The Heart of Grief
Episodes
61 episodes
Self-Forgiveness: Granting Yourself the Same Compassion You Offer to Others
With this episode coming out on January 1, 2025, I’m thinking about the idea of new beginnings. Today’s topic offers an opportunity to step into something that holds great potential for living healthier and happier lives.Religion / psych...
QOF Faith and the Freedom of Self Forgiveness
Our previous episode from Jan. 1, 2025 discussed the difficulty some people have with forgiving themselves for things done in the past. This is often connected to a loss either through death or some other ending of a relationship. Principles an...
Do Men Grieve Differently?
It’s commonly wondered if men grieve differently than women. I want to explore this with the goal of better understanding the differences and achieving greater success in promoting grief care programs among men.While men are similarly eq...
Cover Up or Open Up? Resolving Negative Emotions
Healthy grieving requires that we address difficult emotions head on. Following a significant loss, our minds begin to review the relationship or the circumstances of the loss. Our various memories will prompt both enjoyable and dis...
Grieving a Living Person: Finding Peace with a "Less-than-Loved-One" With Bob Gaudet
This is the first in a series of interviews with participants from our grief recovery programs. In this episode I’m talking with Bob Gaudet, a young man who came to recognize that many of the emotional challenges he was experiencing stemm...
The Meaning of Meaning in Grieving: The Promise of a Bigger Picture
Brian examines the idea of finding some meaning out of a difficult loss experience. What is meant by “meaning?” What do people look for in this regard? What do people find? What benefit does discovery or identification of some “meaning” bring t...
Death of a Spouse: Honoring A Relationship, Finding Peace, Discovering Emotional Health. With Alain Parenteau.
In February 2022 Alain Parenteau's wife of 23 years died following a very difficult illness. For Al the addition of a series of other painful losses over a relatively short period of time left him very much aware that he didn’t posses the...
Will This GRM Help Me? Research Says It Will.
The grief of loss happens to all of us. Sometimes that hurt digs in deep and keeps resurfacing. There are a lot of ideas and programs designed to help us find healing. What can we feel confident in to really help? That’s what today'...
Grief Following a Tragic or Traumatic Death: Cause Vs Loss.
Following a tragic, traumatic or completely preventable death, a griever's thoughts can become focused on the cause or circumstances of the loss to the point where they are missing out on a good grieving process for the loss itself. ...
Integrating Loss Into Life: Keeping Connections Strong and Memories Fond
Professional grief counselors sometimes refer to the tasks of integrating grief into our lives going forward. The goal is to recognize the changes brought by a loss and incorporating the memories, influence and emotional/spiritual presence of a...
I'm Glad It's Over. So Why am I Still Feeling Badly? A "Less-Than-Loved-One Loss."
Sometimes when people are faced with changes or endings in difficult or painful relationships, they wonder why they are feeling badly. Why are they grieving a relationship that was not enjoyable or good for them? In this episode, Br...
Grieving Well Through the Holidays
In July of 2025, Brian's wife of 45 years died. This loss has brought him into a new, deeper and more complex experience of grief. Christmas 2025 will be the first one in 4 1/2 decades without Diane's presence and participation. Thi...
Grief in Separation and Divorce
After more than two years away, The Heart of Grief is back. As Lorri's new job does not allow her the time needed for the podcast, Brian will be running solo for the foreseeable future. In this first episode of Season 3, Brian will be...
“Living for Keeps” Why we’re such poor losers
What do children learn about loss? In this episode Brian explains how, for most of us, our early learning has not prepared us well for handling loss. The emphasis of our upbringing is on getting and keeping things. As a result, we a...
Monkey See, Monkey Do; Modeling Grief for Children
Learning how to lose; how can we help our kids learn well? In Dec. 2020 Lorri and Brian recorded a program introducing the topic of children and grief. They shared 7 points on helping grieving children. You may wish to listen to that. In this e...
Faith and Feelings: Should my belief in God make me feel better?
Maybe you've heard something like "Don't feel bad, God is with you," and though you do believe God is with you, you still felt bad, or even worse somehow. If so, you're not alone, and this episode is for you. How should faith in a God who loves...
Become a Healing Agent for Hurting Hearts: Interview with GRM® Specialist, Trudie Slomp
Brian interviews a colleague and fellow Grief Recovery Method Specialist®, Trudie Slomp. Trudie is a retired nurse, and a grandmother who felt a desire to help fellow grievers find genuine healing. The Grief Recovery® Personal Program gave Trud...
Finding God's Purpose in Pain: Part 1 Interview with Andy Reeves
In this edition of our Questions of Faith program, Brian will be sharing part one of two of an interview he had recently with a professional colleague who has been living for years with chronic, debilitating illness. We’re going to ...
The F Word: How to find freedom and peace through forgiveness
The Grief Recovery Handbook calls it one of the most misunderstood ideas in the world. Forgiveness is a concept widely recognized for its power and importance. Unfortunately it is frequently missed out on due to wrong ideas about what it is and...
Finding God's Purpose in Pain: Part 2 Interview with Andy Reeves
A Questions of Faith episode, this is the second part of Brian's interview with colleague, Andy Reeves. We’re going to continue our conversation about finding God in the midst of suffering, with a particular focus on mental and emotional ...
The F Word - 2: Find Healing Through Compassionate Forgiveness
When a loss experience leaves us with a deep hurt caused by someone, it can be hard to let go of the pain. In this episode Brian shares the idea of Compassionate Reappraisal; a way of considering the circumstances of the offending party ...
QOF 8: How Does Faith Affect Forgiveness?
We’ve looked at forgiveness from various angles in two of our recent episodes. This Questions Of Faith episode is going to consider that powerful emotional action step with the addition of a faith perspective. The question is, how does biblical...
The F Word - 3 Overcoming Our Fears Following Loss
CS Lewis commented at the beginning of his popular book A Grief Observed “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid.” Well not only can grief feel like fear, grief can in...
QOF 9 What's the Use in Saying Sorry?
What do apologies have to do with healthy grieving? In our Grief Recovery Method® programs we recognize that recovery from loss involves identifying and bringing completion to unfinished pieces of emotional business in a relationship that has e...
The F Words-4 Familiarity. "Habit or Helpful? Choose One"
Familiarity can be beneficial, providing safety, comfort and enjoyment. It can also become detrimental. In this episode Brian explains how a familiarity bias regarding response to loss can lead to narrow thinking that keeps us stuck in our grie...
