Curating Grief: Charlene Lam on Choosing What to Keep vs Release After Loss

How do we decide what to keep after a loved one dies? 

In this insightful episode, Nina Rodriguez is joined by grief coach, curator of The Grief Gallery™, and author, Charlene Lam, for a deeply human conversation about curating grief: the tender, often overwhelming process of choosing what to keep after loss.

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Video version available here.

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After the sudden death of her mother in 2013, Charlene found herself alone with the responsibility of sorting through her mom’s belongings. That experience became the foundation for her work, including the 10 Object Method, a reflective practice that invites grievers to select a small number of meaningful items as a way of honoring relationships, reclaiming narrative, and maintaining continuing bonds.

Together, Nina and Charlene explore the emotional weight of everyday objects, the cultural and personal lenses that shape grief, and the evolving nature of our connection to those who have died. This conversation reminds us that grief is not something to complete or solve, it is something we live with, curate, and carry forward in ways that are deeply personal and uniquely our own.

Whether you’re facing a house full of belongings, grieving a loss beyond death, or simply wondering how memory and meaning intertwine, this episode offers language, permission, and companionship.

Key Takeaways

• Curating grief is about choosing what holds meaning, not following rules.
• The 10 Object Method offers a gentle framework for honoring relationships after loss.
• Belongings can feel emotionally overwhelming, especially when time and resources are limited.
• Objects often serve as anchors for memory, identity, and continuing bonds.
• Grief is not static; our relationship with those we’ve lost evolves over time.
• Everyday items can carry deep symbolic and emotional weight.
• Grief extends beyond death and includes many forms of loss.
• Curating memories helps us reclaim our personal narratives.
• Cultural perspectives shape how grief is experienced and expressed.
• Sharing stories keeps connection alive and helps reduce isolation.

Guest: Charlene Lam

• Author, Speaker, Grief Coach & Curator
• @curating_grief
• curatinggrief.com
• [BOOK] Curating Grief: A Creative Guide to Choosing What to Keep After a Loved One Dies

Hosted by: Nina Rodriguez

• griefandlight.com
• @griefandlight
• Resting Grief Face on Substack
• Grief Tending Toolkit

Chapters

• 0:00 Preview & Intro Song
• 0:45 Introducing Charlene Lam
• 2:13 What is "Curating Grief?"
• 7:45 Exploring Different "Curating Grief" Scenarios
• 11:59 Continuing Bonds and Anchors in Grief
• 17:47 Curating Yosef's Gallery
• 23:34 "Meaningful Objects": The Significance of Everyday Items
• 28:28 Soy Sauce, Curating Grief book, Keeping what's important
• 34:38 Embracing the "woo" (a little)
• 35:38 Curating Grief in Places and Spaces, Reclaiming Narrative, Rome and Joy
• 46:21 Grief and Culture, Chinese Heritage
• 53:20 Connect with Charlene Lam
• 55:19 Curating Grief is an Ongoing Process
• 56:19 One Object that Holds Unexpected Meaning, Immigration-related Grief
• 59:59 Final Question

Transcript

mother's belongings acted like an anchor in that they helped me to feel connected to her, like I could more easily access the memories and the stories that were precious to me to feel safe and secure because that was the role my mother had played for me. In her absence, I did find myself holding onto her house and holding onto her belongings. In research, they're called linking objects because they help us to maintain this link. And an anchor can keep you stuck.

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. Imagine this. You're standing in front of everything that your person owned, a lifetime of objects, stories, memories, and you're told that you can only choose 10. Which 10 items would you choose?

And how would you decide what represents them or you or your relationship or your loss? For so many grievers, this feels like an impossible task to face after the loss of your loved one. But for today's guest, it is a sacred practice. Charlene Lam is a grief coach, curator, and speaker who helps people engage with the belongings and symbols that hold meaning after loss.

After her mother, Marilyn, died in 2013 unexpectedly, Charlene developed the 10-object method and later created the Grief Gallery. She's also the author of Curating Grief and a TEDx speaker whose talks have touched so many, including myself. She is one of my favorite people in the grief space. Charlene, welcome to the Grief in Life podcast. I'm so excited to be on your show and chatting with you. And I just love the way that you describe my work. And I'm so excited to dive in.

Absolutely, thank you. It's an honor. And the more I dive into your work, the more I'm inspired. And I have a curiosity that's growing within about the way that we curate our life with the people that we've lost, but also our life as it's evolving. I would love to dig into what that's all about and this thing that it's awakened in me. Before we get to your story and all of the details about that, what is...

curating grief so our audience could understand this concept and where it came from. Yeah, when we talk about curating, it's a word that comes very naturally to me because when my mother died, I was working as an independent curator. So sometimes when we talk about curating, we can use it in all these different kinds of ways, right? You can curate your Instagram grid, you can curate your bookshelf, a restaurant might curate their menu.

do tend to think of it more in maybe the classic sense of a curator in a museum or a curator in an art gallery. Not to say that you have to be a professional curator to curate grief. I was an independent curator when my mom died, meaning that I was designing and presenting exhibitions, working with independent artists and illustrators and ceramicists. And my role as a curator, my role as a curator,

was to choose with intention what went into those exhibitions. And similarly, a curator in a museum might do that to decide what goes into that museum's collections, what goes into a certain exhibition, and they kind of decide like, what gets to get in the spotlight, and what's important about this particular piece. I found that lens of curating incredibly helpful after my mom died. One, because I was dealing with her physical belongings.

