David Kessler: Happy To Be Here Podcast Show Notes

David Kessler and I have come together a handful of times now to talk about grief. It’s an honor because when I was first truly diving into my own grief learning his were words that I turned to. He’s written books with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, like Life Lessons and On Grief and Grieving, and on his own, like Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief. He also leads grief.com and brings together a community of grievers who are all looking for the same thing — a sense of being understood. Throughout our conversation, I think we end up offering up a great primer on grief whether you’re on day 24 or year 24.

You can listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or here.

THE EPISODE’S TOP QUOTES

“You come from a long line of dead people. You know how to grieve.”

“No feeling is final. We get in pain and project it out for decades, after a while you realize your feelings are always changing.”

“It’s really challenging to have to be in so much pain and educate others at the same time.”

“There’s no timeline in grief, but man do we want to put one on it”

“Our loved ones are unforgettable”

“We all have the myth that there’s one grief and there’s not.”

“Grief is just a color and you get to color whatever color it makes sense for your life…on that day.”

“This life has hills and valleys and it’s really easy to think that valleys aren’t valuable, but they are.”

FOLLOW DAVID HERE:

David Kessler Instagram | Grief.com 

HERE’S OUR EPISODE BREAKDOWN:

  • 1 — Meet David Kessler

  • 3:52 — The Grief Dictionary 

  • 5:00 — For first time grievers

  • 8:00 — David’s personal grief experience 

  • 11:15 — Complicated/prolonged grief + the clinical diagnosis

  • 15:20 —  On death anniversaries

  • 19 — We all have different loved ones and different griefs

  • 24:10 — The power of community in grief

DAVID’S RECS

How Long Should It Take to Grieve? Psychiatry Has Come Up With an Answer.

Life Lessons

On Grief and Grieving

Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief