Are We There Yet? : Recent Episodes
Ann Faison
Losing a parent or sibling at a young age is a life-defining event. In bi-weekly episodes, Ann Faison, an artist and grief specialist, and the author of two books that reflect on the grieving process, endeavors to better understand this rarely talked about form of trauma through interviews with adults who experienced grief as teens, parents of teens currently navigating a significant loss, and other experts.
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In this episode, I talk to journalist and author Dan Keoppel about how he centered his role as a father when choosing his treatment for bladder cancer. As a science reporter, he approached his diagnosis with curiosity and extensive research to figure out how to manage his cancer while being the Dad he wanted to be. Dan is so knowledgeable about his disease that he has been able to make the most informed decisions possible regarding his treatment. But his goal is not to "beat" cancer. Instead, Dan's aim is to live as well as possible alongside his disease so that he can enjoy the life he has. This is a deeply moving conversation with someone who looks at death squarely while exercising his curiosity and sense of humor, which is a wonderful way to live.
To find out more about Dan, click here.
To read the piece that made me want to talk to him, click here.
If you would like to support this show, please subscribe to my Substack where you will receive bi-weekly episodes and a bi-weekly newsletter in your inbox. You can also support the show monetarily by becoming a paid subscriber there.
Special thanks to Josephine Wiggs for the song "Time Does Not Bring Relief" from her album "We Fall."
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I had so much fun interviewing Evin Rose Terranova who I met volunteering at Comfort Zone Camp earlier this year. She has been volunteering at the grief camp for kids for several years and has learned a lot from supporting grieving kids. Evin was just eight years old when her father died by suicide and she was lucky enough to have an amazing mother who supported her beautifully with therapy and grief support. But even under those circumstances, grieving the loss of her Dad has been a long journey that challenged her sense of who she was and what she wanted from life. This search landed her in a beautiful career as a self-love and relationship coach. It is clear from listening to Evin that she understands the importance of community and connection when it comes to healing our deepest wounds. What a gift she is to the world and I am so glad to be able to call her my new friend.
You can find Evin on Instagram @EvinRose or her website EvinRoseCoaching.com
If you would like to support this show, please subscribe to my Substack where you will receive bi-weekly episodes and a bi-weekly newsletter in your inbox. You can also support the show monetarily by becoming a paid subscriber there.
Special thanks to Josephine Wiggs for the song "Time Does Not Bring Relief" from her album "We Fall."
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this deeply moving episode which is also packed with useful information, Dr. Lucy Hone shares her unique perspective, expertise, and personal knowledge of resilience. Resilience is a tricky word because it sometimes gets used inappropriately with kids as a way to discount their experience. We've all heard the phrase "kids are resilient" which is often true but is not an excuse to assume they don't need support to recover from a trauma and/or loss. As Dr. Hone explains, kids do better with the right support at home, but can also learn to strengthen their resilience given the tools she writes about in her book "Resilient Grieving." Having lived through the devastating earthquakes in New Zealand in 2011 and then losing her young daughter and two friends in a car accident in 2014, Dr. Hone has direct experience testing the theories of resilience she has focused on throughout her career.
For more information on Dr. Hone click above or here. And to find her book "Resilient Grieving" you can go anywhere you order books or find it here.
If you would like to support this show, please subscribe to my Substack where you will receive bi-weekly episodes and a bi-weekly newsletter in your inbox. You can also support the show monetarily by becoming a paid subscriber there.
Special thanks to Josephine Wiggs for the song "Time Does Not Bring Relief" from her album "We Fall."
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sarah and Ben Satzman are both in their early twenties and were very close to their grandfather Joel Satzman when he died unexpectedly last year. They were able to be with him at the very end of his life and that experience had a huge impact on them. You can hear in their stories about him how much they adored their grandfather and the unique role he played in their lives. He was a great support and strong presence, calling often and showing up to important events throughout their childhoods and they both depended on his special brand of attention. I loved hearing the differences and the similarities between Ben and Sarah's experiences, and it was beautiful to hear how well they supported each other when he died. In the year since that day, Ben and Sarah have both learned a lot about themselves and their grief. Young adults are often my favorite guests and my best teachers, and Sarah and Ben taught me a lot about how family can sometimes be the best support system after a loss.
