This space was created for you by someone who gets it – your grief, your foundation-shattering reality, and the question of what the heck do we do with the shattered pieces of life and loss around us.
It’s also for the listener who wants to better understand their grieving person, and perhaps wants to learn how to help.
Now in its fourth season, the Grief and Light™ podcast features both solo episodes and interviews with first-hand experiencers, authors, and professionals, who shine a light on the spectrum of experiences, feelings, secondary losses, and takeaways.
As a bereaved sister, I share my personal story of the sudden loss of my younger brother, only sibling, one day after we celebrated his 32nd birthday. I also delve into how that loss, trauma, and grief catapulted me into a truth-seeking journey, which ultimately led me to answer "the calling" of creating this space I now call Grief and Light.
Since launching the first episode on March 30, 2023, the Grief and Light podcast and social platforms have evolved into a powerful resource for grief-informed support, including one-on-one grief guidance, monthly grief circles, community, and much more.
With each episode, you can expect open and authentic conversations sharing our truth, and explorations of how to transmute the grief experience into meaning, and even joy.
My hope is to make you feel less alone, and to be a beacon of light and source of information for anyone embarking on this journey.
"We're all just walking each other HOME." - Ram Dass
"People will say the darnedest things" to the grieving | What not to say to your grieving person
•Nina Rodriguez•Season 1•Episode 3
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This episode is about people who say the darndest things to people who have suffered the loss of a loved one.
We live in a grief-averse society where big feelings and emotions are to be pushed away so we can move on with our lives.
Because of this, we are often ill-equipped to care for the bereaved and grieving.
The result?
Grievers end up on the receiving end of hurtful and awful “advice” or “support” from often well-meaning, grief-illiterate people. What some consider support, the grieving experience as painful words that slice our healing wounds wide open again.
In short, it causes unnecessary suffering to those of us already doing our best to survive the tragedy of loss.
I asked the @griefandlight Instagram community: “What have people told you after your loss that was unhelpful or painful?”
You may be shocked at the answers received.
Each one of their answers reveals some of the preconceived notions that non-grievers have about the grieving based on their particular loss, and this is what adds suffering to an already painful situation.
I also share a personal story of the day we met "John" at the funeral home where we held my brother's memorial, and the advice he shared as a grieving father himself.
Please note that it may be challenging to listen to this episode if you are in a tender stage of grief. Feel free to pause and return to it if/when you can.
Grief and Light is an award-winning, independent podcast exploring the honest, messy, and deeply human experience of loss. We're on a mission to foster a more grief-informed, hopeful world, one conversation at a time.
🏆 Ear Worthy Best Life Lessons 2026 · TalkDeath Readers' Choice Best Podcast 2025 · Women Who Podcast Awards 2025 Winner · Podground Editor's Pick
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Personal story about things said to my parents and I after my brother passed
"John's" Advice as a grieving father
The four-legged table
Speaking up about the reality of grief
Grief is a forever thing
Key takeaways
SPEAKER_00
You just lost your loved one. Now what? Welcome to the Grief in Life podcast, where we explore this new reality through grief-colored lenses. Openly, authentically, I'm your host, Nina Rodriguez. Let's get started. Welcome back, everyone. Third episode. All right, let's dive in. This episode is about people who say the darnedest things to people who have suffered the loss of a loved one. We live in a grief-averse society where big feelings and emotions are to be pushed away so we can move on with our lives. Because of this, we are often ill-equipped to care for the bereaved and the grieving.
