Great Grief – Details, episodes & analysis

In this episode, I reflect on the idea of an encore—that unexpected moment when you are called back to the stage.

As a young jazz singer on my first European tour, I experienced my first encore and discovered something powerful: the space between what we plan and what we are asked to give in the moment is where the real magic lives. Through story, music, and reflection, I explore how that lesson returned to me years later through grief. Sometimes grief calls us back to the stage of our lives when we feel unprepared, uncertain, and afraid. Yet in those moments, we are invited to trust, to improvise, and to find healing in the unexpected.

If this episode resonates with you, I invite you to subscribe to Great Grief Podcast, and to join my community as the season unfolds. New episodes are released bi-weekly!

Valentine’s Day can stir many things — joy, memory, longing, even sorrow. Not everyone greets it with candy and flowers. So instead of wishing you a happy Valentine’s Day, I offer you something else: a love bouquet from my heart to yours.

Recorded live at Moorhead Manor on Valentine’s Day, this episode reflects on love through the lens of loss. What is this thing called love? What happens when grief reshapes it? When marriage, partnership, and shared life change form? When the question stops being theoretical and becomes deeply personal?

In this episode of Great Grief, we follow Nnenna Freelon on a walk through the woods, where she contemplates autumn, the changing of the seasons, and the possibility of renewal after everything dies.

• Read a transcript of this episode.
• Join Scalawag and Nnenna Freelon in Durham, North Carolina, on Sunday, December 10 for "Great Grief—Live! Home for the Holidays," a live music performance and uplifting conversation exploring loss, love, and how to move forward with grief during the holidays. Reserve your tickets today.

This is episode one in the second four-episode season of Great Grief with Nnenna Freelon, "Seasons of Change." The seasons are changing—an apt metaphor to talk about the shedding, withering, and falling away that accompanies the most painful parts of grief. This season, Nnenna looks to nature and the cyclical movement of time to delve deeper into loss, creating rituals and making discoveries that help us reconnect with ourselves, each other, and the ones we’ve lost. 

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Unlike other podcasts on grief, Great Grief by Grammy-nominated vocalist Nnenna Freelon doesn’t give you a blueprint for how to get over it. Instead, she offers her own experiences as a wife, a sister, a Black woman, and a powerful jazz artist to help you get into it. Each four-episode season is organized around topics that intertwine our grief experiences—topics like sisterhood, the inevitability of change, and Black love. A new collection drops every quarter, accompanied by a live opportunity for us to gather around our griefs in different cities across the South. Seasons 1 and 2 are available now on all podcast platforms.

• Learn more about Great Grief and find upcoming live events near you.
• Check out the archive of essays in Scalawag's grief & other loves series.
• Join the Great Grief Facebook community.

Great Grief with Nnenna Freelon, season 2: "Seasons of Change," launches November 28, 2023. The seasons are changing, an apt metaphor to talk about the shedding, withering, and falling away that accompanies the most painful parts of grief. In the latest series of Great Grief, Nnenna looks to nature and the cyclical movement of time to delve deeper into loss, creating rituals and making discoveries that help us reconnect with ourselves, each other, and the ones we’ve lost. 

For many people, holidays are a time of celebration marked by family, faith, and food. This time of year can also be a period of remembrance. Yes, grief has a seat at the table. But grieving in the holiday season doesn’t have to be a solo or solemn affair. 

Sunday, December 10, 2023: Come visit with Scalawag and Nnenna Freelon in Durham, North Carolina, for Great Grief—Live! Home for the Holidays. Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon invites you to join her for a live music performance and an uplifting conversation to explore loss, love, and how to move forward with grief during the holidays. 

Accompanied by keyboardist Andrew Berinson, Nnenna will share her story and discuss the process of healing through word and song. Great Grief is produced by Nnenna Freelon and Scalawag, a grassroots Southern media organization committed to building political and social consciousness, in collaboration with OnlyUs Media, a Durham-based, Afrofuturist production company.

Reserve your tickets today.

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Unlike other podcasts on grief, Great Grief by Grammy-nominated vocalist Nnenna Freelon doesn’t give you a blueprint for how to get over it. Instead, she offers her own experiences as a wife, a sister, a Black woman, and a powerful jazz artist to help you get into it. 

Each four-episode season is organized around topics that intertwine our grief experiences, topics like sisterhood, the inevitability of change, and Black love. A new collection drops every quarter, accompanied by a live opportunity for us to gather around our griefs in different cities across the South.

Learn more: https://scalawagmagazine.org/great-grief/

The podcast Great Grief takes shape around Nnenna’s own great grief, which she experienced after the death of her husband, Philip Freelon, in 2019. A wife for nearly 40 years, Nnenna wonders in this episode what to make of the term "widow."Perhaps loss does not make her into a widow. Perhaps it is turning her into something else altogether.

• Read a transcript of this episode.

This is episode four in our four-part season of Great Grief with Nnenna Freelon, "Wailing Women," exploring the profound beauty and irreparable losses we experience as Black women through story and song. Listen to all four episodes, touching on the shock of widowhood, the bittersweet of sisterhood, and the love-hate journeys many of us have with our hair. As we give voice to the wailing women within, we find more than tears.

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Unlike other podcasts on grief, Great Grief by Grammy-nominated vocalist Nnenna Freelon doesn’t give you a blueprint for how to get over it. Instead, she offers her own experiences as a wife, a sister, a Black woman, and a powerful jazz artist to help you get into it. Each four-episode season is organized around topics that intertwine our grief experiences—topics like sisterhood, the inevitability of change, and Black love. A new collection drops every quarter, accompanied by a live opportunity for us to gather around our griefs in different cities across the South. Season 1 is available now on all podcast platforms.

• Learn more about Great Grief and find upcoming live events near you.
• Check out the archive of essays in Scalawag's grief & other loves series.
• Join the Great Grief Facebook community.

Our relationship with our hair is a complicated entanglement. It holds our history, personality, and identity. It also holds our grief. In this episode, "Hairstory," Nnenna sits us down in the chair at her mother’s beauty salon, where for generations, Black women have celebrated one another and have gathered to discuss hair—the grief over it, and the grief under it. 

• Read a transcript of this episode.

This is episode three in our four-part season of Great Grief with Nnenna Freelon, "Wailing Women," exploring the profound beauty and irreparable losses we experience as Black women through story and song. Listen to all four episodes, touching on the shock of widowhood, the bittersweet of sisterhood, and the love-hate journeys many of us have with our hair. As we give voice to the wailing women within, we find more than tears.

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Unlike other podcasts on grief, Great Grief by Grammy-nominated vocalist Nnenna Freelon doesn’t give you a blueprint for how to get over it. Instead, she offers her own experiences as a wife, a sister, a Black woman, and a powerful jazz artist to help you get into it. Each four-episode season is organized around topics that intertwine our grief experiences—topics like sisterhood, the inevitability of change, and Black love. A new collection drops every quarter, accompanied by a live opportunity for us to gather around our griefs in different cities across the South. Season 1 is available now on all podcast platforms.

• Learn more about Great Grief and find upcoming live events near you.
• Check out the archive of essays in Scalawag's grief & other loves series.
• Join the Great Grief Facebook community.

No woman makes it through life without a sister. In grieving the death of her baby sister, Nnenna alights on all the ways Black women experience sisterhood. Through faith, family, and struggle, we inhabit a deep solidarity that allows us to hold one another close, even at the very end.

• Read a transcript of this episode.

This is episode two in our four-part season of Great Grief with Nnenna Freelon, "Wailing Women," exploring the profound beauty and irreparable losses we experience as Black women through story and song. Listen to all four episodes, touching on the shock of widowhood, the bittersweet of sisterhood, and the love-hate journeys many of us have with our hair. As we give voice to the wailing women within, we find more than tears.

