Learning To Grieve Together - Kelly & Miguel Cervantes
Grief Out Loud
In this episode, we talk with and about their daughter Adelaide, who lived with epilepsy and complex medical needs. Kelly and Miguel share what it was like to parent a child who couldn't speak or move but who still made her preferences known – including smacking her brother when she was done playing and loving anything by Frank Sinatra. They talk about the very different roles they occupied during Adelaide's life: Kelly as a full-time caregiver who became fluent in her daughter's medical world, and Miguel, who moved in and out of that world while performing eight shows a week as Alexander...
info_outline
The Grief That Doesn’t Get A Funeral - Juniper Wong On Ambiguous & Ancestral Loss
Grief Out Loud
Sometimes grief and how it shows up is obvious. Other times we might not recognize our experience as grief until something shifts our perspective. This was true for , a therapist who specializes in supporting those who are grieving through self-compassion, mindfulness, somatic experiencing, and Internal Family Systems (IFS). Juniper shares how caring for her father during the final weeks of his life changed her understanding of grief, sparking a recognition of how much of her own life had been shaped by the loss and grief passed down her family line. Becoming a mother led Juniper to see...
info_outline
Easing The Bureaucracy Of Loss - Frank Flores & FamiliaLista
Grief Out Loud
When Frank Flores’s younger brother Marcelo died suddenly at 23, Frank found himself in an unfamiliar role: identifying his brother’s body, navigating paperwork, and figuring out how to bring him home to the U.S. from Mexico. There was little room for grief. Instead, Frank went back to work - and then worked even more. Five years later, Frank’s father died during COVID. Once again, grief was crowded out by the bureaucracy of death: bank accounts, debts, paperwork, family responsibilities, and the messy, exhausting task of untangling a life after death. Frank describes this as a...
info_outline
What If We Didn’t Have To Do Death Alone? - Crystal Meneses on Culture, Care, & Community
Grief Out Loud
What if we thought about death not as something that needs to be handed over to institutions, but as something that communities could face together? In this episode we talk with Crystal Meneses, a death worker, spiritual counselor, hospice chaplain, artist, musician, and longtime community caregiver. Crystal’s path into death work began with watching a recording of her grandfather’s funeral in the Philippines, which sparked questions around being able to one day provide a similar ceremony for her father. Questions that inspired her work to help us rethink how we...
info_outline
Holding The Both/And - Steph Tupper On Grieving Her Children
Grief Out Loud
In 2022, Steph Tupper’s two older children, Ali and Joe, were killed in a car crash. Ali was 16 and Joe was 14. Four years later, Steph is still learning how to live with the reality of losing her children while continuing to parent her youngest daughter. In this episode, Steph talks openly about the devastating night she learned Ali and Joe had died, the ways she continues to feel connected to them, and the complicated process of building a life around an absence that will never go away. She shares what she has learned about community, judgment from others - and herself, parenting...
info_outline
The Grief We Carry, The Love We Keep - Shanda McManus, MD
Grief Out Loud
When physician and writer was fourteen, her mother died after living with ovarian cancer. Three years later, her grandmother - the person who became home after that loss - was killed by a drunk driver. Then, while Shanda was in medical school, her younger brother Monir was murdered on Christmas Eve. For years, surviving meant staying busy. Planning funerals. Managing paperwork. Pushing forward. The grief itself was boxed up, held in place by what Shanda describes as an emotional tourniquet. It kept her moving, but it also kept her separated from memories of her mother, grandmother,...
info_outline
How To Support Kids Through Grief – Jessica Correnti, MS, CCLS
Grief Out Loud
When it comes to children and grief, there's a lot we misunderstand. Adults might think they are either resilient and unaffected, too young to understand, or irreparably broken by the death of someone in their life. In reality though, their experiences of grief can be just as profound and complex as those of the adults around them. In this episode of Grief Out Loud, Jana talks with Certified Child Life Specialist about what children actually need when someone they love dies. Drawing from...
info_outline
Learning From Grief - David Ferrugio On Memory, Meaning, And Moving Forward
Grief Out Loud
For many, September 11th is a shared, historical tragedy. But for today's guest, it is a personal anniversary - the day his father died. David Ferrugio was twelve years old when his dad was killed in the World Trade Center. Twenty-five years later, his grief continues to unfold - from recently sitting with his father's forensic file at the 9/11 Memorial to hosting his own podcast, DEAD Talks, where he invites people into honest conversations about death, grief, and what it means to keep living. In this conversation, David reflects on carrying his private grief through such...
info_outline
Brothers In Grief: Nora Gross On Cumulative Loss & Gun Violence
Grief Out Loud
What happens when grief isn't an exception, but a constant presence? In this episode, Jana talks with researcher and educator about her book, , which follows the two years she spent embedded in a Philadelphia boys' high school where students were grieving repeated losses from gun violence. Through interviews, observation, and simply showing up, Nora witnessed how grief shapes friendships, school life, ideas about the future, and the social constraints Black boys face when it comes to grief. Nora also shares how her own experiences of grief - including the death of her mother from cancer...
info_outline
It's All Hard - Sudden vs Anticipated Loss
Grief Out Loud
Is it harder when someone dies suddenly, or when you know their death is coming? It’s a question that comes up often in grief spaces, and there’s no easy answer. Both are hard - just in different ways. In this episode, Aimee Craig talks about grieving the deaths of both of her parents under very different circumstances. Aimee’s dad died suddenly when she was 23, during a season of major life transitions. Nearly two decades later, her mom died after living with cancer for many years, including five years with a terminal diagnosis. Aimee...
info_outlineIs it harder when someone dies suddenly, or when you know their death is coming?
It’s a question that comes up often in grief spaces, and there’s no easy answer. Both are hard - just in different ways.
In this episode, Aimee Craig talks about grieving the deaths of both of her parents under very different circumstances. Aimee’s dad died suddenly when she was 23, during a season of major life transitions. Nearly two decades later, her mom died after living with cancer for many years, including five years with a terminal diagnosis.
Aimee reflects on how differently she experienced these losses - not just because of the circumstances of each death, but because of who she was at each point in her life. At 23, grief felt overwhelming and frightening. At 41, as a parent and longtime Dougy Center volunteer, she had more language and capacity for grief, even while navigating the difficult realities of caregiving and end-of-life decision making.
We explore the emotional and physical impact of sudden loss versus anticipated death, the complicated realities of caregiving, and the grief that comes with milestone moments, holidays, and parenting without the support and celebration of your own parents.
We also discuss what it means to actually witness grief and how having space to tell the truth without judgment or pressure to feel better - can help grief feel less isolating and a little easier to carry.
We discuss:
- Sudden death and the shock it can have on the body and nervous system
- Grieving before someone dies and the realities of caregiving
- How grief changes as we change over time
- The pressure and complexity of end-of-life decisions
- Parenting while grieving your own parents
- Mother's Day, Father's Day, and other significant days
- Why witnessing grief matters
- How being grief aware doesn't make us immune to being caught off guard by grief
If you’re supporting someone who is grieving, or navigating grief yourself, this episode validates that there's no right or wrong way to feel in grief, no timeline for it, and that we can't measure grief by how someone died.
Check out Aimee's podcast, Who Died?