Good Grief is a podcast about grief but also how we develop, learn and form meaningful traditions around it.
I’ve lost loved ones in my life, most of us have. But recently I lost someone and I just didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to process it, but equally I didn’t know what to do to help friends or family experiencing loss. Selfishly it scared me and reminded me of my own mortality. I guess I’ve avoided anything related to death or grief for my entire life. I was shocked by how much I didn’t know and how we never talk about it as a society. I mean it’s one of life’s most inevitable things, why don’t I have any tools at my disposal to deal with it? It’s clear we’re frightened to talk about it, which makes sense considering, but keeping it at arms length makes it increasingly more difficult to understand or create helpful traditions around. How can we ever help, understand or support people grieving if we never talk about it?
I did some research and development for a documentary film about grief (I’m a filmmaker by the way) and what became obvious through the conversations I was having was that it was potentially a very British phenomenon. I was told about useful grieving practices from other cultures that were so simple yet and so effective that I was dumbfounded I’d never heard of any of them. Why don’t we have our own traditions around death and grief? Is it because UK culture is famously reserved and we avoid the intimate conversations about pain and loss? Do we just ‘get on with it’? Added to that it was only 100 years ago that mortality rates were over double what we experience today. Death is now significantly less common so does that affect our relationship with it?
I want to find out more about why we don’t talk about grief, what has changed over time for us and how we might make it less of a taboo and more of a healing process. I want to unravel pre-conceptions and explore beyond the traditional Great British reserve to address my own fears of loss and grief. I want you, the listener, to discover these new things about grief as I do. Throughout the series I’ll talk to a broad range of people about their experiences of grief including people from diverse faiths and cultures and professionals who deal with death and loss on a regular basis. From midwives to palliative care professionals, from physicians to historians. Whilst I realise the theme of this podcast isn’t exactly happy-go-lucky, we will be exploring the depth and breadth of the human experience, with tears, humour and a celebration of life and try to discover if there is such a thing as good grief?
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Publisher
Jay Gearing
Category
society & culture · society & culture · society & culture
A year ago today I lost my mum. It was an out of the blue loss, my mum definitely had a good few years left in her. It was a shock and I’m still feeling and struggling with that loss today. In this episode, in a role reversal, I talk to my good friend and past podcast guest Anita Nayyar about my mum, what happened and the grieving process over the year. This seems the logical place to end the series so this will be the final episode. Thanks so much to those that have supported the podcast and have listened over the years, it’s been a gift for me and my family. Not only have I learnt about grief and have gained a better understanding but I’ve also had the immense privilege of talking to those that have shared their stories with me and such a generous and intimate way. The whole thing will stay with me forever. Much love, Jay x
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18 May 2023
Emma Spearing
This podcast was recorded in early May 2023 with Emma Spearing who is an Actor and Writer based in Cambridgeshire. Emma has lived in various places across the UK as well as travelled for a few years in Asia but she’s originally from Essex.
I met Emma purely coincidentally whilst working on a shoot in Cambridge. Well actually my good friend and photographer extraordinaire Neil Hepworth met her and talked about this podcast with her, and she told us both about her own journey of loss. Emma lost her identical twin sister Charlie to cancer 9 years ago and she talked about her unique experience of losing someone that is essentially a part of you, a mirror image, literally a soul mate and someone that she was inseparable from for most of her childhood.
I had a bit of cold so apologies for the sniffing and gurgles
I was really struck by how I’d never considered how close a bond twins would have, especially identical twins. I don’t want to spoil what is said about that here but what Emma said was really quite profound, and eye opening too. She covers what it was like growing up as a twin and how different milestones affected them and how they supported each. Importantly she talks about what it was like to care for her at the end and how she processed and continues to process the loss of her. Emma talks about how other people cared for her in the immediate aftermath of the loss of Charlie quite beautifully. What worked for her and what didn’t. It’ll probably not be surprising to most listeners that the things that helped were small and considered. She also addresses the thing that I keep on bringing up, building tradition and experiences around grief. The conversation gets quite emotional when we talk about her then 18 month old daughter saying goodbye to her mother.
