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Content note: This episode discusses a mass shooting and gun violence. Please listen with care.

Losing a child is the loss no one is ever ready for, and losing her to a mass shooting in the safest city in America is something most people can’t even picture. In this episode, I sit down with bereaved father Arik Housley, who lost his 18-year-old daughter Alaina in the 2018 Borderline Bar and Grill shooting in Thousand Oaks, California.

In this episode, we talk about:
✨ Arik’s story of losing his daughter Alaina
✨ Why Arik encourages people not to go down the dark road of “why” after a sudden, violent loss
✨ The surreal first days after loss
✨ Why Arik believes our surviving children are more resilient than we give them credit for
✨ How a years-long legal battle over privacy complicates the grieving process
✨ How each person in the same family can grieve the same loss in completely different ways
✨ How grief humor has kept Arik, his wife, and their son connected
✨ How to give people grace when they say the wrong thing about your loss
✨ What to say to someone who is grieving
✨ How forgiveness can be a way to stop carrying the weight of what happened
✨ The story behind Arik’s memoir, Always November
✨ How Alaina’s Voice Foundation provides free mental health services to victims of violence
✨ Finding comfort in signs and symbols

If you’ve lost a child, if you’re supporting someone who has, or if you’re simply tired of grief advice that doesn’t sound like real life, I hope this conversation makes you feel a little less alone.

Connect with Arik at https://arikhousley.com/

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In this episode, I sit down with psychic medium and medical intuitive Julie Ryan, a businesswoman and inventor of surgical devices who learned mediumship and now teaches it.

Julie breaks down how she believes every one of us is already intuitive and how to start connecting with your loved ones in spirit. She also explains how soul contracts and free will can both be true, and what she sees when someone is transitioning, including who shows up first.

We talk about:
✨ How to communicate with deceased loved ones using Julie's "attention, intention" method, and why she believes you don't need a medium to start
✨ What a past life scan is and how Julie uses it to understand what's happening in your life right now
✨ What Julie says to skeptics who think talking to spirit is nuts!
✨ Soul contracts vs. free will
✨ Why Julie believes everyone in our lives is a soulmate, and why she says spirit sees every experience as neutral
✨ The 12 phases of transition from her book Angelic Attendants
✨ Who Julie says shows up first when we die, and why it's always the maternal line
✨ How pets and animals show up at the end of life
✨ Why Julie says you may be "tuned to the wrong channel" when you're grieving, and how to ask for signs
✨ How to invite your loved ones into your dreams
✨ How Julie's view of death changed after watching her own mom transition

If you make it all the way to the end, I truly believe you found this episode for a reason, and maybe your loved ones led you here today. 🫶🏼

Connect with Julie:

• Website: https://askjulieryan.com/
• Social media: @AskJulieRyan
• Free copy of Angelic Attendants: https://askjulieryan.com/request-ebook/

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🔗 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lifewithgriefpodcast/
🔗 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/losses.become.gains
🔗 Website: https://lossesbecomegains.com/
💌 Letters of Light: https://lossesbecomegains.com/letters
✍🏼 Life Beyond Grief Substack: https://taraaccardo.substack.com/
📖 Shop the LBG Daily Journal: https://lossesbecomegains.com/journal
🎙️ Support the podcast: https://buymeacoffee.com/lifewithgriefpodcast

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 purposes. No other use, including—without limitation—reproduction, retransmission or editing of this Podcast may be made without the prior written permission of Tara Accardo, which may be requeste...

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Have you ever looked around at the people who are supposed to be grieving right alongside you and felt like you're on a completely different planet? Maybe they seem "fine" while you're barely holding it together. Or, maybe you're moving through it while they still seem stuck, and you feel guilty for that, too.

In this episode, I'm talking about the isolating experience of grieving differently than your partner, siblings, parents, or friends, even when you're grieving the same loss. This can happen with the death of a loved one, a divorce, estrangement, infertility, the loss of a friendship or career, or any kind of loss under the sun.

In this episode, I cover:
✨ Why grieving "out of sync" with the people around you doesn't mean something is wrong with you
✨ The real reasons we all grieve differently
✨ What this disconnect does to us emotionally
✨ Three things you can do to feel less alone
✨ How my own experience grieving my parents' deaths differently than my husband's
✨ A gentle permission slip for navigating the holidays when grief styles collide around the table

If you've ever wondered why you're grieving "too fast" or "too slow" compared to someone else, or felt like you have to hide parts of your grief to keep the peace, this episode is for you. And if it speaks to you, I'd love for you to share it with someone who might be grieving a little differently than you, and could use the reminder that there's no wrong way to do this.

Episode mentioned: Understanding Grieving Styles (ep. 218) | https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/218-what-kind-of-griever-are-you-understanding-your/id1688812587?i=1000768376703

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Welcome to a special bonus minisode! This 5-Minute Grief Chat (usually exclusively on YouTube) is all about the second year of loss.

Ever feel like your grief got harder in year two instead of easier? You're not imagining it, and that is a VERY real thing in grief. In this 5-Minute Grief Talk, I'm breaking down why the second year of loss can hit differently than the first, and why that's actually a normal, honest part of the healing process.

✨ Why year one runs on adrenaline and shock (and why that fades)
✨ The loneliness that creeps in once everyone else has "moved on"
✨ The identity question that shows up in year two: who am I now?
✨ Why the guilt around "still grieving this hard" isn't a red flag
✨ What the second year is actually asking of you

If you're in your second year of grief and wondering why this feels harder than you expected, this one's for you.

