Crying Out Loud: What Losing My Son Taught Me About Grief, Healing, and Choosing Life

I've spent more than 30 years as a therapist helping people navigate grief, trauma, and some of the hardest experiences of their lives. But when my 16-year-old son Sammy died, I found myself in a place that all my professional training could never have prepared me for.

Almost six years later, I've written the book I desperately needed back then, Crying Out Loud: A Path Through Grief Into a Life Reimagined. And in this special episode, I want to share some of what I've learned, both from my own grief and from the thousands of people I've had the privilege of working with.

What does it actually mean to cry out loud? It means allowing ourselves to experience grief in all its messy, complicated, sometimes frightening forms. The anger, guilt, jealousy, despair, and even the moments of joy that can make us feel like we're betraying the person we've lost.

I talk about why we can't simply think our way through grief, how our bodies hold what our minds can't process, and why learning to care for our nervous systems is so important. I share the practices that helped me when I could barely function, how my relationships changed, and how I've learned to keep my connection with Sammy alive in ways I never could have imagined.

And I talk about something I believe deeply: grief changes us. I've said before that I didn't survive Sammy's death. The woman I was before he died is gone. I've had to discover who I am now, how to live with this enormous loss, and how to let joy back in without feeling guilty about it.

I believe healing is possible, even when the loss itself can never be undone. And I believe we can build meaningful, even beautiful lives while still wishing with every fiber of our being that none of this had happened.

In this episode, I explore:

What it really means to cry out loud and why we need to stop apologizing for our grief

How to work with anger, guilt, and the emotions we're often afraid to express

Why grief lives in the body and the somatic practices that can help us move through it

How grief changes friendships, relationships, and our sense of who we are

Choosing life again, even when that choice starts with simply getting out of bed

Letting joy return without feeling like we're leaving our loved ones behind

Continuing bonds and the ways our relationships with those we've lost can evolve

How grief can transform us and what it means to create a life reimagined

My new book, Crying Out Loud, brings together what I've learned as a therapist, a grieving daughter, and a grieving mother, along with research, spiritual wisdom, and nearly 100 practical tools to help you find your own way through grief.

I wrote it because I know how desperately we need something to reach for when our world falls apart. And because I want you to know that whatever you're feeling, wherever you are in your grief, there are ways to begin finding your footing again.

Crying Out Loud: A Path Through Grief Into a Life Reimagined, is available now, wherever books are sold.

And The Grief Healing Collective is here for more live support. None of us are meant to carry this alone.

If something in this episode spoke to your heart, share your story or send your questions to [email protected].

And if you want to explore more of how our brains, bodies, histories and emotional patterns shape the way we love and connect, come find me on my other podcast, The Language of Love. Every week, I talk with leading experts and share what I've learned in more than 30 years as a therapist about relationships, intimacy and healing. You can find The Language of Love wherever you're listening to Crying Out Loud. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices