Tag: grief stories

EOLPodcast

Ep. 375 Touching Two Worlds: Finding Hope After Loss with Sherry Walling PhD

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Learn how our grief touches the two worlds of sorrow and joy and how we can navigate these turbulent times.

My guest Dr. Sherry Walling is a clinical psychologist, speaker, podcaster, author and mental health advocate. She helps entrepreneurs and leaders navigate transition, loss, and complex human experience. Sherry is the author of Touching Two Worlds: A Guide for Finding Hope in the Landscape of Loss, a poetic exploration of grief informed by two very personal losses in her own life. She discusses the presence of both sorrow and joy within grief and how her own life has been reshaped by the grief she has experienced. Learn more at her websites:

www.sherrywalling.com

www.touchingtwoworlds.com

Get the book here

Watch on YouTube

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This episode includes:

  • What inspired Sherry to write this book
  • The experience of compound grief and “death by heartbreak”
  • The “two worlds” of grief
  • How grief changes us and why it’s important
  • How Sherry’s two grief experiences differed – after cancer and after suicide
  • The guilt experienced by medical professionals when a loved one dies
  • Coping with a suicide death
  • Parenting children while going through grief and teaching them about loss
  • How various forms of movement can help us with grief
  • The art of crying on airplanes
  • Grief requires us to rewrite our assumptions about the world

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If you enjoy this content please share it with others and consider leaving a review on iTunes. Thanks again to all supporters on my page at Patreon.com/eolu, and to Marsha for buying me a coffee! Your contributions make all the difference.

EOLPodcast

Ep. 322 Dealing with Disenfranchised Grief in a Polarized Society

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Learn some helpful tools for dealing with grief even when it seems out of order or controversial.

In this episode I talk about things I’ve learned from my guests over the past two years about dealing with grief during the COVID pandemic. I share clips from two special episodes and lots of resources to help with grief, particularly “disenfranchised” grief that seems to be occurring frequently in our polarized, angry, judgmental society. Let’s all work on our own grief and show more lovingkindness to others who are grieving right now too!

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This episode includes:

Additional links:

If you enjoy this content please share it with others and consider leaving a review on iTunes. Thanks again to all supporters on my page at Patreon.com/eolu! Your contributions make all the difference.

EOLPodcast

Ep. 318 How to Use Stories to Teach About Death and Dying

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Learn how telling stories can make you a better and more effective teacher about end-of-life issues.

In this solo episode I share some of the research around the power of stories to teach and to change behavior, which is why we should all be using stories when we are working with people around end-of-life issues. You can harness the “magic” of stories to motivate your students to take action and to develop greater empathy for others. Find out how to become a better storyteller in your work, no matter what role you play.

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This episode includes:

  • The neuroscience of stories and how they work to change our thinking
  • Why stories are “empathy machines”
  • Why everyone should use stories in their work, but especially in work that involves death and dying
  • How stories help with healing
    • Teach about the past
    • Increase empathy
    • Make sense of life
    • Reveal what is hidden
    • Engage the imagination
    • Enhance memory
  • Characteristics of a good story
  • Tools needed to become a great storyteller
  • Types of teaching stories
    • Personal
    • Witnessed
    • Borrowed
    • Nature
    • Historical
    • Myth and legend

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If you enjoy this content please share it with others and consider leaving a review on iTunes. Thanks again to all supporters on my page at Patreon.com/eolu! Your contributions make all the difference.

EOLPodcast

Ep. 305 The Death Dialogues Project: Getting Death Out of the Closet with Becky Aud-Jennison

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Learn how Becky created The Death Dialogues Project after a lifetime of experiences with death gradually called her to this work.

My guest Becky Aud-Jennison is the creator and host of The Death Dialogues Project and Podcast, which she created to help bring conversations surrounding death, dying and the aftermath out of the closet. Trained as a nurse and a therapist Becky served as a death doula and home vigilist during the deaths of two of her loved ones, which sparked her passion for facilitating broader conversations. Her love of “verbatim theatre” inspired the original concept for The Death Dialogues Project, which became a podcast over time. She is also the author of two books, forthcoming in 2022: and then the stars spoke: a memoir through the lens of death and Death and Its Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Beautiful Lessons. Learn more at the website:

www.deathdialogues.net

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This episode includes:

  • How Becky’s life experiences drew her to work with and talk about death
  • How the video and training from Zen and the Art of Dying helped Becky be present for her loved ones’ deaths and have non-traditional funerals for them
  • How The Vagina Monologues helped inspire The Death Dialogues Project
  • How timing plays a role in the unfolding of our life’s purpose
  • Why the medical profession needs to have greater compassion for people who attempt suicide
  • Why we need to stop “clenching” against death and grief and be more open
  • Grief is different for each person and also for each death that we experience

Death has torn me apart and it’s put me back together again differently.”

