The Widowed Parent Podcast

I had such a great discussion with Jordan Arogeti for this episode. Jordan and her company have a new tool called Support Now. It’s a bit like a mashup of some tools you may be familiar with, such as CaringBridge, Go Fund Me, and online meal trains. But it’s SO much more than that. In preparing to speak with Jordan, I had an “Ah-Ha!” moment: Support for the newest grievers is all about ORGANIZING and ORIENTING a widowed parent’s own community. ORGANIZING: Support Now is a comprehensive tool that facilitates exactly this. Listen to my discussion with Jordan for a good overview. ORIENTING: I have LOTS of thoughts. Some of them you can find now at GriefAllies.com, where you can download my free tips & resources for supporting grieving people. (And stay tuned for more on this!) In the short term, a widowed parent’s own community is going to be best positioned to help them with urgent and immediate needs. I’m working on ways to make that easier and less awkward. And then, of course, to introduce resources, books, experts, and more who can help after those immediate-term needs have been tended to. -=-=-=-=- Thank you sponsors & partners: Help Texts - Grief support text messaging service. Tips and support delivered all year long, personalized based on your loss. Listeners get $10 off: https://helptexts.com/jennylisk BetterHelp - Talk with a licensed, professional therapist online. Get 10% off your first month: betterhelp.com/widowedparent Support the show - Buy Me a Coffee -=-=-=-=-

I had such a great discussion with Dr. Linda Shanti McCabe for this episode. We haven’t tackled the topic of art and how it can help with grief on the show before, so I was excited to talk with Linda about that as well as her program called the Art of Grief which is starting soon. Linda is a widowed parent herself, and she’s also a licensed clinical psychologist. Listen, too, as she shares the major change she made shortly after her husband’s death, and what she’s planning as her son prepares for his 13th birthday. -=-=-=-=- Thank you sponsors & partners: Help Texts - Grief support text messaging service. Tips and support delivered all year long, personalized based on your loss. Listeners get $10 off: https://helptexts.com/jennylisk BetterHelp - Talk with a licensed, professional therapist online. Get 10% off your first month: betterhelp.com/widowedparent Support the show - Buy Me a Coffee -=-=-=-=-

I had such a great discussion with child life specialist Jessica Correnti this week on the Widowed Parent Podcast. Jessica is the founder of a practice called Kids Grief Support. She is also the author of two picture books for young grievers, including her newest, The ABCs of Grief, which will be available in February 2024. In this discussion we dive deep on a number of topics, such as: the power of books to help kids see that they are not the only kid with a dead parent; the importance of being honest with kids; examples of clear language to help kids understand what it means when someone dies; what she looks for in a developmentally appropriate grief book for kids; and much more. So much of our focus at the Widowed Parent Institute is on helping parents learn about children’s grief and how to support their own grieving kids. Today’s guest has so much to share with us on this topic. Be sure to follow Jessica on Instagram, too, where she shares tips and resources about children’s grief. -=-=-=-=- Thank you sponsors & partners: Help Texts - Grief support text messaging service. Tips and support delivered all year long, personalized based on your loss. Listeners get $10 off: https://helptexts.com/jennylisk BetterHelp - Talk with a licensed, professional therapist online. Get 10% off your first month: betterhelp.com/widowedparent Support the show - Buy Me a Coffee -=-=-=-=-

I had such a great discussion with Dr. Katie Davis for this episode. This week we tackle a thorny parenting topic: screens. The pandemic period of online school, work, play dates, happy hours, fitness classes, therapy sessions, music lessons, and so much more has taught us that asking whether screens and screen time are “good” or “bad” are not necessarily the right questions anymore. Technology has become too central to our lives. Katie is a researcher at the University of Washington who directs the UW Digital Youth Lab and has a new book for parents called “Technology’s Child: Digital Media’s Role in the Ages and Stages of Growing Up.” Plus, she answers that question everyone with young kids want to know: if young kids aren’t supposed to have screen time, what about facetime with grandparents who live 3,000 miles away? -=-=-=-=- Thank you sponsors & partners: Help Texts - Grief support text messaging service. Tips and support delivered all year long, personalized based on your loss. Listeners get $10 off: https://helptexts.com/jennylisk BetterHelp - Talk with a licensed, professional therapist online. Get 10% off your first month: betterhelp.com/widowedparent Support the show - Buy Me a Coffee -=-=-=-=-

