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Grief can feel like you’ve been dropped into an alien landscape where the smallest routines no longer make sense and the future stops looking familiar. I sit down with applied philosopher and grief studies pioneer Thomas Attig to talk about why that disorientation is not a malfunction. It’s what love does to a life, and it’s why grieving is less about “getting over it” and more about relearning the world after loss.

We dig into the difference between reactions and responses in bereavement. Yes, sorrow hits hard, but Thomas argues that grief also includes agency: how we meet the changed facts of family, work, identity, and daily life. Along the way, he shares the teaching stories that shaped his work in death education and grief counseling, including what people actually need from us when they’re mourning and why platitudes can land like harm.

We also explore continuing bonds and the heart of grief: moving from loving someone who is physically present to continuing to love them after they die. We talk spirituality in a grounded way, including remembrance practices, speaking a loved one’s name, and the soul and spirit language Thomas developed over decades of writing. He closes with a powerful “fragile humanity, handle with care” reflection that asks whether it’s okay to be small, impermanent, mortal, uncertain, and sometimes suffering.

If you want to go deeper, Thomas’ new collection, Seeking Wisdom in Death’s Shadows, is available through Oxford University Press, and listeners can use a discount code shared in our conversation. Subscribe, share this with someone who’s carrying loss, and leave a review so more people can find honest grief support.

Thomas Truths / Key Wisdom from the End

1. Life is centrally a grieving process: letting go of what you cannot hold onto, and carrying forward what you can.
2. Grief is not only pain. It can also bring wisdom, gratitude, growth, love, and a deeper sense of being alive.
3. We are fragile humans, and that fragility has to be handled with care.
4. It is a privilege to be alive, even with suffering, uncertainty, impermanence, and loss.
5. We are made with the capacity to grow, learn, recover, and become one another’s teachers.

Reflection / Journaling Questions from Thomas

• Is being small and insignificant in the great scheme of things okay?
• Is impermanence okay?
• Is mortality, or dying, okay?
• Is suffering okay?
• Is not knowing, or uncertainty, okay?

Seeking Wisdom in Death’s Shadows

Book Discount Code

AUFLY30

It gives listeners 30% off Seeking Wisdom in Death’s Shadows through Oxford University Press.

Website

griefsheart.com

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You can feel “fine” on the outside and still be white-knuckling your way through life. That’s the quiet tension Elena Box is unpacking as Ode to Joy shifts into a new season on the art of letting go, a practice she also calls “practicing death while fully alive.”

We talk about why resilience isn’t only about staying strong. Sometimes strength is releasing what was never yours to control in the first place. From Elena’s work as a shamanic practitioner and death doula, a pattern keeps repeating: the things we struggle to let go of at the end of life are often the same things we cling to every day in relationships, motherhood, identity, and the stories we tell about who we’re supposed to be. That’s where the real work begins, not with willpower, but with honesty.

Then we get practical. Control isn’t the problem, it’s the strategy. So what are you protecting yourself from feeling? Elena names the emotional roots beneath avoidance grief, uncertainty, powerlessness, rejection, shame, loneliness and not being chosen and shares a vulnerable story about returning to acting through a community theater audition. The twist is the takeaway: the goal isn’t to be chosen, it’s to choose joy. You’ll also learn a simple 30-second nervous system friendly practice to help you pause, name what you feel, and stay with it long enough for your life to open back up.

If this resonates, subscribe, share the episode with a friend who’s been holding it all together, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What feeling are you most resistant to experiencing right now?

• You are not avoiding your life—you are avoiding a feeling within it
• Control is not your problem—it is your protection
• The way you practice feeling now is the way you will meet life later

• What feeling am I most resistant to experiencing right now?
• When that feeling starts to arise, what do I do instead?
• What am I afraid would happen if I fully felt it?
• Where in my body do I notice this feeling?
• What would it look like to stay with it for just 30 seconds longer?

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Buy your copy of Elena's book "Grieve Outside the Box"
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You can be disciplined, capable, and doing “all the right things” and still feel wrung out. That’s the tell. I’m pulling apart the illusion of control and the sneaky way it turns love into pressure, ambition into tension, and responsibility into burnout. I’m coming to you raw: a sick week, a house full of termites, financial stress, and a long hospital day supporting my mom through heart surgery. Life is not neatly packaged, and neither is resilience.

We talk about the belief that keeps so many of us stuck: if I just do it better, market it better, plan it better, then the outcome will finally be safe. I share what it’s like to realize people still don’t know about work you’ve poured your soul into and how that can trigger the urge to control the narrative. From there, we move into humility, not as making yourself small, but as releasing the need to orchestrate everything and letting your life be lived through you. We ground it in simple, embodied practices, from noticing tension in the body to practicing letting go in everyday choices.

Because death is always the sharpest teacher, we also go there. As a death doula, I explain why control doesn’t just exhaust us in life, it can make death harder too. I offer three core truths, plus journaling prompts to help you loosen your grip, build trust, and find your way back to joy even when you can’t know what happens next. If this lands, subscribe, share it with someone who’s carrying too much, and leave a review with a few stars so more people can find the show.

THREE ELENA TRUTHS

• You are not exhausted from doing too much—you are exhausted from trying to control too much
• The work is not to master life, but to meet it as it unfolds
• The way you practice letting go now is the way you will meet death later

JOURNALING PROMPTS

• Where in my life am I trying to control an outcome instead of meeting what is actually here?
• What am I afraid would happen if I truly let go in one area of my life?
• Where is life asking me to trust instead of force?
• What does “support” actually look like for me right now—am I allowing it?
• If I knew I could not control the outcome, how would I choose to show up differently this week?

A Two-Day Immersion into Death, Devotion & Conscious Living

July 25–26

Beyond the Veil Festival is not a typical gathering—it is a guided passage into that space.

A two-day immersive experience devoted to exploring death not as something to fear, but as a powerful teacher for how to live.

Support the show

Buy your copy of Elena's book "Grieve Outside the Box"
Follow on IG @elenabox