Mourned: Life After Losing A Parent

By Paige Perez,

Anita Rao, Amanda Magnus

Published September 8, 2023 at 5:30 AM EDT

An illustration of an altar. On the altar are four framed photos: On the top left is a photo of an older woman with gray hair dressed in a pink shirt, blue jacket and blue skirt. Standing on her right is an older man with gray hair, wearing a red shirt and tan pants. In the top right photo are three women all dressed in black shirts and long black skirts. They all have shoulder-length brown hair. The photo on the bottom left depicts an older woman with a person standing behind her. The older woman has gray hair, adorning a pink wrap covering her head and body. The person standing behind her has brown shoulder-length hair and is wearing an orange wrap. On the bottom left is a photo of a man wearing a black suit and tie with a white shirt. He has short brown hair. This photo has a string of beads on its frame. The altar also has a bejeweled skull, a red mug, several orange fruits/vegetables, orange carnations, a prayer candle, and a bowl with an offering in it. The word "Mourned" is in the lower lefthand corner of the illustration.

Anita has heard one resounding truth from her friends who lost a parent in early adulthood: That death was the biggest thing that has ever happened to them. She meets two people who've built specific communities around their grief on the internet and a writer who experienced losing his dad twice.

Meet the guests:

Liz Zorn, photographer and model, talks about the sudden loss of her father and how it's changed her views on the afterlife
Naomi Edmondson, grief educator and space holder, shares how the experience of losing two mother figures in her 20s inspired her to create a community group for Black folks who are grieving
Jeff Dingler, author and journalist, explains how he lost his father twice: first to mental illness when he was 14 and then to death when he was in his 20s

Read the transcript | Review the podcast

Tags

Embodied Podcast Grief

Paige Perez

Paige Perez (she/her) is a Caribbean-American audio and photojournalist born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. Her work covering sexual and reproductive health, the climate crisis, and racial inequity is published in The Guardian, HuffPost Voices, and Bronx Times. Paige is a recent graduate of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, where she concentrated in health/science reporting and specialized in audio and video. When she is not reporting and producing, she is probably visiting local art spaces or making images.

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Anita Rao

Anita Rao is an award-winning journalist, host, creator, and executive editor of "Embodied," a weekly radio show and podcast about sex, relationships & health.

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Amanda Magnus

Amanda Magnus is the executive producer of Embodied, a weekly radio show and podcast about sex, relationships and health. She has also worked on other WUNC shows including Tested and CREEP.

See stories by Amanda Magnus