The Grief Between a Mother and Her Child

About this episode:
This conversation explores an often-overlooked consequence of intimate partner violence (IPV): the disruption of the mother-child relationship and the profound grief that can follow. Abuse can begin altering this relationship long before the abusive partnership ends — affecting attachment, emotional availability, parenting, trust, and the child's perception of the mother. Even after the abuse ends, the relationship may remain deeply changed and, in some cases, may never be fully repaired. We examine IPV as a family-system injury and sit with the grief of losing the relationship a mother and child once had — or might have had under different circumstances.

About our guest: Michelle Chaney
- Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor (LCPC)
- Certified Associate Counselor–Alcohol and Drug (CAC-AD)
- Certified Clinical Trauma Professional
- Certified Grief-Informed Professional
- Licensed psychotherapist and founder of Healthy Connections Counseling, LLC
- Clinical expertise in trauma, grief and loss, IPV, attachment, and complex relationship dynamics
- Integrative, trauma-responsive approach to emotional well-being across the lifespan

What we discuss:
- IPV as a family-system injury — not only harm to an individual
- How abuse alters the mother-child bond before the partnership even ends
- The impact on attachment, emotional availability, parenting, and trust
- How a child's perception of their mother can be shaped by the abuse
- Why the relationship may remain changed long after the violence stops
- Grieving the relationship that was — and the one that might have been
- Estrangement, deferred dreams, and broken relationships as secondary losses
- Pathways toward understanding, repair, and self-compassion

The many forms of grief explored:
- Anticipatory grief: mourning a loss that is expected or unfolding before it fully arrives
- Disenfranchised grief: grief that isn't openly acknowledged or socially validated
- Acute grief: the intense, immediate wave of loss in its early aftermath
- Profound grief: deep, far-reaching loss that touches identity and daily life
- Prolonged grief: grief that persists intensely over an extended period
- Secondary grief: the ripple losses — relationships, dreams, connection — that follow the primary one

A note for listeners:
This episode includes candid discussion of intimate partner violence, trauma, and grief. Please listen with care for yourself.

Support (U.S.): The National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24/7 — call 1-800-799-7233, text START to 88788, or chat at thehotline.org. If you are in immediate danger, call 911.

Black People Die By Suicide Too

About this episode:
Ms. T-Kea Blackman, MPS, CPRS, RPS, is a nationally recognized, multi-award-winning peer recovery specialist, social entrepreneur, speaker, and author who joins us to discuss the rising rate of suicide in the Black community and the stigma that keeps it hidden. Drawing on her own lived experience of carrying suicidal thoughts since middle school — while excelling academically and personally — she shares how she transformed private pain into public purpose through her nonprofit, Black People Die By Suicide Too.

About our guest Ms. Blackman:
- Nationally recognized, multi-award-winning peer recovery specialist
- Social entrepreneur, speaker, and author
- Graduate of Howard University and Georgetown University
- Currently pursuing her doctorate
- Avid 10K runner and co-founder of a business
- Founder of the nonprofit Black People Die By Suicide Too

What we discuss:
- The rising rate of suicide in the Black community — and why it's under-discussed
- Her lived experience: carrying sadness and ideation since middle school
- Being high-achieving and ambitious while silently struggling
- Navigating her mental health without hospitalization or medication
- How openness broke stigma among her family and peers
- Inside Black People Die By Suicide Too and its support groups
- Why community and peer support save lives
- Balancing healing with ambition — doctorate, running, entrepreneurship

About the nonprofit:
Black People Die By Suicide Too is a nonprofit that holds support groups for people who have attempted suicide, those experiencing suicidal ideation, and anyone carrying these feelings. Its mission is to break stigma and build life-saving community.

A note for listeners:
This episode includes candid discussion of suicide, suicidal ideation, and mental health struggles. Please listen with care for yourself.

Crisis support (U.S.): Call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, 24/7. Online chat: 988lifeline.org. If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 911.

Please follow her Social Media: IG: @t_keablackman

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/t-kea-blackman/

Organization IG: @blackpeoplediebysuicidetoo

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/black-people-die-by-suicide-too/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Black-People-Die-By-Suicide-Too/61560460779550/

When Kimberli, Owner and CEO of So Salsa, LLC, lost her husband to a heart attack at 34, she had a 2 -year-old, a 7-month-old, and a life that no longer looked like the one they had planned together. He was her first love, a devoted father, and in a single day, he was gone.

That was eleven years ago.

Today, she is a single mother of two thriving kids — smart, athletic, kind — raised on the memory of a father they barely got to know, kept alive through pictures, videos, and the stories she refuses to stop telling. She has forged a life with her mother beside her, juggling work, an attempt at going back to school, and a small salsa business that has blossomed.

This is a story about what it means to be the provider AND the safety. To carry grief while carrying a household. To feel anxious about raising good kids in a world that often feels like chaos — and to do it anyway, with a home that is the opposite of that chaos.

This is a story about what happens when you have one good parent.

So Salsa, LLC www.SoSalsa21@gmail.com

Because the answer, it turns out, is quite a lot.