Overcoming Grief and How to Move Forward with Dr. Jane Oh

Episode 040 — Overcoming Grief and How to Move Forward with Dr. Jane Oh

Grief can change you in an instant—splitting your life into “before” and “after.” In this deeply moving episode of Overcoming Anything, host Anne Vryonides sits down with Dr. Jane Oh to talk about loss, loneliness, and the courageous work of learning how to live again after the unthinkable. Dr. Jane shares the truth many people avoid: grief isn’t something you “get over”—it’s love that has nowhere to go, and the journey forward is learning how to carry it with meaning.

Dr. Jane Oh is a devoted wife, mother, concert violinist, dentist, and community leader who turned her personal experience of child loss into purpose-driven impact. Through her Healing Hearts Child Loss support group, she supports grieving parents with community, hope, and practical tools—creating a space where grief is witnessed, not fixed.

Key Takeaways
• Grief isn’t meant to be eliminated—it’s love that has nowhere to go, so you learn to build it a home
• The hardest part is often the loneliness: support fades, friends disappear, and you’re left carrying something too heavy alone
• Healing happens in safe community: you don’t need a silver lining—you need presence, truth, and tools to keep moving forward

Timestamps
• 00:00 — Introduction: grief, loss, and what it really takes to move forward
• 02:10 — Dr. Jane’s quote: “The love in my grief had nowhere to go, so I built it a home”
• 05:00 — The day everything changed: the call from daycare and losing her son
• 10:00 — “How are we going to live through this?”: the moment after loss
• 13:30 — SIDS and the shock of an ordinary day becoming a permanent “after”
• 17:00 — When support fades: the casseroles stop and the friends stop coming
• 21:00 — Grief in marriage: “two snowflakes born from the same snowstorm”
• 26:00 — Grieving alone for eight years: culture, stigma, and silent suffering
• 31:00 — The turning point: meeting another mother and realizing the cost of isolation
• 35:00 — How Healing Hearts began: a simple flyer, small steps, and a big mission
• 40:00 — Using a pageant platform to amplify purpose and normalize grief conversations
• 45:00 — Lessons: joy and sadness can coexist; grief is sacred, not shameful
• 49:00 — Supporting men in grief: privacy, counseling, and honoring different timelines
• 52:00 — Hybrid support: Zoom meetings, community care, and practical tools to leave with hope
• 56:00 — Recommended book: the “sixth stage of grief” and finding meaning
• 01:00:00 — Final advice: live day-to-day, trust yourself, and let time soften the edges

Connect with Dr. Jane Oh
• Dr. Jane’s| Instagram | Facebook: Healing Hearts Child Loss

Resources
• Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief by David Kessler, 

If this episode helped you, share it with someone who’s grieving, someone who feels alone in their loss, or a parent who needs permission to breathe again and take the next small step. I’ll see you next time on Overcoming Anything.
 ❤️ Anne

Disclaimer
The content of this episode is for informational and inspirational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional therapy, diagnosis, legal, or medical care.

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Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Welcome to Overcoming Anything, the podcast where we dive deep into stories of resilience, transformation, and growth. I'm your host, Anne Vryonides, and today we have an incredible guest who has overcome grief and shares the secrets of how to move forward. So joining me today is Dr. Jane Oh. She's a devoted wife, a mother, a concert. Violinist, community leader who has taken her own experience of losing a child and turning it into a purpose-driven impact. Getting goosebumps, as I say that, supporting grieving parents through the Healing Hearts, child Loss support group, and her advocacy work. She has an amazing story of perseverance and just moving forward and overcoming adversity. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 0:40

Well, Anne, thank you so much for having me here today. I really appreciate the time that you're giving me to speak.

Speaker 0:45

Oh, absolutely. My pleasure. So before we dive in, I always love to ask, what's one quote or mantra that keeps you going in tough times?

Speaker 2 0:53

I would say it's a quote that I formed, so

Speaker 0:55

I love it.

Speaker 2 0:56

I'm gonna say, the love in my grief had nowhere to go, so I built it a home.

