Why We Called It "How to Grieve with Love Instead of Pain"

The title came from something we see again and again - in our 50 years of combined experience supporting grieving individuals.

People come to us believing, sometimes without even realizing it, that the pain is the point. That suffering is proof of love. That if the grief isn't hurting, something is wrong. That moving forward means moving away from the person who died.

We wanted to write a book that gently pushed back on all of that.

Here's what we believe: your connection to the person you lost shouldn't have to live in suffering.

That doesn't mean grief isn't painful. It is. It will be. Nothing about loving someone and losing them makes that pain disappear. We're not here to tell you otherwise.

But pain and love are not the same thing. And while pain may always be part of your story, it doesn't have to be your last or lasting connection to the person you lost. We want that forever connection to be about love.

The book names something we see at the heart of why so many grieving people stay stuck:

"Sometimes we hold on to these roadblocks because of our sense of love and loyalty. To be a loving person is to suffer. What kind of person would I be if I didn't feel bad?"

That belief keeps people from moving forward more than almost anything else we see. And it makes complete sense. If the pain is how you stay connected, letting go of the pain can feel like letting go of them.

It isn't. And this book is our attempt to help you feel that.

This book is built for the people we wrote about in the dedication:

"The stuck ones. The terrified ones. The numb ones. The angry ones. The ones barely holding on. The ones doing it awkwardly. The ones questioning every instinct and second-guessing themselves at every turn. The people trying to rebuild a life that no longer feels familiar, while carrying more than anyone around them can see."

That's who this book is for.

Available Tuesday, September 29th on Amazon.

One Year of GRIEF Ladies: We're Celebrating

This week marks one year of the GRIEF Ladies podcast, and in our anniversary episode- the 53rd Episode of teh podcast, Karyn and Kelly are pulling back the curtain on how it all started, what this past year has actually looked like behind the scenes, and what's coming next.

Why We Started This Podcast

It started with a book — The Grief Experience — and turned into something neither of us expected. Between us, we bring more than 50 years of combined experience in grief work, and this episode gets into the real story of how GRIEF Ladies came to be, built around the G.R.I.E.F. framework: Grounding, Rebuilding, Interacting, Evolving, and Finding.

Quote Box: "We believe that there are things that help people while they're grieving, and we've seen it." — Kelly Daugherty

A Look Back — and a Big Announcement

53 episodes in, we're reflecting on everything we've built together: the podcast, the Facebook community, our downloadable resources, and The First Year After Loss. And we're talking about what's next — including The GRIEF Ladies Guide: How to Grieve with Love Instead of Pain and its companion workbook, releasing Tuesday, September 29th.

We also get into something we don't usually talk about on the podcast: why grief feels so isolating even when you're surrounded by people who love you, and why that's been at the center of everything we've built this year.

Hear the Whole Conversation

This one's personal for both of us, and there's a lot we didn't touch on here — including what's coming in year two. Give it a listen wherever you get your podcasts. https://open.spotify.com/episode/3R8Lt4wdh8ZPS4vQDNmdkr?si=qPKBLdQ3SFap_ytjwyN6aw

Keep exploring:

• Join the GRIEF Ladies Facebook community

• Get familiar with the G.R.I.E.F. framework before the GRIEF Ladies Guide releases September 29th

• Learn more about The First Year After Loss

The Connection Between Unprocessed Grief and Physical Illness with Christina Kantzavelos

What happens when you push grief behind a wall for years? For Christina Kantzavelos, a licensed psychotherapist and chronic illness advocate, the answer was her body. After losing her brother Peter at 19, Christina spent years stuffing her grief down, working harder, and eventually becoming so ill she couldn't care for herself — including leaving behind her work with Doctors Without Borders in Mexico.

In this episode, Christina shares why the nervous system has to come first before any grief or trauma work can really land, how EFT tapping can be a simple and immediate tool for emotional regulation, and what it looks like to finally face the grief you've been avoiding. She also talks about survivor's guilt, identity loss in chronic illness, and why finding the right therapist is a little like finding the right bathing suit — sometimes you have to try a few before one fits.

