Episodes

This is for all my forgotten mourners, for all my Surviving Siblings. In this podcast, I am going to tell you my story, the story of my brother, what happened and I will tell you how I went on my mourning and healing journey.

As a surviving sibling, there are defining moments in your journey. The first defining moment is the call, that call that changes your life forever, the call when we discovered what has happened, the call to provide information that you'd never want to receive. This week I’m sharing the first part of my journey, how that call changed my life and the first series of events that happened after that first call. In this episode, I’m covering: The first event [00:01:42] Getting to the hospital [00:09...

The journey of a surviving sibling is full of ups and downs. Usually, people come to us to ask about how parents are, people forget that we have also suffered a loss, we are usually the forgotten mourners. This week I’m sharing the first pieces of information that the detectives were able to gather and share with us, as well as how it was seeing my sisters, my mother, and my father while they arrived at the hospital. In this episode I’m covering: Meeting the first detective [00:01:04] Organizing...

Everything is so clear but yet blurry at the same time. When it's time to say our last goodbyes, we often find ourselves in disbelief. Disbelief that this is actually happening, disbelief that this is the last time that we will ever see our sibling again. This week I’m sharing how things were after my father arrived from Africa, more pieces of information we got from the detectives as well as my last goodbye to my brother. In this episode I’m covering: Supporting me and remembering my brother [0...

Death can be something that can unite or separate families. It’s not natural for parents to lose their children, but what happens to the other siblings that are still on this Earth? Surviving the death of a sibling is not easy, every step of the journey is painful. On top of that pain, the siblings have to deal with so many other situations. Reality begins to hit and everything starts to feel real. You feel lonely, even if you’re surrounded by a sea of people. In this week's episode, I am sharin...

Abandoned and alone, I had to wait for my family to call me back. When you’re grieving, you really need a support system, someone that’s going to be there for you and help you through the trauma. My family was not that for me. In this week's episode, I am sharing about how I was coping with not only grief but also abandonment, what happened before my brother’s celebration of life, and disappointing moments with my mother. In this episode I’m covering: Abandoned and alone [00:01:00] Memories of m...

The purpose of a Celebration of Life is to remember a loved one, to tell their story and to come together to celebrate their unique personality. My mother decided to celebrate my brother by scattering his ashes in a creek close to where we grew up. In this week's episode, I am sharing about the moments I shared with my mother before the Celebration of life, my thoughts and feelings during the event and what happened after, at my brother’s girlfriend's home. In this episode I’m covering: Conversa...

The pain of loss is overwhelming, it’s something that we learn to cope with as we are going through this journey of losing a loved one. Big feelings always come to the surface, which makes coping with the loss even more challenging. In this episode I’m covering: What happened after walking away [00:01:02] Words of Wisdom from my father [00:08:45] Sharing moments with Caleb and Phillip [00:16:45] Heading home [00:22:30] My friend Walter and going back to work [00:26:30] Handing my notice [00:33:0...

After coping through different mechanisms after the homicide of my brother, I am left thinking “what now?”. What happens now that all the chaos and the spiraling stops? What happens when everything has “calmed down?” In this episode, I’m talking about what happened with my boyfriend at the time during the holidays, how I was dealing with my anxiety and taking medication, the reunion of the reality show I was in, and feeling something for the first time as I was traveling in Mexico. In this episo...

We all process grief in different ways, we all do different things to feel “at peace” when losing a loved one. As a surviving sibling, I wanted to do everything in my power to bring justice to my brother’s death. I had been there from the very beginning and it seemed like I was the only one that cared about it. In this episode I’m talking about how miscommunication with my father led to me being frustrated with him, how I started to move on with my life and my career, the start of my entrepreneu...

During your grief journey your feelings and emotions ebb and flow. I dont believe there’s such thing as “highs” in the grief journey, more like lows and hope. Going into year 2 of losing my brother, I was losing hope because I felt that I had failed him in so many aspects. However, I have to remind myself that I haven’t, that this is part of the journey and that Andreas is always with me. In this episode I’m talking about the updates (or lack thereof) on my brother’s case from the “Dirty Detecti...

When you’re going through your grief journey, you’re always looking for “closure”, that something that is going to make it ok, that something that’s going to finally let you breathe and “get over” your loss. But as I have learned, there’s no such thing as closure, really the main goal is to get answers for everything that’s unresolved. In this episode I’m talking about how I felt like I was regressing in my grief journey as the pandemic hit, looking for closure or something to be able to “move o...

