Today we're sharing an episode from our friends at Self Evident. They tell Asian America’s stories to go beyond being seen, honoring the everyday lives of Asian American people — and pass the mic for everyone to represent their whole self.

Before Me

Before Me is a five-part documentary produced by Self Evident about journalist Lisa Phu chronicling her mother’s journey from Cambodia to America over the course of decades.

For most of her life, Lisa told a story about how her mom and family first came to the United States. Some of it was right, some of it was wrong; none of it was actually ever told to her by the people who had lived it.

After Lisa gave birth to her first child, her mom flew across the country to care for them both. And during that visit, she finally shared the real story with Lisa. About growing up in Cambodia, fleeing genocide by the Khmer Rouge, surviving as a gold dealer in Vietnam, building a home in America while navigating the fallout and traumas of war… and carrying the future of her children throughout the journey.

You can listen to Before Me wherever you listen to podcasts.

Credits

• Created, written, and produced by Lisa Phu
• Edited by Julia Shu
• Fact checking by Harsha Nahata and Tiffany Bui
• Sound design by James Boo
• Additional support from Cathy Erway
• Original theme music by Avery Stewart
• Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions
• Audio engineering by Dave Waldron and Timothy Lou Ly
• Cover art and show name created by Christine Carpenter
• Audience engagement by Rekha Radhakrishnan
• Thanks to Ben Kiernan for participating in the research and reporting process
• Huge thanks and gratitude to Lan Phu
• “Before Me” is a Self Evident Media production. The show’s Executive Producers are James Boo, Lisa Phu, and Ken Ikeda.
• This project is also supported in part by the Juneau Arts & Humanities Council and the City and Borough of Juneau.
• Thanks to the Alderworks Alaska Writers & Artists Retreat for the residency they provided for this project.

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In the last episode of the season, we are focused on building the future with one of the wisest people of our time, adrienne maree brown. If grief is transformative, what are we creating in its wake? This conversation is about emerging from our collective grief and about creating our future together.  It’s about our interconnectedness and what it means to live a good life in community with each other, knowing grief is woven into our lives just as joy is. We love adrienne’s vision and clarity and hopefulness and honesty. We love adrienne, our memelord, and invite you to take in the wisdom, abundance, and lessons with us. 

More about adrienne maree brown:

adrienne maree brown grows healing ideas in public through her multi-genre writing, her music and her podcasts. Informed by 25 years of movement facilitation, somatics, Octavia E Butler scholarship and her work as a doula, adrienne has nurtured Emergent Strategy, Pleasure Activism, Radical Imagination and Transformative Justice as ideas and practices for transformation. She is the author/editor of strategy-series.html">seven published texts and the founder of the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, where she is now the writer-in-residence. 

More about adrienne maree brown and her work here and find her on Twitter at @adriennemaree and on Instagram at @adriennemareebrown.

You can find more info and resources at GriefCollected.com

Credits 

Grief, Collected is a production of The Mash-Up Americans. Executive produced by Amy S. Choi and Rebecca Lehrer. Senior editor and producer is Sara Pellegrini. Development Producer is Dupe Oyebolu. Production manager Shelby Sandlin. Original music composed by The Brothers Tang. Sound design support by Pedro Rafael Rosado. Website design by Rebecca Parks Fernandez. Grief, Collected was supported in part by a grant from The Pop Culture Collaborative. 

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the fourth meditation of our Grief, Collected series, which come out every Friday.

Today is a literary meditation with the esteemed author Alexander Chee. Alexander is the bestselling author of Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night, and a beautiful essayist making meaning of the world around us and helping us imagine new ones. In today’s episode he is reading his 2018 essay, “Why Grieve Is The Word Of The Year,” which walks us through all of our many griefs, and how we can find ourselves in them.

More about Alexander Chee and his work here and find him on Twitter at @alexanderchee and on Instagram at @cheemobile.

You can find more info and resources at GriefCollected.com

More about Alexander Chee - 

Alexander Chee is the bestselling author of the novels Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night, and the essay collection How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, all from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. A contributing editor at The New Republic, and an editor at large at VQR, his essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, T Magazine, The Sewaneee Review, and the 2016 and 2019 Best American Essays.

