Hello and welcome to Being Well, I'm Forrest Hanson.

If you're new to the podcast, thanks for joining us today, and if you've listened before,

welcome back.

It feels like there is a lot of loss out in the world these days, both in our individual

lives and in our broader communities, and with those losses comes grief.

There's a little more painful than grieving the loss of something you love, and everyone's

experience of that process is going to be unique.

As you can probably guess if you've listened to the podcast for a while, I'm the kind of

person who finds comfort in understanding how something works.

I feel like the better I understand something, the more I can do about it.

So to help us learn more about our experience of grief, how grief works in the brain,

and how we can use that knowledge to help us learn to live with loss, we're joined by

one of the world's leading researchers on grief, Dr. Mary Francis O'Connor.

Mary Francis is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and associate professor of psychology

at the University of Arizona, where she directs the grief, loss, and social stress lab,

which investigates the effects of grief on the brain and the body.

She's also the author of the wonderful book, The Grieving Brain, the surprising science

of how we learn from love and loss, which I had a great time reading to prepare for today's

conversation.

I loved having this conversation with Mary Francis.

I think it was so rich and deep and heartfelt, and I also wanted to give a couple of little

disclaimers about it as well.

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