When Loss Breaks You Open

Jelena gets candid about on of her favorite topics: loss, grief, and mortality. It all started with her father - and best friend - being diagnosed with lung cancer when she was 25 to ultimately die a year later. She calls it her year of “cancer and confetti” where she was either dousing strangers with confetti exploring what they celebrate or watching her father fight for his life. This time radically altered her life as she realized that grief and love are two sides of the same coin and how society has radically misunderstood the vital importance of having a relationship with our mortality. It’s been six years since her father died and Jelena brings you into her world - where grief is love and there are many different nuances to it - as she shares excerpts from her yet-to-be-seen, unpublished book - “Cancer & Confetti” - that she wrote during her first fatherless winter. Like always, she uses the written word as a conduit for how to processes her experience of loss and the nuances of being human while sharing her rituals of remembrance that can keep those we have loved and lost alive. 

Chapter Markers 

• 9:00 - My Story 
• 19:32 - When My Dad Died
• 27:45 - Cancer & Confetti
• 29:37 - What is Grief?
• 32:12 - What Grief Gifted Me
• 37:08 - How Grief Shows Up in My Everyday Life
• 43:37 - What Makes Life Beautiful & Meaningful

Self-Reflection Questions

• What is your relationship to grief, loss, death? 
• What does it bring up? 
• How do you mourn? 
• How does it feel? 
• How can you honor those and what you’ve lost? 

Resource Links

• Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
• When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times 
• Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief 
• Smoke Gets In Your Eyes & and Other Lessons from the Crematory 
• The Top Five Regrets of the Dying 
• When You’re Grieving the Living 
• Refuge in Grief 

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