When you ask how to live through estrangement, the answer may not be in reconciling or forgetting – it may be in noticing where your energy resides, and choosing the frequencies that allow you to keep living fully, even through uncertainty.This week, we're addressing a constant question I hear from listeners and clients - what can one do to navigate being estranged when you don't clearly understand where it all went wrong?
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"Joy is sinewy, fibrous, raw. She shows up in the dark, not instead of it."
This week on Restorative Grief, we’re sitting with Dr. MaryCatherine McDonald to explore what she calls the “gritty joy” that grows right alongside our grief. In her newest book, The Joy Reset, she names six “joy thieves” that keep us from accessing healing and explains why our resistance to joy is not a failure—it’s part of how our nervous system protects us.
Together, we’ll talk about what it looks like to invite tiny joys back into our days without bypassing pain, how hope is wired into our brains, and why joy is not the opposite of grief but a companion that helps us keep moving forward.
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“Nourishment is not just survival fuel. It’s the act of tending—to the heart, the mind, the body, and the spirit.”
In this episode, we explore what it means to care for ourselves in life’s most intense seasons. You’ll be guided through reflections and simple practices for the heart, mind, body, and spirit, and invited into a communal act of nourishment you can share with others.
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"No matter what the risk is, the discomfort is huge. But for me, the discomfort is the compass."
When the life you’ve built no longer fits, how do you make the hard choice to walk away and begin anew? Today’s guest, Amy Murtola (AlignedSoulCo), shares her journey of uprooting—moving to a new state, single, alone—and discovering the enneagram as a guide through fear, reinvention, and deep transformation.
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“What if there was a simple way to help your child feel understood when emotions get loud?”
Kids experience big feelings - grief, frustration, sadness, anger - just like adults do. But often, they don’t have the words to explain what’s going on inside. In this episode, we're sharing a gentle, kid-friendly tool that helps children (and their parents) notice what emotions feel like in the body and begin to put language around those experiences.
Together, we’ll explore:
How to help kids recognize their body’s “signals” during tough moments
Why saying “this is valid” builds trust in their own feelings
How parents can respond with compassion instead of frustration
A simple practice you can use today with your kids (or for yourself)
This episode is designed for kids and parents to listen to together - or for parents to play for their kids as a standalone tool. By the end, you’ll both have a new way to approach grief, frustration, and those “too big” feelings with more compassion and connection.
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"It is entirely possible that what we've accepted as "normal" isn't normal at all, and that's the very place we can begin to heal."
Brandan Robertson stands as a beacon of love, hope, and unwavering support for anyone ready to reclaim their faith from the clutches of intolerance.
For the queer kids, for the queer adults, and for every single wonderful human wondering how they can fit in when they don't feel like they belong, Brandan's latest book is an invitation into what could be possible if we leave our need for "normalcy" behind.
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"Lowering the barrier to entry keeps creativity alive through grief, not in spite of it."
Grief doesn't mean we put our canvases away in a closet. It means we allow simply setting a blank canvas on the easel as creativity in itself.
This week, we're talking through one way grieving humans can invite the creative spark back into their daily lives without the pressure of producing something marketable with every stroke of the pen or brush.
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“I hope you look back and your life and when you think about the best parts it’s hard to decide.”
I've been a student and lover of music my entire life, so the opportunity to speak with a musician about grief?! Yes please!
Jay Putty is a folk pop artist with an impressive track record of heartfelt hits filled with heart, grief, and invitations into catharsis.
Our conversation is full of musical curiosities and the encouragement to explore your own grief in any way that feels right to you.
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"This is how I carry them into my present, even as life insists on moving forward. They are frozen in time, but I am not."
This week, I'm sharing a brief anecdote about my own life and grief story. When we can't make the phone call we desperately need, what can we do with ourselves to feel okay?
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"Any separation of the body and mind is imaginary."
Functional health nurse and coach Elisabeth Bojang wants you to uncover the root of your symptoms and finally feel better. For grievers, that can sound like a fairy tale - but Elisabeth's work is 100% real.
Join our conversation about the intersection of our physical health and mental health to learn how a functional medicine approach to grief work can be the very thing to help you finally connect all those overwhelming health dots.
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"Grief itself can come on fast, but grieving is not a fast process. It is a lifelong engagement - an ongoing act of permission to honor and validate the intensity."