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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/
💌 Letters of Light: https://lossesbecomegains.com/letters
✍🏼 Life Beyond Grief Substack: https://taraaccardo.substack.com/
📖 Shop the LBG Daily Journal: https://lossesbecomegains.com/journal
🎙️ Support the podcast: https://buymeacoffee.com/lifewithgriefpodcast

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 purposes. No other use, including—without limitation—reproduction, retransmission or editing of this Podcast may be made without the prior written permission of Tara Accardo, which may be requeste...

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"You can't be sad forever." A professor said that to Shelby two months after her mom died, and I'm still not over it on her behalf.

Whether you're the one grieving or the one trying to support someone who is, the words we use can make a person feel seen or completely unseen in a split second. In this episode of Life With Grief, I'm sitting down with grief coach, author, and podcaster Shelby Forsythia to talk about what to say (and what to skip) when someone is grieving, how to talk to yourself with more compassion, and the three simple phrases from her new book, "Of Course I'm Here Right Now".

We also get into Shelby's own story of stacked losses, the unexpected moment that finally cracked her grief open, and the three permissions to grieve from her book Permission to Grieve.

In this episode, we dig into:
✨ Shelby's story of cumulative loss
✨ What did (and didn't) help her cope back then
✨ "The Day of the Stolen Wallet": the lightning-bolt moment that finally let Shelby grieve her mom
✨ The three permissions to grieve
✨ Why "losses become gains" doesn't have to mean toxic positivity, and why grief is a creative act
✨ The three stories almost every griever tells themselves
✨ What to say to someone who is grieving instead of platitudes
✨ Why cracking a window beats an "Extreme Home Makeover" when you're supporting a grieving friend
✨ How to rewrite hopeless thoughts

Press play, then send this one to the person in your life who keeps saying the wrong thing (or nothing at all).

Connect with Shelby:

• https://www.shelbyforsythia.com/
• https://www.instagram.com/shelbyforsythia/
• https://www.shelbyforsythia.com/grief-grower-podcast
• https://www.shelbyforsythia.com/of-course-im-here-right-now

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

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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/
💌 Letters of Light: https://lossesbecomegains.com/letters
✍🏼 Life Beyond Grief Substack: https://taraaccardo.substack.com/
📖 Shop the LBG Daily Journal: https://lossesbecomegains.com/journal
🎙️ Support the podcast: https://buymeacoffee.com/lifewithgriefpodcast

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 purposes. No other use, including—without limitation—reproduction, retransmission or editing of this Podcast may be made without the prior written permission of Tara Accardo, which may be requeste...

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Grief has a sound. Or more accurately, it has an absence of sound... and that silence after loss is a completely different kind of quiet than anything you've known before.

In this episode, I'm getting honest about why the silence after loss feels so deafening, why it can bring up some of our darker and scarier thoughts, and why—as uncomfortable as it is—learning to sit with it is actually one of the most important things we can do for our healing.

I'm pulling from my own experience losing my mom and dad six months apart, and why I've come to see it as one of the strangest, most twisted gifts of this whole grief journey. Plus, I'm giving you a few gentle tools to help you start sitting with your own silence instead of running from it.

We also talk about:
✨ Why silence after loss isn't just "quiet", it's a deafening absence of the person (or pet) who used to fill that space
✨ How losing my parents six months apart taught me two completely different versions of this silence
✨ Why our thoughts can get dark and scary in that silence, and why that's actually a normal part of grief
✨ The surprising gift of learning to hear your own voice again after losing the people you always went to first
✨ Why avoiding the silence often makes it louder, and how to start building a relationship with it instead
✨ My four go-to tools for sitting with the silence
✨ The balloon analogy that changed how I think about letting grief out little by little instead of all at once

If the silence in your own home or your own head has been feeling deafening lately, I hope this gives you some language for it and a few small ways to start easing into it instead of running from it.

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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/
💌 Letters of Light: https://lossesbecomegains.com/letters
✍🏼 Life Beyond Grief Substack: https://taraaccardo.substack.com/
📖 Shop the LBG Daily Journal: https://lossesbecomegains.com/journal
🎙️ Support the podcast: https://buymeacoffee.com/lifewithgriefpodcast

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 purposes. No other use, including—without limitation—reproduction, retransmission or editing of this Podcast may be made without the prior written permission of Tara Accardo, which may be requeste...

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What do you do when loving your baby means having to say goodbye to him before he's even born?

In this episode I sit down with Rosanna Brown, who takes us inside one of the most misunderstood and least-talked-about kinds of loss there is: TFMR, termination for medical reasons. At her 20-week scan, Rosanna and her husband learned their son William had a condition that meant he would never survive outside the womb, and in the space of 24 hours, they were faced with a choice no parent should ever have to make.

Rosanna is sharing all of it with us today, the diagnosis, the decision, the days she spent with William after, and the grief, guilt, and judgment that still live alongside her love for him.

✨ How a routine 20-week "gender scan" turned into the day Rosanna says she died right along with the version of herself she used to be
✨ William's diagnosis, CHAOS syndrome and hydrops fetalis, and the impossible choice Rosanna and her husband were given
✨ The complicated, guilt-soaked relief that comes with ending your child's suffering
✨ Rebuilding an identity after a loss like this, and why Rosanna doesn't want the old version of herself back
✨ The friendships that fell away, and the unexpected people who showed up for her instead
✨ Grieving differently than her husband did, and what that taught her about holding space for someone else's version of grief
✨ The legal and political reality surrounding TFMR, and how it adds a layer of judgment to an already devastating loss
✨ Her book, The Silence of TFMR, why she wrote it, and why she hopes it ends up in the hands of every parent facing this diagnosis

If you've ever had to make a choice no one should have to make, or you love someone who has, I hope this conversation helps you feel a little less alone in it.

Connect with Rosanna

• https://watkinspublishinglinks.com/the-silence-of-tfmr-landing-page
• https://www.instagram.com/thesilenceof_tfmr/

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