Sometimes we can't really begin to understand grief - ours or anyone else's - if we don't have space to talk about the death. The context surrounding how someone died matters and can shape our grief in meaningful ways. This was true for Kari Lyons-Price, MSW, who was a caregiver for her parents, Hal and Sylvia, for many years. They died three years apart, her dad in 2019 and her mom in 2022, and the circumstances of their deaths greatly impacted Kari and her grief.

We discuss:

• How her parents lived - and how they each died
• Why their death stories matter when it comes to grief
• The anger and resentment in the immediate aftermath of her father's death
• What she's done to come to terms with the circumstances of each of their deaths
• The role advocacy and education in the realm of care facilities played in that process
• Making decisions about her mother's care in light of how her father died and the pandemic
• The ongoing, slow nature of grief when someone has a long-term degenerative illness
• What it's meant to no longer be a caregiver for her parents
• Overcoming her family's narrative of autonomy and learning to accept support in grief
• Where Kari finds her foundation now

In May of 2023, Sweta Vikram was overwhelmed with grief. In the span of three days, her father died, her father-in-law died, and it was the 9-year anniversary of her mother’s death. When she looked for information on how to survive the maelstrom of emotions, she found reassurances that she would eventually get to the other side, but nothing that showed her how to do that. So, Sweta set out to create the resource she was looking for and recently published, The Loss That Binds Us, a manual with 108 practical tips to survive and navigate grief.

• The overwhelm of multiple losses
• Turning to writing for solace and support
• Lessons she learned from each of her parents
• The impact of sudden vs. expected death
• Becoming a protector & caregiver for her dad - and the comfort that brought after he died
• How grief shaped Sweta's values
• The meaning behind the number 108 across multiple cultures
• How she managed to finish her PhD in Ayurvedic Medicine so early in her grief
• Which of Sweta's tips are the easiest and hardest for her to follow
• Her relationship to forgiveness in the context of grief
• How she approaches the anniversary season
• Sweta's self-care practices

Sweta Srivastava Vikram is an international speaker, author, and Ayurvedic Doctor who also teaches yoga and meditation.

Camille Sapara Barton is a social imagineer who is reimagining how we define and relate to grief. As a writer, artist, and somatic practitioner, Camille is looking to create a new grief narrative expansive enough to include multiple forms of individual and collective grief, especially for queer, trans, and BIPOC communities. In Camille's book, Tending Grief, they offer rituals and embodied practices for feeling into and metabolizing grief.

• Camille's lived experience with grieving death & non-death losses
• Support for grief that falls outside the traditional box
• Grief as a generative process
• Camille's learning from Dagara spiritual traditions and Sobonfu Somé
• Collective grief that comes out of displacement, colonization, and threats to queer & trans people around the world
• How we numb our grief and the cost of doing so
• The narrative Camille is hoping to create around grief
• Examples of embodied practices to tend grief

Be sure to check out Camille's new book, Tending Grief - Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community.

Cody Delistraty is a journalist and he's also a son whose mother died of cancer. These two identities intersect in his new book, The Grief Cure, which chronicles his quest to find a way to eliminate the pain of grief. After exploring Laughter Therapy, silent meditation, Breakup Bootcamp, and others avenues for grief expression, Cody landed where so many others do: realizing the "cure" for grief is allowing it to exist, while still engaging with life.

We discuss:

1. Who Cody was when his mom died
2. How he used to define "successful" grief
3. The secondary losses connected to his mother's death
4. How his relationship to the 5 Stages of Grief evolved over time
5. The quest to "cure" grief and the options he explored
6. Which grief memory Cody most wished he could erase
7. How important community can be
8. Learning to embrace both grief and an ongoing connection with his mother

Cody Delistraty is a journalist and speechwriter in New York City. As a journalist, he has written stories, profiles and essays for The New York Times, The New Yorker and The Atlantic, among many others. He has served as culture editor at The Wall Street Journal‘s magazine and as features editor of the Paris-based magazine Mastermind.

It's impossible to speak for an entire community, especially when it comes to grief, but Sharice Burnett, LCSW, knows a lot about the ripple effect of loss in the Black and African American community in Portland, OR. Born and raised in the community, Sharice is a clinical mental health therapist and consultant dedicated to naming and dismantling the larger systemic barriers that stand in the way of Black children and families having access to culturally relevant support, particularly mental health and grief support.

We discuss:

• Grieving the loss of an entire generation of elders during the Covid-19 pandemic
• The grief and displacement from the Vanport Flood of 1948
• The cultural nuances of grief
• Historic, intergenerational, and collective grief
• The unacknowledged grief of racism
• How each death & loss ripples out to the larger Black/African American Portland community
• How safety from racial harm is critical to accessing grief support services
• Sharice's hopes and dreams for creating more culturally relevant grief support
• Creative grief support & healing spaces for Portland's Black community (Black Rose Wellness)

This episode is the third and final in our 2024 three-part series highlighting the voices of communities who have historically been underrepresented in the grief world. The series is part of an ongoing collaboration between Dougy Center and The New York Life Foundation. We are deeply grateful for New York Life Foundation's tireless support and advocacy for children and teens who are grieving.