The result? Grievers end up on the receiving end of hurtful and awful, quote-unquote, advice or quote-unquote support, from often well-meaning, grief-illiterate people's platitudes. In other words, what some consider support, the grieving receive as painful words that slice our healing wounds wide open again. It causes unnecessary suffering to those of us already doing our best to survive the tragedy of loss. I have my own story to share, but before I do so, I'd like to share the results of a post I shared in my Grief and Light Instagram stories yesterday that I think illustrates what I mean by people saying the darndest things. I asked the community, what have people told you after loss that was unhelpful or painful? And the answers that I received surprised me. I'm going to share some of them exactly as they were shared with me because summarizing it simply doesn't do it justice. Each one of these reveals some of the preconceived notions that non-grievers have about the grieving based on their particular loss. And this is exactly what adds suffering to an already painful situation. I'm going to read the answers I received back to back. God needed your brother. She was only your aunt. At least he didn't have a family. You have to go on and stay strong for your daughter. You need to just get on with living. She's in a better place. Well, at least you have another child. They were too good for this earth. Your brother wanted company in heaven. You're still young. You'll find somebody else. Now let some of those sink in and remember that these are phrases that grievers say were exceptionally hurtful and unhelpful. What's interesting is that most of the time the person saying these things actually means wealth. The
problem lies in the disconnect between what people think grief is and how they think it should be supported, versus what grief actually is and what the grievers actually need, which is witnessing of their pain and acknowledgement of their loss. We need someone who looks into our eyes directly at our pain and doesn't feel the need to look away. I'll tell you my personal story about how this played out after my brother's sudden passing, one day after we celebrated his 32nd birthday, and specifically once the word started to get out about his passing. I noticed that even the most well-intentioned friends, family, and colleagues were so ill-prepared to be of support. Most of the things they said felt like they were sticking their sharp, jagged nails into an open wound. Were they even aware of what they were saying? Did those words seriously come out of their mouth? In the shock of the aftermath,
there were a barrage of aftershocks. Much of this was the bizarre words and behaviors, possibly meant to be comforting, that we, meaning my parents and I, received from people. The best way to illustrate this is to share the story of the encounter my parents and I had with the staff member at the funeral home where my brother's memorial was held. The entire thing was surreal. I didn't know if I wanted to see my brother with the open casket, as I was pretty sure I was not going to. I walked into the room where I saw my parents standing in front of the open casket, staring at their lifeless son's vessel in human form for the last time. My heart and soul hurt for them more than they hurt for myself. They are the bravest people I know. They have endured so much already. And now this. My parents are amazing. They do not deserve this. I mean, no one does, but especially not them. I noticed my mother, although in profound pain, was still there, alive. She didn't die. I guess a part of me thought my parents would die if they saw my brother in the casket, but they were still there, enduring, processing, taking it all in in disbelief. Every second felt so surreal. My grandparents were there as well, and my aunts, uncles, cousins. We were all standing because of their support, and because of life's grace in action, which is the numbness and disassociation that often kicks in following a traumatic event. The room was quiet and cold, and I could smell the pungent scent of each white lily adorning the room. The funeral director who helped us plan the memorial during the days prior said to me, He looks good. Don't be afraid. He could tell I was terrified. Did they give him a haircut? I asked. It was my one request to the funeral staff because my brother had plans to get his haircut that weekend, but never made it to the appointment. Yes, we did the best we could. I remember walking towards the front of the room. Everything felt as if it were in slow motion, and similar to the moment when I got the call. I can't recall exactly what I did or said or how I managed to get to my brother's vessel. Maybe I floated there. Actually, that feels appropriate. I probably floated there. And there he was. My sweet brother. He did look nice. His haircut was different, but I guess this was a different occasion of sorts. His body was dressed in the suit we purchased for him a few days prior. And I remember his hands. He had beautiful hands, but they didn't look like his hands anymore. I mean, the shape was there, but they felt frozen and discolored and distant. He wasn't there anymore. He wasn't in there. He's gone. The decision to see your loved one in an open casket format is so very personal. In my case, it was a decision I made on the spot because I originally wanted a closed casket memorial. So while this is my story, please know that if you opted for a closed casket, or if you didn't get the chance to see your loved one one last time, or if you decided not to hold a memorial service at all, that's all perfectly fine. Like the sacred process of birthing a life into this world, the forever send-off is also a sacred process and a very personal one to each of us. In hindsight, I'm actually glad I did float to his side, and I'm eternally grateful for the opportunity to say goodbye, for the opportunity to imprint his face in my mind one last time, to get a good look and mentally photograph all of the details in hopes that I would never forget a single eyelash, birthmark, or the shape of his eyes. Not everyone gets to have this opportunity, the sacred opportunity. It felt oddly gentle seeing him, seeing our lives flash in my mind's eye, remembering when I first met my brother as a baby in the hospital, remembering when I held him in my arms as a newborn, remembering our conversations a week prior, just a week prior, not believing any of this in front of me was now actually real, but taking that first wobbly step towards acknowledging that it actually happened. As guests started to arrive, I got back into automatic mode, slightly detached from the scene just to make sure I got through the evening and making sure I could be there for my parents. I suddenly noticed one of my cousins and uncles, whom I hadn't seen in over a decade, walking in. That melted my heart. We grew up together, and my cousins held some of those precious childhood memories with my brother. My mind flashed images of us as kids and tried reconciling the beauty and nostalgia of those memories with the image of this grown man in front of me, and I just cried. My brother would have loved to see his cousin. I couldn't believe that our reunion had to play out this way. And with each hug and each new person that arrived, with each familiar and new face, a part of me began to acknowledge that this actually happened. I gave my speech.