So I curated her belongings into an exhibition, and that was the way that I was able to empty her house. But also looking back, I was really curating and creatively designing my ongoing relationship with her in that process. So in the last decade of doing this kind creative grief work, I've realized, this can be applied in so many different ways. And by a whole range of grievers, in a way that suits

your circumstances, right, and your relationship with your person. It's beautiful. And I imagine that's not something that happens overnight, especially when it comes to our loved one, our mothers, our siblings, our close relatives, those people that were so near and dear to our hearts, especially with a sudden loss, there's that sense of shock and the many ways that ripples out into our lives and the secondary losses that happen afterwards. for somebody staring at the home

of their parent, let's say somebody who perhaps was in your shoes some years ago. Where do you begin? gosh, yes. In your work and in your show, you've spoken to people who have experienced a whole range of different kinds of losses, right? A whole range of contexts, circumstances. For me, it was a sudden loss and unexpected. Same for you with your brother and someone who's listening. You might have seen, you know, your person decline over a long period of time.

due to mental decline or physical decline. And I had the luxury of trying to keep my mother's house for over a year, which gave me time to absorb the shock of what in the world just happened, as well as figuring out what would make sense for me when it came to her house and what to do with her belongings. And I often talk about, I have colleagues and friends who had two weeks a month.

Right? I have a course called Sorting the Stuff of Life and Loss. And it's so fascinating to me that range because you might be a widow who does not need to leave the family house. So you don't have that time pressure necessarily. So it's not uncommon for people to say, I can't bring myself to look through the clothing. Right? It's too much. It brings up too much. I don't want to move his shoes.

If we have that privilege of giving ourselves time to not make those decisions, then I'm all for taking that. And you might be a widow or a widower who does need to move because there's monetary pressure, there's some other circumstance in your life that says, actually, you do need to make these decisions in two weeks or in a month, or you can only be in the country for a week.

because you don't get enough leave from your job to do this terrible task. So as much as I'd like to start that answer with what do you need and what is most supportive, the real answer is what's your situation? What are the resources that you do have? Resources include time. And I think in grief work, like we try to make space for all of it.

acknowledging what is and the reality of what is, including the very unfair realities of what is. And we make space for like, but what is it that I want? What do I wish this could look like? And how do we kind of find the intersection of that? Thank you. And that is so true because each person's lived reality after loss could be very different. And in your case, you're an only child, so you had to make all of the decisions yourself.

There's also the side where there might be multiple parties involved and some people are maybe even arguing over certain items or wanting to let go of something that somebody else is not ready to. So let's delve into some scenarios for those of us listening and identifying with some of these examples. Let's say somebody, like you said, has a very limited amount of time, one to two weeks, to make these decisions and it just feels impossible. It's another part of this shock.

What would you suggest to that person, for example?

I like to go to what resources can you lean on?

When we're talking about supporting people with grief, we talk about who is in your life, what is in your life that includes the people that you find to be the most helpful, which might surprise you, right? That might be. But also, it really does come back to those resources. It does come to, okay, can we buy you time? Do you have money to throw at the problem? For some people, that might look like, I need to ask a favor and know that I won't.

be able to make all the decisions that I want in the limited time I have. So can I ask a favor of another relative to store some items? Because I would say even depending on the kind of relationship that you had, you will inevitably come across things that feel like emotional landmines. That feel like, don't know if I can really bring myself to look for this box right now. If we can buy ourself time.

to soften this very difficult task. I really, really advocate for that. Not all of us have family, not all of us have money to throw at a storage unit. But if you can, I highly recommend it. I often talk about how, I kept a storage unit for a really long time after I sold my mom's house and I felt a lot of shame about it. And I absolutely understand why I needed to do that.

for my mental health and for my emotional health. So there's that aspect of things. And if you're in situations where you don't have those privileges, where you don't have those options, I would also extend that you can still curate grief. Right? My approach started because I had too much stuff, I had too many decisions, and what you might be experiencing is I didn't have enough time. I didn't get to keep anything.

Or maybe I didn't have access. I couldn't afford to keep a storage unit. My view of it is we can still curate grief. Curating grief is a process that can look at the belongings, but we also look at meaningful objects because while we acknowledge that, of course, we might feel attached to those belongings, we're really acknowledging why we feel attached. What are the meanings?

that make that a meaningful object. So as long as we have meanings and stories and memories to work with and explore, you can absolutely curate grief. So does that make sense, Nina? Absolutely. I'm so inspired by that because there's so many elements and yet you've extended so much grace throughout the entire process, even for somebody with significant constraints. And I hear that if you

can and are able to store some of these things so you don't have to make an immediate decision, then go ahead and do that. It's not necessarily a yes or no. It's a, not now, if it's at all possible. And that is incredibly helpful. We still have, for example, some of my brother's things in my grandma's house exactly where he left them over six years later. And I trust that at some point we may or may not be ready to release those. But right now, it's a, hey, we're not ready to touch that quite yet.