This episode connects to the G in the GRIEF Ladies framework: Grounding — eating, sleeping, moving, and stabilizing the nervous system as the foundation for everything else.

🔗 Christina's Website: https://www.beginwithintoday.com 📖 Begin Within Daily Health and Wellness Journals: https://www.beginwithintoday.com/journal

Listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/qeF4olgiRTI

Why the Five Stages of Grief Are a Myth, Spiritual Bypassing, and Healing Rituals with Dr. Terri Daniel

 If you've ever felt like you were grieving "wrong" because you weren't moving through the five stages, this episode is for you. Dr. Terri Daniel — end-of-life educator, hospice chaplain, and grief counselor — breaks down exactly why the five stages were never meant to apply to grief, why acceptance comes first not last, and why confusing grief with depression is one of the most harmful things we do to grieving people.

Dr. Terri also unpacks spiritual bypassing — what it is, where it shows up, and how to tell when it's helping versus hurting — and shares the role of chaplains in end-of-life care that has nothing to do with religion. She closes with some of the most beautiful and practical grief rituals you'll ever hear, including the shoe insole ritual that will change the way you think about giving away a loved one's belongings.

All of this from a woman who has been making her son's lemon cake with chocolate frosting every year for 19 years.

🔗 Dr. Terri's Website: https://deathgriefandbelief.com

Listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/zuyzFBTxhoM

When Grief Lives in Your Body, Not Just Your Mind with Kim Ludeman

Sometimes grief doesn't show up as sadness you can talk through — it shows up as tension in your chest, flashbacks you can't shake, or emotions so big they feel impossible to access. In this episode, certified coach and brainspotting practitioner Kim Ludeman explains why grief often gets stored in the body and what it takes to actually reach it.

Kim introduces brainspotting — a powerful brain-body therapy that works from the bottom up, accessing what talk therapy alone often can't reach. She explains how a session works, what the difference is between brainspotting and EMDR, and how expansion brainspotting can help grievers build capacity not just for pain, but for joy, peace, and connection too.

Kelly also shares her own deeply personal experience using brainspotting the day after her father's death — how it stopped the flashbacks, ended the nightmares, and changed the image she carries of him forever.

🔗 Kim's Website: https://kimludeman.com 🎙️ Captivatingly Confident Podcast: https://captivatinglyconfident.com

Listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/7EUt8xqnVjY

Grief Stigma, Sibling Loss, and Living Alongside Grief with Nina Rodriguez

 When Nina Rodriguez's brother died suddenly on September 11, 2019 — the day after his 32nd birthday — she was catapulted into a grief she had no language for. His death from fentanyl poisoning added a layer of stigma that kept her silent for nearly a year, protecting his memory while quietly unraveling on her own.

In this episode, Nina shares her journey from real estate agent to grief-informed guide and award-winning podcast host, why sibling grief is one of the most overlooked and under-resourced losses there is, and how approaching grief with curiosity rather than correction changed everything for her. She also talks about navigating collective family grief, reclaiming identity after loss, and how continued bonds and signs from beyond have sustained her connection to her brother.

Whether you have lost a sibling, a parent, a partner, or a friend — this conversation about grief literacy, honesty, and hope will meet you where you are.

🔗 Nina's Website: https://griefandlight.com 📖 Always a Sibling by Annie Sclaver Ornstein: https://www.amazon.com/Always-Sibling-Annie-Sclaver-Ornstein/dp/XXXXXX

Listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/jxTfoX5mm5E

How to Rebuild Your Life After Suddenly Losing Your Spouse with Caroline Melkonian

 When Caroline Melkonian's husband Michael died suddenly from a heart attack — complicated by medical malpractice — she was left with two teenagers, a mortgage she didn't know where to find, and an uncertain future she never planned for. What she did next is the heart of this episode.

Caroline shares how she shifted from passive bystander to active leader of her family, why making things predictable was her first and most powerful tool, and how she applied her 20 years of professional mediation skills to rebuild her life with intention. She also opens up about navigating two years of litigation while grieving, the weight of a high-profile case, and why she felt compelled to pursue justice for Michael.

