Good Grief with Cheryl Espinosa Jones

Nichole Lee had a successful career as a business consultant, traveling the world and supporting change makers on a global level. When her mother died she continued to work just as hard, despite her grief and the global COVID pandemic isolating her in her home. Then one day she heard a whisper, in her mother's voice, telling her to quit her job! In an act of courage and wisdom, she listened, leading her to a life's calling she had never imagined. Join us to hear how she traveled the road to the life she lives today.

When Molly Peacock's husband died, poetry supported her grief. Already a published poet with several books, she captured her experience of grief, navigating the twists and turns through creative expression. Some grievers rely on the skills they already have and some must learn new ways of being. But even for those of us who continue to do what we did before, the way we do those things is often profoundly changed. What changed in Molly Peacock when she faced deep loss? Join us to talk about her poetry, grief, and how we go forward without the one we love the most.

How does loss become poetry? Bill Ratner's losses lived in the depths of his soul and over time, found expression. Creativity can help us to move grief through us, transforming the shape of it. What was that process for Bill? What moved him to put words to his losses? Every griever wants to be heard, but capturing grief in language is challenging. Join us to learn how Bill was able to embody his experience through his writing.

Corinne Masur's father died suddenly when she was just fourteen. When grief came into a family that had no idea how to talk about it, they mostly didn't. Corinne went on to become a psychologist, writing what she came to call a MEsearch thesis on children's grief. Turning that early, confounding loss into a life's calling, she supports families struggling with the same difficult questions her family faced. Author of two outstanding books on children's grief, Corinne joins us to share her wisdom on how to support children in loss of all kinds.

If you grow up, as Julie Fingersh did, convinced you shouldn't share the family secrets, that all that messy stuff is private, how do you cope when those secrets begin to undermine your life? How do you come to terms with being unable to contain them any more? In facing up to the truth of the challenges faced by her family; mental health and chronic illnesses, loss and difficulty, Julie found that finally sharing those secrets gave her a way forward. Her memoir, Stay: A Story of Family, Love and Other Traumas, pulls back the curtain on her family secrets, kept locked away for so long. Join us as we talk about what finally led her to open up and share her story. And what did that lead to?

Charles Bock's wife always wanted to be a mother and, just a bit reluctantly, he agreed to have a child. But within a few years his wife died of cancer and he was now tasked with navigating parenting a very small child on his own. Ultimately determined to do the best he could, and to continue to do better, pushed him forward one tiny step at a time. Looking back on that time, what made his path nearly impossible to walk? What helped? And what did he learn about himself, that small child, and life?

After helping to get the Medical Aid in Dying Act passed in California and then supporting its implementation, Stefanie Elkin's passion for working in end of life only grew. When she left her job at Compassion and Choices she opened her own company, Be Present Care, to support end of life, especially for elders, and to open up conversations about how to navigate dying. She then began traveling far and wide to host Death Over Drafts gatherings, pairing her love of draft beer with her love of talking about death. Her passion moved forward to a life calling!

Ginelle Testa's early life with a drug dealer father and an angry mother led to just the kinds of struggles you might predict. She began the relationship with drugs and alcohol that would lead to several bottoms. She experienced anorexia and sexual assault. She looked to other people to validate her worth. Getting clean and sober was just the beginning of a long search for herself that led, over time, to true healing. Join us as we talk about what helped her to find herself amid her struggles and how she came to believe her story needed to be shared!

After losses that took her to her knees, Siobhan Asgharzadeh searched for ways to move with her grief, recognizing that loss would not end, that life comes with grief. Over time she sought to support others along the profound road of grief, becoming a death, birth and grief doula and using ancient wisdom practices to help create a more grief-informed future. In her workshops, pilgrimages and supports of grievers she has found a way that also addresses the deep losses on the planet, hoping to cultivate a renewed stewardship for our precious earth. Join us for a conversation about the grief, the work, and how we can sit with all the heartache inherent in these times.

Myra Sack and her husband Matt were very lucky. They had fallen in love with the right person, had work they were deeply committed to and had a new baby. Into the middle of their charmed life came the worst possible news; their perfect daughter had Tay-Sachs disease. She would live a very short life. A mistake in the testing they had received for Tay-Sachs blindsighted them. Reeling from the news and immersed in the question of how they could possibly live out this time, they decided they would celebrate Havi every day of her life. And every Friday they would gather friends and family in their home for Shabbirthday. They would love her and cherish her and hold her as if each Friday was both a holy shabbat and a wonderful birthday party. They had no way to imagine how they would grieve her, but they decided to live fully with her as long as they could with whoever also wanted to grace this beautiful child with their love. And with that simple promise, they found a way to put one foot after the other.