And that's just the way that it's played out for my parents, for myself, and for the way that our family has navigated through grief, for example. The other side of that, for example, the years that it took to make those decisions, what would you say to somebody who's maybe concerned that they're hanging on to objects for too long? Is there such a thing? And what would you say to that person?

It's such a common problem and concern. And if someone is worrying about whether it's healthy or not to hold onto something, I often like to start with, where's the question coming from? Is it from someone who's external? Is it a concerned family member or a friend or just a busybody who says, well, it's been a month. You really should donate all his clothes.

Right? Or is it something that's coming up for you personally in your questioning? It's so important, I think, as grieving people to consider what's the, using New Zealand speak, the provenance? Like, what is the origin of the kind of questions and the doubts that we have about ourselves? Because we hear so much of it from all these different sources, including media. Right?

You might be hearing my story and thinking, oh my God, I need to create something. I need to create something beautiful. Do I need to create an exhibition? And it's like, okay, back up. Do you want to? Do you feel ready to? I did not present my first exhibition about my mother until two and a half years after she died. So it wasn't like I was pushing myself to do that. When I first thought about doing an exhibition about my mother, it was really just imaginary. It was an imaginary exercise that was helpful for me.

to do what I needed, right? And notice I said helpful, because I'm a grief coach, I'm not a medical professional, I'm not diagnosing anyone. So rather than thinking about it as healthy or unhealthy, I tend to think about it in terms of helpful or unhelpful. And yeah, I'd love to think about it in terms of anchors. So if you're wondering about this for yourself, that.

My mother's belongings acted like an anchor in that they helped me to feel connected to her. They helped me to feel like I could more easily access the memories and the stories that were precious to me. They helped me to feel safe and secure because that was the role my mother had played for me. So in her absence, I did find myself holding onto her house and holding onto her belongings.

which I think is a very common experience for a lot of grievers. In research, they're called linking objects because they help us to maintain this link.

and an anchor can keep you stuck.

It can go from helping you to stay in one place and feeling safe to stuck and like not moving forward in your own life. And I like to offer people that idea of an anchor to think about for yourself, like what kind of anchor this is for me. And Nina, I know that you're really into continuing bonds yourself. So when I decided to do this work for other people and with other people, and when I was doing research for my book,

I asked grief researchers and therapists and clinicians, what is the research that connects to this? And What's Your Grief is an incredible grief platform. And one of their co-founders told me, continuing bonds theory actually probably has the most research about this, about how continuing bonds, idea that we can stay connected to our people, they are the most healthy when they are dynamic.

when they are changing, when they are evolving and living bonds, rather than something that's static and unchanging and really just in the past. And I think of it that way with our belongings as well and the meaningful objects that we have, right? Is this something that we are keeping like a museum that can never be touched, that you don't even get to interact with and engage with? Or is it something that could evolve with you?

So I can talk about this stuff forever. same. No, and thank you for touching on continuing bonds because when I discovered, quote unquote discovered for myself, the concept of continuing bonds, I said, my gosh, this is the answer to grief. This is the thing that I need to be able to keep moving forward. For me, it has been, and also, which I loved that you touched on the topic of the anchor.

on both sides. could be something that grounds you, that makes you feel tied to your person. And also it could be something that keeps you stuck. Ultimately you decide and it's for us to do that internal search for meaning to see if it's something that is keeping us stuck. And also I imagine it's also a continuum. Like maybe initially it grounds us, it ties us, it connects us in a beautiful way. And then at one point it becomes something we release or we give

away in some way or shape or form. But for continuing bonds, likewise, there's this other side where not everybody benefits from this concept. So when we talk about curating or anchors or continuing bonds, it goes back to your earlier point about, it helpful to you? These are not prescriptive. These are not things that we are saying, hey, this is the way you have to do it and this works for everybody. No, it's, is it helpful to you? This is just another option.

And in my opinion, it's a beautiful option. You touched on meaningful objects. So how might that differ from what society tells us we should keep, for example, in your opinion? Yeah. And Nina, I would love to hear your experience too, right, with Joseph's belongings. Because my experience as a child, an only child, is very different than someone who has a lot of siblings involved.

and someone losing a parent, the experience is very different than someone who loses a sibling. Did you want to get into that first before I go into an answer? I could do that, definitely. Yeah. So, you know, in preparation to talking about this and the more I learned about your concept, I started asking myself, how would I curate something for Joseph or even for

my spouse, between my spouse and I, and I was telling you before we recorded that we had a funny conversation because I asked my husband, if you were to curate 10 things about me, what would they be? And they were not at all what I thought he was going to say. And what stuck out to me, we think of the big things in life as the things that would be most memorable, like the highlights, the big moments. And when I curated the list or I thought about curating a list of things or items, it's actually

the small everyday things that were so tied to them that were so unique to them. And I actually brought this rock. And this is only going to make sense to anybody who knew my brother. This makes sense to absolutely nobody. My brother spent some time in Utah in the wilderness, like a camp experience. From what he told us, it sounded like it was a very profound, I would even say spiritual experience for him.

in community with others, in community with nature. My brother was incredibly attuned to nature. So when we moved, he brought this rock that he found somewhere in Utah, and we made nothing of it. It was just like, he carries this weird rock. Okay, whatever. So years later, we moved to Florida. He still has this rock. He would lose everything. He would lose his ID, his keys, his phone, all the things.

