Grief is a Sneaky Bitch

In her extraordinarily honest and beautiful memoir, End of the Hour, and in our conversation in this episode, Meghan Riordan Jarvis lays bare her experience of PTSD following the deaths of both of her parents within two years of each other. Meghan’s story and perspective is unique as she has spent the past 20+ years as a psychotherapist specializing in trauma, grief, and loss. She opens about her unraveling and the necessary courage it took to check herself into the same inpatient trauma center she had sent clients to over her career. You are going to love Meghan’s honesty, humor and insight.Visit www.meghanriordanjarvis to learn more about Meghan, her podcast, TEDx talk, book, End of the Hour, the consulting work she does with companies and more.You can find all the books featured on the show, including End of the Hour by Meghan Riordan Jarvis by visiting the Grief is a Sneaky Bitch Wishlist on Bookshop.org Host Lisa Keefauver’s forthcoming book Grief is a Sneaky Bitch: An Uncensored Guide to Navigating Loss is now available for PRE-ORDER on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble or Bookshop.org. Drop her a DM on Instagram @lisakeefauvermsw to let her know you did and she’ll send you a party invite to her Book Launch Celebration Visit www.lisakeefauver.com to learn more about Lisa, sign up for her Not-So-Regular Newsletter, register for an upcoming online grief workshop or watch her TEDx talk, Why Knowing More About Grief Can Make it Suck Less. Oh, and this season, if you want to WATCH the show, you can now watch it on YouTube @lisakeefauvermsw Recorded November 3, 2023 – Host Lisa Keefauver had just completed Radiation for Breast Cancer.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sally Douglas and Imogen Carn met during the saddest time in both their lives, after the sudden deaths of both of their mothers. That’s when they had the lightbulb moment to start the Good Mourning podcast, and the rest is history. From their first recording on Sal’s sofa to 100 episodes, a top podcast and a global community that reaches over 100 thousand people each month, it’s been an incredible journey. They’ve helped each other to higher, happier ground, becoming soul sisters, pod-wives and co-authors in the process. Hosts of the successful podcast Good Mourning and their popular book of the same name, these two Aussie women bring their accents, charm, and the wisdom they’ve learned along their grief journey to our conversation. You’re going to love these two! You can find all the books featured on the show, including Good Mourning by Sal and Im  by visiting the Grief is a Sneaky Bitch Wishlist on Bookshop.orgVisit goodmourning.com.au to learn more about Sal and Im, their podcast, book, and how to get involved in their support community. Host Lisa Keefauver’s forthcoming book Grief is a Sneaky Bitch: An Uncensored Guide to Navigating Loss IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble or Bookshop.org. Visit www.lisakeefauver.com to learn more about Lisa, sign up for her Not-So-Regular Newsletter, register for an upcoming online grief workshop or watch her TEDx talk, Why Knowing More About Grief Can Make it Suck Less. Oh, and this season, if you want to WATCH the show, you can now watch it on YouTube @lisakeefauvermswRecorded September 3, 2023 – Host Lisa Keefauver had just completed chemotherapy for Breast Cancer.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As artist-in-residence at the Zen Hospice Project Guest House in San Francisco, Wendy MacNaughton witnessed firsthand how difficult it is to know what to do when we’re sharing final moments with a loved one. In this tenderly illustrated guide to saying goodbye, MacNaughton shows how to make sure those moments are meaningful. Using a framework of “the five things” taught to her by a professional caregiver, How to Say Goodbye provides a model for having conversations of love, respect, and closure: with the words “I forgive you,” “Please forgive me,” “Thank you,” “I love you,” and “Goodbye,” each oriented toward finding mutual peace and understanding when it matters most. In her book, and in our conversation in this episode, Wendy offers us a beautiful, poetic, masterful meditation on the art of presence as love.If you liked this episode, you might also like my conversation with our mutual connection palliative Dr. BJ Miller. His episode, Unnecessary Suffering, aired in Season 3. You can find all the books featured on the show, including How to Say Goodbye by Wendy MacNaughton by visiting the Grief is a Sneaky Bitch Wishlist on Bookshop.orgVisit www.wendymacnaughton.com to learn more about Wendy, and if you want weekly drawing lessons and assignments from Wendy delivered directly to your inbox, you can join the Grown-Ups Table.Watch her TEDx Talk The Art of Paying Attention here: https://www.ted.com/talks/wendy_macnaughton_the_art_of_paying_attention?language=en Host Lisa Keefauver’s forthcoming book Grief is a Sneaky Bitch: An Uncensored Guide to Navigating Loss IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble or Bookshop.org. Visit www.lisakeefauver.com to learn more about Lisa, sign up for her Not-So-Regular Newsletter, register for an upcoming online grief workshop or watch her TEDx talk, Why Knowing More About Grief Can Make it Suck Less here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYtwSU-qaWc Oh, and this season, if you want to WATCH the show, you can now watch it on YouTube @lisakeefauvermsw Recorded September 16, 2023 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

