The lights are bright, the music is loud, and everywhere you look someone is telling you to be merry—while your home carries an empty seat. We open the door to a different way of doing the holidays after a death, one that honors grief, protects your energy, and still makes space for your kids’ sparkle when they have it.

Together, Erin and Colleen name the reality many parents feel but rarely say out loud: traditions can hurt, “firsts” can ambush you, and rest isn’t optional. You’ll hear practical ways to simplify without guilt, set boundaries with family, and create a comfort space you can slip into for ten quiet minutes. We reframe asking for help as a deep act of connection and share a simple system—a visible task list and a trusted point person—to turn offers into real support. Plans are written in pencil, not Sharpie, so you can leave early, skip what stings, or try something new this year and return to old rituals later.

We also focus on kids’ needs. Use gentle, open prompts—“I wonder what you’re wondering”—to invite questions about the death, the person who died, and the season ahead. Blend conversation with movement: toss a balloon while you talk, shoot hoops and trade memories, or step outside to discharge extra energy. These small, playful rituals help children regulate big feelings and make remembering feel safe. And when their eyes light up for traditions you can’t carry alone, enlist your circle—let an aunt handle teacher gifts or a friend lead tree decorating for an hour—so kids feel supported without you burning out.

If the person’s absence feels like the loudest voice in the room, say it. Honesty lowers the pressure to be “okay” and teaches others how to support you. Press play for language you can use today, strategies you can try tonight, and permission to do only what your heart and body can hold. If this episode helps, please subscribe, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more grieving families can find their way to these tools.

Order the book When Grief Comes Home https://a.co/d/ijaiP5L

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For more information on Jessica’s House or for additional resources, please go to jessicashouse.org

Welcome to the When Grief Comes Home podcast. We're glad you're here. This podcast supports parents who are grieving a spouse, partner, or child while helping their children who are living through the loss of a parent or sibling. With personal grief stories and professional guidance, we offer parents practical tips for supporting their child who is grieving while caring for their own grief.

A four-year-old finds her dad gone one morning, and that moment reshapes the rest of her life. Audrey joins us to share how childhood loss became a compass—through awkward school projects, the hush that follows “my dad died,” and the everyday pangs that hit when a dashboard light turns on and there’s no one to call. Her story moves from memory and faith to the practical tools—children’s books, art therapy, journaling, and community support—that helped her speak what words couldn’t.

We walk with Audrey through later losses that stirred old alarms and led to a diagnosis of delayed expression PTSD. She opens up about panic attacks, sleepless nights, and the surprising relief she found in body-based practices like progressive muscle relaxation and grounding. Along the way, we talk about post-traumatic growth: how grief work, peer support, and meaning-making transformed pain into purpose, guiding her toward social work and back to Jessica’s House as a volunteer, youth ambassador, and intern.

This episode is a compassionate guide for parents navigating children’s bereavement and for anyone seeking grief support that honors both heart and body. We share language for tough conversations, simple family rituals that keep memories alive—hello, monarch butterflies—and clear, age-appropriate ways to talk about death without sugarcoating. If you’re looking for practical coping skills, faith-informed resilience, and a reminder that “moving forward” doesn’t mean letting go, this conversation is for you.

If this conversation helps, share it with someone who needs it, subscribe for future episodes, and leave a rating and review so others can find the show. For free grief resources or peer support, visit jessicashouse.org, and email topic ideas to info@jessicashouse.org.

Order the book When Grief Comes Home https://a.co/d/ijaiP5L

Send us a text

For more information on Jessica’s House or for additional resources, please go to jessicashouse.org

Welcome to the When Grief Comes Home podcast. We're glad you're here. This podcast supports parents who are grieving a spouse, partner, or child while helping their children who are living through the loss of a parent or sibling. With personal grief stories and professional guidance, we offer parents practical tips for supporting their child who is grieving while caring for their own grief.

What if the only way out of the storm is through it—and what if that path could widen your life? Erin and Colleen explore how leaning into grief, rather than outrunning it, can open doors to strength, empathy, deeper relationships, and a renewed sense of meaning. This isn’t about silver linings. It’s about honest pain, real support, and the surprising growth that can follow when we feel, speak, and share our losses.