but he would never, ever, ever lose this rock. was always with him, it was always in his pocket. My mom and I were in the car with him one day. We always asked him, what does this rock mean to you? What is the point of this rock? And he said, it's for me to know. It's only for me to know. And we said, okay, whatever. My mom jokingly says, could you imagine if, for whatever reason, you are gone before I am and we never find out the meaning of this rock, right?

clearly joking because we'd never ever ever thought that would actually happen. So life is life. He actually is gone before my parents and myself. He was my younger brother. So in the natural order of things, he should have passed away last. He should never have been the first. And one day we find this rock after his passing and we just stare at it. My mom and I were like, what did it mean? We will never know what this rock meant to him.

shared the story with poet Rosemary Watola Tromer and she said, isn't it wonderful to lean into the wonderment of things, to live with the questions and to maybe make that a living question where you get to ask and wonder for the rest of your life what could it have meant and as you carry it with you and as you move through your life you could give it new meaning. We'll never know.

But maybe you will get close to you get to live with the mystery of what could have been, what was, what is, and give it new meaning. So this little rock would be something I definitely curate. And then I made a list of other things like his bicycle because he had a phrase called LLPs. He wanted to enjoy life's little pleasures. And that meant a bike ride on a sunny day, a barbecue with the family.

A moment of closeness. He valued relationships, so a moment of closeness with our loved ones. And for brevity, I'll say a kayak because we like to go kayaking and some of our favorite memories are related to that. Turtles. used to rescue turtles. We still have one of his turtles in my parents' house. Arduino. He used to like programming things. So a mushroom burger because he loved mushroom burgers.

A flashlight, because that is part of the reason my podcast is called Grief in Light. He said if you were ever to keep a tool, a practical tool in life with you, make it a flashlight because it helps you see in the dark and it illuminates what you need to see. So Grief in Light is a play on words inspired by that. And his sunglasses, because he was always outdoors. He always enjoyed a beautiful outdoor space. So thank you for asking. I did prepare for this before because I wanted to.

shared the story. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you for like such a beautiful curation. Like embracing that idea, all right, and the question of like what would you curate if you were to create an exhibition about your person? And I love your examples too because they illustrate so much that surfaces, right, in this process of curating grief because

When we talk about the meaningful objects, that idea of like, but what is meaningful to us is not necessarily going to be what's meaningful to someone else. Even in the example of what would your husband pick of, wait, why'd you choose that? Why is that meaningful to you? Yeah. And for the record, he chose a half empty cup of coffee is what represent me. I was like, really? Out of all the things. Okay.

But hey, that's what's so special about this. If we were to go to Nina's husband's exhibition about her, we would wander into the space and there'd be like a white display pedestal and there'd be this half empty cup of coffee in like her mug. And unless there was a label from her husband that explained why he chose that.

We wouldn't know. We'd be bringing our own interpretations into that. And I think that's the fascinating thing about this aspect of curating the things that we've chosen for Joseph, right? It's like the rock, which by the way, that is not a small rock in my opinion. That is not a pebble. That is a sizable rock. is sizable. We still don't know what it means, but it's still with us. It is. So it's like someone else might look at that and think it's just a rock.

Or it's just a pair of sunglasses when for you it has so much meaning. There's so much attached to it. And I have rocks from my mother that have different meanings as well. She, I think later in her life, started collecting rocks as souvenirs from her travels. So in her house, I would pick up a rock that was on a shelf and at the bottom she had labeled it.

Grease, Cape Cod. And like, gosh, like do I need to keep the rocks too? That makes it so personal. And I don't know about you, but for example, we had to put this rock in a special place with a covering because we don't want somebody to mistake it for a random thing that needs to be thrown out. So just to make sure we've actually placed it in a protected area just in case, because we understand that not everybody would.

understand the meaning behind this rock. Yes. I love these rock examples because it does really surface so much of that. Someone else might see that rock and just skip it across a lake or something because it doesn't have that significance for them. And that illustrates so much what sometimes happens in family dynamics, right? Where it's like, I set aside this thing that was so important to me and someone else did not realize and gave it away.

or threw it away and the kind of fractures and misunderstandings that can emerge from situations like that that make a loss so difficult. And I love like the stories that you chose about Joseph. Like, obviously I never had the opportunity to meet him, unfortunately, but you've told me about him. You've painted a picture of him through the objects that you chose and through the stories that you shared.

And I think it's this really interesting aspect of continuing bonds where not only are we kind of creating and maintaining continuing bonds in this process, but we're also designing the continuing bonds by the stories that you choose, by the stories that you choose to share. You're also saying, this is how I want to remember him and this is how I want him to be remembered, which

is kind of extending that idea of continuing bonds from not just between you and Joseph, but also like, in the constellation of people who are connected to you, we now have this kind of connection to Joseph and you have designed for us what that continuing bond looks like now, right? It's not just the one-to-one connection. It's like, there's a whole constellation of connections. So.

