The Mindfulness & Grief Podcast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

The holiday season can be especially tender when you are grieving. Familiar traditions, gatherings, and quiet moments can intensify the ache of missing someone you love. Even well meaning silence from others can make the loss feel heavier and more isolating.

In this episode of the Mindfulness and Grief Podcast, thanatologist, yoga therapist, and author Heather Stang talks honestly about why the holidays can be so painful, the social awkwardness many grieving people experience, and how meditation can offer a quiet place of connection when your heart feels full. Heather introduces the concept of continuing bonds and shares the Life Imprint practice, originally developed by C. J. Vickio and taught by Robert Neimeyer, as a way to honor love without forcing cheer or closure.

This episode points you to a gentle guided meditation that can be practiced during the holidays or anytime you are missing your person. The reflection can also be used as a journaling practice and is suitable for both simple and complicated relationships.

🎁 Download your free Grief Sensitive Holiday Planner:
HeatherStang.com/holiday-planner
Includes mindful prompts and reflection exercises to help you plan the holiday season with care and compassion.

You will learn:

• Why missing your loved one can feel sharper during the holidays
• How silence and avoidance from others can add to grief, even when intentions are good
• What continuing bonds means and why many people find it comforting
• How the Life Imprint practice supports connection, even in complicated relationships
• Why meditation can help you sit with longing without becoming overwhelmed
• How this practice fits into the Mindfulness and Grief System, Step Six, Continuing Bonds
• Ways to use this reflection as a meditation or journaling practice

If you find this episode helpful, please follow the podcast and consider leaving a review so others can find support when they need it most.

Thanksgiving can be an emotionally complex day when you are grieving. Even simple traditions or familiar gatherings can feel overwhelming when your heart is carrying loss. Whether this is your first Thanksgiving without your person or one of many, it is normal to feel tender, unsure, or stretched thin by expectations and family dynamics.

In this episode of the Mindfulness and Grief Podcast, thanatologist, yoga therapist, and author Heather Stang shares seven mindful tips to help you navigate Thanksgiving before the day arrives, during the gathering itself, and afterward when everything settles again. Through personal stories, trauma sensitive guidance, and practical mindfulness tools, Heather offers a grounded way to care for your heart and reduce unnecessary suffering on this meaningful holiday.

🎁 Download your free Grief Sensitive Winter Holiday Planner:
heatherstang.com/holiday-help
Includes mindful prompts and reflection exercises to help you plan for the holidays with clarity and compassion.

You will learn:

• How emotional tension builds before Thanksgiving and how mindfulness can help you recognise it early
• A simple visualization practice to uncover what may feel difficult on the holiday
• How to understand and express your needs clearly, including a real life story of how one family transformed their day
• Personal rituals that can bring comfort and meaning during Thanksgiving
• Why children's grief is often overlooked, how to talk with them honestly, and how to support them at their own pace
• How different grieving styles, such as instrumental and intuitive grief, shape family dynamics during the holidays
• What to expect after Thanksgiving, why an emotional drop is normal, and how to tend to yourself with care

If you find this episode helpful, please follow the podcast and consider leaving a review so others can find support when they need it most.

The tables are turned as Heather Stang, the regular host of the Mindfulness & Grief Podcast, is interviewed by guest host Audrey Hughey about the new guided journal for grief, From Grief to Peace, which releases on June 1, 2021. Heather shares how she began journaling about her grief over her Uncle Doug's death in high school and the differences between free journaling and guided writing with prompts. Audrey shares how she processed her emotions over her ex-husband's death in her first thriller/novel.

​From Grief to Peace is based on the Mindfulness & Grief System developed by Heather. It offers meditation and journaling exercises to initially help bereaved people cope with the pain of loss, and eventually rewrite their post-loss narrative, all while developing healthy lifestyle habits. The new book offers a holistic approach to life after loss, weaving in memorial and meaning-making activities with personal reflection and goals to help the reader-writer move forward, which is quite different from moving on. Heather relies on evidence-based approaches, contemporary grief research, and ancient practices rooted in yoga and Buddhism, and holds a master's degree in thanatology, the study of death, dying, and bereavement. 

In episode 46, lifelong friends Shelley Buck and Kathy Curtis share their journey of childhood friendship, staying in touch through college, and the comfort that Kathy provided to Shelley following the devastating loss of her son, Ryder. Ryder was a talented musician and world traveler who continued to live his life to the fullest even after his Stage IV cancer diagnosis. 

After Ryder's death, Shelley felt extremely lost and unsure of her next steps in life. So Kathy helped Shelley write the book "Leave Your Light On," inspired by a song Ryder wrote, to share Shelley's journey through the process. The book is filled with letters, journal entries, poems, and memories. Shelley found that writing was very cathartic for her, and she hopes her journey encourages others. 