He is a 2021 United States Artists Fellow, a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Nonfiction, and the recipient of a Whiting Award, a NEA Fellowship, an MCCA Fellowship, the Randy Shilts Prize in gay nonfiction, the Paul Engle Prize, the Lambda Editor’s Choice Prize, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Leidig House, Civitella Ranieri and Amtrak.

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Collective grief! What does it mean to grieve as a community? As a country? We’re thinking about what it means to face our losses and our grief head on — together — in order to repair our society. What does it mean to lose a future that we might have imagined? Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg joins us to talk about some of the roots of our grief culture here in America, and with that knowledge, what collective grief and healing can look like in our communities. Part of that work includes looking at how societies globally have done this - and what we can learn from them. 

You can find more info and resources at GriefCollected.com

You can find Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg on Twitter @TheRaDR and on Instagram @RabbiDanyaRuttenberg or at DanyaRuttenberg.net 

More About Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg is an award-winning author and writer who serves as Scholar in Residence at the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW).  She was named by Newsweek as a “rabbi to watch,”  as a “faith leader to watch” by the Center for American Progress, has been a Washington Post Sunday crossword clue (83 Down). Her newest book, On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World has been hailed by Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley as ““A must read for anyone navigating the work of justice and healing.” and by the author Rebecca Solnit as “brilliant.” She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time, and many other publications. Her seven other books include Nurture the Wow: Finding Spirituality in the Frustration, Boredom, Tears, Poop, Desperation, Wonder, and Radical Amazement of Parenting, which was a National Jewish Book Award finalist, and Surprised By God: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Religion, nominated for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish literature; The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism;  Yentl’s Revenge: The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism, and, with Rabbi Elliot Dorff, three books on Jewish ethics. 

Credits 

Grief, Collected is a production of The Mash-Up Americans. Executive produced by Amy S. Choi and Rebecca Lehrer. Senior editor and producer is Sara Pellegrini. Development Producer is Dupe Oyebolu. Production manager Shelby Sandlin. Original music composed by The Brothers Tang. Sound design support by Pedro Rafael Rosado. Website design by Rebecca Parks Fernandez. Grief, Collected was supported in part by a grant from The Pop Culture Collaborative.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

For today’s meditation: grab a pencil and paper! The bestselling illustrator and graphic journalist Wendy MacNaughton is the founder and host of Draw Together. She will lead us through a drawing exercise “Chill Out Drawing for Stressed Out Times.” Draw Together is a participatory drawing podcast and interactive art class focused on imagination and community. Although Wendy’s show is ostensibly for kids, we have found it touches the inner kid in all of us. 

You can find more info and resources at GriefCollected.com

More about Wendy MacNaughton:

Wendy MacNaughton is an illustrator and graphic journalist with a background in social work (MSW). She combines the practice of deep looking, listening and drawing to create stories of often overlooked people, places and things.

As a visual columnist for The New York Times and California Sunday Magazine, Wendy MacNaughton drew stories everywhere from high school cafeterias to Guantanamo Bay. She has illustrated, authored and edited eleven books, including the #1 New York Times bestseller Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat, The Gutsy Girl by Caroline Paul and her own book, Meanwhile in San Francisco: The City in Its Own Word.

She is the creator and host of DrawTogether, an participatory drawing show for kids that uses art to bolster social-emotional skills, self-confidence and connection. She is also the co-founder of the Women Who Draw with Julia Rothman, an advocacy database launched in 2016 to increase visibility and opportunities for underrepresented artists, illustrators and cartoonists. She lives with her wife in San Francisco, but you can often find her on the road in her mobile drawing studio built inside the back of a Honda Element. You can find Wendy MacNaughton @wendymac and Draw Together DrawTogether.Studio

Credits for the Draw Together Podcast: 

Editor: Amy Standen, Drawing music: Chris Colin, Theme song: Thao Nguyen

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You know how when you are grieving you might feel clumsy? Or perhaps your heart literally hurts - not metaphorically? These are some of the many physical manifestations of grief that have been scientifically observed - and humanly felt. And not just humanly!!! Animals grieve!  Wait until you learn about crow funerals! Today we’re talking to Dr. Dorothy Holinger, psychologist and author of The Anatomy of Grief.  This validating conversation is an exploration of the science and spirituality of grief, how deeply personal and individualistic the grief experience is and how integral it is to all living beings. 