About Episode & Guest I think we can all agree that children and grief are two words we wish would never have to go together. Yet we do live in that world and the challenge we face is that we live in a culture that is grief avoidant which makes it difficult for us to know how to offer meaningful and age-appropriate support. The good news is that today’s guest, Brennan Wood, Executive Director of the Dougy Center is here to help. The center’s mission is to provide grief support in a safe place where children, teens, young adults, and their families can share their experiences before and after a death. Brennan’s connection to the place goes back decades. You see long before she became the Executive Director, she attended the Dougy Center as a client. Brennan walked through the doors for the first time in 1987 when her mother, Doris, died three days after Brennan turned 12 years old. In this episode, Brennan leans on her own wisdom and the lessons she’s learned from the clinical staff of her organization in today’s conversation. She is a warm, caring, wise spirit and you are going to love her. Get ready! She is full of wisdom, stories, humor, energy and so much more. You are going to love her. Resources and Books You can learn more about Brennan and the Dougy Center by visiting www.dougy.org. They have tons of helpful tip sheets, podcasts, and have age-specific toolkits to help you show up for a grieving child in your life. Host Lisa Keefauver's book Grief is a Sneaky Bitch: An Uncensored Guide to Navigating Loss IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER. You can find it on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble or Bookshop.org or by visiting www.lisakeefauver.com Visit www.lisakeefauver.com to learn more about Lisa, sign up for her Not-So-Regular Newsletter, register for an upcoming online grief workshop or watch her TEDx talk, Why Knowing More About Grief Can Make it Suck Less.You can find all the books featured on the show by visiting the Grief is a Sneaky Bitch Wishlist on Bookshop.org Oh, and this season, if you want to WATCH the show, you can now watch it on YouTube @lisakeefauvermsw Recorded September 8, 2023 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Emily Nagoski, award-winning author of 'Come As You Are' and co-author of 'Burnout,' brings her expertise on stress and emotional health to the conversation. She dives into the chronic nature of grief as a stressor and shares practical strategies to manage it. Emily emphasizes the importance of community and connection in handling grief, while also highlighting the therapeutic power of imagination and storytelling. With a blend of humor and insight, she encourages listeners to embrace self-compassion and redefine personal goals amidst emotional turmoil.

In this final episode of the season, host Lisa Keefauver takes listeners behind-the-scenes. But instead of recapping the incredible conversations she had with 17 guests this season - from Sunita Puri to Colin Campbell to Cyndie Spiegel and so many more, she's offering you a behind-the-scenes peek into her life off the air. Lisa opens up about this season of her life - living with Breast Cancer. Lisa gets deeply personal in the hopes that we can learn, grow, and navigate grief, together. In response to the aloneness and disconnection grievers often feel, Lisa guides listeners through a guided mediation on love for grievers, one she developed years ago in response to her own need for connection. In true end of season style, she also offers listeners a sneak preview of some of the incredible line-up of guests joining her in Season 5 of the podcast (launching in November 2023).Episode Resources Watch her TEDx talk, Why Knowing More About Grief Can Make it Suck Less to learn more about grief. Watch the Media Maker Profile of Lisa recently released by Medicinal Media to understand how and why she became a grief activist and the host of this podcast, Join her intimate workshop space, Reimagining Grief, Together – A Learning Circle Series, by visiting her website at www.lisakeefauver.com/workshopsandevents Jump Straight Into 13:45 In the wake of her cancer diagnosis, Lisa shares what she learned after months of saying “yes” to offers of support. 22: 02        Lisa guides listeners in a meditation on love for grievers she created year ago in a time when her own grief made the notion of love feel out of reach.  