---

Unlike other podcasts on grief, Great Grief by Grammy-nominated vocalist Nnenna Freelon doesn’t give you a blueprint for how to get over it. Instead, she offers her own experiences as a wife, a sister, a Black woman, and a powerful jazz artist to help you get into it. Each four-episode season is organized around topics that intertwine our grief experiences—topics like sisterhood, the inevitability of change, and Black love. A new collection drops every quarter, accompanied by a live opportunity for us to gather around our griefs in different cities across the South. Season 1 is available now on all podcast platforms.

• Learn more about Great Grief and find upcoming live events near you.
• Check out the archive of essays in Scalawag's grief & other loves series.
• Join the Great Grief Facebook community.

Grief is a woman with plenty to say. This shape-shifting step-sister of ours wasn’t originally a part of the plan, but now she is coming with—no choice there.

But did you know you also have the ability to shape your grief? It's true, but first, you must be willing to meet her where she lives. In this episode of Great Grief, Nnenna Freelon asks us to consider what happens if we stop running from our grief, sit down, and listen to her for a change.

• Read a transcript of this episode.

This is episode one in our four-part season of Great Grief with Nnenna Freelon, "Wailing Women," exploring the profound beauty and irreparable losses we experience as Black women through story and song. Listen to all four episodes, touching on the shock of widowhood, the bittersweet of sisterhood, and the love-hate journeys many of us have with our hair. As we give voice to the wailing women within, we find more than tears.

---

Unlike other podcasts on grief, Great Grief by Grammy-nominated vocalist Nnenna Freelon doesn’t give you a blueprint for how to get over it. Instead, she offers her own experiences as a wife, a sister, a Black woman, and a powerful jazz artist to help you get into it. Each four-episode season is organized around topics that intertwine our grief experiences—topics like sisterhood, the inevitability of change, and Black love. A new collection drops every quarter, accompanied by a live opportunity for us to gather around our griefs in different cities across the South. Season 1 is available now on all podcast platforms.

• Learn more about Great Grief and find upcoming live events near you.
• Check out the archive of essays in Scalawag's grief & other loves series.
• Join the Great Grief Facebook community.

Grief is your shape-shifting step-sister. While she wasn't originally part of the plan, now she is coming with—no choice there. In order to shape your grief, you must first be willing to meet her where she lives.

With "Wailing Women," the first four-part installment of Great Grief, Nnenna Freelon uses story and song to explore the profound beauty and irreparable losses we experience as Black women.

When grief has broken not only the lover's heart but the sister's heart, the little girl, and the woman self, these layers live in thick and disorderly kinship. How does a sister speak to the widow? What does a daughter whisper to the wife? And what is our grief saying through it all?

Join Scalawag on September 13, 2023, for the official launch of Great Grief with Nnenna Freelon, season 1: "Wailing Women."

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Unlike other podcasts on grief, Great Grief by Grammy-nominated vocalist Nnenna Freelon doesn’t give you a blueprint for how to get over it. Instead, she offers her own experiences as a wife, a sister, a Black woman, and a powerful jazz artist to help you get into it. 

Each four-episode season is organized around topics that intertwine our grief experiences, topics like sisterhood, the inevitability of change, and Black love. A new collection drops every quarter, accompanied by a live opportunity for us to gather around our griefs in different cities across the South.

Learn more: https://scalawagmagazine.org/great-grief/

Welcome to Season 3 of Great Grief.

In this episode, I sit with the word “loss.” What does it mean to lose something? A bag. A job. A sense of direction. A beloved. What does it mean to feel lost yourself?

Through meditation, storytelling, and song, I explore the difference between something being gone and something being changed. I reflect on grief as a landscape—where the map no longer matches the terrain, where you show up but feel estranged from your own life.