the depths of our soul. My parents and I looked at each other and we decided to walk towards the casket one last time as a family of four, or as I like to call us the four-legged table, because at the end of the day, we supported each other to get through this thing called life. And now our four-legged table has become a three-legged table, still standing, but perhaps not as stable and surely never the same as the original. We knelt before my brother and prayed over him while holding each other's hand. We thanked my brother for his life. We sent him our love. We took a deep breath, knowing the future is not what it used to be. A while later, we left the room and we reluctantly walked away from the vessel that held my brother's life, never to see him in human form again. John's words echoed in my mind for days. People will tell you the darndest things, and boy was he right. It saddened me that John considered this, of all of the possible pieces of advice, this was the most valuable advice. And it was, but it saddened me because the bereaved are tossed into this impossible journey, often against their will, and those who have walked the path ahead of us feel compelled to warn us that some of the most painful aftershocks involve grief-illiterate people violently reopening our deep wounds of loss through careless, thoughtless words that were almost always best never said. I'm sure too many of you can relate to this, from platitudes like, oh, at least they're in a better place, or God needed another angel, to shaming with phrases like, well, if you wouldn't have done XYZ, then they would still be alive. And yes, these are things people actually say. And it's just awful. Some of them are evil. And this is a big part of why so many grievers have started to speak up about the reality of grief
and are openly sharing what is helpful and what is not. This ignorance around grief is why so many are starting to speak up. Because it's important to educate ourselves as individuals and as a society. It's important to become grief literate. It's important to learn how to be human, empathic, and at the very least, know when not to say something hurtful. I remember one of my husband's relatives saying to me, Well, you know what you have to do now, right? You have to have a baby so your parents can smile again. I said goodbye after that conversation. Not only was that wildly inappropriate and wrong, but they knew that was a very sensitive topic for my husband and I. More importantly, no new baby is going to replace my brother. And hello, are you even thinking about what you're saying? Another one was a former colleague whom I met for coffee a couple of years after my brother passed. She asked how I was doing, and I said, I was doing okay. I'm still grieving and processing what happened. To which she said, Still? Haven't it been like two years already? Wow. Well, that one made me crawl back into my emotional cave. I didn't know there was a timeline for grief, and side note, there isn't one. There are moments when we need more help than others,
but grief? Grief is a forever kind of thing, just like the love we have for a loved one. The most painful of all of the things that was said to me, however, was a colleague who casually said to me, mid-conversation at work, Well, now that you're an only child, the rest of the words faded into the background as I felt the most sudden and violent, painful drop in my stomach. What did she just say? Everything felt distorted in that moment. The words left my coworker's lips so easily. How did she not know that her words would haunt me every day thereafter? I just lost my brother, my only sibling, and not once had I thought of myself as anything but his sister. Until, until the moment those words were uttered. Everything in my life has been redefined since the day he left. Is this part of my new reality? Am I now an only child? One of my greatest joys and privileges was being Joseph's sister. Those words threatened to take that away from me. The body died. Our sibling love did not. And love lives on. Our relationship lives on. It looks nothing like what I expected or wanted, but it's still very real. He will always be my baby brother, and I will always be his sister. I share this in hopes that you can see how words can cut so very deeply and cause more damage, especially when you're in the tender and vulnerable state of grief. You can see why words matter and why grief awareness is so very important. Like John at the funeral home warned us, people have in fact said the darndest things. And it sucks. And we must do better. I have yet to meet a grieving person who hasn't received their own version of crazy comments following a loss. And with all of the examples that I mentioned in the beginning of this episode, God needed your brother. She was only your aunt. At least they didn't have kids. You have to go on and stay strong for your daughter. You need to get on with living. She's in a better place. Well, at least you have another child. They were too good for this earth. Your brother wanted company in heaven. You're still young. You'll find another husband. If you
take anything away from this podcast, it is this. Your loss matters. Your grief matters. This is hard. It's okay to slow down and feel our feelings fully. In fact, it's the only way through and it's necessary. Grief lasts as long as love lasts. No, it won't be this heavy every day. Yes, you will still grieve decades after you're lost. Yes, you are still their sister, brother, partner, mother, father, son, daughter, niece, nephew, etc. Death did not change that. And if you're looking to support a grieving person in your life, please think before you speak. Become grief literate by learning about grief. If you can't seem to find the right words, then just hold space for them to be and feel exactly as they are in that moment without trying to fix or change them. Be the person who looks into their eyes and does not need to look away. That's it for today's episode. Be sure to subscribe to the Grief and Light podcast. I'd also love to connect with you and hear your thoughts and your stories. Feel free to share them with me via my Instagram page at Grief and Light, or you can also visit griefandlight.com for more information and updates. Thank you so much for being here, for being you. Always remember you are not alone.
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