Her work as a special educator did not prepare Joanne De Simone for the news that her precious baby had severe disabilities. At first, she searched for answers to the questions that plagued her; what was her son's condition, what could she expect going forward and how would they navigate it? Over time she used what she had learned as a dancer to support her in finding the beauty with her son. It didn't look as she had imagined, but changed her in ways she came to deeply value!

When Jamie Lee SIlver's son, Ben, took his life, she dived into practices that she had been learning during his struggles with schizophrenia. Over time, she became certified in EFT tapping, a technique to heal through tapping. She moved within a year to the beach. She wrote letters to Ben and wrote replies from him too. Unconcerned about what others would think, she moved forward with deepening certainty that Ben was still with her. Also sure that she has work left before her own death, she offers what helped her to others and has raised nearly $200,000 to fund research into schizophrenia. What helped her hte most? How did she find her way to a life of purpose, AND a life of happiness?

Bridey Thelen-Heidel had a chaotic and traumatic childhood with a mother who brought dangerous men into the house and failed to protect the little girl called Bright Eyes. But Bridey was determined to face her traumas and find her way to a beautiful life. In her memoir she describes the road she took to find her way out of the chaos her mother had created. In the process, we can be inspired to imagine that each of us has that potential. Join us for our conversation about what it takes to heal.

When Jessica Fein's daughter, Dalia, was just five, she was diagnosed with a rare and degenerative disease that would shorten her life. Because it is rare, no one knew exactly how long she would live. But from that day forward Jessica lived with potential loss in the background while doing everything she could to give Dalia, and her other two children, a love-filled life. Along the way she learned that her capacity for facing hard things, and for love, was bigger than she ever imagined!

Out of her own experience with cancer, Ann Bancroft created an absorbing and compelling story about a woman who changes her life as a result of being diagnosed with metastatic disease. She finds new friends, rearranges her priorities and begins to heal the places in her life that have troubled her for years, even decades. Join us as we talk about how a life-changing event like a cancer diagnosis can bring both grief and a compelling desire to create the life we want to live!

Uncovering the hidden injuries of a life spent denying oneself is deep, painful and meaningful work. How do we find the tenderness and courage to do it well? Heather Plett peeled back the layers of her own truth and discovered it is possible. As she healed herself, she came to long for a larger healing, beyond the individual and spreading into her family, her community, her culture and the world. How do we tenderly support one another to find this deeper healing?

Meredith Burns' mother was a constant emotional presence in her life, there to offer support, advice and solace. When that began to change, Meredith, and the whole family, searched for an explanation. Was she depressed? Having a psychotic break? Less interested in supporting them? Over the years, it became obvious that there was a serious problem going on, one that all the medications that had been prescribed for her would not address. Finally, the diagnosis came; Frontotemporal Degeneration. What a terrible diagnosis to face! But knowing what was happening earlier would have saved her, and her whole family, from thinking she didn't care or that she needed a pharmacy of medications for things she didn't have. As a result of her own experience, Meredith has become an advocate for seeing the early signs of the disease and getting diagnoses as soon as possible.

A relationship with a sibling holds the keys to our upbringing. No other person knows what it was like to grow up in your family. Some siblings are close, others not, but if you have siblings, it leaves a mark. What happens when sibling dies? There has been very little work done to understand the impact of this under-attended loss. After her own sibling died, Annie Sklaver Orenstein applied all her considerable research talent into better understanding herself and other mourning siblings. The result is Almost a Sibling, a book that carries her own experiences and also those of the many people who shared their stories with her.

When Ashley Jones' daughter died, it threw her into a profound grief she didn't know the way out of. In those early times, pictures brought some comfort. As she moved through her own grief, she wanted to offer that comfort to others. She offered free photo shoots to people anticipating a loss and saw the impact it had. Over time she founded her organization, Momento, to continue to supply photo shoots while offering grief education and organizational consulting. Join us to learn how she found her way forward.

Farah Naz Rishi is Pakistani, American and Muslim. Her memoir, Sorry for the Inconvenience, deftly portrays the overlapping pressures that made it hard to find herself. We'll be talking about grief, family dynamics, tragedies and how to become yourself against the backdrop of family, community and intergenerational overlays. How did Farah learn to live her own life, with so many expectations of who she should be? And how did the difficulties force her to come to terms with her choices?