EOLPodcast

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

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

Listen here:

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, Grief

Ep. 205 Surviving the Suicide of a Loved One with Sarah Neustadter PhD

Listen to a personal and intimate conversation about suicide death and how to cope with the aftermath as a survivor.

PodcastNeustadter

My guest Sarah Neustadter PhD was studying psychology in graduate school when her boyfriend, a fellow student in the program, chose to end his life. Ten years later she has written a book to guide others through the complicated grief that follows suicide. In this conversation we share our own stories of grief and find insights together that we hope will be helpful to others on this path. Learn more about Sarah’s work at her website:

www.sarahneustadter.com

Neustadterbook

Get the book here.

Listen here.

 

This interview includes:

  • Why no amount of training can prepare you for the suicide death of a loved one
  • How grief after suicide differs from other types of grief
  • The stigmatization of suicide death in our society
  • How devastating guilt and regret follow a suicide
  • Why suicide survivors need to work on self-forgiveness
  • What might help on the journey of post-suicide grief:
    • Community
    • Physical touch or holding
    • Support with mundane tasks of daily life
    • Frequent check-ins from friends
    • Presence from others rather than words
    • Acknowledgment of the pain – even months and years later
  • Grief has its own timeline and can’t be rushed through
  • How writing can help us process grief and other difficult emotions
  • Sarah’s 3 categories of her own grief process:
    • Despair
    • Shifting
    • Beauty

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 Patreon.com/eolu – your contributions mean everything to me!