by Lindsey Fenton | Jul 25, 2025 | Speaking Grief, What's New
I had the incredible honor of guest-hosting this very special episode of Dougy Center’s Grief Out Loud podcast so Jana DeCristofaro, LCSW, longtime host of Grief Out Loud and Advocacy & Education Manager at Dougy Center, could shift to the guest role and share about her love and grief for her beloved dog, Captain.
I first connected with Jana in 2018 and since then, we’ve become colleague friends, finding common ground in our commitment to grief work as well as in our dedication to our fur babies. I’m, unfortunately, intimately acquainted with the pain of pet loss, having said goodbye to my own dog, Birch, in 2022. Jana’s openness in navigating her own grief has been both moving and validating and I was grateful she agreed to this podcast “takeover.”
Together, we delve into how Captain came into Jana’s life, the complexities of caregiving for an aging pet, the difficult decisions surrounding their end-of-life, and the subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways pet grief can be minimized or dismissed…and how we can internalize those messages in surprising ways.
Click here to listen.
*Content Note: we discuss tender topics like end-of-life caregiving for a pet, including the decision-making process around euthanasia, so please take care as you listen.
by Lindsey Fenton | Jul 24, 2025 | Speaking Grief, What's New
In 2018, I began developing an initiative with the working title “The Grief Project.” It would eventually become WPSU’s Speaking Grief, and it would change my life.
In the early days, we were told no one would want to fund a project about grief. Thankfully, those voices were wrong. We connected with the New York Life Foundation, a leader in childhood bereavement, who immediately understood the power of storytelling and educational media in advancing grief literacy.
As fate would have it, the project we had been building for years launched in May 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic thrust grief into the global spotlight.
Five years later, I still get emails, sometimes weekly, from organizations hosting screenings and discussions inspired by Speaking Grief. In nearly two decades in public media, I’ve worked on many projects I’m proud of, but none have generated this level of sustained engagement.
This flagship initiative became the foundation for related projects like Learning Grief and Follow the Nudge, all built on the same hope: to help people feel less alone in their losses and to give families, communities, and professionals the tools to better support one another.
To mark this five-year milestone, Penn State Outreach recently featured the project in an article that includes a Q&A with me about the journey and its impact, which you can read here.
WPSU also created a short video capturing the project’s on-going impact:
https://player.vimeo.com/video/1106149926?badge=0&autopause=0&player_id=0&app_id=58479
As WPSU continues to celebrate the five-year anniversary and ongoing impact of Speaking Grief, I’m reflecting on what an extraordinary journey this project has been, why we do what we do, and how powerful it is when media connects hearts as well as minds. I am endlessly grateful to the teams, partners, and grieving people who make this work possible.
Every message we receive from someone who feels less alone reminds me why this work matters.
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