Ep 267: Sharing As Part of Grief (REPLAY)

10 Things To Tell You

Laura Tremaine

Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.7 • 930 Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2025

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This episode with my friend Amy Ortloff originally aired in August 2021 with the title Teaching People To Grieve With Me. As part of my effort to highlight the best of my past episodes, I wanted to replay this conversation, which is one of the most important I've ever shared.

Content warning: Child loss and suicide

In 2017, Amy Ortloff lost her middle child Ryan to suicide. Ryan was just 17 years old. Less than a week after his death, Amy took to her personal Facebook page and starting sharing every single day. She began by sharing stories about Ryan, family memories and examples of the kind of kid he was. She didn't want her child to be forgotten.

As the weeks went by, deep in grief, Amy also started sharing her own experiences of this devastating time she was living through. She shared what she was learning in therapy, she set and shared her personal boundaries for interaction for those in her small town Oklahoma community.

Amy's sharing was raw and vulnerable. It was heartbreaking and powerful. I made a point to read her posts every day that first year after Ryan.

This episode is about the effects of that real-time sharing during the hardest time of her life, the positive and the negative. Amy was teaching us how to grieve with her, and it made an enormous impact on me long before I ever wrote a book about sharing stuff.

If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or text TALK to 741741.

Please share this episode with anyone who needs to hear it.

SUBSCRIBE to 10 Things To Tell You so you never miss an episode!

CLICK HERE for episode show notes

FOLLOW @10ThingsToTellYou on Instagram

FOLLOW @10ThingsToTellYou on Facebook

JOIN Laura Tremaine’s SECRET SUBSTACK

BUY THE BOOK: Share Your Stuff. I'll Go First. by Laura Tremaine

BUY THE BOOK: The Life Council: 10 Friends Every Woman Needs by Laura Tremaine

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	With almost 400 episodes and bonuses of 10 Things to Tell You, occasionally I like to bring
0:07.8	some of the best ones back into your feed as replays. I do this so that they don't get lost
0:13.6	and so that new listeners can hear them for the first time. I do this because some of these
0:18.5	conversations are so important.
0:22.1	Like this one, a tender hour with my friend Amy Ortloff on the loss of her son and teaching
0:27.4	us how to grieve alongside her.
0:29.7	This episode originally aired in August of 2021 and it is one of the most meaningful
0:34.3	conversations of my life.
0:37.1	Content warning includes child loss and suicide.
0:40.4	Please take care when listening. I'm Laura Tremaine and I have 10 things to tell you.
1:07.5	And you have 10 things to tell.
1:14.6	This show is about connection with each other and with ourselves. And the hope is that the things we talk about here will be fuel for better conversations
1:20.4	and a personal awareness. This is an interactive podcast. Each episode has a prompt and a topic that I want you to take to your journal,
1:31.4	text to your best friend, or answer on social media using the hashtag 10 Things to Tell You.
1:38.2	This is a show about digging deeper and sharing our stuff.
1:42.3	I'll go first.
1:49.1	This episode is one of the most tender and important that I've ever shared on this show. And I am just so deeply grateful to my friend Amy Ortloff
1:56.4	for having this conversation with me and letting me make it public.
2:07.5	I grew up with Amy's husband, Steve, in our tiny town in Oklahoma of about 4,000 people.
2:13.3	Steve is my sister's age, he has a younger brother, my brother's age, and then another younger brother about my age, and our parents were very close friends when we were growing up. I have
2:18.5	known this family my whole life. In 2017, Steve and Amy lost their middle child Ryan to suicide.
2:29.6	Ryan was 17. He had just finished his junior year of high school. It was a devastating heartbreak,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Laura Tremaine, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Laura Tremaine and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.