We unpack post‑traumatic growth through five research‑backed domains—personal strength, closeness with others, new possibilities, appreciation of life, and spiritual or existential expansion. Erin and Colleen bring this to life with stories from families and kids, from the teen who finally opened up after being asked “What’s one thing you want me to know about your dad?” to parents who learned that modeling emotions teaches children that big feelings are survivable. You’ll hear practical tools you can use today: letting waves of grief crest and recede, breathing and bilateral movement, journaling or voice notes, nighttime “dosing” strategies to protect rest, and building a circle of trustworthy helpers so you don’t carry this alone.

We also talk about keeping bonds alive. As Dr. Alan Wolfelt teaches, death ends a life, not a relationship. Bringing your person into everyday moments—“What would Mom think of this?”—can lighten the body and soften the day. And we’ll be honest about avoidance: when we stuff feelings, they leak into our bodies and behaviors. Turning toward pain gently, with support, lets healing do its quiet work. Grief may never end because love never ends, but a larger, kinder life is possible.

If this conversation helps, share it with someone who needs it, subscribe for future episodes, and leave a rating and review so others can find the show. For free grief resources or peer support, visit jessicashouse.org, and email topic ideas to info@jessicashouse.org.

Order the book When Grief Comes Home https://a.co/d/ijaiP5L

Send us a text

For more information on Jessica’s House or for additional resources, please go to jessicashouse.org

Welcome to the When Grief Comes Home podcast. We're glad you're here. This podcast supports parents who are grieving a spouse, partner, or child while helping their children who are living through the loss of a parent or sibling. With personal grief stories and professional guidance, we offer parents practical tips for supporting their child who is grieving while caring for their own grief.

Hope doesn’t erase grief—it gives it somewhere to go. We sit down with Ashley Oplinger, founder and executive director of Bridget’s Cradles and host of Cradled in Hope, to trace how a handmade cradle in a Wichita hospital became a nationwide lifeline for more than 30,000 bereaved families each year. Ashley shares Bridget’s story with unflinching honesty, opening space for the raw questions parents carry after miscarriage and stillbirth: Where is God? Why does guilt cling to my body? How do I live with an empty nursery and a full heart?

Together we explore a practical, faith‑rooted path through loss. Ashley explains how she moved from feeling forsaken to trusting God’s character, flipping the script so scripture shapes thoughts and feelings instead of letting pain define who God is. We talk about the ministry of presence, what to say (and what to avoid), and simple survival tools for the hard nights—protein when meals feel impossible, opening the blinds, and listening to the Psalms when reading is too heavy. Ashley also offers a clear, comforting vision of heaven and the new earth, where reunion is real and embodied, and why “grateful and grieving” can exist at the same time without cancelling each other out.

Ashley also honors her father, SRG, who was killed by a drunk driver, and shares how drumming became therapy—turning anger into rhythm and engaging the brain much like EMDR. If you or someone you love is navigating pregnancy or infant loss, you’ll find gentle wisdom, practical guidance, and resources: support groups, free ebooks, and Ashley’s new book, Cradled in Hope. Listen, share with a friend who needs it, and help us reach more parents—subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: what helps you hold both joy and sorrow today?

Order the book When Grief Comes Home https://a.co/d/ijaiP5L

Send us a text

For more information on Jessica’s House or for additional resources, please go to jessicashouse.org

Welcome to the When Grief Comes Home podcast. We're glad you're here. This podcast supports parents who are grieving a spouse, partner, or child while helping their children who are living through the loss of a parent or sibling. With personal grief stories and professional guidance, we offer parents practical tips for supporting their child who is grieving while caring for their own grief.

The room gets quieter when pregnancy loss comes up, and that silence can make grief feel even heavier. We open the door wide—talking candidly about miscarriage and stillbirth, why the loss can feel invisible, and how parents can honor a baby’s life at any gestational age without apologizing for their pain. Erin and Colleen share tender personal stories, the origins of our Heartstrings group, and the small, steady practices that bring comfort when words fail.

You’ll hear practical ways to care for yourself in the early days and beyond, from navigating hormonal shifts and the shock of emptiness to setting boundaries around showers and birthdays. We also explore the complicated emotions of future pregnancies—the way joy mixes with fear—and how to create rituals that carry meaning: candles on a “Heaven Day,” planting a tree or rose bush, memory boxes, Molly Bears, and using your baby’s name. For friends and family, we offer guidance that actually helps: show up with meals and gift cards, keep inviting without pressure, remember due dates and anniversaries, and send a simple message that says, “Your baby mattered.”