More about Dorothy Holinger 

Dorothy P. Holinger, Ph.D., is a Staff Psychologist in the Department of Neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a Harvard hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. She was a long-time Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. A graduate of Brown University with a degree in English, she earned her doctorate in psychology from the University of Michigan. Dr. Holinger is a member of the American Psychological Association, and Sigma Xi (The Scientific Research Society) and is a fellow in the Association for Psychological Science. She has studied the human brain for over thirty years, and in her book, The Anatomy of Grief (2022/2020, Yale University Press), she has drawn from brain science, psychology, paleontology and literature to describe what happens to the brain, heart and body of the bereaved. She has her own psychotherapy practice, and lives in Brookline, Massachusetts with her husband. You can connect with Dr. Holinger  here. 

You can find books mentioned in this episode here.

You can find more info and resources at GriefCollected.com

Credits:

Grief, Collected is a production of The Mash-Up Americans. Executive produced by Amy S. Choi and Rebecca Lehrer. Senior editor and producer is Sara Pellegrini. Development Producer is Dupe Oyebolu. Production manager Shelby Sandlin. Original music composed by The Brothers Tang. Sound design support by Pedro Rafael Rosado. Website design by VOKSEE. Grief, Collected was supported in part by a grant from The Pop Culture Collaborative. 

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the second meditation of our Grief, Collected series, which come out every Friday.

Today is a breathing meditation with Linda Thai. Linda is a therapist and leads meditations as part of her somatic healing practice. She will take us on a 10 minute meditation to explore our relationship to our ancestors through release and healing. And for those us that get antsy about the idea of meditating for 10 minutes - we get it! Take a walk and see how it feels.

Linda Thai is also featured in Episode 3 of the podcast.

More about Linda Thai and her work thai.com/">here. 

You can find more info and resources at GriefCollected.com

More about Linda Thai - 

Linda is a trauma therapist and educator who specializes in brain and body based modalities for addressing complex developmental trauma. She is highly sought after for her trainings in trauma-informed care, compassion fatigue resilience, and vicarious trauma recovery skills for human services professionals. As an adjunct faculty member in the Social Work Department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Linda's decolonized approach to education and engaging teaching style makes her well-loved with students. She assists internationally renowned psychiatrist and trauma expert, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, with his private small group psychotherapy workshops aimed at healing attachment trauma. She has a Master of Social Work with an emphasis on the neurobiology of attachment and trauma.

Grief, Collected is a production of The Mash-Up Americans. Executive produced by Amy S. Choi and Rebecca Lehrer. Senior editor and producer is Sara Pellegrini. Development Producer is Dupe Oyebolu. Production manager Shelby Sandlin. Original music composed by The Brothers Tang. Sound design support by Pedro Rafael Rosado. Website design by VOKSEE. Grief, Collected was supported in part by a grant from The Pop Culture Collaborative. 

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

America! The land of opportunity! And also, for so many Mash-Ups, the ambiguous loss of immigration and uprooting a life and a history comes with a complex web of emotions. Today we’re talking to the trauma therapist and educator Linda Thai about ancestral grief, and how unmetabolized grief, particularly in Mash-Up families, is passed down through generations. We dive into how important understanding historical context is for grief and healing. There are many Mash-Up  revelations in this episode!!!! We’re asking: what happens to a family structure if we don’t grieve? 

You can find more info and resources at GriefCollected.com

About Linda Thai:

Linda Thai is a trauma therapist and educator who specializes in brain and body based modalities for addressing complex developmental trauma. She is highly sought after for her trainings in trauma-informed care, compassion fatigue resilience, and vicarious trauma recovery skills for human services professionals. As an adjunct faculty member in the Social Work Department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Linda's decolonized approach to education and engaging teaching style makes her well-loved with students. She assists internationally renowned psychiatrist and trauma expert, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, with his private small group psychotherapy workshops aimed at healing attachment trauma. She has a Master of Social Work with an emphasis on the neurobiology of attachment and trauma.