Plus: a stat that every surviving spouse needs to hear — $15.5 billion in Social Security survivor benefits goes unclaimed every single year. Caroline marched down to the Social Security office herself. You may need to too.

🔗 Caroline's Website: https://cmlmediation.com

Listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/TP2x7yPi2wY

Death Doulas, Death Cafes, and Grounding Through Grief with Michelle Polacinski

What is a death doula — and do you actually need one? In this episode, end-of-life doula, herbalist, and death cafe facilitator Michelle Polacinski breaks it all down. Michelle became interested in death and dying after a near-deadly reaction to an antibiotic at age 23 left her unable to walk for months, facing her own mortality alone and far from home. That experience transformed her life — and eventually led her to the work she does today.

Michelle explains the role of a death doula and how they work alongside hospice, what happens at a death cafe and why talking openly about death matters, and the Swedish death cleaning movement — a practical and meaningful way to prepare your loved ones and spark important conversations before it's too late.

She also shares her personal grounding practice and her biggest takeaway for anyone navigating grief: when you need to cry, just cry. Don't hold back.

Death Cafe: https://deathcafe.com

Channeling Grief Into Purpose: The Story Behind Get Griefy Magazine with Kera Sanchez

What do you do when you're holding your newborn for the very first time and you get the call that your mother has died? For Kera Sanchez, the answer — eventually — was to build something.

In this episode, Kera shares the origin story of Get Griefy Magazine, a free, colorful, community-driven publication created to make grief approachable and to give grievers a place to feel seen. She talks about the secondary losses that followed her mother's sudden death, how grief reshaped her identity and career, and why community built through vulnerability may be one of the most powerful tools a grieving person has.

This is a conversation about benefit finding, finding your people, and what it looks like to channel pain into purpose — in whatever form that takes.

🔗 Get Griefy Magazine: https://getgreifemagazine.com (Digital edition always free — print available on Amazon)

Listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/4ZncPwl7kms

Secondary Losses in Grief: Why Loss Changes More Than You Think

Secondary Losses in Grief: Why Loss Changes More Than You Think

Grief is rarely about just one loss.

When someone dies, we may also lose routines, identity, security, future plans, and the roles we once held. These are called secondary losses — and they can make grief feel overwhelming and confusing.

In this episode, Nicole Lee joins us to explore:

Why grief feels like more than one loss

Emotional overwhelm and “energy in motion”

Identity changes after death

The idea that loyalty does not require ongoing suffering

How growth can coexist with pain

Grief is deeply personal — and it evolves over time.

Grief After Suicide Loss: Stigma, Boundaries, and Finding Support with Sarah Shelton

Suicide loss is one of the most isolating and misunderstood grief experiences there is — and Sara Shelton knows this firsthand. After losing her sister Heidi to suicide in 2019, Sara navigated stigma, family silence, and a profound lack of resources for suicide loss survivors. Now, as founder of The Postvention Project, she's working to change that.

In this episode, Sara talks openly about why suicide grief is different, how stigma keeps survivors isolated, and why boundaries during grief are not about pushing people away — they're an act of love and self-preservation. She also shares what she's learning through her survivor research interviews, why finding community with other suicide loss survivors is one of the most powerful steps toward healing, and what to say — and not say — when someone you love is grieving a suicide loss.

If you or someone you know has been impacted by suicide loss, this episode offers honest, compassionate insight from someone who has lived it.

If you are struggling, please reach out to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988.

🔗 The Postvention Project: https://www.postventionproject.com 🔗 Sara on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarashelton/

What No One Tells You About Stillbirth Grief with Vallen Webb

Stillbirth grief is one of the most misunderstood and isolating experiences a family can go through — and Vallen Webb knows this firsthand. After the stillbirth of her daughter Evelyn in 2019, Vallen navigated postpartum depression, rage, isolation, a husband deployed overseas who never got to hold his daughter, and a cascade of secondary losses that took years to untangle.

In this episode, Vallen shares what she wishes society understood about stillbirth and infant loss, how disenfranchised grief shows up for bereaved families, and why routine became her survival tool when everything else felt out of control. She also offers four simple but powerful self-care anchors — sun, movement, water, and sleep — and talks honestly about how she continues to honor Evelyn seven years later.