Since Charlie’s death Emma has since written a play about her experience of the loss of her sister called WHOLE (WHOLE) which she has toured in the past, and I believe will be touring again which we talk about in the podcast. The purpose of which, much like this podcast, is to help those that are grieving.
This episode ends not with a wrap up from me but a song beautifully written and sung by Charlie herself.
When we recorded the podcast we discovered that we had both travelled India but what was almost freaky was that we stayed at the very same guesthouse in Bagsu called (I think) Sky Pie. Or Pie in The Sky. Anyway, it was our first discovery of Banoffee Pie and what a transformative experience that was.
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16 Jan 2023
Mark Richards
This episode concentrates on loss through absent fathers. Mark and I share similar experiences with absent fathers but have processed them in quite different way. Unlike other episodes I share a lot more here about my own experiences than usual. There’s a lot of things that Mark mentioned in this episode that moved me to tears, and perhaps shows that’s there’s still some work for me to do around my own thoughts and feelings about my father which I mention in the podcast. Mark is very open, clear and insightful about the past but I think that maybe for some, this might be a little bit of a difficult listen. Having said that, some of his reflections are down right inspiring. He talks about what he went through at different stages in his life relating to this, grieving the loss of his father decades before he died, what it meant for his mother and also how it effected his romantic relationships. He also talks about what it meant to come out to his dad and how he responded to that.
Mark is an only child, born and raised in Southampton by his mother, his father, of whom a lot of this podcast is about, was absent through work. Mark went to art school in Winchester & Canterbury and also did an MA in European Cultural Planning at DMU in Leicester. He trained to be a painter (artist, not decorator). For a while he lived as an artist in a squat in London, was showing his work from his studio and occasionally teaching but when he was approaching his 30s decided to get himself a ‘proper job’ in his words, and moved into arts development through local authorities and the Arts Council. He now supports artists as his own artistic practice.
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10 Oct 2022
Anna Bunten
This episode deals with the immediacy of death, bodies and grief. I talk to Anna Bunten who is an advanced nurse practitioner who started training in 1997. From there she started working initially in a hospital and then later in an out of hours service where she provided a mixed roll of both nursing (district nursing at night including palliative care) and out of hours emergency care. She is now settled in a GP practice in Peterborough and has been a nurse partner there ever since.
Due to the nature of Anna's work death is discussed a fair amount and the immediacy of after care. The conversation does meander a fair amount and we discuss personal loss, what grief looks like in a professional setting, long term grief, grief ceremonies, specifically Scottish grief tending and the necessity of grief being witnessed which was a very powerful part of the conversation. Finally we talked about being remembered, ourselves and our loved ones, how we’d like to be remembered but also how other live on through us.
There’s a few clumsy questions in here, obvious ones that I’m a little bit embarrassed about to tell you the truth but Anna’s answers were too good to leave out so I had to leave my embarrassing self right in there...
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2 Aug 2022
Theo Tramblinas
This episode focuses on parental loss at an early age as well as loss through Alzheimer’s.
This week I talk to Theo Tramblinas, a good friend of mine who lost his dad when he was 12 years old and is currently looking after his mum, along with his siblings Alex and Marita, as their mother has Alzheimer's. Theo is from Sussex but currently resides in Surrey with his wife Ania which is where we recorded this conversation in April 2022. Fulled through childhood curiosity and having lots of questions about nature Theo started his own business called Nature Dayz teaching kids about nature and making the outdoors more accessible.