In episode 45, Angela Kennecke shares with us her story of losing her beautiful 21-year-old daughter, Emily, to overdose. Angela and her family were just a normal family. Emily was a gifted student and cheerleader. But Emily was struggling with one of the most common problems in America — addiction. Her sudden and unexpected death changed the lives of her family forever. 

Through her grief, Angela wanted to keep Emily's memory alive. She originally wanted to just display some of her daughter's artwork at a local charity center. Fast forward to today and Angela now runs Emily's Hope, a foundation that wants to remove the stigma of addiction, provide financial support for treatment seekers, and bring comfort to families who have lost a loved one to addiction. 

If you're looking for resources for yourself or a family member, please check out the resources that are available on the Emily's Hope website. 

In episode 44, we talk to Author Jenny Lisk about her experience of parenting and caregiving for her husband during his aggressive form of brain cancer and eventually becoming a single parent and widow. Jenny shares how she navigated her way forward after his passing and her calling to help other people who may be losing a spouse. 

In Future Widow, Jenny goes behind the scenes of her journey through those tumultuous and heartbreaking months. She reflects on the community who showed her how to be an ally in a crisis, her search for guides on how to parent grieving children, and the dual reality of having to choose—and getting to choose—what her future will look like.

Jenny Lisk is an author, speaker, and host of the Widowed Parent Podcast, which has been featured in The Washington Post and ParentMap. On her "hundred dreams" list is riding a camel, milking a cow, and raising $44,000 for brain cancer research, in honor of her husband's 44 years. The author of Future Widow: Losing My Husband, Saving My Family, and Finding My Voice, Jenny lives in Redmond, Washington, with her two teenagers. She is passionate about helping widowed parents increase their family's well-being. You can download her free guides, What I've Learned About Widowed Parenting and How to be Helpful: Tips for Allies of Widowed Families. 

https://jennylisk.com/memoir

In episode 43, New York Times-bestselling author Adam Mansbach talks with us about his new memoir, "I HAD A Brother Once," which details his grief of losing his brother by suicide a decade ago. As a writer, he struggled for nine years before he was finally able to write about his brother. Although Adam is known for his very successful novels, his new book is written poetry-style with dramatic storytelling about his life. In it, he shares how his brother David felt he had to wear masks to hide his real self and the importance of removing the masks of shame and guilt to save lives. 

David's death happened during a very exciting and stressful time in his life. His incredibly popular book "Go the F*** to Sleep" had just gone viral. In the midst of celebrities reading his book on social media worldwide, and conducting interviews 10 hours a day — David died. Adam suddenly found himself both struggling with loss and success at the same time.

In Episode 42, Dr. Amy Novotny shares her emotional journey of living with a mother that was bipolar and suffered from borderline personality disorder, being tutored by her throughout higher education, and eventually losing her to cancer. The grief left Amy struggling with an unexplainable physical illness that she was eventually able to overcome, and now she teaches how to ease your physical pain when grief is stored in the body. 

Amy developed a method called PABR, which is a technique to help your body overcome the fight or flight response that can occur during the grieving process. During our interview, Amy walks us through her basic technique for breathing and relaxing your body position so you can start getting some relief. 

Want more free resources? Email Amy Novotny at amy@pabrinstitute.com and mention this episode of Mindfulness and Grief Podcast to receive a consultation. 

In Episode 41, Daniel Hess talks to us about his struggle with losing his cousin after a long battle with cystic fibrosis. Daniel was only 9 years old at the time. The trauma of losing his best friend at such a young age created a void in his life that he has since tried to fill with creativity to keep the memory of his cousin alive. 

Daniel began writing poetry as a way to cope with his feeling of loss and to stay creative throughout his young adult life. It's been a place of solace for him. A place to express his dark thoughts and feelings in a safe environment. He has recently written a book, "Just a Boy Blaming Himself," as a reflection of looking back through the pain of his childhood experiences and how they have shaped him into the person he is today.

When two health scares hit Katherine May's family, she was forced to slow down and learn a valuable lesson — staying busy doesn't always mean you're doing something productive with your time. The idea of wintering creates the opportunity to slow down the pace of life, observe as it transitions from one season to another, and find hope in the next phase of your life. 

Katherine also discusses the issue of the "get over it" societal norm we have in regard to grief and children, recalling her own experience as a parent seeking help for her son through a difficult time. She believes that building resilience includes confronting hard truths and the emotions that come with them, not pushing everything down, and concealing feelings. Wintering consists of a period of isolation where you allow the silence to teach you and prepare you for the next season.