Today’s discussion is such an important one. For families who have been touched by suicide losses, for sure – and also for any parents of grieving teens from any death losses. Joanne tells us today about her new film, “Talking Out Loud - Teens & Suicide Loss: A Conversation.” I’ve seen it, and I have to say it’s such a privilege to hear directly from teens about such a sensitive topic. They knew their parents were watching live during the filming, but they apparently all forgot about that and the cameras and they had a really honest, unfiltered discussion. I’d like to thank Joanne and her team for bringing us this incredible film, and also for coming here to speak with us about it this week. -=-=-=-=- Thank you sponsors & partners: Help Texts - Grief support text messaging service. Tips and support delivered all year long, personalized based on your loss. Listeners get $10 off: https://helptexts.com/jennylisk BetterHelp - Talk with a licensed, professional therapist online. Get 10% off your first month: betterhelp.com/widowedparent Support the show - Buy Me a Coffee -=-=-=-=-

I can’t think of a better way to kick off Children’s Grief Awareness Month than to share my recent discussion with Laurel Braitman, author of the new memoir What Looks Like Bravery. Longtime listeners will recall that I’ve often mentioned what a privilege it is to speak with grown-up grieving kids, and to hear firsthand their experiences and reflections after losing a parent at a young age. What Laurel gives us in this book is an incredibly intimate portrait of her life. She lets us inside, and she allows us to see how grief has affected one now-grown-up grieving child over the decades. Her book and today’s discussion are full of beautiful insights - and I really can’t say enough about how incredible her book is. I don’t usually cry when reading books, but wow, I had a little trouble seeing the words on the last few pages through the tears that were welling up. -=-=-=-=- Thank you sponsors & partners: Help Texts - Grief support text messaging service. Tips and support delivered all year long, personalized based on your loss. Listeners get $10 off: https://helptexts.com/jennylisk BetterHelp - Talk with a licensed, professional therapist online. Get 10% off your first month: betterhelp.com/widowedparent Support the show - Buy Me a Coffee -=-=-=-=-

I had such a great discussion with Azurae Johnson Redmond for this episode. Azurae is the founder of Young, Black & Widowed Inc and she is also the foreword writer for my new book, out this week: "Widowed Parents Unite: 52 Tips to Get Through the First Year, from One Widowed Parent to Another." I’m thrilled that Azurae and so many other contributing authors are part of this book. Widowed Parents Unite wouldn't be nearly what it is without each and every one of these moms and dads who decided to share their stories with those newer on this widowed parenting path. I know you'll learn so much from Azurae's story, and I hope you check out the resources offered by Young, Black & Widowed. -=-=-=-=- Thank you sponsors & partners: Help Texts - Grief support text messaging service. Tips and support delivered all year long, personalized based on your loss. Listeners get $10 off: https://helptexts.com/jennylisk BetterHelp - Talk with a licensed, professional therapist online. Get 10% off your first month: betterhelp.com/widowedparent Support the show - Buy Me a Coffee -=-=-=-=-

I had such a great discussion with Mae Yoshikawa for this episode. Mae’s boys were young when her husband died. One was 8 years old, and the other was just 5 months old. Listen in our discussion for the important question Mae asked her older son after her husband died: What if the question right now is not “Why?” This hearkens back to her own experience when her mom became gravely ill when Mae was a young adult. -=-=-=-=- Thank you sponsors & partners: Help Texts - Grief support text messaging service. Tips and support delivered all year long, personalized based on your loss. Listeners get $10 off: https://helptexts.com/jennylisk BetterHelp - Talk with a licensed, professional therapist online. Get 10% off your first month: betterhelp.com/widowedparent Support the show - Buy Me a Coffee -=-=-=-=-

I had such a great discussion with Gina Moffa for this episode. Gina is a therapist specializing in grief and loss, and she has a brand-new book out this week: Moving On Doesn’t Mean Letting Go: A Modern Guide to Navigating Loss. I was honored to read an advance copy and provide an endorsement for her terrific book. Perhaps the best way I can introduce our discussion is to share what I wrote about her new book: “If you don’t have a therapist on speed dial—or even if you do—Gina Moffa’s Moving On Doesn’t Mean Letting Go will walk with you through the disorienting and devastating experience that is grief. Helpfully, she tackles both the inner grief journey and navigating the world at large while grieving. Moffa shares important information on the mind-body connection as it relates to the grief experience, helping us understand how important it is to listen to what our bodies are trying to tell us. An important chapter called ‘Grief’s Sister, Trauma’ is not to be missed. A must-read for those who are grieving the loss of someone close.” -=-=-=-=- Thank you sponsors & partners: Help Texts - Grief support text messaging service. Tips and support delivered all year long, personalized based on your loss. Listeners get $10 off: https://helptexts.com/jennylisk BetterHelp - Talk with a licensed, professional therapist online. Get 10% off your first month: betterhelp.com/widowedparent Support the show - Buy Me a Coffee -=-=-=-=-

