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In an episode of the hit television show reboot Scrubs (so excited about this second revival!), there’s a quiet moment between J.D. and Elliot Reid that captures something many people experience but rarely talk about: the strange, painful uncertainty of what comes after a relationship ends. Elliot shares a deeply vulnerable realization: watching a patient face death forces her to confront the uncertainty of her own future. She had always imagined growing old with J.D., and w

Friendships are often treated as optional relationships in our culture. We expect grief when someone dies or sadness when a romantic relationship ends, but when a friend group dissolves, people often assume we should simply move on. Yet anyone who has been part of a close-knit group knows the truth: friend groups can become a powerful part of our identity. When they end, the loss can feel surprisingly intense. A scene in the sitcom The Good Place captures this beautifully. T

In a recent support group, someone asked a simple but meaningful question: “If you could recommend a few books about grief, where should I start?” It’s a question I hear often. There are hundreds of books about grief (and more coming out all the time), but some have become what I think of as “core books”—the ones that come up again and again because they offer helpful insights, language for the experience of grief, or compassionate guidance for navigating loss. Below is a lis

When we enter a grief support space, we enter tender ground. There is something sacred about a grief support group. Not sacred in a religious sense (though it could be and, as a seasoned grief support group facilitator, I would argue that the community created in this space is often spiritual). Sacred in a human one. When someone walks into a grief support group, they are carrying something raw. Sometimes it’s fresh shock. Sometimes it’s years of quiet ache. Sometimes it’s co

Law and Order: SVU has been one of my favorite shows since Season 12. I wasn't sure if it was for me, but my sister got me hooked in 2011 (and I thank her for that). I have and still do wtach on live television as Captain Olivia Benson and her squad, including Sargeant Amanda Rollins, work to solve the crimes associated with special victims in New York City. Full Disclosure: I love Olivia Benson as a character and am Team Olivia all the way. I even dressed up as Olivia Bens

The Men of Letters bunker that has become Dean and Sam Winchester’s inherited home in the hit television show Supernatural is quiet in a way that doesn’t feel peaceful. It’s the kind of quiet I recognize from lived experiences shared in sacred grief support spaces. The quiet after casseroles stop arriving. After everyone else has gone home. After the adrenaline fades. In the bunker, the lights are low. The air feels heavy. The kind of heavy that lingers after a storm has pa

When we think about grief, we often picture one clear loss: a person, an animal, a life ending. But there’s another kind of grief that doesn’t get named as often. Relational grief. It’s the grief that shows up not only because someone is dying or gone —but because the relationships around that loss suddenly shift, strain, or reveal their edges. Because grief doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens in systems. Family systems. Little ecosystems. Families. Ex-partners. New par

I didn’t set out to become a grief professional. I was just a teenager who had lost too many people. By my senior year of high school (2001-2002 era), suicide had already touched my life again and again. Friends. Classmates. People I’d sat next to in class the week before. After a while, the question that haunted me wasn’t why did this happen?  but why aren’t we talking about this? So we started talking. With the help of a faculty advisor, I co-founded a Survivors of Suicide

When I was seven years old, my pet turtle Shelly died. This is the picture I drew afterward. At the top, in careful but uneven pencil strokes, I wrote: “Shelly died today. It was sad. She was nice as a pet.” There are hearts drawn in a row, a face with tears streaming down, a grave marked “Poor Shelly,” flowers planted carefully around it, and a small figure standing alone, crying. At the bottom is the date: January 29, 1991. A time when I was interested in playing with my Ba

Okie dokie…let’s get started. Have you heard of Fallout ? It is a popular television show and video game set in a post-apocalyptic world where an alternate future was shaped by nuclear war. Blending dark humor with retro-futuristic 1950s aesthetics, it invites you to explore the ruins of civilization while navigating survival, factions, and ethical dilemmas. It is fascinating for a variety of reasons; I am a big fan of the television show but have not played the game. I will

There’s a moment in the television show Supernatural that isn’t about monsters, or lore, or the end of the world. It’s quiet. Ordinary. Easy to miss if you’re waiting for something explosive to happen.   Sam Winchester hands his mother, Mary, John’s journal. (Sam and his brother Dean carry deep, long-standing grief after the death of both of their parents years earlier. John has been dead for several years. As has she and now she's back, but that's a story for another time.)