Thank you for sharing those stories. Thank you for bearing witness and for reflecting back to me what you see from your perspective as well. I do believe that when we share, and this is such a beautiful and powerful and meaningful exercise to do, to curate not just items, but the stories that we share and the way in which we share them, our memories also somehow live in the memories of others now. Like I now know about your mother.

you know about Joseph and there's this exchange even though they're not here physically with us, obviously. And one of those items that holds so much meaning that I've heard in some of your speeches, your TEDx talk, your book, all the things is soy sauce. So could you tell us about soy sauce and your personal grief? the soy sauce. The soy sauce has taken on so many layers of meaning since my mother died. It is on the cover of my book.

I was like, need soy sauce on the cover of my book. For those watching on YouTube, she's showing the book. It's called Curating Grief, and I will link it in the show notes if you would like to read it. It's soy sauce, and it's on like a white box that kind of represents like that white display pedestal that you might see in an art gallery or in a museum. And the subtitle is A Creative Guide to Choosing What to Keep After a Loved One Dies, and a side note, like that includes...

what do we keep of the physical stuff, but also what do we keep of the emotional stuff, of the memories and the stories. But it really does represent that idea of like, we get to choose what is important. Other people might not think to put a bottle of soy sauce on display in their curation about an exhibition about their person. But for me, the soy sauce has represented so many things. Initially,

The soy sauce represented that incredible difficulty that I had in choosing what to keep of my mother's and how hard it was for me to let go of some things that seemed like they should be easy to let go of. So things like rocks. Where I was really worried, do I need to bring all these rocks back to London with me? I I'm already worried about how heavy my suitcase is going to be and now I'm going to pack rocks in it.

How do I explain that?

And my husband's gonna be really, really confused. But the soy sauce really represents me standing in my mother's kitchen. More than a year after she died. And I tried multiple times to throw out that soy sauce. But every time I looked at it, it was just like, my God, how did this soy sauce outlast my mother? This bottle of soy sauce might still have her fingerprints on it. But also this soy sauce represents.

what a good cook she was. It represents, like I regret not learning how to cook from my mother because she was an amazing cook. She loved feeding people. And at the time I was not an amazing cook. I really did not learn a lot of these Chinese recipes from her. So there was guilt about that and then feeling like, I'm sure other family members think I'm a bad daughter because I didn't learn how to do this. I didn't help out my mother more.

And I think there was also the level of slight panic. If I can't throw out a bottle of soy sauce, there are thousands of items in this house. I'm in trouble, right? How do I make these choices? So soy sauce represents that difficulty that I had and the conundrum that really started all of my grief work of that question of like, how do we choose what to keep? And what do I do with this now?

And I think often, you know, we talk about grief awareness, which is great. We can be aware of a lot of things. And then we still have this aspect of deciding, and what do I do with this now? And then the meaning of soy sauce has evolved over time. In the 12 years since my mother died, now it represents, yes, like how caring and generous she was, how brilliant she was. It represents a connection to my heritage. Now I think about

she would be so proud that I learned how to cook during the height of COVID because we had to. I'm a much better cook now. And I can hear her saying like, I'm so proud of you. And then it also now connects me to other people. People are like, I think of your mother when I have soy sauce. I'm gonna eat some dumplings in honor of your mom. And last year I was in Los Angeles for some end of life conferences and events.

It was amazing because that's also where I launched my book. And one of the people that I met there, she sent me this. I am holding off to the camera. That's adorable. If you're listening to the audio, it is like a little kind of like a little toy figure that is a bottle of kikkoman soy sauce, right? That iconic shape with the red top. But it has a face.

It smiling face, it has feet, it is carrying a bowl of food, and it has chopsticks in its hand. It is super, super cute. Because I talked about the soy sauce so much, people started associating soy sauce with my story and with my mother. And what's more, this woman, when I met her, she'd come all the way from Alaska to attend this conference in Los Angeles. And she was helping to care for her brother.

who was dying. And they read my book together. And he suggested that she send me this toy, soy sauce. And she did. Sent it all the way from Alaska to my mailbox in New York, because don't send stuff to Portugal. It's a whole drama thing. But it now lives on the shelf that I have for my mother's things. Wow.

Right? So many layers of meaning, so many different kinds of connection. And I'm just so touched that her brother was thinking of me in his last days. And it was something that they could do together that had meaning for them. And now I feel like, my mother also has a connection with her and with her brother. And what if we're all connected in those ways? I'm not really that woo, by the way. But I

do love that idea of like, these kind of beautiful interpretations and layers of meaning. So that is a beautiful story. And thank you for sharing. And see, now we're remembering this person and her brother and that point of connection. I'll embrace the woo for you. And I will say that I want to believe that in some way we are connected. I want to believe that even if they're not physically here, there's a reason why this story is being shared now.

in relation to this item, in relation to these siblings, in relation to your mother, in relation to your story. There's a thread that ties it all together. Let the mystery be the mystery. But I do appreciate how over time they take on new meaning, new connections. And here we are talking about it in that way. I absolutely love that. Can you curate places? saw recently on your Instagram, for example, that you went to Rome and curated moments of connections. So can we curate?

places as well. Well, absolutely. Right? When we talk about loss and we talk about grief, often there's the assumption that we're talking about a death-related loss. But of course, there are a whole range of losses that we experience as human beings. And you and I in our work, we talk about this a lot. You can grieve the loss of a place, whether it was a move that you chose or that you didn't have a choice about. You can grieve the loss of a job.

of a previous version of yourself or a vision of yourself. Maybe you had a life-changing diagnosis. You can grieve the loss of a pet. You can grieve the loss of a plan. There's so much that we can grieve. And you can absolutely curate grief with all of it. Because I think, one, thank you for embracing the woo. I mean, I'm definitely welcome.