Becky Aud-Jennison

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If you enjoy this content please share it with others and consider leaving a review on iTunes! Thanks again to all supporters on my page at Patreon.com/eolu! Your contributions make all the difference!

EOLPodcast

Ep. 292 Life Review: The Hospice Musical – Life, Love and Loss with Benjamin Kintisch

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Learn about a touching and humorous new musical that focuses on the stories of hospice patients and how you can join the audience.

My guest Benjamin Kintisch is a Cantor, hospice chaplain, and music teacher when he’s not performing on stage. He has loved singing and performing since childhood and has had used his skills to create a musical inspired by his experiences with hospice patients. He shares his creative process in writing Life Review: The Hospice Musical and performs two songs from the musical to give us a preview! Learn more at the website:

www.lifereviewmusical.com

Listen here:

This episode includes:

  • How a hospice chaplain became inspired to write a musical
  • The power of both stories and music to open the heart
  • Why music ends up being a good format for telling the stories of hospice patients
  • An overview of Life Review: The Hospice Musical
  • How Ben recognized that the musical needed to contain lightness and humor
  • Coping with the reality that ultimately we can’t fix people
  • Ben’s experiences “workshopping” the musical
  • Feedback from cast members and audiences
  • How Life Review can be used for education and discussion purposes
  • Goals for the musical currently and post-COVID

Links mentioned in this episode:

  • SAVE THE DATE for the upcoming Virtual Cabaret Show of Life Review: The Hospice Musical with Ben Kintisch on Sunday April 25, 2021 at 4 pm Pacific/7 pm Eastern
  • Listen to the unedited interview on YouTube: https://youtu.be/lvLuVXliqlU
  • Sign up for the 2021 online reading group A Year of Reading Dangerously at this link
  • Support your local bookstore by buying my books on Bookshop and Indiebound: 7 Lessons for Living from the Dying and The Journey from Ego to Soul
  • Subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Stitcher Radio
  • Check out the Series I’ve recorded in the past here
  • Join the team at Patreon.com/eolu and get access to the EOLU mug: “Mind if we talk about death?” (only Patrons can purchase it). PLUS get our new bonuses: the monthly EOL News Update, movie reviews from 2 Doctors and a Movie, and automatic access to A Year of Reading Dangerously!

If you enjoy this content please share it with others and consider leaving a review on iTunes! Thanks again to all supporters on my page at Patreon.com/eolu, especially my newest supporter Trina Wacasey and Suzanne O’Brien for upping your pledge! Your contributions make all the difference!

EOLPodcast

BONUS 13: Love Over Fear – Stories for Precarious Times

kwyattmd

Welcome to this weekly bonus series of brief stories designed to touch your heart and offer you comfort, joy, laughter, and inspiration as we face uncertain times together! Remember always to choose LOVE over fear!

Story 13: These tricky roads of grief

These tricky roads of grief

Featured Poem by Meggie C. Royer

Color of Grief

As a child I was constantly sticking my fingers in sockets

and trying to figure out if grief had its own color

so my mother sat me down on the sofa and took out the Pantone book,

paged through it for an hour until we found the blues.

There, I said, that one, and pointed to cerulean.

Oh honey, my mother replied, That’s not grief. That’s just a paint swatch

and it will never amount to all the pain in your heart.

Sometimes I feel the urge to go wade out into the lake

after filling my pockets with stones,

but then I remember my father and how he wore his grief

like a too-tight sweater, something given to an awkward child

by a grandmother who doesn’t even know the right size,

so I take the stones back out of my pockets

and I place them on his grave instead. 

EOLPodcast, Grief

Ep. 246 Mother’s Day Grief Dialogues for Motherless Daughters with Elizabeth Coplan

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Learn how stories heal grief in this special episode for Mother’s Day.

My guest Elizabeth Coplan is a playwright, educator and speaker who created the non-profit Grief Dialogues where she uses theatre as the artistic expression to open new conversations about dying, death, and grief. Today, on Mother’s Day, we will talk about the grief experience of motherless daughters and she will share some stories from Grief Dialogues: The Book. Stories of Love and Loss. Learn more at her website:

www.griefdialogues.com

Listen here:

This episode includes:

  • How Elizabeth used writing to work through her own grief issues
  • How stories help us heal grief
  • The unique grief of motherless daughters
  • How Grief Dialogues is reaching out to healthcare professionals to address grief
  • Two stories from the book Grief Dialogues:
    • I am a Marionette by Megan Vered
    • Grief is Like Swimming in the Middle of the Ocean (and I hate the ocean) by Alica Forneret
  • How to submit your own story to Grief Dialogues

Out of grief comes art.”

Motto of GriefDialogues.com

Links mentioned in this episode:

If you enjoy this content please share it with others and consider leaving a review on iTunes! Thanks again to all supporters on my page at Patreon.com/eolu! Your contributions make all the difference!