Is This Normal? Getting To Know Grief With Kendra Rinaldi

Kendra Rinaldi knows a lot about grief. When she was just 21, her sister died in a car accident. Ten years later she had a miscarriage. Ten years after that, her mother died of cancer. Professionally, she is a grief guide and host of the Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray In Between podcast. But she didn't always get grief. When she was 21, she didn't realize that everything she was thinking, feeling, and experiencing after her sister's death counted as grief. In the years since, Kendra's gotten to know her grief well and uses that knowledge to support others.   

We discuss:

• The spectrum of losses Kendra's experienced
  • Grieving her sister's death in a car accident
  • Grieving a miscarriage
  • Grieving her mother's death from pancreatic cancer
• What can be different between a sudden death vs. one from a long-term illness
• Discerning grief from depression
• Writing as a tool for navigating grief and staying connected to her sister
• How Kendra's sister's death shifted family dynamics
• Tri-lingual grieving - and why Spanglish is her favorite language for grief
• How grief is approached differently in the U.S. and Kendra's home country, Colombia
• The origin of the Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray In Between podcast
• The hardest aspect of doing a podcast about grief
• Kendra's recent sneaky grief attack

Follow Kendra on IG @griefgratitudepodcast

Want to help with our special Children's Grief Awareness Month episode? If you have a child or teen in your world who is grieving a death who would like to participate, you can record a voice memo of them responding to one or more of the following prompts and email it to griefoutloud@dougy.org

1. When my ____ died, I felt...
2. When I'm missing them, ____ helps the most
3. Today, my grief feels like...
4. In the future, I hope my grief feels...

Thank you for considering!