I had such a great discussion with Phyllis Fagell for this episode. Phyllis just released a brand new book, Middle School Superpowers: Raising Resilient Tweens in Turbulent Times. We haven’t specifically talked about middle schoolers on the show before, and I knew Phyllis would be just the right person to tackle this with. She’s a parenting author and speaker – and I had to laugh when I saw on her website: “Phyllis has lived through middle school three times: first for herself, then with her kids, and now as a counselor.” She’s a school counselor in Washington, DC, and her first book Middle School Matters could be likened to “what to expect when you’re expecting a middle schooler.” -=-=-=-=- Thank you sponsors & partners: Help Texts - Grief support text messaging service. Tips and support delivered all year long, personalized based on your loss. Listeners get $10 off: https://helptexts.com/jennylisk BetterHelp - Talk with a licensed, professional therapist online. Get 10% off your first month: betterhelp.com/widowedparent Support the show - Buy Me a Coffee -=-=-=-=-

I had such a great discussion with Chris Buchanan for this episode. Chris has written a graphic novel for grieving teens and kids – something that is unique among the grief literature. She was inspired to write this book because of a death in her community, and she brought her many years of expertise as a speech-language pathologist to the task of writing this book in order to create a different type of resource for parents and professionals working with grieving children and teens. -=-=-=-=- Thank you sponsors & partners: Help Texts - Grief support text messaging service. Tips and support delivered all year long, personalized based on your loss. Listeners get $10 off: https://helptexts.com/jennylisk BetterHelp - Talk with a licensed, professional therapist online. Get 10% off your first month: betterhelp.com/widowedparent Support the show - Buy Me a Coffee -=-=-=-=-

I had such a great discussion with Lynn Haraldson for this episode. She was widowed 40 years ago, at the age of 19—with an 11-day-old baby at home. I especially appreciated the longer lens she brings to the experience of being a widowed parent. Her journey has included many twists and turns, and she reflects on it all in her new memoir, An Obesity of Grief. Listen especially for Lynn telling us about her daughter’s high school project, when she reached out to the newspaper in their former small town to learn about the father she never knew. -=-=-=-=- Thank you sponsors & partners: Help Texts - Grief support text messaging service. Tips and support delivered all year long, personalized based on your loss. Listeners get $10 off: https://helptexts.com/jennylisk BetterHelp - Talk with a licensed, professional therapist online. Get 10% off your first month: betterhelp.com/widowedparent Support the show - Buy Me a Coffee -=-=-=-=-

