Laurel Braitman | What Looks Like Bravery

Grief is a Sneaky Bitch

My guest Laurel Braitman is an absolute damn delight! In today’s episode we’re exploring her beautiful brand-new memoir What Looks Like Bravery: An epic journey through loss to love. I appreciate so much the humor, wisdom, and insight she brought to our conversation about the expansiveness of grief in her life, from the death of her father as a teenager, to lost loves, pets, a home in the wildfires of Northern California, and more recently the death of her mother. Her adventurous spirit, which has taken her all over the globe, shows up in our conversation and her approach to living fully in the wake of loss.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Laurel is a writer, teacher and secular, clinical chaplain-in-training. She wrote a NYT bestselling book Animal Madness: Inside Their Minds. She also has an amazingly cool job, one I would love to have – as the director of Writing and Storytelling at the Stanford School of Medicine’s Medical Humanities and the Arts Program where she helps clinical students, staff and physicians communicate more clearly and vulnerably for their own benefit and that of their patients.

Pick up a copy of What Looks Like Bravery: An Epic Journey Through Love and Loss at your favorite local bookstore or online here

JUMP STRAIGHT INTO:

(30:00) Laurel and I dive deep into how hyper-vigilance can show up for those of us who’ve experienced profound loss, in ways that don’t always make sense to others, or to ourselves for that matter.

(59:00) As we wrapped up our conversation, I asked Laurel to explore what she learned from the opportunity to be with her mom at the end of her life and how her parents love of storytelling was a gift to her and one she got to return to the them at the end of their lives.

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