More about Linda Thai and her work thai.com/">here. 

Grief, Collected is a production of The Mash-Up Americans. Executive produced by Amy S. Choi and Rebecca Lehrer. Senior editor and producer is Sara Pellegrini. Development Producer is Dupe Oyebolu. Production manager Shelby Sandlin. Original music composed by The Brothers Tang. Sound design support by Pedro Rafael Rosado. Website design by VOKSEE. Grief, Collected was supported in part by a grant from The Pop Culture Collaborative.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the first meditation of our Grief Collected series, which come out every Friday. Today we have a series of 4 songs on grief from Daniela Gesundheit and Snowblink. A lot of Daniela’s music engages with grief, as she weaves together stories from  her personal experience and her Jewish traditions. These meditative episodes are an invitation to get out of our heads and into our bodies.

This is music by Daniela Gesundheit and Snowblink.

Playlist - 

None - written by Daniela Gesundheit. Performed by Snowblink. Produced by Daniela Gesundheit, Dan Goldman, and Caley Monahon-Ward. Mixed by Thom Monahan. Courtesy of Fire Records UK. 

Second Sight - written by Daniela Gesundheit and Dan Goldman. Performed by Snowblink. Produced by Daniela Gesundheit, Dan Goldman, and Robbie Lackritz. Courtesy of Outside Music. 

Opposite the Seraphim - written by Daniela Gesundheit and Sarah Pagé. Performed by Sarah Pagé. Produced by Daniela Gesundheit. Mixed by Steve Kaye. Courtesy of Idée Fixe. 

Wild Here - written by Daniela Gesundheit. Performed by Snowblink. Produced by Daniela Gesundheit, Dan Goldman, and Robbie Lackritz. Courtesy of Outside Music. 

You can find more info and resources at GriefCollected.com

More about Daniela -

Daniela Gesundheit is a vocalist, composer, poet, and cantor interested in long-surviving musical traditions that explore and foster group identity. As Snowblink Gesundheit writes non-denominational devotional pop music and has released three critically acclaimed albums. Her latest project is Alphabet of Wrongdoing, an album of Jewish prayers and blessings encircling themes of reckoning and forgiveness reimagined for secular audiences and secular spaces. She lives in Los Angeles and haunts Toronto with her husband and fraternal twin babies. You can find her @DanielaSarah

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We’ve been looking around these past couple years, wondering what grief is in America. Today we start at the beginning and we have some BIG QUESTIONS. What is grief? What is the particularly American approach to grief and grieving — or not grieving as it were? Will we be okay?! We are joined by two of the world’s leading grief experts. George Bonanno and Natalia Skritskaya are psychologists who are researchers on grief, trauma, and loss to define grief and loss and their many manifestations. We go deep on the incredible resilience of human beings, the throughlines of grief experiences and the impact of NOT addressing it, particularly in a post-Covid age — and how the truth about grief may look completely different from what we think it to be. 

You can find more info and resources at GriefCollected.com

About The Guests

Dr. George Bonanno is a Professor of Clinical Psychology and Chair of the Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology at Columbia University's Teachers College. He is the head of the Loss, Trauma, and Emotion Lab at Columbia University. For the past 25 years, he has pioneered research in the nature of resilience in contexts of loss and trauma. His books include “The End of Trauma: How the new science of resilience is changing how we think about PTSD. And the The Other Side of Sadness”: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After Loss. You can find him on Twitter @giorgiobee. 

Dr. Natalia Skritskaya is a researcher at the Center for Complicated Grief, Columbia University and clinical psychologist in private practice. Her background is in cognitive-behavioral therapy for anxiety disorders with an interest in mind-body connection. For the past decade Dr. Skritskaya has been helping people struggling with difficult losses and trained clinicians in an evidence-based prolonged grief therapy. Her research is focused on assessment of typical bereavement-related thoughts and understanding their role in prolonged grief.You can find more about her work here. 

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