Speaker 1:00

Oh, that's so beautiful. That's so beautiful. I love that because I just, I got this visual of you just opening your heart and just taking that grief and putting it inside a beautiful, almost like castle or home in your heart, because so many times people wanna get rid of grief. But I like your, analogy to just make a home for it.

Speaker 2 1:20

Yes. Because grief at the end of the day is not something to get rid of. I've learned that it's love that you carry because it has nowhere to go.

Speaker 1:28

Yes. So profound. Yeah. So let's go ahead and start at the beginning. What is the most difficult thing that you've ever had to overcome?

Speaker 2 1:34

I'm a mother who lost a child, and I would say that it's not something you truly ever overcome, but you evolve around it. You start to grow around that grief, right? Because your love always stays the same, but you start to get bigger around it. And my story started eight years ago on a very ordinary day. I had just finished Christmas brunch with my girlfriends and I get a phone call from daycare and they told me, Alexander stopped breathing. So I dropped everything. I remember the dishes crashing around me. I grabbed my coat, I ran to the emergency room, and I remember falling on my hands and knees and just begging the doctors to save his life. Ultimately, he passed away, but in that last moment when they brought him to me, I remember holding him really tightly and stroked, smoothing back his hair. And my husband looked at me and said, how are we gonna live through this? Like, how are we gonna live? I didn't have answers for him back then, but what I did was I told my son that day that I was gonna love him forever. I meant to kept that promise to him. And so eight years down the road, now I have my support group, my healing hearts, because as a community, you do heal together. That is how you overcome is when you have a community to do it together with. And I wanted to honor that promise because. For me, it wasn't about being bitter, it wasn't about asking why. It was asking, what do I do now? And I didn't know that my promise was gonna be the Healing Hearts Foundation. And let me tell you, Anne, last night when I finally, I wrote out a check to my foundation, I had tears because I knew that this dream was coming true. It was becoming a reality.

Speaker 3:12

Oh, how amazing. I'm sure your son is looking down on you and so proud of what you've accomplished.

Speaker 2 3:18

Yes. I know that when I see him one day and I'm going to tell him that I loved you forever and the way how I loved you was making an impact in my community and,, putting that love forward for other people and yeah, that, and I'm just so happy to see him again.

Speaker 3:32

I definitely see you doing that. You are making an impact, so thank you for coming on and sharing your story.

Speaker 2 3:38

Thank you.

Speaker 3:39

Absolutely. So was he ill or did something happen at daycare?

Speaker 2 3:44

No. So what was interesting is he was five month and he was such a happy, such a beautiful baby. When I had my first born, I think because I was a new mother, I was 34, and being, going through professional school,, I pushed off motherhood because I had very, I had this huge ambition of having a career. And that's the problem with women, right? It's like we're expected to do well at everything at home, at our career. There's this huge pressure and I pushed off being a mom for a while. In fact, I didn't even know if I wanted to have children, but my biological clock, I felt was ticking. But now, you have technology. I, you can freeze your eggs. This is something women should think about if they want to. But back then, this was already like, 15 years ago and I, that was not something that occurred to me. And I was broke, I was right out of professional school. I had a huge amount of debt. But I had Alexander almost at age 40, and he was really healthy, chubby baby, and he died of sids. I, that was, it was really shocking because there was not even like time to process that. And when you think about that, you go through an ordinary day. Then suddenly everything's changed. I'm not even the same person that same day anymore. Like you, you split into two different people. Now you have someone before that happened and now you have this person who is after. And I think the women, before the death of my child was somebody who was innocent. I believed that tomorrow was gonna be there. Now I believe that tomorrow is not promised. So I live more with intention. I live more with gratitude because I know it's not promised. And in a way I do grieve that loss of my innocence cause I have to think this way now.

Speaker 5:20

So who was there to support you during this time? Did your friends all come together, your family, and how did things work between you and your husband?