Going into year five of losing my brother to a homicide, thanks to Detective G I already had most of the answers I was looking for, but in the middle of a global pandemic, I felt like I was regressing in my grief journey. I went through a mixture of feelings, excited because of my entrepreneurial journey but sad at the same time. In this episode, I’m talking about the evolution of my grief journey, how my brother came to me in dreams several times to deliver messages, my spiritual journey, why I...

After losing her brother in 2004, Dr. Dawn DiRaimondo became interested in bereavement work. It wasn’t until later that she found out that there are almost no resources when it comes to sibling loss, so she decided to write a book Surviving Sibling Loss: The Invisible Thread That Connects Us Through Life and Death. Dr. Dawn DiRaimondo Psy. D. was the inspiration behind this podcast. In this week's episode, I am sitting down with Dr. Dawn DiRaimondo and sharing about Dawn’s sibling loss history, ...

As a surviving sibling or anyone that has experienced loss in their life, birthdays, holidays and milestones are always difficult days. Mostly because it is a reminder that our siblings' physical form is no longer with us. What I do is have a glass of champagne by myself every year, that is for my brother and is one of the many ways I decided to honor him on his birthday, a birthday that we share. In this week's episode, I am sharing about how I have dealt with celebrations and holidays in the p...

Support groups can be very overwhelming, so even Jen surprised herself when she decided to join a sibling loss support group just a couple of days after losing her brother LB. It's been six years since that time and now she is co-president of the COPE Foundation. Connecting Our Paths Eternally (COPE) is a nonprofit grief and healing organization dedicated to helping families living with the loss of a child. COPE offers professionally facilitated support groups, a grief support phone line, and mo...

When Audree Kropen unexpectedly lost her sister Robin at the age of 12, her whole life changed. Her family decided to stop talking about Robin completely and not acknowledge the fact that she had passed. Now 50+ years later, Audree feels ready to share her healing journey and how that single event has immensely impacted her life and who she is today. In this week's episode, I am sharing Audree and Robin's story, how her family dynamics affected Audree’s life, and how they decided to deal with he...

NOTE: THIS IS A TWO-PART EPISODE, TO LISTEN TO PART ONE CLICK There are so many layers to Audree’s story, as mentioned in , she lost her sister Robin when she was 12, and they were only two and a half years apart. To this day, it has been the event...

Myesha and Maya are probably the ones that have the most in common because both of their younger brothers were murdered, so they were left looking for answers. The call that changed Myesha’s life forever, the one where they told her her little brother, Tony, had passed, was the beginning of a nightmare. It wasn’t until years later that she began her grief journey, and one of the ways she has decided to honor her brother is by creating SAVED. In this week's episode, I am sharing Myesha and Tony’s...

For Margaret, everything started when her mother passed. A few months after that, her brother Julian was killed in a motorcycle accident. This event made Margaret develop an understanding of everything surrounding death and grief from a completely different perspective. She now runs the Good Grief AUSTRALIA website - https://good-grief.com.au/ which helps others understand their grief journey. In this week's episode, I am sharing Margaret and Julian’s story, what she considers the grief bubble a...

Randa’s grief journey has been a long one, filled with emotional rollercoasters. It all started when Perry was diagnosed with breast cancer, after the treatment for that was over they had a couple of good years. Until the cancer came back. Some days were good, others not so much. Until Perry asked for her family’s blessing to be able to go. She lost her sister in 2016, after spending 3 weeks at her bedside.Randa compares her grief journey as like having a backpack full of rocks which you learn t...

No one gets a pass on grief, not even a three-year-old. Janice lost her sister Julie at the age of 3, she was too young to understand what was going on around her and her coping mechanism growing up was saying that she had grown up as an only child. She didn't acknowledge that she was a surviving sibling until she started going to therapy for an ailment she thought was completely unrelated, and it ended up being “stuck grief”. Grief that Janice had not given herself the space to process and unde...

Caleb Harrison and Maya have more in common than being just surviving siblings. Maya was there for Caleb when he lost his brother Josh and Caleb was able to do the same for her when she lost Andreas. This episode is a deep conversation between two friends, two surviving siblings that lost part of their soul and came together to support each other. In this week's episode, Maya and Caleb share about Caleb and Josh’s life, what Caleb thought was going to be “just a hiccup” and ended up being a life...

November 21st 2016 was the day that changed my life forever, it was the day that I lost my brother. As I have shared in previous episodes, my grief journey hasn’t been linear. There are many things that I have done to cope with the loss of my brother. Creating this podcast was a way for me to honor my brother, to tell his story, to tell my story, our story. As surviving siblings we go through different stages of grief, one day our grief might be in the drivers seats, while others in the trunk of...