What a Day in the Life of a Hospital Chaplain who Sits with the Dying Teaches Us About GRIEF J.S. Park is a hospital chaplain, author, and online educator. For eight years he has been an interfaith chaplain at a thousand-plus-bed hospital that is designated a Level 1 Trauma Center. His role includes grief counseling, attending every death, every trauma and Code Blue, staff care, and supporting end-of-life care. He also served for three years as a chaplain at one of the largest nonprofit charities for the homeless on the east coast. J.S. has a MDiv completed in 2010 and a BA in Psycholog ..read more

NPR’s Rhaina Cohen is the  The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center,   The Other Significant Others invites us into the lives of people who have defied convention by choosing a friend as a life partner—from friends raising a child together to best friends of 50 years who live together in their retiree years. Based on years of original reporting and striking social science research, Cohen argues that we undermine romantic relationships by expecting too much of them while we diminish friendships by expecting too little of them. At a time when many Am ..read more

Anne Gudger is an autobiographical essayist who writes hard and loves harder. She’s been published in Real Simple, Cutbank, Cutthroat, The Los Angeles Review, The Normal School, The Rumpus, and the Columbia Journal, among others, and has been a Best of the Net nominee twice. She is also the co-founder of Coffee and Grief, a reading series that’s been thriving since March 2020 and hosts five curated readers every month reading on grief. Anne lives in Banks, Oregon with her beloved husband. The Fifth Chamber is her first book ..read more

Don't miss the wonderful episide with the the incredible ane L. Rosen author of On Fire Island as she explains how her personal exprience with grief informed her charachters in the book.   Jane L. Rosen is an author, screenwriter and former Huffington Post contributor. Jane often takes inspiration from real-life stories and interviews to craft her novels. Her first novel Nine Women, One Dress was translated into ten languages. Her second novel Eliza Starts a Rumor has been optioned by NBC. A Shoe Story and On Fire Island are out now! She lives in New York City and Fire Island with her hus ..read more

Amy's work went viral.  Learn the story of how and why in this episode where Amy discusses her how her viral list, was really a reaction to compound grief and loss. In her own words: I’m a psychotherapist turned “accidental” author I started my career as a psychotherapist intending to help others build mental strength. I never imagined how much I was going to need mental muscle in my own life. My mom passed away when I was 23. Then, my husband died when I was 26. Losing the two most important people in my life sent me on a quest to learn as much as I could about how to be mentally strong ..read more

What happens when someone whose job is supporting other people’s mental health is rocked by their own traumatic loss? In this episode, Juliet Haas LPC, LMHC, shares her story, including the personal and professional impacts of her loss. Juliet is an embodied trauma-informed counselor, registered dance-movement therapist, and owner of Mindful Counseling and Wellness LLC. Licensed in both Wisconsin and Massachusetts, Juliet supports adults through grief, both death and non-death loss, trauma, and anxiety. Her therapeutic approach is person-centered, mindfulness based, and integrative. Her approa ..read more

What is the cost of framing motherhood only in terms of its potential gains, without acknowledging its inevitable losses?   That’s one of the questions that Molly Milllwood addresses in her brilliant book, To Have and To Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma. A mix of research, client stories, and Molly’s personal experience, the book tells the truth about the realities of motherhood in an effort to normalize and validate the experience for women everywhere.   In this conversation, Molly discusses the current state of parenthood, its impact on mothers and their marriages ..read more

Laurel Braitman PhD, is a writer, teacher and secular, clinical chaplain-in-training. She is the author of the memoir What Looks Like Bravery: An epic journey through loss to love (March 13th, Simon & Schuster) and the NYT bestselling book Animal Madness: Inside Their Minds.   She received her doctorate in History and Anthropology of Science from MIT and is the director of Writing and Storytelling at the Stanford School of Medicine’s Medical Humanities and the Arts Program. Laurel is also the founder of Writing Medicine, the global community of writing healthcare profes ..read more

Julianne Manske Rollefson is a therapist, grief educator, and host of the new podcast, The Art of Losing.    After the deaths of her parents, she left her career in corporate coaching and leadership development to pursue a master’s degree in Counseling Psychology, with the goal of becoming a therapist specializing in grief and loss. She quickly realized that counseling graduate programs don't include grief-specific training and set out to learn as much as she could on her own, which is how she discovered my work and the Grief is My Side Hustle podcast.   For the past year and a ..read more

Rightsizing expert Jeannine Bryant is the owner and CEO of Changing Spaces SRS, a senior move management company in Lincoln, NE.  She has helped provide rightsizing and relocation services to seniors since 2010.  During that time, she has been actively involved in the downsizing and moving processes of thousands of older adults.  Learn more about their services (and shop their online auctions!) at www.ChangingSpacesSRS.com.   In 2019, Jeannine created a sister brand to Changing Spaces SRS called Easy Rightsizing.  This platform allows Jeannine to educate anyone an ..read more