I think that's the thing, right? I'm I'm agnostic. You decide what's helpful for you. I did not grow up religious, but I would say, am I spiritual? Yeah, probably. I lived in Northern California for a long time. So I'm like New York and then Northern California combined. And certainly doing this work has made me more open to mystery. You know, when I see the number 39, I'm like, that's my mom. Do I have scientific evidence? No, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

But I think there is that level of interpretation. There's an interpretation that we do on a day-to-day basis, right? We are deciding what has meaning for us. I'm going to decide that that is a butterfly that represents my grandmother. And I think when we bring it to that idea of curating, curators also interpret. Like the wall labels that accompany an item or an exhibition, that's all called interpretive text, because we are interpreting when we curate.

And that's why I love that idea of like we are all curators. You can pick that rock. Your husband can pick that half empty cup of coffee because he's the curator of the exhibition. All right, if you were to curate an exhibition by yourself, Nina, I think you'd probably pick different things. that's because you'd be the curator. So in that curating, that choosing, it gives us this opportunity to choose narrative.

and often to reclaim narrative. This is going to lead to Rome. All roads lead to Rome. I think reclaiming narrative can be so powerful for grieving people because there might be so many reasons why it feels like, the official narrative or the official memorial doesn't quite feel right to us. Often it can be like, the circumstances of how they died.

or aspects of how they lived, right? There might be substance abuse, there might be mental illness, there might be suicide, there might be family conflicts. All of that might feel like they overshadow how the person lived and how we want to remember them and how we want them to be remembered. So when we put on our curator hat and we take on that ability to choose with intention, it gives us this opportunity to reclaim narrative.

And that's kind of what I was doing in Rome. So Nina's talking about in September, I made a quick trip to Rome. My husband was there for work and he invited me to crash at his hotel and stay over for a weekend, which I was like, okay, let's do this. I'd never been to Rome. And I was lucky enough to find a lot of photos in my mother's house. She kept a lot of photo albums and she was kind of the family archivist.

So I had a lot of photos from different times in her life. And I did find a couple of photos from the year before I was born. And they said in the back, Rome, September, 1976. So I'm like, give me away my age. Doesn't matter. Growing old is a privilege. Yes. But I was like, oh, what if I could like...

recreate these scenes of Rome when I'm there. And that was kind of my mission for going there. I went around and I was trying to figure out, where is she standing in this spot? How is she getting this view? Okay, I see the Roman Colosseum in the back. Let's try to find it. And my husband was able to hang out with me for one day. And it was so sweet because he was holding the photo and saying, no, no, back up. think, I think.

Maybe it's that streetlight that she's standing next to, like, trying to recreate this photo with me. And the reason why I it's reclaiming narrative is because, one, yes, like I was reclaiming in a way, kind of feeling like I was interacting with my mother. I never had the chance to ask her about this trip. That seemed very important to her. I never got to ask her about this period of her life.

And of course, there's so many things I want to ask her. But also, my parents divorced really bitterly a couple years before she died. And I look back at these photos of her young and looking so cool, and my parents look so happy. And on some level, I did feel like, oh, this is me helping her to reclaim that joy.

that love, that excitement before everything fell apart.

So I didn't really talk about that in my public postings about it, but there was that layer of work of reclaiming Rome for her in that work. So yeah, thanks for letting me share that. Thank you for sharing that. And the pictures were incredibly cool. I was looking at them. I was admiring even her poses and everything. And I was like, gosh, I bet she had so many stories, so many really cool stories to share.

insights. She looks like somebody, I don't know why I picked this up, but like she looked like somebody that had a lot of insights, like depth about moments that seem everyday and simple to some, but she probably enjoyed something beyond that. I don't know why I think that. Let me not attribute things to your mother that I don't know about, but she just looked like a very interesting person is what I gathered. I that did. I love that point of connection.

of being able to stand where she once stood across time and space and the concept of reclaiming the story. I've heard you say in other conversations that the funeral, and I found this too, the funeral is so transactional, feels like. Funerals in general here in the US at least are so transactional. You do this and you do that and you pay us this and that's it. That's the end point to this person's life. I find that

through curating, you get to give them the sendoff that you really wanted to do instead of this very, I don't know, like it just always feels like the movies, everybody's wearing all black, nobody knows what to say, it's just like an awkward, it's just awkward, I'm sorry. It's so awkward. That's the word that was coming up for me too, I'm like, it's so awkward. I heard you say that and I'm like, yes, they're very awkward. To this meaningful sendoff and also reclaiming of their story, especially if you've experienced

like I did, a stigmatized loss because that overshadows how we grieve and the stories we tell. And so reclaiming the stories is an incredibly powerful exercise and important part of processing grief, in my opinion. And what was your relationship with grief, if any, prior? And how does that relate to culture? Yeah. it's an excellent question. I just want to say, like, I love that you shared your interpretation. Because that's what happens.