Her mission says it all: grief doesn't need fixing. It needs witnessing.

🔗 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/evelynjamesandco/ 🔗 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ValenWebb

Healing Stuck Grief: Ketamine, EMDR, and the Grief Impact Statement with Karen Sprinkel

Some people do years of therapy and still feel stuck in their grief. In this episode, trauma specialist, psychotherapist, and author Karen Sprinkel shares the innovative east-west approach she has developed over decades of working with grieving clients — combining EMDR, somatic experiencing, internal family systems, ketamine-assisted therapy, and a Buddhist philosophical framework to help people finally find lasting relief.

Karen explains why ketamine combined with traditional trauma modalities produces more durable, sustaining change than either approach alone, how she assesses clients mentally, somatically, and spiritually before any intensive work begins, and what after-death communications look like in a psychedelic-assisted therapy context. She also introduces the grief impact statement — a powerful tool she developed from her early work in victim advocacy that gives grievers a structured way to be witnessed in their loss, whether or not there was ever a perpetrator to face in court.

If you or someone you love has been stuck in grief and wonders if there's something more, this episode offers a genuinely different path forward.

🔗 Karen's Website: https://www.karensprinkel.com 🔗 Instagram: @thethrivingself 🔗 IADC Training: https://www.iadctraining.org

Listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/jE-7rtNJAvo

Signs From Loved Ones After Death: Mediumship, Meditation & Healing

Signs From Loved Ones After Death: Mediumship, Meditation & Healing

After someone dies, many people wonder:

Was that a sign?

In this episode, we’re joined by intuitive medium Deb DeCelle to talk about the experience of receiving signs from loved ones in spirit. We explore meditation as a tool for connection, the role of gratitude in noticing signs, and how maintaining a bond after death can support healing.

We discuss:

What signs from loved ones may look like

Why meditation can help quiet grief

Doubt and skepticism around spiritual experiences

Continuing connection after loss

How gratitude can deepen awareness

Grief doesn’t erase connection — it transforms it.

As always, we close with practical steps you can try this week.

How Grief Impacts Self-Esteem (and Why It’s Hard to Trust Yourself After Loss)

How Grief Impacts Self-Esteem (and Why It’s Hard to Trust Yourself After Loss)

Grief doesn’t just break your heart — it can shake your confidence.

In this episode, we explore how loss impacts self-esteem, identity, and your ability to trust your own intuition. Joined by Dr. Lenka Schulze, we discuss why grief can feel disorienting, how disenfranchised grief often goes unacknowledged, and why talking openly about death matters.

You’ll hear:

How grief affects self-confidence

Why trusting yourself may feel harder after loss

The connection between grief and physical health

Disenfranchised grief, including miscarriage

Rebuilding inner trust through surrender and awareness

Healing isn’t about rushing forward — it’s about reconnecting with yourself.

As always, we close with practical steps you can try this week.

Grief, Relationships, and Dating After Loss: What Nobody Tells You with Joëlle Lydon

When someone is deep in grief, the people closest to them often want to help — but don't know how. And the grieving person? They're often too exhausted to explain. In this episode, relationship coach and author Joelle Lydon breaks down what's really happening in relationships when grief enters the picture, how both partners can navigate it without losing each other, and what dating after loss actually looks like.

Joelle talks about the power of making clear and specific requests, why partners often inadvertently short-circuit the grief process by trying to fix things too quickly, and her concept of the sacred third — the relationship itself as something both people contribute to or take away from. She also dives into dating after loss — why transparency beats strategy, why dating is a sorting process not a search, and how companionship can look very different than you'd expect.

Plus: a beautiful in-the-moment insight about honoring a friend through daily "marquee moments" at the dinner table.

Sorting a Loved One's Belongings: Clinical Considerations and Grief-Informed Support

Belongings, Meaning, and the Complexity of Letting Go

When a person dies, their physical possessions become something more than objects. They become containers for memory, relationship, and identity — both the deceased's and the bereaved person's. The sweater that still carries a scent. The handwriting on a grocery list. The reading glasses left on a nightstand. These items carry relational weight that has nothing to do with their material value, and the decisions surrounding them can become some of the most emotionally loaded tasks a bereaved person faces.

