In this deeply moving and unexpectedly warm conversation, Blair and Alana sit down with Emmy-nominated television producer and ghostwriter Samantha Rose to talk about grief, suicide loss, creativity, and the complicated ways we stay connected to the people we love after they die.

Samantha opens up about writing her award-winning memoir, Giving Up the Ghost, which chronicles the loss of her mother to suicide and the surreal, tender experience of channeling her mother’s voice while writing the book. What started as a way to survive grief became a path to reclaiming her own voice after years of helping others tell their stories.

Together, the three explore the strange overlaps between grief and creativity, the pressure to “do grief correctly” (spoiler: there is no correct), and the quiet magic that shows up when we give ourselves permission to listen.

Yes, they also talk about signs from beyond, vivid dreams, spiritual tattoos, ghostwriting secrets, and that unforgettable moment they all met at a grief conference involving a sound bath and a choking incident. Because grief is heavy, but laughter still finds a way in.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

1. What it’s like to write a memoir after losing a parent to suicide
2. How channeling a loved one’s voice can be healing, grounding, and terrifying
3. The complicated identity shift that happens when your parent dies
4. The emotional intimacy of ghostwriting and why it mirrors grief work
5. Vivid dreams, spiritual experiences, and staying connected after loss
6. Gentle, honest advice for anyone grieving a parent lost to suicide

This episode holds space for the complexity of suicide grief with care, honesty, and compassion. If this topic feels tender for you, please listen gently and take breaks as needed.

If this episode resonated, share it with someone who needs permission to grieve out loud, write it out, or trust the voice that’s been quietly waiting inside them.

Grief changes us. Stories help us survive it. And sometimes, giving up the ghost is exactly how we find ourselves again.

Sponsorship opportunities: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15oZsxAigvb6e4wbAmvW_El_1_laeyK4shMY1md6zVWI/edit?usp=sharing

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About the Guest:

Samantha Rose is an Emmy award-winning television producer and a New York Times, USA Today, and internationally bestselling ghostwriter of nearly twenty titles, some that have been selected as Reese’s Book Club and Target Bookmarked Picks and featured in the Wall Street Journal, Oprah.com and Harper’s Bazaar. She is the principal of Yellow Sky Media, an editorial agency in Petaluma, California, where she lives with her son. Her newest release, Giving Up the Ghost, was awarded “Best Memoir” at the 2025 San Francisco Book Festival, and is her first book written under her own name.

Links:

In this deeply human and refreshingly unfiltered episode of RESILIENT A.F., Blair and Jessica sit down for a conversation that refuses to whisper about grief. They talk openly about miscarriage, mental health, entrepreneurship, and the quiet weight women are expected to carry without complaint.

This episode is not about tidy healing arcs or silver linings. It is about naming what hurts, breaking cycles of silence, and learning how resilience actually looks in real life, messy, nonlinear, and deeply embodied.

Jessica shares her background as an author and reproductive health advocate, including her work with the I Had a Miscarriage campaign, which aims to dismantle shame and stigma around pregnancy loss. Blair reflects on her own layered grief journey, including miscarriage, multiple family losses, caregiving, and navigating ongoing medical uncertainty with her husband.

Together, they explore how grief intersects with ambition, identity, hormones, partnership, and purpose, and why these conversations belong in the mainstream, not the margins.

Blair and Jessica discuss their shared experiences with miscarriage and the emotional aftermath that so often goes unspoken. They explore why silence compounds grief and how storytelling can interrupt shame, stigma, and isolation, especially for women navigating loss while running businesses or leading teams.

The conversation dives into how personal loss collided with professional pressure during the pandemic. Jessica reflects on how unresolved grief shows up in leadership, creativity, and burnout, and why acknowledging pain is not a weakness, it is a survival skill.

Blair opens up about perimenopause, deciding not to have children, and how grief reshapes identity in ways no one prepares you for. Both women discuss how these deeply personal decisions are often judged, misunderstood, or minimized, and why honesty matters.

