Drop me a message or voice note!

I don't think I've had a conversation on this podcast that captures the sheer whiplash of compounded loss quite like this one. My guest today is Emilie Eiden—flight attendant, grief and trauma-informed coach, and the heart behind the Instagram community Emily in Transit—and her story is one of those that reminds you grief doesn't wait its turn.

Emilie spent most of her twenties caring for her father as he lived with multiple sclerosis and cancer, watching him lose mobility year after year until he passed away when she was 26. Just when you think that's the whole story, she takes us into her thirties: a marriage that ended in divorce after eight years, and then—four months later—the unexpected death of her ex-husband.

In this episode, we cover:

✨ What anticipatory grief actually feels like when you're watching a parent decline for over a decade
✨ Why losing "the house" that held every holiday and celebration can feel like its own separate grief
✨ The complicated, often invalidated grief of divorce
✨ What it's like to grieve an ex-spouse after divorce
✨ How walking, therapy, journaling, and travel became Emilie's tools for processing compounded grief
✨ The difference between triggers and glimmers
✨ How a string of "failures" (six failed nursing board exams) led Emilie to the career and life she has now
✨ Why alone time and community aren't opposites, and how both showed up in her healing
✨ Emilie's grief and trauma-informed coaching certification and what's next for her

If you're navigating a loss that doesn't fit neatly into one category—a divorce, a death, or both at once—I hope this conversation reminds you that you're allowed to hold it all, and that there is life waiting for you on the other side.

Connect with Emilie:

• https://www.instagram.com/emilieintransit/

Learn more about Letters of Light 💌✨ https://lossesbecomegains.com/letters

Support the show

Letters of Light 💌✨ https://lossesbecomegains.com/letters

Support the podcast: https://buymeacoffee.com/lifewithgriefpodcast

📖 Life Beyond Grief Substack: https://taraaccardo.substack.com/

Connect with me:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lossesbecomegains/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lifewithgriefpodcast/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/losses.become.gains
• Website: https://lossesbecomegains.com/
• Work with me one-on-one: https://lossesbecomegains.com/work-with-tara
• Shop the LBG Daily Journal: https://lossesbecomegains.com/journal
  
  

By accessing this Podcast, I acknowledge that the entire contents are the property of Tara Accardo, or used by Tara Accardo with permission. Except as otherwise provided herein, users of this Podcast may save and use information contained in the Podcast only for personal or other non-commercial, educational purpo...

Drop me a message or voice note!

Can grief actually make you more magnetic? I know that might sound like a strange question—maybe even a little "woo woo"—but stick with me on this one.

This episode was sparked by an afternoon walk with my daughter, an episode of Sahara Rose's Higher Self podcast, and my word of the year: magnetic. As I listened to her talk about what makes a person magnetic—present, authentic, unbothered by the small stuff—I couldn't stop thinking about how much of that we, as grievers, already have access to. Not despite our loss, but because of it.

In this conversation, I'm walking you through how to alchemize your grief into magnetism, using six perspective shifts I've learned in the six years since losing both of my parents.

✨ How losing people teaches us to stop half-listening
✨ Why our sharpened noticingis a form of magnetism, not just leftover hypervigilance
✨ How dropping the performance of "I'm fine" gives other people permission to be honest too
✨ Why our forced familiarity with discomfort becomes a superpower others can lean on
✨ How grief teaches us to stop over-explaining our boundaries
✨ Why we become truth-tellers about what actually matters
✨ How holding joy and grief at the same time makes us more compelling, not more complicated
✨ Why our own brokenness becomes the thing that lets us meet other people's pain without flinching
✨ How releasing the need to be understood by everyone becomes its own kind of ease
✨ Why what we've survived becomes the bedrock of quiet, bone-deep self-trust

Episode with J.S. Park: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/223-11-years-at-a-trauma-center-a-hospital/id1688812587?i=1000772192456

Episode with Darnell Lamont Walker: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/139-facing-death-honoring-legacy-living-fully-with/id1688812587?i=1000720195925

Learn more about Letters of Light 💌✨ https://lossesbecomegains.com/letters

Support the show

Letters of Light 💌✨ https://lossesbecomegains.com/letters

Support the podcast: https://buymeacoffee.com/lifewithgriefpodcast

📖 Life Beyond Grief Substack: https://taraaccardo.substack.com/

Connect with me:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lossesbecomegains/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lifewithgriefpodcast/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/losses.become.gains
• Website: https://lossesbecomegains.com/
• Work with me one-on-one: https://lossesbecomegains.com/work-with-tara
• Shop the LBG Daily Journal: https://lossesbecomegains.com/journal
  
  

By accessing this Podcast, I acknowledge that the entire contents are the property of Tara Accardo, or used by Tara Accardo with permission. Except as otherwise provided herein, users of this Podcast may save and use information contained in the Podcast only for personal or other non-commercial, educational purpo...

Drop me a message or voice note!

I sit down with poet, therapist, and author Sara Rian to talk about the day her world changed. Sara's mom, Susan, died by suicide in July 2018 when Sara was just 28, and this conversation goes straight into the parts of grief after suicide loss that so many of us are afraid to say out loud.

We talk about what it's really like in those first immobilizing weeks. The police calls, the organ donation decision, planning a funeral while still in shock, and more.

Sara opens up about the anger she felt, not at her mom, but at a world that felt unsafe, and the guilt that lingered long after. She also shares how her mother's earlier suicide attempts throughout her childhood shaped an anxious attachment and a belief that her mom simply "couldn't" die.

This episode is also a love letter to healing tools that actually work. Sara talks about what saved her life: therapy, suicide-loss support groups, community, and writing "Insta poetry" starting just days after her mom died. She's since written seven books. We also get into how becoming a mom herself unlocked a whole new layer of grief she wasn't expecting.

✨ Why the early days after a suicide loss can feel physically immobilizing
✨ Navigating police involvement, organ donation calls, and funeral planning in real time
✨ Why Sara's anger was directed at the world, not her mother
✨ How childhood exposure to suicide attempts shapes anxious attachment
✨ The lifesaving role of therapy, support groups, and community after suicide loss
✨ How writing poetry within days of loss became a form of survival
✨ Becoming a mother without her own mom, and the grief that surfaced

If you've lost someone to suicide, or you love someone who has, this episode will help you feel less alone in it.

Connect with Sara:
🔗 https://www.sararianbooks.com/
🔗 https://www.instagram.com/sara_rian_books/

Learn more about Letters of Light 💌✨ https://lossesbecomegains.com/letters

Support the show

Letters of Light 💌✨ https://lossesbecomegains.com/letters

Support the podcast: https://buymeacoffee.com/lifewithgriefpodcast

📖 Life Beyond Grief Substack: https://taraaccardo.substack.com/

Connect with me:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lossesbecomegains/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lifewithgriefpodcast/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/losses.become.gains
• Website: https://lossesbecomegains.com/
• Work with me one-on-one: https://lossesbecomegains.com/work-with-tara
• Shop the LBG Daily Journal: https://lossesbecomegains.com/journal
  
  

By accessing this Podcast, I acknowledge that the entire contents are the property of Tara Accardo, or used by Tara Accardo with permission. Except as otherwise provided herein, users of this Podcast may save and use information contained in the Podcast only for personal or other non-commercial, educational purpo...