If you go to an exhibition in an art gallery, there's the curator or the artist's intent. And then when you come in, you bring in your own interpretations. And I find that that's why I love that metaphor of exhibition. And I host a free monthly grief gathering for the grief gallery, which is the name of my creative platform. But it's also that idea that we gather in a gallery setting that's just virtual. We imagine gathering a gallery because I think somehow it gives us that permission

to see things from different angles and to acknowledge, yes, of course, someone else is going to see what I picked in a totally different way than I might. And maybe I agree with their interpretation and maybe I don't, but that's the whole point of it. We all get to interpret differently. My mom would love that you have that view of her. She really did look so cool in those photos. It's like sunglasses and like the jeans.

And I think that's, yeah, I mean, there's a reason she picked those photos, right? That's also her curation. She liked those photos of herself enough to put in an album and then kept those albums for decades. So I love that that's also her curation. And I love that you named, I think what you kind of said about with Joseph too, that my mom was very good at kind of savoring and noticing life's little pleasures.

the details and I'd like to think like I also get that from her, right? Then I'm like, I want to savor the little details and life's little pleasures. My mom was really good at that. So yeah, I really forgot the question. That comes through and I thank you for embracing my perspective because sometimes I'm like, my gosh, maybe they don't want to be perceived in this way.

But she just looked like such a cool, interesting person that I would love to like sit and have tea with or coffee and an evening of stories. And same with yourself. I do believe that that is something that you've embodied through everything you do from curation to storytelling to all those speeches and everything. I wanted to touch on the cultural aspects of your relationship to grief prior to the loss of your mother. I've heard you mention how it wasn't necessarily something that was embraced. So how did you get from?

a cultural understanding of we don't talk about this to, I'm literally grieving out loud to the world in social media and openly and authentically. Yeah, for sure. So I'm Chinese American. My mother moved to New York City when she was 15 from Hong Kong with her immediate family. And I would say what allowed me to

do this, there's so much that I can credit my mother for. Right? And I feel like every year that I do this, I realize this more. Where when I think about, why museums and art? because my mother loved museums and art. Right? She loved visiting museums on all our travels. So I have all these childhood photos of our family engaging with art, thinking about it. my mom really encouraged.

make believe. Like as an only child, I spent a lot of time in my head and kind of making up stories. She encouraged reading. So, it was natural for me to make believe that I was a curator in a playful way that was helpful for me. And I think with grief and engaging with it. So when I grew up, the view of grief and talking about death and dying was more traditional where

certain Chinese cultures, and I think for most Chinese Americans, I won't speak for all of them. My family wasn't actually that traditional in a lot of ways, but that thing of not talking about unhappy things, not talking about death, not talking about dying was certainly in place. The funerals that I remember, my grandmother, they took place in Chinatown, but there were also Western aspects of it.

I really didn't understand any of what was happening. I was so young when my grandmother died. I was five. But I do remember we did not talk about it. There were family members on both sides of my parents' families that died in kind of stigmatized ways, right? And they did not talk about it. So that's what I grew up with. But my mother had her own evolution.

She went from, don't joke about that, we don't talk about that, to...

becoming a marriage and family therapist, like as a third or fourth career, and training to be a social worker. And she was working with Asian immigrant populations in New York, specializing in getting people to think about putting together their paperwork, advanced directives, like healthcare directives, but also thinking about estate planning. And she would give presentations.

where she would try to translate things into Chinese. And I still have printouts of her slides about grief. She was presenting about grief to older Asian immigrant populations. And I cannot even imagine what kind of resistance she must have encountered. And I encountered that myself. Yes, she had that evolution, but certainly my other family members didn't. My mother died around Chinese New Year, the Lunar New Year.

And I was told, don't talk about it with the neighbors. It's considered unlucky. And that is unfortunately not an uncommon experience for people who lose family members around the Lunar New Year, that it might be considered unlucky to talk about it. And you yourself might be considered unlucky, which if we kind of think about it from that aspect of what we know about.

needing community support and to be witnessed after a loss how isolating that might be for so many people. So I've experienced both sides of it where I understand why my other family members responded in that way. And I appreciate my mother so much for having had that evolution herself. So that's why I feel like I have her permission to talk about her and to share about her.

because it is in service of helping other people, which she was so passionate about. And it was interesting because even in the first year or two where my aunt said something about how, well, you know, your mother was a very private person.

And I don't even remember what the context was for that. But I also know that in my mother's house, I found her notes for writing a book about our family, about the women in her family going into these difficult topics, right? Generational trauma, depression, all the history. And I think it's like when we pull it

back that perspective and say, yes, of course, my aunt's curation, my aunt's understanding of who my mom was, was different than what I see. And yes, maybe my aunt is coming from what she knew of my mother as a very private person, and my mom was on some level, but I also knew that because of her work and because of what I found in her house, that she had evolved, she was

wanting to tell her story as a way to help people. So I think, yeah, again, like that very much informs my approach, right? I love talking about my mom. I love talking about my story, but it really is as an invitation for other people to share your stories and ultimately with that goal of helping people. So yeah, thanks mom.

