Mark: Everything you think you know about getting over a loss is probably wrong. In fact, the goal might not be to "get over it" at all. What if the most common advice we hear about grief is actually the most harmful? Michelle: Whoa, that's a bold way to start. You’re basically saying that the entire cultural script we have for dealing with loss—the platitudes, the timelines, the expectation to 'be strong'—is fundamentally broken. Mark: That's the radical and deeply compassionate idea at the heart of Jan Warner's book, Fully Alive with Grief: 52 Weeks of Prompts and Exercises to Discover Hope and Inspiration. Michelle: Jan Warner… I was looking into her background, and it’s just incredible. She’s not just a writer; she's a counselor who has worked in suicide prevention, and this book came directly from her own experience after losing her husband, Artie, in 2009. That personal stake gives her words so much weight. Mark: Exactly. And it’s not just her personal story. She founded the "Grief Speaks Out" online community, which has grown to over two million members worldwide. She has tapped into a universal feeling that our modern world often tries to silence: the raw, messy reality of grief. Michelle: It’s like she’s giving a voice to something everyone feels but is told not to talk about. So where does she begin dismantling our broken script? Mark: She starts by taking a sledgehammer to the very idea of "normal" grief.

Michelle: Okay, but what about the classic roadmap? The five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Isn't that how it's supposed to work? A neat, linear progression? Mark: That's the exact myth the book explodes in the very first week. Warner, drawing from her own experience and that of her community, argues that grief isn't a tidy, linear path. It's wild, unpredictable, and deeply personal. The writer Anne Lamott has a quote in the book that captures it perfectly. She says grief is like a "lazy Susan." Michelle: A lazy Susan? Like at a Chinese restaurant? Mark: Precisely. One day it spins and stops on heavy, underwater sadness. The next day, it lands on loud, rageful anger. The day after, it's wounded keening, and then maybe just numbness and silence. You don't "complete" a stage and move on. You're on this spinning platform of emotions, and you never know where it's going to stop. Michelle: That makes so much more sense. It explains that feeling of emotional whiplash, where you can be laughing one minute and then suddenly feel like you've been punched in the gut because a song came on the radio. You feel like you're going crazy. Mark: And the book says that's not crazy, that's just grieving. Tom Zuba, a grief expert quoted in the book, actually advises people to walk out on any therapist who tells them there's an "inappropriate" way to feel or who tries to force their grief into neat little boxes. Grief, he says, "is wild and messy and unpredictable." Michelle: I love that. It’s so validating. It also explains some of the... well, the "crazy things" grievers do, which the book talks about in Week 36. Things that feel essential for survival but would look strange to an outsider. Mark: Like what? Michelle: Oh, you know. Like wearing a deceased partner's shirt to bed. The author, Jan, admits she wears her late husband's jacket when she goes out because it feels like he's hugging her. Or people who keep calling their loved one's phone just to hear their voicemail. It’s this desperate, physical need for connection. Mark: And the book’s position is that these aren't crazy at all. They are attempts to find comfort and maintain a connection. As long as it's not harming you or anyone else, it's a valid expression of grief. It’s part of the mess. Michelle: So the first step is just permission. Permission for it to be messy, chaotic, and weird. Mark: Exactly. Because the reason it's so messy is tied to the book's most profound and beautiful insight. Michelle: Which is? Mark: That grief isn't the opposite of love. It is love, just in a different form.

Michelle: Okay, unpack that for me. Grief feels like the absolute absence of something, like a black hole. How can it be love? Mark: The book argues that the intensity of your grief is a direct measure of the intensity of your love. In Week 45, there's this incredible quote from Nicholas Wolterstorff: "Grief is existential testimony to the worth of the one loved... Every lament is a love-song." Your pain isn't a sign of weakness; it's a testament to the value of what you lost. Michelle: Wow. "Every lament is a love-song." That completely reframes it. Mark: It does. And Warner illustrates this with a devastatingly honest story about her own life. She talks about the profound, soul-crushing grief she felt when her husband Artie died. Then she contrasts it with how she felt when her parents died. She admits she had a difficult relationship with them and felt mostly relief at their passing. And she says, with such clarity, that the lack of grief for them is a much sadder story than the intense grief she feels for her husband. Michelle: That's heartbreakingly powerful. The absence of grief is the real tragedy because it signals an absence of deep love. Mark: Precisely. Another quote in the book, from Tessa Shaffer, puts it this way: "Grief isn't the absence of love. Grief is the proof that love is still there." It's love that has lost its object, so it transforms into what Rebecca McNutt calls "an eternal missing." Michelle: That’s a beautiful idea, but it also sounds incredibly painful. If grief is just love continuing, does that mean the pain never, ever ends? Mark: The pain of the loss, the core of it, might not. But the book suggests our relationship to that pain can change. Warner uses this wonderful metaphor of a sunflower in Week 3. Michelle: A sunflower? Mark: Yes. She says to picture your grief like a sunflower. The dark, black center is the unchanging pain of the loss. That will always be there. But over time, as you continue to live and create new memories and find new joys, you grow bright yellow petals around that dark center. The center doesn't shrink, but the flower gets bigger. Your life grows around the grief. Michelle: So you're not trying to erase the darkness, you're trying to grow more light around it. Mark: Exactly. You become fully alive with grief, not by conquering it. And that leads to the final, crucial part of the book's message: the actual work of rebuilding.

