In this episode of Great Grief, we follow Nnenna Freelon on a walk through the woods, where she contemplates autumn, the changing of the seasons, and the possibility of renewal after everything dies.

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• Join Scalawag and Nnenna Freelon in Durham, North Carolina, on Sunday, December 10 for "Great Grief—Live! Home for the Holidays," a live music performance and uplifting conversation exploring loss, love, and how to move forward with grief during the holidays. Reserve your tickets today.

This is episode one in the second four-episode season of Great Grief with Nnenna Freelon, "Seasons of Change." The seasons are changing—an apt metaphor to talk about the shedding, withering, and falling away that accompanies the most painful parts of grief. This season, Nnenna looks to nature and the cyclical movement of time to delve deeper into loss, creating rituals and making discoveries that help us reconnect with ourselves, each other, and the ones we’ve lost. 

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Unlike other podcasts on grief, Great Grief by Grammy-nominated vocalist Nnenna Freelon doesn’t give you a blueprint for how to get over it. Instead, she offers her own experiences as a wife, a sister, a Black woman, and a powerful jazz artist to help you get into it. Each four-episode season is organized around topics that intertwine our grief experiences—topics like sisterhood, the inevitability of change, and Black love. A new collection drops every quarter, accompanied by a live opportunity for us to gather around our griefs in different cities across the South. Seasons 1 and 2 are available now on all podcast platforms.

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