For helping professionals, understanding why belongings hold such significance after loss — and why decisions about them can be so difficult — is a meaningful component of grief-informed care. The process of sorting, keeping, distributing, and releasing a loved one's possessions is not a logistical task that happens alongside grief. For many bereaved individuals, it is grief work itself.

In this episode of the GRIEF Ladies podcast, certified grief coach and TEDx speaker Charlene Lam joins hosts Kelly Daugherty and Rox to discuss the emotional and practical dimensions of managing a loved one's belongings after death. Drawing on her Curating Grief® framework and her book of the same name, Charlene brings a structured, creative, and clinically relevant perspective to a topic that is frequently underaddressed in bereavement support contexts.

What This Episode Covers

The conversation addresses several areas with direct relevance to professionals supporting bereaved individuals:

• Why physical possessions carry such concentrated emotional and relational meaning after a death

• How guilt functions in the context of decisions about belongings — and what it is actually communicating

• Frameworks for approaching decisions about what to keep, what to release, and what to transform — without imposing timelines or external pressure

• Why there is no clinically or personally correct timeline for sorting through a loved one's possessions

• Creative approaches to honoring memory and maintaining continuing bonds without retaining every physical item

Clinical and Systemic Implications

The management of a deceased person's belongings sits at the intersection of grief, identity, continuing bonds, and practical life reorganization. It is a dimension of bereavement that receives relatively little attention in clinical training, despite being a near-universal experience for bereaved individuals and a frequent source of distress in the months and years following a death.

Several clinical and systemic considerations are worth naming directly.

Belongings function as physical anchors for continuing bonds. Continuing bonds theory — the understanding that maintaining an ongoing connection to the deceased is a normative and often adaptive aspect of grief — helps explain why releasing possessions can feel threatening rather than freeing. For many bereaved individuals, objects are not reminders of the person who died. They are part of how the relationship continues. Professionals who understand this framework are less likely to inadvertently pressure clients toward releasing items before they are ready, and more likely to help clients make decisions that honor their actual grief process.

Guilt around belongings is clinically meaningful data. When a bereaved person feels guilty about keeping something, releasing something, or simply not knowing what to do, that guilt warrants clinical attention rather than reassurance. It often reflects underlying beliefs about loyalty, love, identity, and what it means to move forward after loss. Exploring the content of the guilt — rather than rushing to resolve it — is more clinically useful and more respectful of the client's actual experience.

External pressure around belongings is a significant source of bereavement distress. Bereaved individuals frequently face pressure from family members, landlords, estate processes, and well-meaning friends to sort and clear a deceased person's belongings on a timeline that has nothing to do with their grief. This pressure is a form of disenfranchisement — it communicates that the grief process should be subordinate to practical or social convenience. Professionals who can name this dynamic and explicitly support a client's right to their own timeline provide meaningful advocacy within the bereavement support relationship.

Decisions about belongings can surface family conflict. When multiple bereaved family members have different relationships to the deceased's possessions — different timelines, different emotional attachments, different practical needs — conflict can emerge that complicates the grief of everyone involved. Therapists and family counselors who are not prepared for this dimension of bereavement may find themselves managing interpersonal conflict without the grief-informed context needed to navigate it effectively.

Creative approaches to belongings are underutilized in clinical settings. Transforming a loved one's clothing into a quilt, creating a memory box, digitizing photographs, or commissioning art from meaningful materials are all approaches that support continuing bonds while reducing the practical burden of retaining every item. These creative solutions are not just aesthetically meaningful — they are grief-informed interventions that help bereaved individuals maintain connection while also moving through the practical realities of loss. Professionals who are aware of these options can expand the support they offer significantly.

For children, a deceased person's belongings can be a significant grief resource. A parent's watch, a grandparent's recipe box, a sibling's favorite book — objects can serve as concrete, tangible points of connection for children who are still developing the cognitive and emotional capacity to hold loss in more abstract ways. School counselors and therapists working with bereaved children benefit from understanding how to incorporate meaningful objects into grief support, and how to help caregivers navigate decisions about children's access to a loved one's possessions.

