Good Grief cover art

Good Grief

Good Grief

Written by: Jay Gearing
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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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Jay Gearing Philosophy Relationships Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Good Grief - Trailer

    Good Grief - Trailer
    Feb 15 2022
    A trailer for the upcoming podcast series Good Grief coming Spring 2022

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    3 mins
  • Lynne Booker

    Lynne Booker
    Jun 9 2022

    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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    1 hr and 54 mins
  • Anita Nayyar

    Anita Nayyar
    Jun 30 2022

    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.miscarriageassociation.org.uk

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    56 mins
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