Blair talks about losing both parents, experimenting with traditional therapy and alternative healing modalities, and developing the Navigating Grief Framework grounded in neuroscience. She also discusses the emotional complexity of supporting her husband Shane after a recent stroke, while living with the very real awareness of mortality.

If you have ever felt like your grief was “too much,” too inconvenient, or too uncomfortable for polite conversation, this episode is for you. It validates the complexity of loss, especially when it overlaps with leadership, caregiving, health challenges, and ambition.

This is a conversation about resilience that does not rush healing, minimize pain, or demand optimism. It meets grief where it actually lives.

If this episode resonated, share it with someone who needs permission to speak honestly about their grief. Subscribe to RESILIENT A.F. with Blair and Alana for more conversations that tell the truth about loss, resilience, and what it actually takes to keep going.

And if you are walking through grief right now: you are not behind, broken, or failing. You are human.

Sponsorship opportunities: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15oZsxAigvb6e4wbAmvW_El_1_laeyK4shMY1md6zVWI/edit?usp=sharing

Subscribe to our Substack: https://theglobalresilienceproject.substack.com/

Buy our books: https://theglobalresilienceproject.com/books/

About the Guest:

Jessica Zucker is a Los Angeles-based psychologist specializing in reproductive health and

In this deeply grounding episode, Blair Kaplan Venables sits down with Alexis Hart, a seasoned death care professional with over a decade of experience walking This conversation moves fluidly between the practical and the sacred, touching on death literacy, professional burnout, cultural rituals, and the surprising ways redwoods, coastal air, and honest conversations can regulate the nervous system.

Alexis shares how an early fascination with death, fueled by Forensic Files and a family discovery that her great-grandmother was a mortician, led her into mortuary school and beyond. Her career spans hospice volunteering, medical examiner cases, forensic pathology, and holistic grief care, giving her a rare, full-spectrum view of the end-of-life process.

Blair and Alexis also discuss how death and grief conversations are slowly becoming more normalized in culture, similar to the shift we’ve seen around mental health, yet still deeply underserved.

A recurring theme in this episode is the role of community. Alexis emphasizes that grief was never meant to be carried privately and that conversation and ritual are essential tools for integration, not indulgences.

She shares a powerful story of being present for someone’s final moments and how those experiences forever change how you see time, relationships, and what actually matters.

Blair and Alexis bond over their shared love of nature, from hiking and birdwatching to living near redwoods. Alexis explains the science behind time in green spaces, including reduced cortisol, improved immune function, and nervous system regulation, while also honoring the ineffable, spiritual healing that happens when humans remember they are part of the natural world.

This is grief support without fluorescent lighting or folding chairs.

This episode is a reminder that grief is not a problem to solve, but a process to be witnessed. It invites listeners to rethink how we approach death, how we support one another, and how healing often begins when we slow down enough to listen, to nature, to our bodies, and to each other.

If this episode resonated, share it with someone navigating loss or working in a helping profession. Grief grows lighter when it’s carried together.

And yes, if you’re ever offered a drive through the redwoods after a hard conversation about mortality, say yes. Always say yes.

Sponsorship opportunities: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15oZsxAigvb6e4wbAmvW_El_1_laeyK4shMY1md6zVWI/edit?usp=sharing

Subscribe to our Substack: https://theglobalresilienceproject.substack.com/

Buy our books: https://theglobalresilienceproject.com/books/

About the Guest:

Alexis Hart, a Los Angeles native, is a seasoned death care professional with over a decade of experience across various facets of end-of-life and death care. Her extensive background spans mortuary and cemetery services, medical examiner, hospice, and forensic pathology, establishing her as a guiding light during families' darkest moments. She is currently the Chief Healing Officer at Prism Memorial.

Passionate about nature, Alexis seamlessly integrates its healing power into her work, enhancing the support she provides to those in need. She blends ritual, creativity, and compassion to craft meaningful, inclusive spaces where grief is honored as both personal and collective, sacred and transformative.

With a deep commitment to inclusivity and healing justice, she helps shape spaces where all stories are honored, and grief becomes a...