Grief Is My Side Hustle

Ep. 83. Charlene Lam: The Grief Gallery Founder/Curator

Charlene Lam is a certified grief coach, speaker and the founder of The Grief Gallery. After her mother died suddenly in 2013, she leaned into her creativity and instincts as a curator to guide herself through grief.

That work led her to help other people to process their grief and losses.

Charlene believes we are ALL curators after a loved one dies. Her Curating Grief coaching framework is designed to be a creative and accessible way to process grief.

She provides grief coaching to help bereaved people to feel less alone and better equipped to deal with the practical and emotional aftermath of losing a loved one. And when they’re ready, to transform their pain, loss and grief into something beautiful so they can move forward with living their own fullest lives.

As curator of The Grief Gallery, she presents exhibitions exploring death and grief during international design events and festivals, including NYCxDESIGN, DesignTO (Toronto) and the London Design Festival.

She speaks about the power of art, creativity, story and meaning making for healthy grieving and post-traumatic growth.

She’s the author of the forthcoming book Curating Grief: A Creative Guide to Choosing What to Keep After a Loved One Dies. Her podcast guest appearances include Late Bloomer Living, and the What Works podcast with Tara McMullin. A proud Chinese-American New Yorker (like her mother!), she's currently based in Lisbon, Portugal and works with clients worldwide.

Ep. 82. Candace Cahill: Author Goodbye Again–A story of Childloss

Candace reunited with the son she'd given up for adoption when he turned 18. Primarily In contact through calls and letters, they met once when he was twenty. Candace worked hard to allow her son to drive the nature of their new connection, only to have him die unexpectedly in his sleep at age 23. 

In Candance's beautiful book Goodbye Again, she shares with us her experience learning to greive losses that are disenfranchized in our culture.  She talks us through pain upon pain, only to ultimately leave the reader holding an incredible story of hope and love.

You can learn more about Candace on her website:

https://candacecahill.com

Candace Cahill is a first mother and an LDsA, late discovery step-adoptee or NPE. She grew up in rural Central Minnesota with no running water or electricity, and by the time she graduated from high school, she’d learned books were an oasis and her guitar a good friend. After earning a Social Work degree, she embarked on a year-long bicycle trip across North America before settling in Alaska. An artist at heart, she is a self-taught silversmith, singer/songwriter, and plays the guitar, banjo, bass, and saxophone. Candace resides with her husband, Tom, in Denali, Alaska, and works as a Park Ranger during the summer months

Ep. 81. Priya Soni: Caring for the Care Givers

Join Meghan for this heart felt discussion where two time caretaker, griever Priya Soni reveals how her own experience caring for her parents through their end of life experiences informed how she approaches grief and loss.

Priya's thoughtful approach of how to support grievers, approach memories and create a grief care group a beautiful concepts that can teach us all. 

Learn more  here:

https://www.priyasoni.net

Ep. 80. John Worsley: A Widower Writes his Grief

When writer John Worsley's wife Amy died, he processed his grief through the written word.

He's the author of My Heart Has No Home: A Journal of Grief and Healing, a moment-by-moment account of his experience grieving the sudden death of his wife, Amy K.W. Heil – what he felt, how he healed, and what he learned.

Where to buy My Heart Has No Home: Amazon paperback and Kindle / Apple Books / Kobo / B&N and Nook

http://www.johnworsley.name

Ep. 79. Jon LeFrandt: Caring for Siblings after the Death of His Father

Jon Lefrandt is Co Founder and CEO of For Grief

 

After more than seven years in real estate, Jon took a leap of faith and began his career in the funeral industry in 2011. Jon experienced the passing of his father and the emotional stress of planning his funeral — through that experience, Jon understood the need for individualized pre-planning and aftercare services.

 

At For Grief, they've built a better way for people to navigate loss by offering unprecedented and direct access to the country’s most preeminent grief experts and authors. Whether you join our monthly conversation series or participate in one of our new and forthcoming innovative GriefCalendar™ events, the first such on-demand community resource in the country, you’ll be welcomed into a circle of support unlike any other. Depending on your needs and schedule, our on-demand video courses, Grief Guide, information-rich blog, and downloadable resources are always available to you, anytime

 

https://www.forgrief.com

Ep. 78. Author Debbie Weiss: Available As Is: A Midlife Widow’s Search for Love

Debbie Weiss is a former attorney who earned her MFA in creative nonfiction from Saint Mary’s College of California in 2020. A native of the Bay Area, she turned to writing after George, her husband and partner of more than three decades, died of cancer in April 2013, and she found herself single and living alone for the first time in her life. Weiss’s essays have been published in The New York Times' “Modern Love” column, HuffPost, and Woman’s Day, among other publications. Available As Is: A Midlife Widow’s Search for Love is her first book. She currently lives in Benicia, CA.

