Episode 349: When Seasons Change

The flowers are blooming. The days are getting longer. The world looks like it is coming back to life. So why do so many of us feel so heavy? In this episode, Gwen Kapcia, social worker and thanatologist, and I sit down to talk about something grieving parents experience but rarely hear discussed directly - the way the changing seasons can shift something deep inside us, often before we even realize what is happening. As Gwen puts it so simply and so truthfully, every new season is the calendar doing what the new year does, four times over. It is a marker that more time has passed without our child. And there is no denying it. We talk about why transitions are so hard, why the body keeps score even when the mind has not looked at the calendar, and why sometimes the hardest season is not the one we expected. It might not be the season our child died in. It might be back to school, or the first warm day, or the quiet of February. It just hits, and we feel it before we can name it. We also read through beautiful and honest responses from our community, parents who shared their children's favorite seasons, their own hardest seasons, and specific memories from each time of year that brought both tears and smiles. A boy who played hooky at the state fair every fall birthday. A girl who wore flannels and loved Halloween and was honored at her visitation the same way. A son whose love of summer camping shaped every warm month for his family. These are the kinds of memories that keep grief open, as Gwen says, to both the beauty and the pain. Gwen also shares some practical tips for navigating the seasonal shifts, including the importance of routine, sunlight, staying active, and above all, staying connected. Because as we say on this podcast again and again — we are not meant to do this alone. And there is one more thing I want to invite you to do, whether you are listening the day this drops or months from now. Take a few quiet minutes and write down a specific memory of your child in each of the four seasons. Not for anyone else. Just for you. To remember. To treasure. To hold them close in every season they ever lived in.