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Terry Chatkupt is a visual artist whose current show at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, California is about the 2020 lockdown and its effect on his family. This podcast was started, in part, to address some of the reporting on adolescent mental health in the aftermath of the pandemic that was sorely lacking. Stories in mainstream media missed an opportunity to interview young people and instead turned to experts who had little knowledge of childhood grief. So I was excited to do an episode addressing the pandemic from the perspective of one man investigating how it affected his own family while trying to convey his appreciation the privilege of having a safe place to live. Terry is also a teacher, so we talked about what we have observed in our students as well as our families and what it may mean for an entire generation to have missed some crucial parts of their social and emotional development as a result of the isolation we all endured for a time.
https://www.terrychatkupt.com/
If you would like to support this show, please subscribe to my Substack where you will receive bi-weekly episodes and a bi-weekly newsletter in your inbox. You can also support the show monetarily by becoming a paid subscriber there.
Special thanks to Josephine Wiggs for the song "Time Does Not Bring Relief" from her album "We Fall."
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Acclaimed author Sara Zarr has published ten novels for young readers, as well as two books of non-fiction about creativity. She’s a National Book Award finalist and two-time Utah Book Award winner. Her first book, Story of a Girl, was made into a 2017 television movie directed by Kyra Sedgwick. She also hosts the podcast "This Creative Life," all of which you can find on her website below.
I'm a huge fan of Sara's books because she writes about many different forms of loss and does it beautifully, realistically, and honestly without glossing over her characters' struggles. Her latest book, "Kyra, Just for Today" is a follow-up to her previous book, "A Song Called Home," both of which feature young characters living in alcoholic family systems. I love Sara's writing because she takes on kids' hardships while showing us how her characters learn and grow from them. We talked about why she writes about dysfunctional families and the toughest aspects of growing up and why she often gives her characters creative outlets. I appreciate Sara's thoughtful approach to addressing the economic realities of the worlds she creates, and her sharing her motivation and approach to writing about grief from a young person's perspective.
To find out more about Sara:
https://www.sarazarr.com/books
If you enjoy the show please rate and review! You can also find me here @annbfaison on Instagram, or contact me through my website.
Please subscribe to the podcast on whatever platform you use, or on my substack: I'm Listening
Special thanks to Josephine Wiggs for the song "Time Does Not Bring Relief" from her album "We Fall."
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
I'm excited to kick off the second season with another interview with a young adult. In this episode I talk with Léa Greenberg, a junior in college, about losing her mother and maternal grandmother by age fifteen. Her mother and grandmother were both French so Léa also lost a big piece of her French identity. We could have talked for hours so it took a lot of work to edit our conversation to fifty minutes. Léa articulates why it was hard as a teenager to deal with pity from adults and all the other hard lessons of losing her mother at a young age. As usual, when talking to a GenZ guest, I was filled with hope for her and gratitude for our conversation. Léa is amazingly clear about what is most difficult about not having a mother, and how she uses her experience to help others. For an extra fifteen minutes of our conversation, you can listen to the bonus episode.
You can find me here @annbfaison on Instagram, or on my substack, or contact me through my website.
Please subscribe to the podcast on whatever platform you use, or on my substack: I'm Listening
Special thanks to Josephine Wiggs for the song "Time Does Not Bring Relief" from her album "We Fall."
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This is an extra fifteen minutes of my conversation with Léa Greenberg. It won't make much sense if you haven't listened to the full episode but we talk about Harry Potter, holding onto her French identity and what she plans to do for her career.
Please consider subscribing to the podcast on whatever platform you use or on my substack: I'm Listening
Special thanks to Josephine Wiggs for the song "Time Does Not Bring Relief" from her album "We Fall."
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Coming soon! Season two is shaping up nicely and I should be posting the first episode in a couple of weeks. This trailer is about what you can expect from the next season and how my thinking about adolescent grief has expanded and changed.
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I'm so pleased that my daughter Grace Muller was able to come on the show for the last episode of the first season. Grace is an artist and a junior at Bennington College in Vermont, so we sat down to record while she was home for the holidays. It's a more casual, less edited conversation but we went deep into the ways that she understands her relationship to grief and I had no idea where the conversation would go. But it went in very interesting directions from talking about how she responded to loss as a toddler and small child to the difficulty of grieving a romantic partnership as an adult. We got very silly at the beginning and the rest of the conversation maintained that joyful spirit, which was a great way to end the season.
