The Profound Lessons a Trauma Therapist Learned About Loss When Facing Her Own with Meghan Riordan Jarvis

When you lose someone you love, every loss asks something different of you. One goodbye can leave you heartbroken but standing. The next can bring your whole world to a stop. Sometimes grief gives you months to prepare, convincing you that you'll know how to survive what's coming. Other times, it arrives without warning, turning an ordinary day into the day your life is divided into before and after. And sometimes, even if you're a therapist who's spent years helping others through loss, you discover that the very tools you've relied on for decades can suddenly feel helpless in the face of your own grief.  Meghan Riordan Jarvis knows that firsthand. She is a trauma therapist with more than 20 years of experience and the author of Can Anyone Tell Me? A book born from the questions grieving people ask every day but rarely receive honest answers to. Instead of treating grief as something to fix or get over, Meghan explores what it actually does to our bodies, our minds, and our relationships, offering the kind of validation so many people never receive. Her understanding of grief changed through two very different losses. In 2017, Meghan's father died after a year-long illness. She describes those final months as watching him grow smaller, weekend after weekend, until he was gone. It was heartbreaking, but it felt like the kind of grief she had spent her career helping others navigate. Two years later, everything changed. While they were on vacation together, Megan's mother died suddenly. The loss shattered every assumption she had about grief, including her own. A relentless voice began telling her it was her fault. What started as an intrusive thought became constant rumination, repeating so often that she recognized she was no longer coping. Eventually, she checked herself into the same inpatient treatment program where she had once referred her hardest clients, those whose grief and trauma required more intensive treatment.  In this episode of Crying Out Loud, Meghan and I talk about what happened when her professional knowledge could no longer protect her, and what she learned after experiencing grief from the inside instead of the therapist's chair. We explore why grief can disrupt memory, sleep, concentration, and appetite for much longer than most people expect, and why those reactions are part of how the brain responds to profound loss. In this episode, we discuss: What grief does to the brain and why memory, sleep, and concentration are often affected Why brain fog is a normal response to loss, not a sign that you're falling apart The role anger plays in protecting us from overwhelming sadness Simple practices that help calm a nervous system under stress The thoughts so many grieving people experience but are afraid to say out loud What Meghan discovered at the deepest point of her grief, and how it reshaped the way she lives and helps others If this conversation resonates with you, pick up a copy of Meghan's Can Anyone Tell Me? and visit her website or connect with her on Instagram for classes, guidance, and other grief resources. And if you're looking for more support, you'll find it in my book, Crying Out Loud: A Path Through Grief Into a Life Reimagined, and inside The Grief Healing Collective. I'd also love to hear your thoughts on this episode. You can reach me anytime at [email protected].