Practical Applications for Helping Professionals

1. Assess where clients are in the process of managing belongings — without assuming. Some bereaved clients will raise this topic directly. Others will not, either because they have not connected it to their grief or because they are ashamed of where they are in the process. A simple, direct assessment question — "Have you had to deal with any of their belongings yet, and how has that been?" — opens the conversation without pressure and provides clinically useful information.

2. Normalize the absence of a timeline. One of the most useful things a professional can say to a bereaved client who is not ready to sort through belongings — or who sorted them quickly and is now second-guessing that decision — is that there is no correct timeline. Decisions about belongings are not a measure of grief health or forward progress. Clients need to hear this explicitly, because the external messages they are receiving often communicate the opposite.

3. Explore the meaning of specific objects rather than making general recommendations. Rather than offering advice about what to keep or release, help clients articulate what specific objects mean to them and what function they are serving. Is a particular item providing comfort? Maintaining connection? Creating distress? The object's function in the grief process is more clinically relevant than its practical value, and exploring that function provides a more useful basis for decision-making.

4. Address guilt directly and with curiosity. When guilt arises around belongings — whether about keeping, releasing, or simply not deciding — treat it as clinical material rather than a problem to be resolved. What does the client believe the guilt means? What would keeping or releasing this item say about their love, their loyalty, their grief? These questions often open into deeper grief work that would not have been accessible otherwise.

5. Introduce creative frameworks where appropriate. Clients who feel stuck between keeping everything and feeling overwhelmed, or releasing everything and feeling bereft, often benefit from a third option: transformation. Memory quilts, shadow boxes, commissioned artwork, digitized archives, and other creative approaches to belongings can be introduced as possibilities — not prescriptions — that expand the available options and reduce the binary pressure of keep or discard.

6. Support clients in setting limits with external pressure. Where clients are experiencing pressure from family members, estate processes, or social expectations to clear belongings on a timeline that is not their own, explicitly support their right to a different pace. Help them develop language for communicating their needs, identify what is and is not negotiable, and recognize that advocating for their own grief process is not selfishness — it is self-knowledge.

About the Guest: Charlene Lam

Charlene Lam is a certified grief coach, TEDx speaker, and the founder of The Grief Gallery. After her mother died suddenly in 2013, Charlene drew on her background as a curator to develop the Curating Grief® framework — a creative, accessible approach to navigating both the physical and emotional dimensions of loss. Her first book, Curating Grief: A Creative Guide to Choosing What to Keep After a Loved One Dies, is now available. Charlene's work offers bereaved individuals and the professionals who support them a structured, creativity-informed lens for one of grief's most practically complex challenges.

Resources from the Center for Informed Grief

The Center for Informed Grief provides training and professional development for therapists, educators, healthcare providers, and organizational leaders working with bereaved individuals. Our programs address grief-informed practice across its full scope — including the practical and relational dimensions of loss, continuing bonds, and building the professional capacity to support clients through the full complexity of bereavement.

To learn more about upcoming trainings, workshops, or consultation opportunities, visit the Center for Informed Grief.

Curating Grief: Choosing What to Keep, Release & Create After Loss

Curating Grief: Choosing What to Keep, Release & Create After Loss

Belongings can hold more than memory — they can hold identity, connection, and unfinished emotion.

In this episode, Charlene Lamb shares her Curating Grief framework, inviting us to move beyond “keep or toss” and instead approach memory with intention.

We discuss:

• The emotional meaning of personal items

• Designing your ongoing relationship with the person who died

• Reclaiming your narrative through choice

• Creating something new from what remains

• Why there’s no rush to decide\

Grief isn’t about erasing — it’s about evolving.

As always, we close with practical steps you can take in your own time.

Polyvagal Theory & Grief: Grounding Tools to Calm Your Nervous System

Polyvagal Theory & Grief: Grounding Tools to Calm Your Nervous System

Grief isn’t just emotional — it’s physiological.

In this episode, 37 of the GRIEF Ladies Podcast, we explore how grief impacts the nervous system and why you may feel anxious, shut down, exhausted, or on edge. Joined by Gabrielle Juliano-Villani, we discuss polyvagal theory, grounding techniques, and practical tools to help regulate your body during grief.