I'm taking time off before the next season to organize my list of guests, so if you would like to be invited as a guest or have ideas for people I might invite on the show please reach out to me. I am always looking for teens and young adults, but anyone who feels they have a perspective on the topic that they would like to share.
You can DM me @annbfaison on Instagram, find me on my substack, or contact me through my website.
Please consider subscribing to the podcast on whatever platform you use or on my substack: I'm Listening
Special thanks to Josephine Wiggs for the song "Time Does Not Bring Relief" from her album "We Fall."
If you would like to support the show you can become a paid subscriber on Substack. Thank you!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week I speak with Elise Gaul, a therapist specializing in grief and loss who works in multiple modalities including EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitizing and Reprocessing) therapy. Elise explains why EMDR works well to address "covert grief," a term she coined for the parts of childhood grief that can profoundly affect a person's life, often without their awareness. Her stints as the executive director of a grief center called Peter's Place and the director of Camp Erin, a bereavement camp for children led us to talk about what parents and caregivers can do to minimize the long-term negative effects of grief on kids. I loved Elise's attitude about grief as a learning process and her curiosity and interest in working with adults to try to unlock some of the negative beliefs that childhood grief can create.
To learn more about Elise and her work please visit her website
To read Elise's fascinating article on Covert Grief that led me to invite her on the show read this blog post
To learn more about EMDR visit APA or EMDRIA
Please take a moment to rate and review the show or leave comments on my Substack "I'm Listening."
Special thanks to Josephine Wiggs for the intro and outro music from her album "We Fall."
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
I'm thrilled to have my son Skops Faison and his friend Sean Dillon on the show to talk about the grief that results from coming out as trans or nonbinary. Skops and Sean are both seniors in high school who came out to their families as trans during the pandemic. There are many parallels in their stories and many contrasts as well. The conversation was wide-ranging in terms of the many losses and gains that come with identifying as gender nonbinary. We talked about losing family, watching parents grieve their expectations of who their kids are, and the different advantages and disadvantages of being identified by others as male versus female. I was fascinated to learn so many things I'd never considered about straddling those different social groups and identities through middle and high school. As always when talking to teenagers or young adults, I feel very optimistic after hearing how articulate and aware they are of what they are going through.
I open the discussion with a reference to the book Lost & Found: A Memoir by Kathryn Schulz
Please take a moment to rate and review the show or leave comments on my Substack "I'm Listening."
Special thanks to Josephine Wiggs for the intro and outro music from her album "We Fall."
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode, I talk with Fran Mason who lost her mother when she was 11 years old. It's interesting how different it was for her than it was for me because she was three years younger than I was when my mom died. Hearing Fran talk about going through early adolescence without her mom highlighted the difference it made to have three more years with mine. We talked about memory and how her perspective on her loss kept shifting as she was growing into adulthood. Fran is writing a book about her experience and shares how that process has helped her understand herself better. I appreciated Fran's perspective on her childhood which she developed through her writing and from rereading the journals she kept at the time. Fran's tendency toward practicality and optimism seems to have contributed to her ability to thrive despite having little emotional support while she was growing up.
You can read more about Fran and her writing on her blog and her substack.
To leave comments, please rate and review on Apple podcasts or visit me on my substack: "I'm Listening."
Special thanks to Josephine Wiggs for the intro and outro music from her album "We Fall."
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Vanessa Fierstadt started a counseling practice called Kintsugi Grief Center that's near me in Pasadena, CA. I wanted to find out what drew her to work with people who are grieving and our conversation was wide-ranging and fun. As Vanessa recounted her earliest losses it was clear that her curiosity about grief both helped her heal and find her calling. I loved Vanessa's take on creativity as a way to help support kids in grief, the importance of conversations about death, as well as her focus on ritual as a critical piece of healing. We talked openly about depression too, which is an important, yet often overlooked layer of grief.