Michelle: Okay, so we embrace the mess, we reframe grief as love, we grow our sunflower petals... but how do we actually live with this? How do we rebuild when we feel so broken? Mark: The book is very clear that this is active, difficult work. It’s not a passive "healing journey." And the most powerful story that captures this is from the epilogue. After Jan's husband Artie died at home, she wanted to dress him for the mortuary. He was always a sharp dresser, so she picked out a silk shirt and tie. Michelle: Oh, that must have been so hard. Mark: It was impossible. She and the caregiver couldn't manage it. His body was no longer his. In that moment of frustration and sorrow, she remembered a T-shirt he owned. On it were the words: "I do all my own stunts." Michelle: Oh, wow. Mark: She put him in that T-shirt. And she writes, "When someone you love dies, you are left to do all your own stunts." That's the shift. You move from a life of shared support to one of radical self-reliance. Michelle: That phrase gives me chills. It’s the perfect metaphor for the loneliness and the terror of it. So what does "doing your own stunts" look like in practice? What does the book suggest? Mark: It's about honoring the dead through action. Week 40 is all about this. It's not about building a monument of sadness, but making your life a memorial. One of the most practical things the book suggests is to find ways to honor them on those impossible dates—the anniversaries, the birthdays. Michelle: Those days are the worst. They feel like landmines on the calendar. Mark: They are. So instead of just sitting in the sadness, Warner suggests creating a new tradition. On her husband's birthday and the anniversary of his death, she asks people to perform an act of kindness in his name, to "keep his smile going." It transforms a day of dread into a day of purpose and connection. Michelle: That's a way of showing up for life, which the book talks about in Week 42. But what if you feel like a zombie? What if 'showing up' feels like climbing Everest? Mark: Then you start smaller. This is where the book becomes a true daily guide. In Week 50, "Hooray for Me," Warner encourages readers to become their own cheerleaders. To literally give themselves a gold star for the smallest victories. Michelle: Like what? Mark: Like, "Hooray for Me! Today I kept breathing." Or "Hooray for Me! I washed one dish." It sounds simple, but it's about acknowledging that survival itself is a monumental accomplishment when you're grieving. It’s about forgiving your inner critic and treating yourself with radical kindness. Michelle: It’s about learning to do your own stunts, one tiny, brave step at a time. Mark: That's it exactly.

Mark: When you pull it all together, the book offers this incredible three-step dance for anyone navigating a loss. First, you have to give yourself permission for your grief to be an absolute mess. Throw out the rulebook and the timelines. Michelle: Right, embrace the lazy Susan of emotions. Mark: Then, the second step is to look at that mess and see it not as a flaw or a sickness, but as a direct reflection of your love. The chaos is the sound of a heart that was big enough to love that deeply. Michelle: The lament is a love song. Mark: And finally, the third step is to take that love and use it as fuel. You rebuild your life, not by forgetting them, but by honoring them. You do your own stunts, you perform acts of kindness in their name, you find a way to be fully, vibrantly alive, carrying them with you. Michelle: It really changes the fundamental question. It’s not, "When will I get over this?" It becomes, "How will I carry this love forward?" Mark: That's the perfect way to put it. And that's a question we'd love to hear your thoughts on. This book is so much about the power of community, born from the author's own experience with her Grief Speaks Out page. So, for our listeners, how have you found ways to honor a love that you carry? Share your stories with us. We'd be honored to hear them. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.