Stay ConnectedFollow her on socials @lisakeefauvermswOh and if you love the show, don’t forget to leave a 5-star rating and write a review hereLisa’s book, Grief is a Sneaky Bitch: An Uncensored Guide to Navigating Loss published by UT Press, will be available for pre-order soon and in bookstores June 4, 2024. Sign up for her Not-So-Regular Newsletter here to get notified when you can order your copy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Some words become excruciating in the wake of loss. For my guest today, Katie Joy Duke, that word is expecting. After a whirlwind romance and engagement, Katie and her fiancé were over the moon with the discovery that they were expecting their first child together. A beautiful wedding ceremony and a fairy tale pregnancy, as Katie describes it, left them both shocked when after going into labor, they were told that their daughter Poppy, whose beautiful home had been Katie’s womb for the past 9 months, was dead. Katie’s relationship to her daughter, herself, to life, to the very notion of expectations is forever changed. In this episode, and in her beautiful memoir, Still Breathing, Katie brings vulnerability, wisdom, heart, and insight to the much-needed conversation around grieving stillbirth, something that affects 1 in 175 pregnancies in the U.S. EPISODE RESOURCES:Katie Joy Duke is an attorney turned life coach who published her debut memoir, Still Breathing: My Journey with Love, Loss, and Reinvention in May 2022. Still Breathing is a heart-breaking love story that captures Katie’s experience birthing Poppy, her first daughter, who was stillborn at full-term in 2015. You can learn more about Katie and the work she is doing as a speaker and life coach at www.katiejoyduke.comPick up your copy of Still Breathing here along with many of the books featured on this podcast.STRAIGHT INTO:(33:00) Katie shares how and why she had developed a forever changed relationship with the words expecting and expectations. This shift comes not only because of the stillbirth of her daughter poppy, but more recently her diagnosis and treatment for stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. (47:00) Katie shares her hard-worn wisdom about the grief support she had (and wanted) in the wake of the stillbirth of her daughter, Poppy.                                                                          STAY CONNECTED1)     SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST on your favorite platform so you don’t miss an episode. If you love the show, I’d love to invite you to leave a rating and write a review. 2)    INVITE ME TO YOUR INBOX to get behind-the-scenes on the podcast and all the grief support offered by our host, Lisa Keefauver, by signing up for her Not-So-Regular Newsletter at lisakeefauver.com/newsletter. 3)    IF YOU’RE FEELING SOCIAL, you can find her on all your favorite social channels too.@lisakeefauvermsw on Instagram, Threads, Facebook, LinkedIn,YouTube and TikTok. Check out her tweets @lisakeefauver Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bethany Harvey, author of the beautiful memoir Dipped In It, shares the experiences and lessons she’s learned from several losses. Some we’ve explored in past episodes, such as the loss of a parent and other losses we haven’t touched on much over the seasons, the grief that results from divorce. At the end of Bethany’s marriage, her now ex-spouse came out as gay and trans-gender. And while Bethany shares that she initially grieved the loss of the “he” she was married too, she quickly realized that this person who now uses the “she” pronoun was the same exact person that made her laugh like crazy in her marriage and drove her nuts too. Bethany brings humor, metaphor, and deep wisdom to our conversation about things like secondary losses, grieve waves, grief expression and so much more.  EPISODE RESOURCES:Bethany Harvey is an award winning author whose debut memoir shot to the bestseller list at Barnes & Noble on the day of its release in 2021. “Dipped In It, a Memoir” is a deep dive into grief as Bethany explores her emotional well after the death of her father and the dissolution of her marriage. With heart and humor Bethany explores the question, “Can grief and gratitude co-exist?” Sharing so openly about her life, loves and losses has further deepened Bethany’s understanding that grief—in all its forms—changes us in ways we never imagined. New paths appear and we may need help illuminating the way forward. To that end, Bethany has recently completed training as a personal coach with renown coach, author and speaker, Martha Beck. Bethany is currently accepting coaching clients on her website www.dippedinit.com.Pick up a copy of Dipped In It at your favorite local bookstore or online here or wherever books are sold.JUMP STRAIGHT INTO:(30:00) Bethany explains how differently she and her now ex-spouse communicated and processed the divorce, a decision they came to in a therapy session at the end of their marriage. Bethany explains that though their verbal communication styles are very different, they shared some tender moments of grief expression in the month following the decision that didn’t rely on words. (44:00) Bethany shares how the overwhelmingly personal and thoughtful response from readers to her memoir got her thinking about how she wants to show up in the world, both for herself and for others.                                                                                               STAY CONNECTED 1)     SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST on your favorite platform so you don’t miss an episode. If you love the show, I’d love to invite you to leave a rating and write a review. 