You can find Vanessa on Instagram , Facebook , or LinkedIn or on her website Kintsugi Grief Center
To leave comments please rate and review on Apple podcasts or visit me on my substack: "I'm Listening."
Special thanks to Josephine Wiggs for the intro and outro music, from her album "We Fall."
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
When I started to Interview Peter Rukavina for this episode, I had no idea we were going to be exploring such overarching questions about grief. The story of raising his daughter Olivia after her mother died is extraordinary because of Olivia's intersectionality. Olivia is autistic and came out as trans in the wake of her mother's death, so her experience of grief, and Peter's, were multi-layered and complicated in ways I had never considered previously. Listening to Peter talk about raising Olivia throughout the many years of his wife's illness, I was struck by his clarity and even-handed thinking around grief. He is careful not to make assumptions about Olivia's emotional life and is mindful of the opportunities as well as the challenges that loss and grief have afforded him.
To leave comments please rate and review on Apple podcasts or visit me on my substack: "I'm Listening."
Special thanks to Josephine Wiggs for the intro and outro music, from her album "We Fall."
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This episode took my breath away. Maddie McFadden lost her father Brad to cancer when she was fourteen and she has been through a lot in the four and a half years since then. From dealing with anxiety and depression, being in charge of her younger sibling, rebelling and fighting with her mom, Maddie learned a ton about growing up and taking responsibility for her choices. She talks about her anger and also her compassion for the adults around her who didn't appreciate all the weight she was carrying on her young shoulders. This conversation was deeply meaningful to me, remembering the challenges of losing a parent at fourteen and appreciating the hard work of forgiving myself and those around me for not understanding what I needed. It was profoundly uplifting to talk to someone growing up through some horrible circumstances because her perspective is so clear-eyed and hopeful. You can hear her hard-won faith in herself throughout our talk.
To leave comments please rate and review on Apple podcasts or visit me on my substack: "I'm Listening."
Special thanks to Josephine Wiggs for the intro and outro music, from her album "We Fall."
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This conversation is extraordinary in many ways. Laura Aviva is the only person I've interviewed so far who has lost a sibling, and her story is not what I expected. Laura was 23 when her brother Michael was killed at age 20. They were not teenagers, and Laura articulates how she feels she was already firmly who she was by the time he died. She talks about how her brother Michael was her "sage" and what he taught her about life and death, even before he died. He was not interested in living like other people. He took risks and chased adventures. Laura's unique attitude about her brother's life and the way he chose to live it is a testament to her love for him. I could tell there was a profound and mutual respect between them and what came through in our conversation was how many possible attitudes there are to take when someone you love dies.
To leave comments please rate and review on Apple podcasts or visit me on my substack: "I'm Listening."
Special thanks to Josephine Wiggs for the intro and outro music, from her album "We Fall."
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lynne Hughes is an exceptional example of someone who has tremendous strength and fortitude despite her traumatic childhood. Lynne lost both parents by age twelve and had to move in with extended family, including an uncle who refused to acknowledge her presence, let alone her grief. For Lynne, summer camp was a place to grow and learn to create lasting bonds with friends and have fun doing it. She loved being a camp counselor and grew up wanting to create a space for grieving kids to discover tools to manage their grief, strengthen their bonds with their deceased family members, and overcome the fears and insecurities that often result from the trauma of early loss. After hearing Lynne talk about all the free programs that Comfort Zone Camp offers, I was convinced that any child who has lost a family member would benefit from them and I signed up to volunteer.
To find out more, visit Comfort Zone Camp's website.
To leave comments please rate and review on Apple podcasts or visit me on my substack: "I'm Listening."
Special thanks to Josephine Wiggs for the intro and outro music, from her album "We Fall."
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hope Edelman is my guest this week and I couldn't be more excited to share our conversation. Hope is the leading expert on historical loss for women who lost their mothers at a young age. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Motherless Daughters and many other books on grief and loss. She now has a thriving business as a grief and loss coach, and writing instructor, who helps women-identified people to reframe their early losses in a way that helps them heal and repair the lost connection to their mothers. Hope brings years of research to her latest book The Aftergrief, which I found so validating and fascinating to read. Her deep knowledge and decades of working with people who suffered an early traumatic loss make her a perfect guest for my show.