You’ll hear:

How the nervous system responds to loss

Why burnout and grief often overlap

The role of self-compassion

What “glimmers” are and why they matter

Simple grounding practices you can try today

Grief can feel overwhelming — but small shifts in awareness can create meaningful change.

As always, we close with practical steps you can use this week.

Listen wherever you get your podcast or watch at: https://youtu.be/9Oig0ouNGCw?si=RGmKXDcBcJPji2I0

Why We Wrote The First Year After Loss

When life knocks us down, most of us have ways of coping. We lean on the people we trust. We throw ourselves into work for a while. We exercise. We spend time with friends. We distract ourselves with hobbies. We remind ourselves of other difficult things we've survived and draw confidence from knowing we've gotten through hard times before. We rely on routines and familiar structures to create a sense of stability while life feels uncertain.

Then a significant loss occurs, and suddenly, the life we knew how to navigate no longer exists.

The person we would normally call may be the very person who died. Friends and family are often grieving too, leaving them with less capacity to support us in the ways they once did. The hobbies and interests that used to bring comfort can suddenly feel meaningless. Our routines change because the life those routines were built around no longer exists. Even our confidence in ourselves can take a hit as we struggle with forgetfulness, indecision, exhaustion, and a complete lack of motivation.

In other words, loss doesn't simply create pain. It destabilizes many of the systems we would normally rely upon to recover from pain.

We think this is one of the reasons the first year after loss feels so bewildering. People often come into grief believing they are mourning one person, only to discover they are also grieving a future they expected to have, a role they once occupied, a sense of security, familiar routines, important relationships, and even parts of themselves. They find themselves struggling with things that used to come naturally and wondering why they can't seem to "get it together." What they don't realize is that they are trying to adapt to an entirely new reality while many of the supports that would normally help them adapt have changed or disappeared.

This is also why so many grieving people ask the same questions. Why am I so tired? Why can't I concentrate? Why do I feel worse now than I did three months ago? Why don't I enjoy anything anymore? Why do I feel so disconnected from everyone around me? Beneath all of those questions is often a deeper one: Is this normal?

After hearing those questions for years, we began talking about how difficult it can be for grieving people to find straightforward, practical information during the time they need it most. The irony, of course, is that grief itself affects concentration, memory, motivation, and the ability to absorb information. People are desperate to understand what is happening to them at exactly the same time they are least able to read a dense book or sort through complicated explanations.

That realization became the foundation for our GRIEF Brain Reader Series, a collection of books on grief and life after loss designed specifically for people whose worlds have been forever changed. We wanted these books to be practical, accessible, and easy to return to—offering information, reassurance, and guidance without requiring the focus, energy, or emotional bandwidth that grief often takes away.

That conversation eventually became The First Year After Loss: A GRIEF Ladies Guide to Everything You Need to Know. We wanted to create the book we wished every grieving person had during those early months—the book that explains not only what grief is, but why it feels so hard. A book that helps people understand the exhaustion, the fog, the loneliness, the identity changes, the relationship challenges, and the countless secondary losses that often accompany the death of someone important.

No book can remove the pain of grief. No book can tell someone exactly what their experience will look like. But we do believe that understanding matters. There is comfort in learning that what feels frightening is often normal. There is relief in discovering that other people have struggled with the same thoughts, questions, and fears. There is tremendous value in realizing that the exhaustion, confusion, forgetfulness, loneliness, and sense of being completely unlike yourself are experiences shared by many grieving people.

The first year after loss asks an enormous amount of us. It asks us to carry heartbreak while adapting to change. It asks us to learn new routines, navigate unfamiliar emotions, and make sense of a world that no longer looks the way we expected it to. We hope this book helps people feel less confused, less alone, and better equipped to understand what is happening to them as they find their way through one of the most difficult years of their lives.

The First Year of Loss will be available on Amazon on Tuesday, June 16th. Want to hear more about why we are starting with this book, check out: https://youtu.be/Nfz8_vQbWck?si=qkVHy8ivBGEirpnS