Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.

If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jhhhu.edu.

That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes.

This is Lindsay Smith-Rogers.

The holidays can be an intense time for everyone, but especially for those who are

dealing with grief, whether it's recent or decades old. Today, I talk with Lisa Williams,

a clinical social worker, and Eleanor Haley, who has a master's in counseling psychology,

who are both co-founders of What's Your Grief, an online community for grieving people and grief support professionals.

We talk about ways to approach celebrations or rituals,

communication with loved ones,

and the need to make more room for flexibility, honesty,

and maybe even a little joy.

Let's listen.

Lisa Williams and Eleanor Haley, thank you so much for being on public health on call. I am personally a huge fan of your podcast. It has helped me through

some really rough times in the last few years and also the body of work that you have on your website.

We're coming into the holiday season, which can be a difficult

time, whether grief is fresh and maybe it brings up grief that's decades old. So today we're

going to talk about how people can think about this time. First, let's start off with a little

bit about you and your work. Let's talk about what's your grief. So Eleanor, let's start with you.

Yeah. So What's Your Gr grief as an organization that we started

about 10 years ago now, a little bit over 10 years. After working in the field of grief

...