meditate a lot. I just had time. So I would just be down in my meditation room, like just meditating for like an hour, hour and a half at a time. And I'm in therapy at the time. Because I'm sober, like I said, I'm going to this 12 step group called, adult children of alcoholics, anonymous and dysfunctional families. And I'm learning about this emotional abandonment thing that happened in childhood, which is what my grief.

It reared its ugly head after Jeremy died, which is why I pulled away. I was afraid of being abandoned again, all that kind of stuff. So I had all these awarenesses. Like things were just, I was just in this real netherworld is kind of what I call it. Like I wasn't here and obviously wasn't there, but I was probably trying to stay with my brother and like, where are you? Like, I want to be with you, right? So I just had these really deep, deep experiences and I was out of nature a lot.

a lot, a lot. think nature is so healing because really it's really where I met myself, like, and the oneness, right? That the universal oneness, that we're all one. And I just met God, you know? I mean, I had a higher power. I'm not a religious person. I'm much more spiritual. But I just kind of, like, I look at a tree and there's like, it's very, it's very deep, but it's just like, there's no...

separation, like I can feel the beating of that tree like within me. Like it was just, I was in a real deep place. And then in 2021, well, I started thinking in 2020, what am I gonna do like when I get out of this house? Cause literally I think I cooked dinner like 374 nights in a row. Like I took it, like we took it really like probably too seriously. I was like, what am I gonna do? Like I have a social work degree, you know, I was also really passionate. I still am passionate about climate change, but I was like really on fire about climate change at the time.

and all that division, and I was feeling like we're kind of powerless, like our vote kind of doesn't really matter much anymore, and the only power that we have is raising our own frequency, which then helps raise the frequency of the planet, which then makes everything just better. Like we become love, we find compassion, we're kind when we're in that energy. So I'm in that process, right? And then I'm like, I have my social work degree, I could work in Denver for a nonprofit or something, climate change, what am I passionate about?

when one of my natural abilities. And I kind of just threw it out there. It's like the universe. And I was like, all right, what do want me to do? And I'm running one day and I get meditative when I run. And the music and the drumming and the whole rhythm, rhythmic, the whole thing I get in a zone. And I just heard you're gonna write a book. And I was like, what? whoa. And I still feel like it was my brother. And from that moment, like floodgates opened.

like total flood gates opened, things just poured through me. I put on a hold for a couple of months, because I ran upstairs and I was like all sweaty and I'm like, Jim, with my husband, I'm like, I'm gonna write a book. And he's like, what? Like, what are you talking about? So I let that kind of deter me. was like, hmm, maybe I can't write a book. He didn't mean it in any other way other than like, what do you, really what? Like that's big, like that's a big undertaking.

Anyway, two months later I started writing and it just poured out of me. Dots were connecting and I know a couple of you ladies have written books here. It's such a cathartic experience and they told me, my publishing consultant said, what you think you're writing about is not really what you're writing about. And that was so true for me. It was a whole much deeper experience than I thought was happening. So it was kind of happening at the same time that I was going through all of this healing and it was just a really good place to put it there. And where I'm at now is just.

Life just keeps getting better. I really can't explain it any other way than that. Things are growing. I'm getting clients left and right. My retreats are selling out. I feel so grateful that I'm able to help women and men and men. We're actually opening up our retreat in February to men. That's amazing. There was literally like divine inspiration and intervention, if you will. And one thing I'm noticing in all of our stories, all of your stories is a lot of this happened after 2020, the post-pandemic era, if you will.

the time that we probably were at home trying to figure out what do I do with all this time now that I have to be indoors. And it sounds like that also helped us find these outlets or reach out or connect to people differently, which is something that I ask, why is this grief conversation out in the ether right now? Why is it becoming a more mainstream thing? Or maybe I feel like it is because my whole algorithm is curated to griefy things.

But we're at the end here and I do want to save a little bit of time for some hot seat questions. Before we go to those, give me one or two sentences. What advice would you give somebody who's experienced a loss, is seeing their changing family dynamics, is having a hard time dealing with that, especially right before the holidays, is feeling the grief of the loss and the ripple effect and all the things that we just talked about. Go back to like your early days.

What advice would you give that person or maybe words of wisdom if advice sounds a little bit too strong? I personally think that there's so much power in community and finding other people who have experienced a similar loss. And even though their situations might be different or the dynamics might be different, just being able to see yourself in someone else and in someone else's experience just makes you feel less isolated. So I personally think

that finding other griefy people out there in the inner webs can be helpful. I'm going to say put up your boundaries early. Set those boundaries with your family. If you're having a hard time, it's OK to say no. It's OK to take a minute to rest. All of those things. think often in those family dynamics, we want to make everyone else comfortable and we forget

that we are the ones making ourselves uncomfortable. And it's important to remember that this is happening to us too, and that it's okay for us to say, we can't do this. It's okay to be honest with your loved ones. I think in grief support, we often talk about the both and. And the holidays are a great opportunity to practice the both and. I miss my person so much.

And I want to celebrate.

I want to celebrate and I'm just going to try to cope. The world is terrible and it is so beautiful. I always think of it as practicing. We're all just practicing how to use these tools and skills and hey, holidays give us a lot of opportunity to practice. So both and. I would say we all learn really quickly that, you know, we all communicate grief differently and we all do it really poorly at first.