You can find Hope on Instagram, Facebook, and on her website, HopeEdelman.com
To leave comments please rate and review on Apple podcasts or visit me on my substack: "I'm Listening."
Intro and outro music by Josephine Wiggs from her Album "We Fall."
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Charlotte Maya's memoir Sushi Tuesdays chronicles the many years she navigated her grief and that of her kids and stepkids after her husband Sam died by suicide. Charlotte unexpectedly found love again with a widower whose wife had recently died. So when they married they became a family of six grieving individuals, trying to find love and stability all under one roof. In a way, this was like living in a peer support group, but it also had many challenges. Charlotte talks about how her faith was challenged after Sam died but ultimately she found it helped the whole family find stability and comfort in church. Watching four grieving kids grow up has given Charlotte a wide perspective on the different ways adolescent grief shows up. I was so moved by our conversation and by how she and her husband Tim, like other parents I've interviewed, have done a great job of making space for their kids to grieve openly and honestly.
To learn more visit Charlotte's website
To leave comments please rate and review on Apple podcasts or visit me on my substack: "I'm Listening."
Intro and outro music by Josephine Wiggs from her Album "We Fall."
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week I talk to author, screenwriter, essayist, and producer Emily Ziff Griffin about her latest project, her recent New Yorker essay, and her 2017 novel, all of which have something to do with her father's death from AIDS when she was fourteen. I have written extensively about losing my mother at that age but I don't know too many writers who have chosen to write about this deeply complex subject from personal experience. So it was pure pleasure to delve into that experience with Emily, someone who has written about the positive outcomes and other strengths that the experience of losing her father gave her. We discuss how hard it is to get comfortable talking about grief and how writing about it got Emily to the point of owning the experience in new ways. We also talk about the ways kids can seem fine when they're not, and how that experience informs her parenting.
To learn more visit Emily's website https://emilyziffgriffin.com/
To leave comments please rate and review on Apple podcasts or visit me on my substack: "I'm Listening."
Intro and outro music by Josephine Wiggs from her Album "We Fall."
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
On this week's episode, I talk to Lauren Schneider, the clinical director of child and adolescent programs at Our House, the only grief support center in Los Angeles, serving the second-largest school district in the country. Lauren has been doing this work for over 20 years and she understands adolescent grief better than anyone. We talked about grief as it relates to child development, therapy versus grief support, and why peer support is the absolute best thing for kids who've lost someone close to them. She also shares insights into how we are only now beginning to see the effects of Covid on kids. I learned a tremendous amount from this conversation and it shifted a few of my ideas about how to best support kids today.
To leave comments please rate and review on Apple podcasts or visit me on my substack: "I'm Listening."
Intro and outro music by Josephine Wiggs from her Album "We Fall."
This week health reporter and author Rachel Zimmerman shares her story of raising two young daughters after her high-achieving husband suddenly died. She had no preparation for how to deal with telling her kids what happened but she instinctively kicked into gear and got the advice she needed. This is an amazing story of strength and love in the aftermath of a death no one saw coming. Meanwhile, her kids are amazing examples of how grief can strengthen relationships and grow into something beautiful. I loved listening to Rachel recount how she prioritized her kids and how that has paid off.
For updates on Rachel's upcoming memoir visit
https://www.rachelzimmerman.net/
To leave comments please rate and review on Apple podcasts or visit me on my substack: "I'm Listening."
Intro and outro music by Josephine Wiggs from her Album "We Fall."
Parents, there's a bit of profanity in this one but it's a great episode. My friend Mark Lightcap was a young punk when his best friend and bandmate was diagnosed with cancer. Listening to Mark share this amazing, often funny story, I was struck that losing a friend is less destabilizing than losing a family member and allows grief to feel more liberating in some ways. Losing his friend made Mark aware of death and respectful of the immediate aftermath as a unique opportunity for spiritual and intellectual growth. It's a great story. And listen all the way to the end if you like early punk as defined by suburban kids in the early 80s.
Here's a clip of Mark playing music during Covid if you're interested: Mark Lightcap performs You've Been Inside by Acetone
If you'd like to comment on the episode, you can do so here: "I'm Listening."
Intro and outro music by Josephine Wiggs from her Album "We Fall."