Ep. 77. Amanda Held Opelt: Bereaved Sibling & Author of A Hole in the World

Amanda Held Opelt is an author, speaker, and songwriter.  She writes about faith, grief, and creativity, and believes in the power of community, ritual, worship and shared stories to heal even our deepest wounds.  Amanda has spent the last 15 years as a social worker and humanitarian aid worker.  She lives in the mountains of Boone, North Carolina with her husband and young two daughters.

http://amandaheldopelt.com

Ep. 76. Melissa Lunardini: Help Text Chief Bereavement Officer

Melissa Lunardini, MA, MBA, FT, is the Head of Bereavement for Help Texts (previously known as Grief Coach). Melissa has 17 years of experience in program design and development in grief, loss, and trauma for healthcare, academia, youth-based, NGOs, and grief and loss-based industries. She holds a fellow in Thanatology from the Association for Death Education and Counseling. A recognized specialist in childhood bereavement, Melissa strives to remain current with trends and research in the industry. She is a sought-after presenter on trauma, grief, and loss both locally and nationally. Melissa is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in international psychology with a focus on trauma. She holds a MA in psychology from Chapman University and an MBA and BA from California State University San Bernardino.

www.griefcoach.com

 

Ep. 75. Allison Gilbert: Journalist, Author, double parent loss and 9/11 survivor

Allison Gilbert is an award-winning journalist and co-author of Listen, World!, the first biography of American writer Elsie Robinson, a newspaper columnist who came from nothing and became the most-read woman in the country and highest-paid woman writer in the William Randolph Hearst media empire. The New York Times raves “One does not tire of spending time with Elsie Robinson” and the Wall Street Journal proclaims the book “an important contribution to women’s history.” Susan Orlean effuses the biography is “the rarest of things — a lively piece of unknown history, a marvelous story of a woman’s triumph, and a tremendous read.”

Gilbert is host of “Women Journalists of 9/11: Their Stories,” a 20-part documentary series produced in collaboration with the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. For this, she interviewed such luminaries as Savannah Guthrie, Maggie Haberman, Dana Bash, and Linda Wertheimer. She is co-executive producer of the companion 2-hour film that featured, among many others, Tom Brokaw, Rehema Ellis, Ann Thompson, Scott Pelley, Byron Pitts, Ann Compton, and Cynthia McFadden. Gilbert is the official narrator of the 9/11 Memorial Museum’s historical exhibition audio tour, the only female journalist to be so honored.

Allison Gilbert writes regularly for the New York Times and other publications. On her blog, she features Q & A’s with some of the most notable names in our culture today including, Arianna Huffington, Jon Stewart, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Dani Shapiro, and Gretchen Rubin.

Allison is co-editor of Covering Catastrophe: Broadcast Journalists Report September 11 and author of Always Too Soon: Voices of Support for Those Who Have Lost Both Parents, Parentless Parents: How the Loss of Our Mothers and Fathers Impacts the Way We Raise Our Children, and Passed and Present: Keeping Memories of Loved Ones Alive.

Gilbert lives in New York with her husband and two children. You can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

 

 

Events:

Wednesday, November 9

New York Public Library — IN PERSON

6:00pm ET

476 5th Ave, New York, NY 10018

A special evening with Sunny Hostin (co-host of ABC’s The View and author of Summer on the Bluffs)

https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2022/11/09/allison-gilbert-sunny-hostin-listen-world

 

Wednesday, November 16
Society of Illustrators — VIRTUAL
6:00pm ET
In conversation with Liza Donnelly (New Yorker cartoonist and author of Very Funny Ladies: The New Yorker’s Women Cartoonists)

https://societyillustrators.org/event/listenworld/

 

Friday, November 18

New-York Historical Society — IN PERSON
7:00pm ET
170 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024
In conversation with Brooke Kroeger (founding director of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU and author of the forthcoming Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism and Julie Golia (associate director of Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books at NYPL and the author of Newspaper Confessions: A History of Advice Columns in a Pre-Internet Age)

https://www.nyhistory.org/programs/listen-world-elsie-robinson-newspaper-columnists?date=2022-11-18

 

Tuesday, November 29
Books & Books Key West — VIRTUAL
7:00pm ET
In conversation with Christina Baker Kline (author of The Exiles)

https://booksandbookskw.com/events/gilbert/

Ep. 74. Tembi Locke: Actress, Producer, Author of From Scratch--A New Netflix Series

New York Times best-selling author, TV producer, actor, and screenwriter Tembi Locke has a passion for connecting with an audience both on the page and on the screen.

After going through a monumental rollercoaster life experience, Tembi put pen to paper and began the cathartic experience of writing down her personal story. This turned into Simon and Schuster’s’ New York Times-bestselling memoir, “From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home,” which was chosen as a 2019 Reese’s Book Club pick, and was quickly scooped up by Reese’s Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine and Netflix as a limited series. Inspired by the memoir, From Scratch is a cross-cultural love story that follows Amy (played by Zoe Saldana, based on Tembi) an American student studying abroad in Italy, as she meets and falls in love with Lino, a Sicilian chef. Their whirlwind romance faces many unforeseen challenges, including their very different cultural backgrounds of which Lino’s family is not accepting of Amy’s. But when Lino is faced with unimaginable health challenges and the couple’s future is threatened, the two families come together to create an extended family unlike any they could have imagined, proving that love crosses all borders.

Tembi is an accomplished actor with over sixty film and television credits, most recently recurring on Never Have I Ever. Offscreen, Tembi is a nationally recognized speaker for her keynotes on resilience, loss, and motherhood; her TEDX talk has been viewed by individuals and nonprofits worldwide.

https://www.tembilocke.com