Grief has a way of making everyone else uncomfortable. After the funeral, the messages slow down. A few days later, people expect life to carry on as if nothing happened. You’re back at work. You stop bringing up the person who died because it feels like everyone else has already moved on. But you haven’t. The truth is, life never goes back to what it was after losing someone you love.

Carla Fernandez has spent years challenging that way of thinking. She is the author of Renegade Grief and co-founder of The Dinner Party, a community that has supported more than 20,000 young adults after the death of someone they love. Her work has helped reshape how a generation thinks about loss, replacing isolation with connection and making grief something people can share instead of hide.

In this episode of Crying Out Loud, I sit down with Carla to talk about what she calls renegade grief: choosing to grieve honestly in a culture that would rather you keep your pain quiet.

Together, we explore what happens when we stop trying to “move on” and start making room for grief instead. We talk about creating new rituals, building altars, taking grief pilgrimages, holding onto continuing bonds with the people we’ve lost, and why healing doesn’t mean leaving someone behind.

This conversation isn’t about fixing grief or making it disappear. It’s about permitting yourself to grieve in a way that feels true to you and remembering that you never have to carry it alone.

• How Western culture became wired to avoid grief, and why the myth of “closure” is so damaging

• The truth about Freud’s theories on grief, and how even he changed his mind after his own loss

• Why connection with other grievers can be the most powerful catalyst for healing.

• How rituals and creativity emerge naturally from our longing to honor and remember

• Simple, deeply personal ways to keep bonds alive: altars, “grief quests,” and everyday practices that create meaning

• The immense value of finding (or becoming) a “grief ally,” and why your support may change another’s entire experience

• The misunderstood line between helping others and bypassing your own pain, and how to find a healthy balance

• How metaphysical beliefs, neuroscience, and cultural rituals intersect in the ongoing relationship we have with those we grieve

This one isn’t about getting past your grief. It’s about what happens the moment you stop trying to.

Find Carla’s book, Renegade Grief (recently out in paperback) 

You don’t have to carry this alone. My book, Crying Out Loud: A Path Through Grief Into a Life Reimagined, and The Grief Healing Collective are both here if you need them. And if something in this episode moved you, tell me at  cryingoutloudpod@gmail.com.

Press play. You’ll never set the table the same way again.