Trigger warning: This episode includes discussion of suicide and deep personal loss. Please listen with care and step away if needed.
In this deeply moving episode, we open an honest conversation about grief, healing, and the courage it takes to truly feel.
Our guest, grief guide and educator Laurel O’Sullivan, shares her personal journey through profound loss—the death of her 18-year-old son—and how that heartbreak became the catalyst for transformation, self-discovery, and a renewed purpose.
Laurel invites us to see grief not as something to overcome, but as a natural part of life—any change we didn’t want.
Through her story, she reveals how loss can open a path back to love, connection, and even joy, if we allow ourselves to feel it fully.
Together, we explore how to navigate grief’s unpredictable waves, how to listen to the wisdom of the body and heart, and how to grow a life that’s big enough to hold both the pain and the beauty of what remains.
This conversation is tender, brave, and deeply human—a reminder that we can’t think our way out of pain, but we can walk each other home through it.
Laurel O’Sullivan, J.D. is a Grief Guide & Advocate as well as a Certified Grief Educator with 25 years of experience helping individuals and organisations navigate change.
Her work is deeply informed by her own journey through tragedy and loss, including the death of her 18-year-old son, Patrick, to suicide.
As a grief advocate, Laurel empowers her clients to transform their loss into meaning, and discover new paths forward—both personally and professionally.
She draws upon two decades as an attorney, consultant and nonprofit advocate, bringing compassion, wisdom, and a deep understanding of the grieving process to help others find strength and renewal in the face of life’s most difficult transitions.
You can also find her writings on Substack under Lost & Found Discovering Yourself After Loss
Connect with Laure online: