Digitally Crushed by Grief

Thanks For Asking

Feelings & Co.

Society & Culture, Personal Journals, Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.7 • 13.4K Ratings

🗓️ 4 November 2025

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There are times we expect grief to hit us: death anniversaries, birthdays, holidays. But when grief attacks us out of nowhere, what do we do? How do we deal? And even worse – what if it happens digitally? If our dead partner’s Instagram is suddenly gone? If their voicemails or texts get deleted? Grief is a language that all of us will someday be able to speak. Today, we’re listening to those of us who have been crushed by digital grief. Watch us on YouTube here⁠⁠! Get this episode ad-free here! Listen to Geoffrey’s album on ⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠Apple⁠⁠! Shop my favorite bras and underwear at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SKIMS.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. After you place your order, be sure to let them know I sent you! Select "podcast" in the survey and be sure to select my show in the dropdown menu that follows. Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠indeed.com/TFA⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for all of your hiring needs! Head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠cozyearth.com ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠and use my code NORA for up to 20% off! Find your fall staples at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Quince.com/TFA⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! Get your creatine at livemomentous.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi. Hi. Hi. How are you there? Hi. Hey, Nora.
0:11.8	I'm Nora McInerney, and this is thanks for asking, a call-in show about what matters to you.
0:30.0	There are moments when you know that grief is going to hit you in the face.
0:31.1	I'm talking about birthdays.
0:33.1	I'm talking about anniversaries.
0:37.3	Or for me, the days leading up to those big days. But there are other more unexpected moments when
0:42.8	grief can attack you. And I'm sure you've experienced that. You smell their perfume, their cologne,
0:48.1	their deodorant, their hair product in a crowded room. And it feels like they are there with you.
0:53.8	Again, you find a birthday
0:55.5	card with their handwriting when you least expect it, or you hear a song on the radio, and you
1:02.9	are back in the car with them getting lost upstate while autumn leaves fall like pieces into place.
1:09.9	A grief attack can happen anytime, anywhere.
1:14.5	But recently on an October morning, I was scrolling through my emails and I got one from Google
1:20.6	and it said your email address is going to be deleted due to not being used, basically.
1:27.1	And I thought, huh, that's probably a phishing email. And then I thought,
1:30.3	what I always think? Well, you know, what if it's not? I should click it. Please note, I am
1:34.9	incredibly easy to trick, dupe, fool, okay? Fool me once. I'm not impressed. Fool me twice.
1:42.9	Anyone could do it. Fool me three times. Again, not hard. Fool me four times. I truly wish you wouldn't. But I open this email from Google and I see that it is not a fishing scam. It is real. Google is letting me know that the email address that I secured when I was pregnant with my second child
2:01.5	is going to be deleted. And that is an email address that was never used because I lost that
2:08.0	pregnancy in October 2014. That was a few days before my dad died, a few weeks before my husband
2:15.5	died, and seeing this, her name, the name that we had
2:19.9	chosen for her on our screen, the finality of it, of knowing, oh, oops, yeah, this last sort of
	...

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