Warning, there is a fair amount of swearing
This is chat rambles A LOT and goes all over the shop on many different subjects but the main crux of this podcast is the grief he experienced losing his dad at such a you age. Tears happen during this point, I just want to prepare you as this may be a trigger for some of you. We also talk about the experience of losing someone whilst they’re still here, in the case of his mother losing her memories and recollection of who Theo is. But we started talking about how we meet first, in India many moons ago…
At the end I mention the Life Changes Trust which you can find more about here: https://www.lifechangestrust.org.uk (https://www.lifechangestrust.org.uk)
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30 Jun 2022
Anita Nayyar
This episode I’m talking to Anita Nayyar about her experiences with miscarriage.
Anita is a social psychologist originally from Croydon, South London and now resides in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. Her job has two halves to it, one half looks at hate speech and its effects and how to counter hateful narratives, the other half is one to one work which includes mentoring and counselling (Anita is also trained in psychodynamic counselling) and works with people who are leaving gangs. Anita is of mixed heritage, her father was Indian and her mother is English. In her spare time she enjoys writing poetry (occasionally performing it as well), cycling, swimming, kayaking and attending cultural events.
This is an important one, well, hopefully all the topics we cover in the podcast are, but this one specifically that perhaps don’t understand how deeply affecting a miscarriage can be and how society at large can pretend that it’s insignificant.
There is some lightness to the start of this conversation even though it’s a heavy subject and Anita I talk in a very matter of fact way. It’s worth saying that we have been friends for a while now so we talk to each other in a very relaxed manner.
Subjects covered include complications of grief surrounding miscarriage (the shame and taboo surrounding it), a lot of this episode concentrates on the difficulty but necessity of embracing your pain, Anita talks about the book “Unattended Sorrow”and what happens when you try to ignore pain and try to get on with things and how transformative it can be if you do engage with it, the mixed care and understanding from pretty much everyone, garden burial for the foetus, the sensitive and care given by the hospital chaplin, we briefly talk about the loss of her father at an early age and the appreciation of having such a good dad. Listen out for the microphone punch just after this bit, nonverbal expression through crying and the shame around it and support from friends and support and advice she has given to others going through a similar experience. We also question is any walks of society deal with grief better than ourselves? From a Muslim perspective but also what’s happening in a secular society.
If you or anyone else is affected by this subject, Anita has suggested two support groups:
https://www.tommys.org/baby-loss-support/miscarriage-information-and-support/support-after-miscarriage (https://www.tommys.org/baby-loss-support/miscarriage-information-and-support/support-after-miscarriage)
https://www.miscarriageassociation.org.uk (https://www.miscarriageassociation.org.uk/)
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9 Jun 2022
Lynne Booker
In this first episode, which was recorded in March 2022 I talk to Lynne Booker. Lynne has been working as a counsellor/therapist since 2004 in all sorts of different contexts, through the NHS, with a hospice, and more recently with the Refugee Council working with refugees and asylum seekers. Lynne initially trained at the University of East Anglia, doing a masters in Person Centred Counselling and wrote a dissertation on complicated grief. Lynne has a Jewish background and became Christian when she was 19. She was born in London but grew up in Reading and now resides in Lincolnshire with her husband. She also enjoys life drawing, being a mother (although the kids have flown the nest) and fairly recently become a grandmother.
We talked about a lot in this first episode and therefore it’s an unnaturally long. We started off talking about Lynne’s training in Person Centred Counselling, why she wanted to become a therapist and her own personal journey which includes a break up with a partner she was very much in love with and the loss of her parents, which triggered a reevaluation of her relationship with them.
We also talked about the importance of meaningful tradition around grief, a loss of family ties and sense of community, refugees feeling war including PTSD, the different stages of your children growing up and a sense of loss of the person they were as we celebrate who they become and surprisingly we talked about football grief and masculinity plus Lord of The Rings! A trigger warning that there is lengthy conversation about child loss, miscarriage and still birth.
The episode include much more besides. Please do leave a comment if you have any feedback at all.
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15 Feb 2022
Good Grief - Trailer
A trailer for the upcoming podcast series Good Grief coming Spring 2022
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