Parents with other children will find ideas to include siblings in healthy remembrance—letters, drawings, and the “I wish/I wonder” prompts that keep a sibling’s story alive in an age-appropriate way. Throughout, we return to one truth: grief changes, but love remains. If this conversation resonates, subscribe, share it with someone who needs gentle support, and leave a review so more grieving families can find us.

Order the book When Grief Comes Home https://a.co/d/ijaiP5L

Send us a text

For more information on Jessica’s House or for additional resources, please go to jessicashouse.org

Welcome to the When Grief Comes Home podcast. We're glad you're here. This podcast supports parents who are grieving a spouse, partner, or child while helping their children who are living through the loss of a parent or sibling. With personal grief stories and professional guidance, we offer parents practical tips for supporting their child who is grieving while caring for their own grief.

When grieving, we desperately need what therapist Kristi Gaultiere calls "oxygen for the soul" – empathy. Not quick fixes or sympathetic platitudes, but the profound healing that comes through being truly seen in our pain.

In this illuminating conversation, Kristi unpacks why empathy transforms grief by allowing us to breathe through unbearable moments. Research shows that when someone responds to our vulnerability with genuine understanding, our whole body responds – energy increases, fatigue decreases, sleep improves, and our ability to concentrate returns. Without this empathetic connection, we remain isolated in our pain, unable to process our grief effectively.

Kristi walks us through her practical Four A's framework for offering empathy: Ask curious questions, Attune completely to the person, Acknowledge the unique significance of their loss, and Affirm their strength (but only after the first three steps). She clarifies crucial distinctions between healthy empathy and codependency, explaining how true empathy empowers while codependency drains both parties.

For parents navigating their own grief while supporting children, Kristi offers wisdom about self-empathy and befriending our emotions. When we judge or shame ourselves for feelings like anger or sadness, our children learn to suppress their emotions too. By modeling acceptance of our grief, we create safe spaces for our children to process theirs.

Most powerfully, Kristi reminds us that our wounds can become sources of healing for others. Through our grief journey, we develop deeper capacity for empathy – turning our pain into a gift that helps others feel less alone. Whether you're grieving, supporting someone who is, or simply want to become more empathetic, this episode offers practical wisdom and heartfelt guidance for the journey ahead.

Order the book When Grief Comes Home https://a.co/d/ijaiP5L

Send us a text

For more information on Jessica’s House or for additional resources, please go to jessicashouse.org

Welcome to the When Grief Comes Home podcast. We're glad you're here. This podcast supports parents who are grieving a spouse, partner, or child while helping their children who are living through the loss of a parent or sibling. With personal grief stories and professional guidance, we offer parents practical tips for supporting their child who is grieving while caring for their own grief.

In this episode, Erin and Colleen share the powerful concept of "the rule of thirds" in grief support—how a third of people will disappointingly vanish, will provide neutral assistance, and will show up in ways you never imagined.

Beyond practical support, we dig into the emotional quality of relationships during grief. The difference between true compassion versus what we call "silent indifference" can profoundly impact healing. We discuss how to handle well-intentioned but painful platitudes, express your authentic needs, and conserve precious emotional energy by showing up as your true grieving self instead of maintaining appearances.

Order the book When Grief Comes Home https://a.co/d/ijaiP5L

Send us a text

For more information on Jessica’s House or for additional resources, please go to jessicashouse.org

Welcome to the When Grief Comes Home podcast. We're glad you're here. This podcast supports parents who are grieving a spouse, partner, or child while helping their children who are living through the loss of a parent or sibling. With personal grief stories and professional guidance, we offer parents practical tips for supporting their child who is grieving while caring for their own grief.

In this episode, Erin reflects on a moment of panic while driving through fog after her son’s death—an emotional “grief storm” that arrived without warning. We explore how grief can feel unpredictable and intense, and how tools like deep breathing and grounding can help bring us back to center.

Using Dr. Dan Siegel’s “window of tolerance” framework, we look at how grief can leave us feeling overwhelmed or numb—and how to gently return to a place of balance. For parents, we share a creative activity where children illustrate their own “grief weather,” helping them name their feelings and discover what helps them cope.

Grief storms do pass. And with the right support, we can move through them with greater strength and compassion.

Have you had a grief storm? Share your story or leave a review to help others find this conversation.

Order the book When Grief Comes Home https://a.co/d/ijaiP5L

Send us a text

For more information on Jessica’s House or for additional resources, please go to jessicashouse.org