Lisa Keefauver is a lot of things - she's a writer, speaker, educator, social worker, podcast host, mother, widow, and grief activist. She came to the last two titles when her personal experience of grieving for her husband Eric, who died of a brain tumor in 2011, intersected with her professional life as a clinician. At this intersection, Lisa realized just how grief illiterate the world is and how that illiteracy creates unnecessary suffering for those who are grieving. Lisa hosts the acclaimed podcast, Grief is a Sneaky Bitch and recently published her book, Grief is a Sneaky Bitch: An Uncensored Guide to Navigating Loss.

We discuss:

• The gift of love from her husband Eric
• Living in the both/and of grief and life
• Being a mental health professional while grieving
• Navigating a breast cancer diagnosis in a medical system that failed her husband
• How we bring our full history into each new loss
• The "shoulds" that hassled Lisa
• The grief time warp
• Grief thieves - including the one in the mirror
• Lisa's go-to skill in her own grief
• The power of observation & being with grief as it is

Lisa Keefauver is a grief activist, speaker and author. She began her career as a social worker and narrative therapist in 2004. She expanded her activism in a variety of roles: clinical director, non-profit co-founder, clinical supervisor, facilitator of personal and professional growth and healing, and mentor. Lisa's wisdom and insights on grief are also embodied from her personal losses, including the death of her husband Eric in 2011.

The Autism & Grief Project is a new online platform designed to help adults with autism navigate and cope with the complexities of grief arising from both death and non-death losses. Alex LaMorie, A.A.S is a member of the project's Advisory Board and brings his lived experience with both autism and grief to this work. Dr. Kenneth J. Doka, PhD, MDiv, brings years of both professional and personal grief knowledge to his role on the project's Development Team. The Autism & Grief Project is unique - just as grief and autism are unique - and the site provides information not only for adults with autism who are grieving, but also the people who are supporting them.

We discuss:

• Parallels between the uniqueness of grief and the individual experience of autism
• What Alex found to be helpul and unhelpful in his grief
• Being open to different forms of communication and emotional expression
• Learning to ask for help
• The goals for the Autism & Grief Project
• What Alex and Dr. Doka learned from being part of the project

Alex D. LaMorie, A.A.S is an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland Global Campus and autism advocate. Alex's expressive grief artwork was recently featured in the textbook Superhero Grief: The Transformative Power of Loss (2021, Routledge). He serves as an advisor on the Hospice Foundation of America's Autism & Grief Project. In his spare time, he loves movies and TV shows as well as traveling to Comic Con and Anime conventions with his older sister. Alex also loves creative writing and spending time with his New York family so he can eat the world's best pizza and bagels!

Kenneth J. Doka, PhD, MDiv, is Senior Vice President of Grief Programs at Hospice Foundation of America (HFA) and recipient of the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Death Education and Counseling. He serves as editor of HFA’s Living with Grief® book series and its Journeys bereavement newsletter. He is a prolific author, editor, and lecturer; past president of the Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC); and a member and past chair of the International Work Group on Death, Dying, and Bereavement (IWG). In 2018, the IWG presented Doka with the Herman Feifel Award for outstanding achievement in thanatology. He received an award for Outstanding Contributions in the Field of Death Education from ADEC in 1998. Doka is an ordained Lutheran minister and a licensed mental health counselor in the state of New York.

This episode is the second in our 2024 three-part series highlighting the voices of communities who have historically been underrepresented in the grief world. The series is part of an ongoing collaboration between Dougy Center and The New York Life Foundation. We are deeply grateful for New York Life Foundation's tireless support and advocacy for children and teens who are grieving.

Have you ever heard someone’s voice in your head and suddenly you're transported to a time and place when you were with them? This phenomenon is what Lissa Soep explores in Other People’s Words: Friendship, Loss, and the Conversations That Never End, her book about the intimacy of friendship and how words and language keep people with us, even after they die. After the deaths of her friends, Jonnie and Christine, Lissa found comfort in this idea of them living on through their words.

We discuss:

• Lissa's friendships with Jonnie & Christine
• Grieving a sudden death vs one from a long-term illness
• The unique nature of friendships formed in our 20's
• How Jonnie & Christine's come back to Lissa through their words
• The Russian critic Mikhail Bahktain's concept of double voicing
• What Lissa's learned about how to support others who are grieving

Lissa Soep is a senior editor for audio at Vox Media and special projects producer and senior scholar-in-residence at YR Media. She has a PhD from Stanford, where she first started writing about Bakhtin.