Bonus music by Chocolate Crankshaft
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"Kids make you better," Heather said, talking about how much she's learned from parenting her kids after their father died. Heather's husband died a year before the pandemic hit, so she was in survival mode, trying to support her family, be there for her kids and deal with all the uncertainty of Covid. Fear was the undercurrent until she eventually realized she needed to slow down and take care of herself in order to be able to support her kids in the best way possible. It's a great conversation about how Heather carved out her own path, relaxed the reigns around her kids, and discovered all the ways our kids make us better people.
If you enjoy the conversation, I'd love to hear your thoughts. You can leave a review on Apple Podcasts or find me on Substack at "I'm Listening."
Music by Josephine Wiggs from her Album "We Fall."
This week I'm talking to Austin Liston who entered parenthood fast when he started dating Chad, his now husband, who already had two kids. Then they decided to have more kids and ended up with four foster children. Austin co-hosts the wonderful podcast Best Wives Club with his best friend, Amanda, who happens to be Chad's ex-wife. We talked about how the loss of their birth parents affects his young kids and how he and Chad try to make space for all the feelings that come with that. For someone who had little experience parenting before he found himself co-parenting six kids, Austin has an amazing attitude and sense of humor that makes talking with him extra fun. I really appreciated his unique perspective on the challenges of parenting kids through changes and transitions, especially when you don't have much control over the circumstances.
Music by Josephine Wiggs from her Album "We Fall."
In this episode I talk to the first of several professionals in the field of childhood and adolescent grief, Jana DeCristafaro from The Dougy Center in Portland, Oregon. Jana is also the host of Grief Out Loud, a great podcast about grief and early loss. The Dougy Center was founded on the idea that grieving teens know how to support each other, in ways that adults might find challenging. Jana explains how this works from the perspective of working directly with adolescents, in their peer-to-peer support groups. "How do we know if a teen is grieving? We know someone in their life died," says Jana. She also talks about how she and her colleagues help adults understand that grief can take many forms and look very different in different kids. She also talks about how parents and community members can gain confidence in their ability to support grieving teens. We talk about grief in the larger culture right now, how that's changing, how it isn't, and how finding the language to talk about it is so important. On that point, Jana mentioned the book "Finding the Words," by Colin Campbell.
Music by Josephine Wiggs from her Album "We Fall."
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week I talk to Kimberly about how she did her best to navigate her kids' grief, as well as her own, in the wake of her husband's death. Having lost her mother to cancer a few years earlier, Kimberly knew how to deal with medical insurance and doctors, treatments, and surgeries. But as her husband's prognosis worsened, Kimberly and her husband had to do a constant calculus to prepare their kids as much as possible, without overburdening them. It wasn't easy, but she and her kids got through it. After her husband died, Kimberly began the process of becoming a therapist which gives her a great perspective on parenting her kids through multiple losses as they grew into adults.
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In this episode, I talk to Nancy and Eric, a couple who didn't realize (or don't remember knowing) that they were in the same club when they met. The club of parent loss is one that no one asks to be in but its members often enjoy lasting bonds. For Nancy and Eric, it has resulted in a long marriage that has endured many hardships. Even though every early grief experience is unique, the impression it makes on young people is often similar. Eric, Nancy, and I had fun discussing the contrasts and the parallels between our histories and how they affected our lives and romantic relationships.
Music by Josephine Wiggs from her Album "We Fall."
In this episode, I interview my sixteen-year-old son, Skops, who has a lot to say on the subject of grief. He reminded me that I'm doing a show about adolescent grief, so I should have younger guests on, sooner than later. I was intending to save that perspective for later in the season but decided to listen to him. This podcast is all about making adolescent grief more visible by talking about it and listening to all kinds of perspectives on it. Skops had a lot to share about the loss of his older sibling, Keirnan, who died before he was born, and what it was like to be born into a family that was still grieving. He also had a lot to say about media and how social media is helping to open more conversations about grief. I find all of that fascinating and it gives me a lot of hope for his generation.
Thanks to Josephine Wiggs for the music from her album We Fall.