Speaker 2 5:28

So it was such a difficult period in my life, right? The casserole stopped coming and then the friends stopped coming too, and I think for me, what I wanted was my friend's presence. I didn't want a silver lining. I wasn't looking for words that were comforting because even the greatest mind can't touch a bleeding heart. Only love and hope and faith can, right? And so many people can't sit in the uncomfortable silence. They think that this has to be fixed because we live in a culture where everything has to be fixed, right? But people don't realize, you're not broken. I have a broken heart, but I wasn't a broken person. My grief was love. So why should my love be fixed for my child? And people just didn't understand that. So in a way, I felt like I lost all of my friends. It could be my fault too, because it was like asking for direction from people that never left their home. And it's just, it was just a really hard period because I was angry, but I was also going through the stages of my grief cycle. 'cause you do feel that anger,

Speaker 6:25

right?

Speaker 2 6:25

The marriage between my husband and I, we struggle too because even though. We had a shared experience. It is like we're born out of the same snowstorm. But we're two different snowflakes. 'cause no snowflakes are ever identical. His grief, his grieving was very different from mine. It was almost like I felt like. I actually had a fight with him. I said, I love him more than you. I carried him for nine months. So what right do you have to grieve for him even harder. These are like toxic words, but that's the reality. And when I really look back at that, I think. I realized that we were two people sitting up on a mountain. Both of our legs are broken. We don't even know how to fix that, but we know what the problem is, right? Like our legs are broken,

Speaker 7:04

right?

Speaker 2 7:04

So the option is do we try to struggle down by ourselves alone, or do we choose to stay up on that mountain together? We made that decision that we were just gonna stay up on that mountain together and work through it.

Speaker 7:15

I love that. That's so profound. I love that we were two snowflakes born from the same snowstorm. I kinda laughed when you said that. That's like a beautiful analogy. And then also when you said I had a broken heart, not, I was not a broken person. Wow, that's profound. So thank

Speaker 2 7:31

you.

Speaker 7:31

Is that when you found your support group and others who were grieving that helped you, process all of these emotions that you had never experienced before?

Speaker 2 7:40

I went on my grief journey alone for eight years because in my mind I didn't want to sit in a group with bunch of people who. We're depressed. That was my thinking. And there was no solution to what had happened. None of us can get our children back. So I thought, what was the point? I especially did the grief alone, especially 'cause of my culture. I'm South Korean. And we come from Confucius culture where everything is about respect, reverence, and and just discipline. And my parents are very dignified people. They're immigrants in this country. They still don't speak English very well, but we were taught that when something hard happens, you keep it to yourself. You don't broadcast it to the public. So I didn't really have support from my family in a sense. They even came over and took down all the pictures of the baby because they said there was no reason to hang on to the past. And so I grieved alone for eight years. I couldn't even practice dentistry. I was a successful dentist before my son passed, but everything just felt like out of alignment with that too. So I stepped away from my career and I think what really, got this group going was when I met another mom who is South Korean, and she also did this journey alone for 13 years, and she told me I was the first mother she had ever spoken to. When I held her in my arms and she was sobbing, I realized that there's something so broken in our culture where we're, this is a stigma and it shouldn't be. And I decided to blend the western eastern culture and open the support group because I feel like it has death now. I still carry myself with dignity, but I have to be open about my grief as well, and show the vulnerability because I realize that space is so sacred when you're hearing other people's stories.

Speaker 9:16

Wow, I'm amazed. How did you navigate that snowstorm all by yourself for eight years?

Speaker 2 9:22

It was hard. It was just about the mental discipline. It was about endurance, but I think how I was built. I went through dental school, I didn't have the financial backing of my parents. Like I had to survive that, right? If I failed, like I, how am I gonna pay all that money back?, So I had to get through school and just that discipline. And then evolving from dentistry to becoming an investor who built, I built a seven figure portfolio, again with discipline. And then I built, I'm building my nonprofit, so everything is like brick by brick. Everything I've learned along the way. I think in a way, just coming from a background where I didn't have very much really installed that that courage to try to do something for yourself. 'cause I didn't have anything to fall back on but myself. So it did turn me into a stronger person, but I wouldn't say that my grief made me stronger. I would say it's grief is layered. It made me a deeper person.