Absolutely, what a beautiful perspective and thank you for sharing about her evolution and in a way it lives on through you, I would imagine. In the work that you do in creating a more grief-informed world through curating grief and through the work that you do as a grief coach, as an author, as a speaker, all the things. What a powerful continuation of that spirit of wanting to change things of...

reclaiming your story. think I hear a theme here of reclaiming your story, whether it's generational, personal, or even, you know, after death, after loss. So thank you so much for sharing that. we're at the end here. could, Charlene, I could talk to you forever. I'm loving. No, I'm like, need to interview you. I want to interview you and have so many questions for you. Before we wrap up, I would love for you to share how can people get in touch with you?

How can they attend some of your offerings, read your book, et cetera, et all the things? How can they find you? Yeah, head over to curatinggrief.com. That website will kind of lead you to all your different invitations that are available to you. So you can download a sample chapter of my book, Curating Grief. You can RSVP to my free monthly grief gathering. That's on Zoom, the last Wednesday of every month. There are

grief resources, you can find out about how to work with me, if you need an assist with how do I actually clear out the house or that storage unit, or if you're looking more for emotional support through grief coaching. So that's curatinggrief.com and I'm on Instagram at curating underscore grief. And all of that will be linked in the show notes, of course. Please attend and give yourself the opportunity to explore your own

curation of your relationship with your person, of your relationship with your things and their things. And for me, I will continue this as a personal exploration of maybe how instead of a coffee cup, my husband could find something else to remember me by. Or maybe not, you know, sometimes it's like the rock. It's the things that hold meaning to us.

at the end of the day isn't that interesting how sometimes we think it has to be this grandiose final act and final thing that we remember them by. It could be that. And also it's in the little things that are so near and dear to our hearts. So thank you for sharing your beautiful perspective with the world and with us that ripples out in beautiful ways. I would like to give you the floor to share anything that maybe we didn't cover in conversation that you feel is

good to add to the conversation, and if not, then I will move on to the final question. Curating grief is an ongoing process. It's not like the official memorial or funeral where you just have one time to put on the definitive way to remember your person. I have curated exhibitions about my mother many times over the decade plus since I lost her, and you can too.

You don't have to do one big perfect curation. Your relationship with your person is going to evolve over time, just as grief evolves over time. Your understanding of who they were and who you are and your relationship with them is going to evolve over time and grow and shift. So you can curate over and over again. That's the beauty of it. Yes, over and over. And I actually have two questions. I said there was a final, but I...

I do have one more. What is one object in your life that holds unexpected meaning for you today?

I've been going through my mother's passport photos because with that idea of, we can curate over and over again. What's really present for me grief wise right now is immigration related grief. Today I was supposed to board a plane to go to Los Angeles for the end of life events and grief events that are happening there. And I decided not to go. I canceled this trip.

partially because of what's happening in the United States of feeling like, my gosh, my packing list this year is so different than last year. Not in terms of clothing, not in terms of shoes, but in terms of, my packing list includes copies of my US passport, just in case, making sure I carry those with me. It's going to include making a plan with my husband in case I somehow accidentally

gets swept up in an ice raid because I am Asian. It's going to look like trying not to take the bus because I don't really drive. But when you take the bus, I am traveling more with workers. And it sounds silly, right? It's a little paranoid, but it's acknowledging that, there's a non-zero chance of this happening. And that's terrible.

And how much did my family members give up in order to immigrate, to migrate, to integrate? So I'm just grieving a lot of that for myself, for them, and for other people who are experiencing a very real fear who are on the ground in Los Angeles, who are going to be experiencing this on a day-to-day basis. So I have a lot of things like...

My mother kept all these passport photos from like over the decades. And I don't know why, but I do know that she had to do a lot of immigration paperwork just over her life in different countries. And these passport photos just represent so much of that. So, and of course I turned it into a mini curation and like a mini book. So using the 10 object method, I picked 10 objects that represented my immigration grief and all that.

But that's what I've been spending a lot of time with. Thank you for sharing that to me. Those represent moments of daring into the unknown of whatever was next in her life for each of those photos. A brave woman who dared. That's what it comes through. And I thank you for sharing. I also want to name what you said about the grief related to immigration, the suffering that causes. It's very real for

those of us who are affected simply by the way that we look at how we are stereotyped, how we are grouped into categories. But I thank you for naming that and I just wanted to validate what you're feeling. And I'm sorry you didn't get to go on this trip today for Los Angeles. also- we get to hang out. We get to hang out. I was going say, also thank you for this beautiful conversation, meaningful, powerful conversation on the ways that we can curate grief and continue to curate grief.

as our grief and love evolves for our person. Final question, Charlene, what would Charlene today say to Charlene after Marilyn's passing? It's okay that you're not crying.

I cried immediately after I found out and then I didn't really cry for a long time. And I think in the decade plus we've been doing this work, you learn, that's totally normal. You were in shock. you expressed your grief in different ways. Yes, of course you made a checklist. You are more of an instrumental processor. So I think.

just giving her permission to not add that to her burden too. You're not grieving wrong. You're doing whatever you need right now to survive. Just because you're not crying doesn't mean you didn't love your mom. You have permission to take care of yourself and to grieve in whichever way you want. You will find ways to grieve and honor your mom. I promise. Charlene, thank you so much. It has been an honor.

Thank you for your time and thank you for being you. Thank you. This was so much fun. 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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