And you just have to find your community. Similar to what Kira said, you have to find those like people that understand. And that's sometimes the only saving grace that we have is having that community of people that like, I see you, I get it, and I understand, and without even having them speak. I would say don't trust everything that you feel. Get very curious about

what you're feeling and look at why and try to understand, talk to people, get the help that you need, pray, meditate, do whatever you need to do to get to the bottom of why. So ask a lot of questions of yourself. I know we live in a time where we are very empowered to trust our instinct, trust our intuition, not abandon ourselves, but sometimes, especially when there's a lot of emotion, when we're really emotionally charged, sometimes our brain is lying to us to protect us.

So just get curious.

That was really good. Thank you all. would say permission to grieve, give yourself permission to feel, permission to be, permission to not let things need to be perfect or ideal or what they used to be. They are what they are. And if this year looks different, that's okay. And if your relationships are shifting, there's a bit of a surrendering that you have to do extending that grace to yourself and to each other. Before we end, because we're in the holidays and this is airing on grief week, does anybody have any

coming offerings for the holidays that they would like to share? I do. have, with Butterflies and Halos, I created the Holiday Heart Lift, and that actually starts November 30th. But it's 25 days of audio messages between five to eight minutes. It's a way for you to navigate the holidays. I give you tips, advice, I give you journal prompts, and walk along beside you during the holidays. You can sit in your house underneath your covers,

and you can listen to those audio messages and you can find it under Butterflies and Halos and it's tabbed Holiday Heart Lift. I've been introducing how to use the lens of curating in different ways. Something called the 10-object method as a way to do like a mini curation, a mini exhibition. The one that I've done that's around grief in the holidays is called Wistful Winter Wonderland. And I have a video that shows how I use a 10-object method.

to curate a mini exhibition to hold space for the different kinds of feelings that I have going into the holidays, going into the new year without my mother and my uncle and other people in my life. And that leads into my free monthly grief gathering, which is on a last Wednesday of every month. And this year, the last Wednesday of December is December 31st. And that's the last day that I saw my mother, December 31st, 2012. So I think that'll be super special.

So we're gonna do a little longer session. And as always, you're invited to bring something that reminds you of a person that you'd like to share with the group to have witnessed. Bring something that you'd like to bring forward with you into the new year. And you can find all that on curatinggrief.com.

I have the Healing Hearts podcast and I'm doing a special mini series, mini episodes on the holidays called Tis the Season to Get Griefy, nagivating the holidays with a grieving heart. And I will be interviewing past guests, having raw, real conversations with grievers just about the holidays. It's like just sitting down with a friend, having coffee and wine. There's lots of faces and voices that you're hearing.

right now will also be there. So I'm really looking forward to that. And then also as part of grief awareness week, three of us lost parents are hosting a virtual zoom support group to honor our children, our babies and our stories during grief week as well.

and have anything. I'm taking December completely off. Wonderful. Focusing on my family and all the other things that I just have already going on. So taking a break. Same. I'm moving. That's going to be busy, busy. But so I will, of course, link everything in the show notes. These sounds like amazing offerings. And also rest is so key. OK, we're going to hot seat questions. Kara, I'm coming to you very quickly. First thing that comes to mind, favorite trauma treat.

Cheese fries. Liz, favorite sign from Spirit slash the universe. Butterflies. Charlene, a hobby or activity you've picked up since your loss. Red ribbon dancing by the water. Say that again. Red ribbon dancing. A red ribbon dance is a traditional Chinese dance and my mother was a dancer. So I don't cry. What I do is I go to the beach.

or by the river and I dance using red ribbons and it's my way of expressing and processing emotion. That is beautiful. And do you post on social media about this? Sometimes. Sometimes there's video. Yeah. I'll have to check it out. That was really cool. Angie, what is a funny or random thing grief has made you do?

question everything that I've ever done.

Absolutely. Amanda, if grief had a superpower, what would yours be? my gosh, these are hard. You ladies did this so quickly. If grief had a super.

Talking to spirit. Being- Kara, an object, smell, or place that instantly reminds you of your mom? By the beach. Liz, what's a movie or book you turn to when you need to feel all the feels? that's tough, because there's so many. In the very beginning, after we lost Olivia, it's very odd, but there's this book called Tear Soup.

Because there wasn't a lot of books on like lot baby loss So but tear soup was one of the first books that I ever received after losing Olivia And so it's probably one just because of that being my very first brief book Thank you, Angie, what's an unexpected moment of laughter you've had while grieving just when you're deep grief crying and Then you think of something funny that your person did and yeah

That would probably be the thing and just surprises yourself. Yes, I co-sign on that one. I either cry and then laugh hysterically or laugh hysterically and end up crying. It's like a cycle. Charlene, your grief journey in one word or phrase.

I lost my mother and found myself. that needs to be a book. Amanda, your favorite memory that still makes you smile of Jeremy? Christmas, for sure. For sure. He used to play the Chipmunks Christmas album from like October, like Halloween it used to start. And he would wake me up at like four o'clock in the morning, Santa came, Santa came. And we would go sit down and just like, ogle at the gifts and wait until our parents would wake up. He loved Christmas. I love it.

Thank you all so much for participating today, for sharing your grief, your joy, your people, and your message to the world. Everybody's information will be tied, tied linked in the show notes. And I hope you felt, seen, heard, validated, and at least hopefully made you smile a little bit. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for being you. And we wish you a gentle holiday season. That's it for today's episode. Be sure to subscribe to the Grief and Light podcast.

I'd also love to connect with you and hear your thoughts and your stories. Feel free to share them with me via my Instagram page at griefandlight or you can also visit griefandlight.com for more information and updates. Thank you so much for being here, for being you, and always remember you are not alone.


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Nina Rodriguez

Host
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Amanda McKoy Flanagan

Guest
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Angie Hanson

Guest
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Charlene Lam

Guest
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Kera Sanchez

Guest
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Liz Quinn

Guest