Speaker 10:09

Okay. Alright. So how did you overcome your fear and just move forward, like just going to dental school I guess, and starting your nonprofit and building a seven figure portfolio. Because you said you didn't have anything to fall back on, I'm sure you were scared, but how did you overcome that mindset and just decide, I can do it.

Speaker 2 10:28

Because I know that challenges in life are blessings in disguise, and I decided that every challenge that comes along my way, I'm gonna flip it and turn it into an opportunity. And you have to have that mindset, and that's what I did. I think most of us have that fear that we're gonna fail and that's completely normal. But growing up, like looking at my dad where he. Didn't wanna take any risks. Was such a turnoff for me. I know that growth isn't linear. It's, you are gonna have these jagged slopes as you go, but you will reach that peak if you keep going.

Speaker 10:59

Yeah. So what was the breakthrough moment and how did you get through it?

Speaker 2 11:03

It was when I met my friend Jane, who, lost her son and didn't have anyone to talk about. That was an aha moment for me. I'm like, why? Why are we doing this alone? Because this is a very heavy load that we're carrying. If we do it as a group, as a community, it becomes lighter to carry. So I started searching for people. I didn't have, I didn't know anybody who lost a child in my community. I didn't even, I couldn't even find a group to go to myself. I didn't want to be in a therapy session where. You are just sitting with a therapist who's looking at the clock, right? And especially if they haven't lost a child. I couldn't even relate to someone like that. So yeah, I, I went and it started out with a simple flyer. I created a simple flyer and I posted in my mailbox, and that's what it takes. Sometimes it's not drastic measures to get things started, right? Sometimes it's just taking that small step. It was me starting out with a flyer, posting it in my mailbox around coffee shops around town and entering the pageant. Actually, most people go to therapy. I entered a pageant and, I thought,, I don't know much about pageantry, but I thought. It's a platform to speak. Some women will I this, looking at it as a bling glamor and a status symbol for me, it wasn't. It was about a microphone. It was about getting my message out because my goal is to reach 1 million parents into this healing community. And I, if I do win, I want to use that title to amplify my mission.

Speaker 12:19

I love it. So tell us more. What pageant did you enter?

Speaker 2 12:22

So I entered a, Mrs. America pageant system. And this is so crazy too because I didn't know what the their national platform is. 'cause I'm in Washington state, so they're part of the Mrs. America system. Their national system is called they support Victoria's voice. I looked into it, this is like just a couple weeks ago, and I'm competing in two weeks, and I was like, I should've known that, right? But I looked up their, what their mission was, and it's called Victoria's voice and it's four. A parent had set that up because they lost their daughter to substance abuse. So if, if I'm asked a question like, okay, how do you align your platform with our national platform? That's so easy, right?

Speaker 12:57

Right.

Speaker 2 12:57

I support the parents who've lost children. So it set that shiver up my spine thinking, wow, like I was already in alignment even before I entered the contest.

Speaker 13:06

It sounds like you were destined to do this

Speaker 2 13:08

For sure. Yeah. It sounds was like, this must be like destiny. All the stars are lining up.

Speaker 13:11

Yeah.

Speaker 2 13:12

Whether I win or not is not the bigger picture for me. It's that I've challenged myself to, to put myself out of my comfort zone, enter a beauty contest at age 48 to try to get my point across that I'm not gonna be silence, like our culture sits around silence because it's comfortable. But we need to learn to sit with the uncomfortableness of it. I want other parents to, they deserve to be seen and heard for their pain.

Speaker 13:35

Yeah. And so how do you feel like your nonprofit has changed Korean lives and Korean parents that have lost children?

