Faced with numerous losses and feeling deep grief, Jamie Thrower could not find grief services that understood how to support a queer griever. Struggling through the feelings and inevitable difficulty of their own grief, they became intent on doing their part to save others from what they experienced. Queer Grief Club was born! As a death doula, workshop leader, writer and artist, they have made it their mission to offer safe spaces to grieve for members of the LGBTQIA+ community.

The funeral industry does not always respond to the unique traditions and practices of their clients. What is important to the grieving person? Can the industry support grievers as they navigate their losses? Joél Simone Anthony brings her well cultivated spiritual outlook to these questions. Realizing how important her own traditions are to her she actively responds to the people who come to her, discovering what is meaningful to them and doing her best as a mortician to create ritual that incorporates those needs. She sees herself not only to helping with funerals and burials but also holding the griever in traditions that matter. And in that, she shares what comforts most; that grieving people are heard in their own experience and context.

Joél Simone Anthony. Joel is a licensed funeral director, insurance agent and sacred grief practitioner. She specializes in guiding individuals, families, businesses and governmental agencies to navigate uncomfortable and difficult conversations about death, dying, end of life, funeral and burial planning. Joél was born in Europe and raised in Beaufort, South Carolina, the heart of Gullah and Geechee culture. Spirituality, the sacredness of death, caring for those in transition, the deceased and supporting her community through grief have always been a huge part of her life. Her professional approach is deeply rooted in ancient and ancestral wisdom passed down generation to generation. Her unique experience and training helps her to guide her clients through their journeys of grief. It is her life's work to educate everyone –regardless of faith, race, age, or status – that death, dying and grief are sacred and transformative to our journeys as human beings.

In light of the recent added restrictions on reproductive health access, we are sharing an episode with Kassi Underwood, whose book is a thoughtful memoir on the subject.

The war between so-called pro-choice and pro-life forces in America seem divided beyond repair. But where does that leave women who have made the often painful and important decision to have an abortion? As Kassi Underwood says, they are left with a choice between regret and relief, with few opportunities to talk about the experience and feel supported in their personal struggles. Kassi knows from personal experience that needing to hide all the sometimes complex feelings left after an abortion has a greater chance of fracturing women than the abortion itself. For even necessary losses are still losses, deserving our ear and calling for our attention. With great humor and fierce honesty, Kassi Underwood takes us along on her own search for answers and, in the process, helps us to think more deeply about this important subject.

Kassi Underwood's work has been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic online, The Rumpus, and Refinery29. She holds an MFA in literary nonfiction from Columbia University, where she taught on the faculty of the Undergraduate Writing Program. In 2012, she won Exhale's Pro-Voice Storyteller Award in recognition of her personal essays on abortion; in 2013, she traveled across the United States, sharing her journey after abortion in an effort to bring peace to the abortion war. Described by audiences as "part-storyteller, part-public speaker, and part performance artist," Kassi gives talks on the spirituality of abortion, addiction recovery, personal transformation, and social justice nationwide. She has addressed Christian churches and liberal arts colleges, shared a stage with standup comedians Amy Schumer and Sarah Silverman, and appeared as a guest on MSNBC and HuffPost Live. She lives with her husband in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she is a student at Harvard Divinity School and cohost of the podcast, Spiritually Blonde.