There are some losses that divide our lives into a before and an after.

The person is gone, but the love isn’t. And somehow, we’re left learning how to live in a world that kept moving when ours stopped.

In this deeply personal conversation, I sit down with writer Stefanie Joseph, whose sister Jen’s death changed the way she understood grief, love, presence, and what it means to truly be alive. Stefanie is currently writing her memoir, No Words Were Spoken Yet So Much Was Said, an exploration of the lessons death has taught her and the relationships that continue beyond physical loss.

Stefanie and I found each other through a podcast, only to later discover how closely our stories mirrored one another. Within months of each other, we had both lost the person we considered our person: her sister Jen and my best friend Jessi.

We talk about those final weeks of Jen’s life, the hummingbird that became her unmistakable sign, and what it meant for Stefanie to stay fully present with her sister as she was dying. We explore the signs and synchronicities that can keep us connected to the people we love, and the stillness grief asks of us when everything inside wants to run from the pain. Pasted text

We also talk about what grief begins to reveal when we allow ourselves to actually feel it.

The ways we numb. The ways we hide. The identities and survival patterns we’ve carried for years. The relationships that change. The thousand smaller deaths that can follow the first one. And, slowly, the return to ourselves. Pasted text

Stefanie says grief is our capacity to love.

I believe grief can become a portal.

This conversation lives somewhere between those two truths: in the love that remains, the presence death can awaken in us, and the question of how we continue living when someone we love is no longer physically here.

This is Part One of The Grief That Breaks Us Open.

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