What do you do when the grief advice you’ve been given is actually making things worse?

Dr. Lucy Hone knows that territory intimately. A leading researcher and educator on resilience, grief, and human flourishing, Lucy was finishing her PhD on psychological flourishing when her twelve-year-old daughter Abby was killed in a car accident, along with Abby’s best friend Ella and Ella’s mother Sally, one of Lucy’s closest friends. In that single unsuspecting Saturday morning, everything Lucy had spent years studying became painfully, urgently personal.

She joins me on Crying Out Loud to share what she’s learned in the twelve years since, as a researcher, as a mother, and as someone who has lived every theory she teaches.

In this conversation, Lucy and I talk about what happens when the predictions you’ve been given don’t match your reality. How do you hold onto hope when everyone around you doubts it? What does healthy grieving actually look like when someone can be in enormous pain and still be psychologically healthy? And who are you when the loss doesn’t shrink, but your life grows around it?

And perhaps most importantly, we talk about the rituals that keep our people close. Rainbows. Tattoos. A sip of salt water for a beloved brother. The thousand small ways love continues.

We explore:

• Why the grief advice she received after Abby died was not only unhelpful but destructive

• Why resilience rests on three foundations (self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-compassion), and why self-compassion matters most

• Living losses: what they are, why they need a name, and the top ten questions people ask during ambiguous loss

• What Lucy would tell her younger self, twelve years ago, about the life ahead of her

Don’t forget to follow Lucy and check out her books, Resilient Grieving and How Will I Ever Get Through This?. You can find her on her website  and as Dr. Lucy Hone on Instagram and Facebook, where she shares daily wisdom on resilience, grief, and how to get better days ahead.

And if you’re looking for support, connection, or a place to feel less alone, my book, Crying Out Loud: A Path Through Grief Into a Life Reimagined, and The Grief Healing Collective are here for you. If something in this episode spoke to your heart, share your story or send your questions to cryingoutloudpod@gmail.com.

None of us are meant to carry this alone.

And if you want to explore more of how our brains, bodies, histories and emotional patterns shape the way we love and connect, come find me on my other podcast, The Language of Love. Every week, I talk with leading experts and share what I’ve learned in more than 30 years as a therapist about relationships, intimacy and healing. You can find The Language of Love wherever you’re listening to Crying Out Loud.