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Remember the last time you tried to talk about grief and suddenly everyone left the room? Hosted by Jana DeCristofaro and produced by Dougy Center, Grief Out Loud® is opening up this often avoided conversation because grief is hard enough without having to go through it alone. We bring you a mix of personal stories, tips for supporting children, teens, and yourself, and interviews with professionals. Platitude and cliché-free, we promise!
September 11th, 2026
When Frank Flores's younger brother Marcelo died suddenly at 23, Frank found himself in an unfamiliar role: identifying his brother's body, navigating paperwork, and figuring out how to bring him home to the U.S. from Mexico. There was little room for grief. Instead, Frank went back to work - and then worked even more. Five years later, Frank's father died during COVID. Once again, grief was crowded out by the bureaucracy of death: bank accounts, debts, paperwork, family responsibilities, and the messy, exhausting task of untangling a life after death. Frank describes this as a "mountain of paperwork stacked on top of our grief." It took years for Frank to recognize how staying busy prevented him from being with his grief. That realization eventually became part of the inspiration for FamiliaLista, a bilingual resource designed to help people organize the information family members need if someone becomes unable to speak for themselves—or after they die. In this conversation, Frank talks about the deaths of his brother and father, the pressure he felt to be strong for his family, cultural discomfort with talking about death, and how he's making more space for grief. He also shares his hope that preparing for death can be understood not as morbid or inviting death, but as an act of love.
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When Frank Flores's younger brother Marcelo died suddenly at 23, Frank found himself in an unfamiliar role: identifying his brother's body, navigating paperwork, and figuring out how to bring him home read more...
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What if we thought about death not as something that needs to be handed over to institutions, but as something that communities could face together? In this episode we talk with Crystal Meneses, a de read more...
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In 2022, Steph Tupper's two older children, Ali and Joe, were killed in a car crash. Ali was 16 and Joe was 14. Four years later, Steph is still learning how to live with the reality of losing her chi read more...
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When physician and writer Shanda McManus was fourteen, her mother died after living with ovarian cancer. Three years later, her grandmother - the person who became home after that loss - was killed by read more...
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Grief Out Loud® is supported in part by the Chester Stephan Endowment Fund in loving memory by the estate of Theodore R. Stephan.
Dougy Center, through the Grief Out Loud podcast, is committed to learning from and sharing diverse perspectives on grief experiences and grief support. The views expressed by podcast guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Dougy Center, its staff, or its Board of Directors.