2)    INVITE ME TO YOUR INBOX to get behind-the-scenes on the podcast and all the grief support offered by our host, Lisa Keefauver, by signing up for her Not-So-Regular Newsletter at lisakeefauver.com/newsletter. 3)    IF YOU’RE FEELING SOCIAL, you can find her on all your favorite social channels too.@lisakeefauvermsw on Instagram, Threads, Facebook, LinkedIn,YouTube and TikTok. Check out her tweets @lisakeefauver Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, my guest Aly Bird shares the journey she’s been on since the untimely death of her young husband, the secondary and ambiguous losses she continues to uncover, and the inspiration to help create a culture of positive grief support which resulted in her beautiful book, Grief Ally. I can’t wait for you to meet her!  EPISODE RESOURCESSince her husband’s untimely death, my guest Aly Bird has poured her heart into helping those who feel helpless during an unexpected crisis. Her extensive study of grief psychology and culture, combined with her own devastating first-hand knowledge, led her to create a roadmap for those committed to supporting the bereaved. A registered psychotherapist (qualifying), coach, and speaker, Aly offers a clear path to those who have the courage to take on the vital role of being a grief ally.  Pick up a copy of Everything Left to Remember at your favorite local bookstore or online here JUMP STRAIGHT INTO(25:00) Aly shares how fortunate she was to receive tremendous support from her community. She was surprised to discover this wasn’t the case for most people and dismayed there wasn’t much out there on how to be a strong grief supporter, which is how her book Grief Ally was born. (45:00) Aly and I explore this place we get to in our grief where we move from surviving to asking ourselves what does thriving look like. We also explore some of the key components of what it means to be a good grief ally, including not putting early pressure on the griever to be strong and in thriving mode.                                                                                               STAY CONNECTED 1)     SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST on your favorite platform so you don’t miss an episode. If you love the show, I’d love to invite you to leave a rating and write a review. 2)    INVITE ME TO YOUR INBOX to get behind-the-scenes on the podcast and all the grief support offered by our host, Lisa Keefauver, by signing up for her Not-So-Regular Newsletter at lisakeefauver.com/newsletter. 3)    IF YOU’RE FEELING SOCIAL, you can find her on all your favorite social channels too.@lisakeefauvermsw on Instagram, Threads, Facebook, LinkedIn,YouTube and TikTok. Check out her tweets @lisakeefauver  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Steph Jagger explores one of the most common ways we experience ambiguous loss - when someone we love is in the grips of Alzheimer’s Disease. In our conversation, just like in her exquisitely written memoir, Everything Left to Remember, Steph reveals what she learned when she took her mom, who was diagnosed with early on-set Alzheimer’s, on an adventure into big nature under the big Montana sky. While what she learned on this trip wasn’t what she expected, she gained more than she bargained for including insights on childhood, motherhood, personhood, the lessons of Mother Nature, and what it means to love someone who doesn’t quite remember the person she spent her lifetime becoming. EPISODE RESOURCESSteph Jagger is a sought-after mentor and coach whose offerings guide people toward a deeper understanding of themselves and their stories. Her work, including speaking and facilitating, lies at the intersection of loss, the nature of deep remembrance, and the personal journey of re-creation. Steph grew up in Vancouver, Canada and now lives and works on Bainbridge Island, WA. Everything Left to Remember is Steph’s second book. Her first, Unbound, was published in 2017. Pick up a copy of Everything Left to Remember at your favorite local bookstore or online here JUMP STRAIGHT INTO(30:00) Steph explores what she had hoped to discover on this trip through big nature with her mother versus the gifts she received along the way. (47:00) As we wrapped up our conversation, Steph and I explored what it means to practice being with our emotions in grief and the suffering we experience when we resist or hang on too tightly.                                                                                               STAY CONNECTED1)     SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST on your favorite platform so you don’t miss an episode. If you love the show, I’d love to invite you to leave a rating and write a review. 2)    INVITE ME TO YOUR INBOX to get behind-the-scenes on the podcast and all the grief support offered by our host, Lisa Keefauver, by signing up for her Not-So-Regular Newsletter at lisakeefauver.com/newsletter. 3)    IF YOU’RE FEELING SOCIAL, you can find her on all your favorite social channels too.@lisakeefauvermsw on Instagram, Threads, Facebook, LinkedIn,YouTube and TikTok. Check out her tweets @lisakeefauver Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.