Grief work is not meant to be rushed, but in a culture that values high productivity, rushing through it seems to be our default approach.
This week, we're exploring the possibility that there MIGHT just be a better way to grieve.
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"You don't have to parent through grief alone."
Erin Leigh Nelson & Colleen E. Montague want you to know that grieving as a parent doesn't mean you set your own grief aside. Although as parents, we often put our needs last, grief is one of those arenas where you can support yourself and your kids (and community) through the expressions of loss as they come.
This conversation is around the work of Jessica's House, a peer support program for grieving children and families, as well as their new book, When Grief Comes Home: A Gentle Guide for Living Through Loss While Supporting Your Child.
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Wouldn’t it be lovely if you knew what you were doing wrong before you found yourself elbow deep in misery?
Great news – this week, we’re naming the five biggest mistakes grievers make so not only can you prepare yourself for what’s to come, but you can support your friends who are grieving in a new and more healthy way, too.
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"If you can become that one trusted adult, it could change everything."
Former NCAA Division 1 hockey player Eric Daddario understands first hand the feeling of helplessness in the face of grief. After experiencing the tragic loss of his younger brother to a drug overdose, Eric dedicated his life to helping students and student-athletes navigate grief, anxiety, and the pressures of adolescence.
Through his engaging presentations, he empowers young people to speak up, seek help, and make healthy life choices, fostering resilience and emotional well-being. If you have a teen in your life, this is the perfect episode for you.
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“This is the chance you have to stop performing your life and start embodying it.”
Do you know where to begin when you’re grieving? Most of the time, we suspect we simply wait until it hurts too much, then allow ourselves (or don’t) to burst like a dam until the tears stop applying emotional pressure.
This week, we’re going to talk through how to grieve with intention when we notice all those griefs we’ve disallowed ourselves from feeling over the years.
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"I’m a little less than I would have been without my struggles, and also a little more. My children are not what make me whole. But they are part of what I needed to stop feeling broken."
Learning to tell our story as a griever is an art form a transformation, and a necessary part of the healing process but often, it can feel unsafe to get started. In her new book Held Together: A Shared Memoir of Motherhood, Medicine, and Imperfect Love, author Rebecca N. Thompson explores the many ways that grief shows up in the world of parenting.
Her own work as a family medicine and public health physician wasn’t exactly insulation against her own pregnancy complications and losses, but it did allow her to begin creating a container where others in similar situations could learn to tell their stories, too.
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"Happy, healthy, and independent people understand the power of sorrow."
What if your shortcut to happiness has been with you since birth—but was silenced to keep others comfortable? This week, we're digging into distress tolerance—the skill that helps us hold sorrow without bypassing it. Many of us were raised in emotionally dismissive environments, and it’s time to unlearn that conditioning.
You’ll learn why distress tolerance is vital for emotional health, how avoidance keeps us stuck, and what it means to re-parent your inner child with presence and compassion. Whether you're a parent or not, this episode will remind you that feeling your feelings is not weakness—it’s wisdom.
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"When people feel listened to well, their window of tolerance is expanded."
It's time to learn how to listen with intention, not just an outcome in mind. We're learning these skills from Emily Kasriel—former BBC journalist, executive coach, and author of Deep Listening: Transform Your Relationships with Family, Friends, and Foes.
Listen while we discuss how grief often becomes the unnamed adversary in our lives and relationships and explore how Emily’s eight-step framework for Deep Listening can help us re-enter connection, not only with those we’ve lost or hurt, but with the hurting parts of ourselves.
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"If you could preserve your loved one in a digital body, would you do it?"
This week, we're confronting the uncomfortable reality of AI grief bots - programs and companies providing artificially generated versions of your loved ones after their death.
This conversation could go on for days, so while this just scratches the surface of the topic, it's worthwhile to get your thoughts going about the ethical and emotional ramifications of this technology and the way we grieve.
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"If you really want to shock the world, unleash your kindness."
In a world full of fear, anger, and sorrow, kindness and empathy are become far less commonplace. But Brad Meltzer wants you to remember that as we go through these transitions and intense experiences in life, we can always position ourselves to make magic happen.
If you are in need of a reminder of the beauty that also exists in the middle of pain, this is a perfect conversation for you. Even as we grieve, we can craft a life full of wonder, awe, and joy for ourselves and for others.
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