Carla Fernandez On Navigating ‘The Wild Ride’ of Grief

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KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 14 March 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Through years of hosting dinner parties with fellow grievers, Carla Fernandez, writes that she learned to approach grief without sweeping it under the rug. “I learned about approaching grief less as a noun, a thing to distance ourselves from, and more as a verb,” as she writes in her new book, “Renegade Grief: A Guide to the Wild Ride of Life After Loss.” Fernandez lost her father to brain cancer when she was 21. Well after the funeral and support tapered off, she realized she wasn’t done grieving and didn’t have an outlet for her experiences, so she co-founded The Dinner Party in 2014 to bring other young adults together to share food and process grief. Fernandez joins us to talk about how to navigate grief as an ongoing journey. Guest: Carla Fernandez, co-founder, The Dinner Party; author of the book “Renegade Grief: A Guide to the Wild Ride of Life After Loss.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:35.7	From three-time Tony-winning composer Jason Robert Brown comes the story of
0:40.0	Leo and Lucille Frank, a newlywed Jewish couple struggling to make a life in Georgia. When Leo is
0:46.9	accused of an unspeakable crime, it propels them into an unimaginable test of faith, humanity, justice,
0:55.1	and devotion.
1:03.5	The riveting and gloriously hopeful parade plays the Orpheum Theater for three weeks only, May 20th through June 8th.
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1:10.5	From KQED. From KQED.
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1:20.6	This sweet old.
1:24.0	From KQED in San Francisco.
1:25.3	I'm Leslie McClureg.
1:27.2	I'm in today for Alexis Madrigal. Grief. It's messy. It hits
1:30.3	an unpredictable, kind of painful waves, and it usually lasts much longer than we want.
1:36.3	But what if we didn't want it to stop and just go away? What if it didn't have to be so
1:41.0	isolating? Carla Fernandez offers an easier path in her new book, Renegade Grief.
1:46.9	She gives tangible steps to ensure a loss can inspire community, create rituals, even spark joy.
1:54.4	We will talk to her about how to find our way through the hard stuff, and maybe she'll even
	...

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