Grieving The Relationship We Didn't Get To Have - Maegan Parker Brooks, PhD

It's our 300th episode and this conversation with Maegan Parker Brooks, PhD, is the perfect one to honor that milestone. Maegan is an Associate Professor at Willamette University and a volunteer at Dougy Center where she facilitates a peer grief support group for adult caregivers of teens who are grieving. Maegan is also a daughter and sister, grieving the deaths of her father, her sister Emily, and her mother. In this conversation we talk about grief and estranged relationships, relationships impacted by substance use, non-death losses, memorialization during the pandemic, and all the ways we talk to one another - and ourselves - about that grief.

Maegan Parker Brooks, PhD is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Civic Communication & Media Department at Willamette University. At Willamette, Maegan teaches courses in Death and Grief Communication and facilitates the Diversity of Loss grief support group. Beyond Willamette, Maegan co-facilitates a group for adult caregivers of grieving teens at Dougy Center and she recently earned a certificate in Arts-Assisted Grief Therapy at the Portland Institute for Loss & Transition.

Related Articles: Brooks, Maegan P. "Listening to Grief." Willamette., 1 Feb. 2024, pp. 20-21.

Brooks, Maegan P. “Listening to Layers of Loss.” Journal of Autoethnography, 4, 2 (2023): 174-192.

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Grief Out Loud® is a production of Dougy Center, The National Grief Center for Children & Families.