Speaker 2 13:43

I think it will open up more conversations because we're trying to change that generation. I honor my parents, they grew up in a different era where everything was swept under the carpet. I believe that me being a different generation and starting this will really flip the culture, like the ideology that everything needs to look perfect because we don't live perfect lives. We don't live in a perfect world. I come from a family of physicians like we. It, when I go to South Korea, like they look at us as like the royal family. There's such respect, right? 'cause we're like the American dream. We come to America and we're successful. So for them, I think it was shameful to, to have had this happen to me because it was like getting an F on a report card, right? And I want to just change that outlook because people have lives. Everyone at some point in their life will go through something that is hard. Whether it's child loss, having cancer, going through a divorce, the same concept can be applied to all of that. But Asian culture is stoic. It's different. And I'm probably the black sheep in the Asian community because I'm out there talking about this. But somebody has to so love it, But being, but that's being vulnerable. And I do feel as a leader, you do need to be vulnerable, which means putting your ego outside and being very honest. About your thoughts and your feelings.

Speaker 14:56

Yes. I love your inner fortitude and your courage will change the world and you will have the massive impact that you want through this nonprofit. What life lessons did this experience teach you?

Speaker 2 15:07

That you can carry joy and sadness together. That it's not something to be ashamed of., It is taught me that grief is sacred. It's love, it's so precious, and it's not something that victimizes you and anything in life. I had to struggle through. This is like the biggest loss of my life, but I'm still standing and I think what I want other. People to see is that you can still stand with dignity and love yourself, and don't let this stop you from becoming your the best version of yourself in the future.

Speaker 15:38

Yes. Wow. That is definitely profound. Yeah, because just because you face an obstacle, like we talk about this all the time on the podcast, everyone faces some type of challenge or adversity in their life, but to know that you can still be great, you can overcome it, and yes, you can keep going forward and reach your

Speaker 2 15:55

dreams. I, I really think it's your mindset. We all have choices, right? Like you can, you have the choice to. To lay in there in bed and not wanting to do anything. And honestly, I feel like those days are survival days too. Just even just simple things. When I lost my son, I couldn't get up to even fry up an egg. And if I did that was victory for me. That's winning, right? So sometimes just being able to brush your teeth, give yourself credit, give yourself that gratitude, like the grace, because just those small things will make you. Run eventually. Yes. It's the baby steps that builds into you becoming even stronger each day.

Speaker 16:29

Yes. So true. So what was your husband's grief journey? What did that look like?

Speaker 2 16:34

So my husband is a physician and he's very private. And men are like, and I do feel bad for men because I think they're told to be strong. They're told to be the leaders in their family, right? And I know that he's trying to protect me, and he talks, he says he can't cry like he wishes he can, but there's something that's blocking him from that. And I know that he seeks individual counseling. He, it's painful for him because. Men are not expected to really show their emotion or cry openly for women. We know we are more open, we have more social gatherings, and women are just more open and empathetic. But you know, because his career is where, he does see a lot of death and, he has to hood it together. It's hard. But I support him. I don't push him into coming into my meetings because everyone has their own time. It took me eight years to step into my first meeting, and that's why my goal is to reach 1 million parents. Not necessarily ask them to come into that space, but to spread the word that we exist. The support is there when they're ready.

Speaker 17:32

And do you have like resources on your site? So maybe if there's a person like your husband who's more private and doesn't wanna come to a group that would still have access to resources where they could just go online and watch

Speaker 2 17:44

it, like their leisure. Yeah, so what I have is I actually do hybrid meetings. So I have Zoom and I have mom from Cal, like all over the US and also Canada that joins because that's how much like they, there really is no community. And they're so lonely. And I'm telling you, Ann. I think that what really almost killed me was the loneliness of the journey. It's, so I stood one day in my kitchen thinking how lonely I was. And that was another inspiration to get this started. But yes, if people want to join our meetings, like they're welcome to do it by Zoom. Like we have technology. So I always post the meeting information on my Facebook page. It's called Healing Hearts child loss.com and. Like the time we meet twice a month. And I wish like more parents were local. But I actually opened up my home to do the meeting because I like to cook. And Thursday nights I cook for the members that come in. So we eat and enjoy each other's company as well.

Speaker 18:36

Oh, I love that. That's probably made such a difference and those people's lives just to have a good homecooked meal. Yes. Feel the love your positivity.