In this episode, I interview my sixteen-year-old son, Skops, who has a lot to say on the subject of grief. He reminded me that I'm doing a show about adolescent grief, so I should have younger guests on, sooner than later. I was intending to save that perspective for later in the season but decided to listen to him. This podcast is all about making adolescent grief more visible by talking about it and listening to all kinds of perspectives on it. Skops had a lot to share about the loss of his older sibling, Keirnan, who died before he was born, and what it was like to be born into a family that was still grieving. He also had a lot to say about media and how social media is helping to open more conversations about grief. I find all of that fascinating and it gives me a lot of hope for his generation.
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My close friend, Vivian (Trimble) Lewine died this month so I am dedicating this episode to her.
This interview with another close friend, Raequel London, was the most meaningful one, for me personally, to date. Raequel lost her mother to breast cancer when Raequel was in her twenties. Because she was older, she had the opportunity to see her mother's death coming and to be with her at the end. This brought up old feelings of regret for me since I didn't have that experience. The result is a very moving and healing conversation for both of us. Raequel also talks about her own experience with breast cancer and how it led her to become certified as a health coach. I can attest to her amazing talent as an intuitive and supportive health coach. Our sessions have improved my mental and emotional health in countless ways.
You can find Raequel at https://www.coachraequel.com/
Music by Josephine Wiggs from her Album "We Fall."
I talk with Trilby, a former schoolmate of mine, about the aftermath of her mother's murder in 1980, and how that informs her ability to support students, as a teacher. I asked her what it was like to deal with people's responses to her family's traumatic loss and how she and her siblings managed to support each other as they grew up.
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In this episode, I talk to Diane, whose father died on Veteran's Day, 1963, eleven days before the assassination of President Kennedy. Diane was born in the aftermath of World War ll so she is from a different generation and grew up in a different culture than I did. She also had to help support her family right away so there wasn't much time for grief. We talk about the difference between our generations and what happens when we have no choice but to put off the grieving process. Diane shares openly about how she coped and how present her grief remains today.
Music by Josephine Wiggs from her Album "We Fall."
In this episode, my friend and fellow artist Ivette and I go deep into our earliest experiences with shame, grief, and art. For Ivette it was theater, and, for both of us, music, clubs, and dancing. Ivette also talks about the culture of grief in her large, Mexican-American family which was quite different from mine. We also get into shame and how it weighs on kids who have an early grief experience.
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My older brother Shep talks about how he managed to escape his grief by traveling and becoming a foreign correspondent. But it all came back when he began his new life as a father and faced a personal crisis. We also talk about the responsibility older siblings feel toward younger ones in the wake of losing a parent.
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As I get my feet wet recording interviews, I decided to start with the people most familiar to me: My siblings! In this episode, I interview my sister Quinn Faison about her experience with adolescent grief and how it has affected her as a friend, a parent, and a parenting coach. Quinn and her wife Sarah have a coaching business called Plan P where they support parents through the challenges of raising responsible, caring, young adults. Although Quinn and I have talked throughout our lives about grief, there were a lot of questions I had never asked her before. If you listened to the first episode, you'll notice that our stories are quite different, even though we agree on a lot of the benefits of adolescent grief.
In this episode, we discuss Hope Edelman's books: "Motherless Daughters" and "After Grief."
Music by Josephine Wiggs from her Album "We Fall."
For the first episode of this podcast, I will lay the groundwork by talking candidly about my most significant losses and how they intertwine. It's a surprising story about how losing my mother at a young age helped me decades later to grieve a child and mother my other children as openly and honestly as I know how.
I also discuss my book, "Dancing with the Midwives: A Memoir of Art and Grief" which is available on Amazon.
Music by Josephine Wiggs from her Album "We Fall."
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"Are We There Yet?" is about gaining a better understanding of grief by looking at the consequences of an early loss. It's also about helping kids and their communities better understand the short and long-term consequences of grief. Ann Faison is an artist and grief specialist who has read, researched, and written extensively about grief since losing her mother to cancer when she was fourteen. In this trailer, she discusses why grief still fascinates her and why she interviews other adults who have grown through and thrived from an early loss. There are dozens of podcasts about grief, but not many that look at adolescent grief from an experiential adult perspective. Are We There Yet? is for anyone looking for a different take on grief, or who would like to better support teens and young adults who are suffering a loss. Music by Josephine Wiggs from her Album "We Fall."
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