We’re trying something a little different today. Or actually: a lot different. We’ve got our first non-human guest on the show. No, I’m not interviewing either of my dogs, Daisy and Penny, although that could get interesting. Today I’m interviewing the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT. What is ChatGPT, you ask? I asked it to describe itself briefly, in a non-technical way, and this is what it said: “ChatGPT is like a digital helper that can talk and write in a human-like way. It's powered by a type of artificial intelligence, and it can help answer your questions, write emails, tutor in a variety of subjects, translate languages, and even write poetry. It's like having a very knowledgeable friend to help you out with all sorts of tasks. This tool was created by OpenAI, a research group focused on making AI technology that benefits everyone. ChatGPT was first made available to the public in 2021.” So I got to wondering recently whether ChatGPT might have anything useful to say to those of us who are widowed parents. Because if you’re anything like me, you’re trying to figure out how to raise kids after their other parent has died – and you’re realizing this is hard. And – it’s hard to know who can help us figure that out. This idea came up because a family member of mine has a podcast on a totally different topic, and she interviewed ChatGPT on her show. And my dad spotted it and said to me, hey, maybe there’s something interesting here in relation to your show, too. So I listened to the discussion my aunt, Jo Ann Barefoot, had with ChatGPT on her show, which is called Barefoot Innovation – and it was fascinating. If you’re at all interested in the banking industry, and especially in FinTech and financial regulation, I highly encourage you to listen to her interview with ChatGPT, and to her many other interviews as well. Anyway, I started to wonder: what would ChatGPT say to my listeners? If I asked it to suggest resources for widowed parents, would it have any? Would those resources be any good? Would it have advice on planning for Father’s Day, for example, since that is right around the corner? Would it be well-versed on kids’ understanding of grief at various ages and developmental stages? Perhaps most importantly: If I posed a bunch of questions, and I shared them on the show, would I have to interject over and over and let you know where its answers were unhelpful, or even incorrect or dangerous? I played around a little first, to get a sense of how to use it. And because I was sitting next to my dog when I signed up, my very first question to ChatGPT was: “can you tell me about Tibetan spaniels?” I asked a few more questions about topics that were top-of-mind: recovery from the type of shoulder surgery I recently had, and how to clean my new Trex decking. Then, it was time to think about what to ask ChatGPT about widowed parenting, and give it a go. Have a listen for yourself, and let me know what you think about how it answers. A note about the methodology and technology used in this interview. I used the most up-to-date version of ChatGPT, called GPT-4. Because it only takes text input, and answers with text replies, I conducted the interview by typing my questions and reading the answers as they came back. In order to share it with you today, I went back and recorded myself reading my questions out loud, and also fed ChatGPT’s answers into a text-to-speech tool called NaturalReader (the commercial version). I picked a voice named “Aria” and chose the “friendly” option for her tone. I used another AI tool called DALL-E to generate a “headshot” for today’s guest. I had to experiment quite a lot with what type of prompts to give the tool, in plain English, and get the type of image I wanted, and that was fun. As someone who spent 20 years in the tech world in my prior life, I have to say, this experiment was super interesting. I was blown away with how accurate and useful the answers were to the questions that I posed. I don’t think that’s necessarily always the case with AI tools, even this one. One criticism I hear is that these tools can create great-sounding answers that are entirely wrong. In this case, I’m able to review the answers before sharing them with you, and if any of the answers had been wrong or even dangerous, I would have addressed that. As AI tools become more and more widespread, I think it’s important for those of us working in the grief world to realize that the grieving people we serve may begin turning to them for answers. I think it’s important that we understand what’s out there, what may be coming, and what the possibilities and limitations are. We can’t afford to ignore AI – for better or worse, it will likely change the way we do our work in the world, and how grieving people are supported in the years to come. I hope you enjoy my interview with ChatGPT. -=-=-=-=- Thank you sponsors & partners: Help Texts - Grief support text messaging service. Tips and support delivered all year long, personalized based on your loss. Listeners get $10 off: https://helptexts.com/jennylisk BetterHelp - Talk with a licensed, professional therapist online. Get 10% off your first month: betterhelp.com/widowedparent Support the show - Buy Me a Coffee -=-=-=-=-

I had such a great discussion with Talia Kovacs for this episode. We talked about an important topic: building resilience in our kids. Listen for Talia explaining what she means when she says resilience is learned, but it can’t be taught. It’s an important nuance that I hadn’t thought about before, and Talia explains to us what this means for us as parents. -=-=-=-=- Thank you sponsors & partners: Help Texts - Grief support text messaging service. Tips and support delivered all year long, personalized based on your loss. Listeners get $10 off: https://helptexts.com/jennylisk BetterHelp - Talk with a licensed, professional therapist online. Get 10% off your first month: betterhelp.com/widowedparent Support the show - Buy Me a Coffee -=-=-=-=-

I had such a great discussion with Heidi Carson for this episode. Heidi is a fellow widowed parent, and she lost her husband, Chad, when their kids were 12 and 14 due to complications related to a rare telomere disease. I so appreciate Heidi talking with us because I believe that hearing other people’s stories helps us feel so much less alone. Listen for Heidi sharing how getting involved in volunteering and advocacy related to her husband’s disease has helped her in her grief, and how writing fiction has helped, too. -=-=-=-=- Thank you sponsors & partners: Help Texts - Grief support text messaging service. Tips and support delivered all year long, personalized based on your loss. Listeners get $10 off: https://helptexts.com/jennylisk BetterHelp - Talk with a licensed, professional therapist online. Get 10% off your first month: betterhelp.com/widowedparent Support the show - Buy Me a Coffee -=-=-=-=-

