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_outlineIn this episode, we talk with Kelly and Miguel Cervantes 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 Hamilton in Chicago.
We also talk about grief that followed when Adelaide died in 2019, just before her 4th birthday. Kelly describes the secondary loss of her identity as a caregiver and Miguel talks about what it meant to step onto a stage each night and, at times, find his own grief story overlapping with Hamilton's. Both parents reflect on how differently they grieve — Kelly's grief as something that pours out in what she calls "werewolfing," and Miguel's as private and internal — and how learning to recognize and support those differences became a turning point in their marriage. They close by talking about their son Jackson, and what they've learned about supporting a child who grieves on his own terms.
We discuss:
- Adelaide — her personality, her humor, her love of Sinatra
- The different roles of parent and caregiver
- Miguel's experience moving between the hospital and the Hamilton stage
- "Werewolfing" — Kelly and Miguel's very different ways of grieving, and how they learned to support each other in those
- Secondary losses: grieving an identity, a routine, a sense of purpose, alongside grieving Adelaide
- Finding meaning through advocacy, writing, and music in Adelaide's honor
- Parenting their son Jackson through his own grief, and learning he needed support that didn't come from them
About Kelly and Miguel Cervantes:
Kelly Cervantes is a writer and advocate whose books include Normal Broken and The Luckiest. She serves on the boards of CURE Epilepsy and the Undiagnosed Diseases Network Foundation. Miguel Cervantes is an actor and singer known for originating the title role in the Chicago production of Hamilton.
Kelly and Miguel will be joining Dougy Center in Portland, Oregon, on October 27th, 2026, for our Focus on Hope luncheon. Visit dougy.org/hope for details.