This is TED Health, a podcast from TED, and I'm your host, Dr. Shoshana Ungerleiter.

Grief is messy. It rarely follows a straight line, but sometimes healing begins when we pause long

enough to trace one. For cartoonist Navid Madavian, that metaphor is literal. When he learned a loved

one was close to dying, he sought refuge in art, not as a cure, but as a kind of companion, a way to make sense of what feels too big, too raw, too complex to carry alone.

In this talk, Navid shows us how creativity, through drawing and through presence,

can help metabolize emotion and reconnect us to empathy, memory, and even our own bodies.

Because when it comes to loss, sometimes the most powerful form of care isn't found in a treatment plan,

but in the stories that we allow ourselves to tell.

Then stick around after the talk for a conversation with Dr. Nathan Gray.

Nathan specializes in internal medicine and palliative care,

and he's also an amazing cartoonist who uses comics to foster empathy

and capture the human side of medicine.

Together, we'll talk about how art and storytelling can change the way we understand suffering,

healing, and what it means to truly care.

But before we dive in, a quick break to hear from our sponsors.

And now, Navid Maravian takes the TED stage.

When I found out my grandmother, my last living grandparent was dying.

My first thought was, I need to draw her hands.

I'm a visual artist, a cartoonist for the New Yorker and comics writer,

so drawing is how I understand much of the world.

For a long time, my cartoons had been impersonal.

Commentary on the world around me, sure, but not really about me.

...