Ep. 159: Back To School With Grief & The COVID-19 Pandemic - A Tip Sheet
Release Date: 08/10/2020
Grief Out Loud
As of January 21st, 2021, over 400,000 people in the U.S. have been killed by the coronavirus. Globally, the number is over 2 million. Despite attempts by journalists and public health officials to put these numbers into context, what gets lost in tracking case counts are the stories of the people who died and their family members left behind. This is one of those stories. The story of Maria, beloved mother of four, who died this summer of COVID-19, told by Mariana, her youngest daughter.
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This is the story of how a random encounter led to a transformative friendship that's lasted for more than 50 years. A friendship rooted in the shared experience of grieving a parent who died of suicide. David Pincus and Rick Knapp met as high school seniors. They had a lot in common, including a part of their lives that they rarely talked about. Both of their mothers had died by suicide. Their book, Sons of Suicide: A Memoir of Friendship, chronicles how these early losses shaped so much of their lives.
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After her oldest son was killed in 2017, Julia Mallory had a sense that creativity was a place she could go in her grief. In that place, she wrote Survivor's Guilt, a collection of essays and poems about grief, joy, and the moments when they intersect.
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When Carmel Breathnach was 11, her mother died of cancer. While she felt supported at home by her father, she didn't feel that way at school. Now as an adult, Carmel’s carried this grief though graduations, moving from Ireland to the U.S.. getting married, and now through a pandemic. We talk about the role anger played in her grief, what she needed from her teachers, how she honored her mom at her wedding, and how working on her forthcoming memoir, "Briefly I Knew My Mother," has affected her grief.
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Amber Jeffrey is the creator and host of The Grief Gang, a podcast by and for young adults who want to normalize the conversation about loss. Amber was 19 when her mom died suddenly, throwing her into a period of questioning and reworking so much in her life. We talk about what inspired her to start The Grief Gang, the solace she finds in the online grief community, navigating the winter holidays & grief, and what to do when a grief activating song comes on during a manicure.
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When Dara Kurtz was in her late twenties she was excited. Excited about being pregnant. She was also devastated. Devastated that her mother was recently diagnosed with stage IV cancer. As Dara’s baby grew, Dara’s mother grew closer to the end of her life. Two weeks after Dara’s daughter was born, her mother died – sweeping Dara into a whirlwind of diametrically opposed emotional states: the thrill of being a new mother and the heartbreak of being a grieving daughter.
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It's our third annual holidays & grief episode with Rebecca Hobbs-Lawrence, Pathways Program Coordinator at the Dougy Center. We share updated ideas for navigating the winter holidays while grieving, during a pandemic.
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For Allison Hite, two questions sparked a community project called Never, Ever Give Up. The first question was, “How do I be grateful in grief?” The second was, “What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do?” These questions became part of Allison’s life after her mother died in a traffic accident when Allison was in her mid-twenties. At its core, Never, Ever Give Up is a conversation between those who write letters of struggle and those who respond with letters of hope.
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How do you go on living after your child's life ends? How do you continue to find connection, beauty, and meaning when someone we can't imagine living without dies? This is the question Margo Fowkes faced when her son Jimmy died of brain cancer at the age of 21. Margo barely had a moment to grapple with this devastating loss when just year later, her mother also died. Out of these two losses, Margo created her website, Salt Water.
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BJ Miller is a Hospice & Palliative Care Medicine physician who works with patients facing the end of their lives. When BJ's sister Lisa died of suicide over twenty years ago, he did what so many of us do, he pushed his pain aside. It was his work, supporting patients with advanced serious illnesses, that helped him realize the importance of reckoning with his own grief.
info_outlineThis episode is a little different. Rather than an interview, we are sharing information from the Dougy Center's most recent Tip Sheet - Back to School with Grief and the COVID-19 Pandemic. With how tough it can be to focus long enough to take in a lot of text when you're grieving, we wanted to offer the information in this format. We'll be bringing you more Tip Sheet episodes over the next few months, so stay tuned!
Check out the Dougy Center's full Tip Sheet collection. It includes Tip Sheets for parents and caregivers wanting to supporting children and teens in their grief as well as ones for teens, young adults, teachers, and school administrators.
In this episode we mention When Your World is Already Upside Down, a Tip Sheet specifically on how to support children and teens who are carrying grief into this time of COVID-19.