Speaker 2 18:44

And I see that transformation happening in them and actually even hired a grief therapist to start joining us because I didn't want the parents to leave the feeling heavy. I needed them to leave with hope and optimism, but also tools to help them through hard times when it does hit

Speaker 19:00

right. So how has your life changed for the better? Not to say that grief makes you better, but having gone through this experience, how are you seeing your life in any way?

Speaker 2 19:10

I do. I feel that, I used to think this may be shallow, but I used to think having a ton of money was gonna make me happy, right? I will tell you this, having money does make your life comfortable, right? But when you live without meaning, it's hollow. It's very hollow, and I think having gone through what I have gone through made me a deeper person. It made me understand humanity more, but also when someone is acting in a way that's, I would think is inappropriate or I don't like this person. Now I flip that and look at it as, what is this person caring? They're carrying something and that's why it is coming out this way. So I'm not quick to judge anymore. I think I've become a better person, someone who understands more because of what I've endured.

Speaker 19:51

Yeah, that's beautiful. So if someone listening is going through something similar right now, what advice would you give them?

Speaker 2 19:57

I would tell them that, look at that challenge and turn it into. Into an opportunity, but also know that whatever pain that you have today, it's not gonna be as sharp. It will get softer with time. Just like any wound, I'm a doctor and I know that when I operate it in patient's mouth, that wound looks so ugly. But as time goes on, it heals and it's always gonna be there, but the edges get softer.

Speaker 20:21

I love it. So looking back, what is one thing that you learned about yourself having gone through this experience?

Speaker 2 20:27

I learned that, I have an inner glow now. I think that I'm a beautiful person because I look at it like Grand Canyon. Grand Canyon was formed with time and pressure and turned into something beautiful. And as I age and as I'm entering my fifties. I look at myself like the Grand Canyon.

Speaker 20:45

Wow. I love your analogies. The Grand Canyon, the snowstorm. Yes.

Speaker 2 20:49

I think as I write, so I have a lot of metaphors in my head. Yes. And I'm blessed that I can speak about my metaphors. Because not everybody can, we live in a great country where we can speak freely. Yes.

Speaker 20:59

Yes. And I love that 'cause I feel like people remember those metaphors, like they can get that visual, they make that analogy in their head and they can reference it and really retain more information. So

Speaker 2 21:10

yes.

Speaker 21:10

Thank you for sharing those., Is there a book that helped you on your journey that you could recommend to someone who's going through this experience? This,

Speaker 2 21:17

yes. I love David Kessler. I feel like he saved my life. The book I really found deep was finding meaning. And he really, gives you that perspective to honor your sorrow, your grief. It's just a different way of looking at it, and I love everything he has to say, so I would highly recommend anyone to read that. Even if you haven't lost a child. It's just about loss in general and how you look at it and, 'cause we're all gonna go through a loss, whether it's losing a parent, even losing your dog, those things matter because, he talks about how grief needs to be witnessed. It's not something to be fixed. So it's called, finding Meaning, and he talks about the sixth stage of grief, which is finding meaning. And I didn't even realize I had reached that through throughout this journey.

Speaker 21:57

Wow. I love it. I'll definitely link that down below in show notes. Is there any other advice or experience or anything that you'd like to share with our, listeners?

Speaker 2 22:06

I would just say, you know what? Go live your day and don't think about like tomorrow too much, but live your day to the fullest and take it as they come because you're not gonna solve all these problems in a day. You will solve your issues, but it's just gonna take time to do it and trust yourself.

Speaker 22:22

Amazing., Thank you for sharing your light, your positivity, and your amazing and courageous spirit. This has been a great conversation. Where can people connect with you?

Speaker 2 22:32

So my Instagram is Dr. Jane o so they can message me on there as well. Yeah.

Speaker 22:36

Okay. Excellent. We'll put that down in show notes. If you found this episode helpful, please share with someone who might be facing a similar challenge and needs to hear this message of hope. So we'll see you next time on overcoming Anything.