I had such a great discussion with Dr. Lisa Damour for this episode. I always love talking with Lisa, and her books and podcast are incredible resources for parents. I frequently recommend her book Untangled to parents of teen and tween girls, and she’s got a brand new book out this week: The Emotional Lives of Teenagers. In addition to unpacking that topic, we talked about trauma, and also why one of Lisa’s first questions when encountering someone in crisis is to ask whether they are able to sleep. We talked about some options to consider if your teen is refusing to go to therapy, and so much more. -=-=-=-=- Thank you sponsors & partners: Help Texts - Grief support text messaging service. Tips and support delivered all year long, personalized based on your loss. Listeners get $10 off: https://helptexts.com/jennylisk BetterHelp - Talk with a licensed, professional therapist online. Get 10% off your first month: betterhelp.com/widowedparent Support the show - Buy Me a Coffee -=-=-=-=-

I had such a great discussion with Rabbi Steve Leder for this episode. So great that I may just have to have him back. We talked mostly about his second-most-recent book, The Beauty of What Remains, which I found fascinating and helpful and comforting, all in one. He describes it as both a memoir and a field guide. We talked about what he’s learned working with a thousand grieving families in his thirty years at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, plus what he learned when he lost his own father. Even though Steve is a Rabbi, I found his wisdom applicable to those who practice any religion, or even no religion at all. -=-=-=-=- Thank you sponsors & partners: Help Texts - Grief support text messaging service. Tips and support delivered all year long, personalized based on your loss. Listeners get $10 off: https://helptexts.com/jennylisk BetterHelp - Talk with a licensed, professional therapist online. Get 10% off your first month: betterhelp.com/widowedparent Support the show - Buy Me a Coffee -=-=-=-=-

I had such a great discussion with Whitney Kobrin for this episode. Whitney is herself widowed, and she really wanted to focus our discussion on giving hope to people who feel stuck. She’s a love coach, but we didn’t talk about dating or relationships—we talked about self-love and self-compassion. We also talked about the advice you may have heard to not make any major changes in the first year. That’s come up on the show before, but we’ve not really explored it too much, and Whitney tells us about her experience with this. -=-=-=-=- Thank you sponsors & partners: Help Texts - Grief support text messaging service. Tips and support delivered all year long, personalized based on your loss. Listeners get $10 off: https://helptexts.com/jennylisk BetterHelp - Talk with a licensed, professional therapist online. Get 10% off your first month: betterhelp.com/widowedparent Support the show - Buy Me a Coffee -=-=-=-=-

I had such a great discussion with Dr. Elena Lister and Dr. Michael Schwartzman for this episode. I’m going to keep this brief and make just one suggestion: If you’re a widowed parent, buy this book. If you know a widowed parent, buy it for them. Seriously. The stuff the authors cover is exactly the sort of stuff I was wondering about when my husband, Dennis, was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and my kids were 9 & 11. If you don’t know what to say to your kids about death and grief—and let’s be honest, who does?—then do yourself a favor and read Giving Hope: Conversations with Children About Illness, Death, and Loss. -=-=-=-=- Thank you sponsors & partners: Help Texts - Grief support text messaging service. Tips and support delivered all year long, personalized based on your loss. Listeners get $10 off: https://helptexts.com/jennylisk BetterHelp - Talk with a licensed, professional therapist online. Get 10% off your first month: betterhelp.com/widowedparent Support the show - Buy Me a Coffee -=-=-=-=-

I had such a great discussion with Charlene Lam for this episode. Charlene said she’d like to share with my listeners why she believes we are all curators after a loved one dies. I thought that sounded intriguing, so I invited her on the show. Little did I know I’d end up with some new items on my to-do list! We brainstormed what to do with the pile of old DVDs I have – including all the seasons of Mad Men, which Dennis and I enjoyed together for many years. Listen for Charlene’s reflections and tips for using our loved one’s belongings as a source of connection and healing, and consider dropping into one of her monthly Grief Gallery gatherings on zoom. -=-=-=-=- Thank you sponsors & partners: Help Texts - Grief support text messaging service. Tips and support delivered all year long, personalized based on your loss. Listeners get $10 off: https://helptexts.com/jennylisk BetterHelp - Talk with a licensed, professional therapist online. Get 10% off your first month: betterhelp.com/widowedparent Support the show - Buy Me a Coffee -=-=-=-=-