Sometimes Loss Is Freedom: A Conversation with Rebecca Woolf

What if you were just about to get divorced, but your partner gets sick? Like really sick? Rebecca Woolf was just about to leave an unhappy marriage when her husband got sick and died. What followed was a crash course in performative grief, and the dismantling of one life in order to build the next.

This week on It’s OK, we cover love, sex, marriage, divorce, grief, shame, assumptions (both internal and external), and personal agency - it’s QUITE the conversation.

Sensitivity note: this episode contains the F word, and references sex.

In this episode we cover:

• The conventions of marriage and grief that trap people in inauthentic versions of themselves
• How you can love someone AND be relieved they’re dead
• Why everyone has an opinion about how soon is too soon to date, have sex, or otherwise live your life after someone dies
• Grieving the time you lost living someone else’s life
• Building your own “house of hope,” according to your own desires

Looking for a creative exploration of grief? Check out the best selling Writing Your Grief course here.

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About our guest:

Rebecca Woolf has worked as a writer since her teens - it’s the way she understands both herself and the world. Her essays have appeared on Refinery29, HuffPost, Parenting, and more. She currently authors the bi-weekly column Sex & the Single Mom on romper.com. Her latest book is All of This: a Memoir of Death and Desire.

Find her on IG @rebeccawooolf (with three o’s) and at rebeccawoolf.com

About Megan:

Psychotherapist Megan Devine is one of today’s leading experts on grief, from life-altering losses to the everyday grief that we don’t call grief. Get the best-selling book on grief in over a decade, It’s Ok that You’re Not OK, wherever you get books. Find Megan @refugeingrief

Additional resources:

Want to talk with Megan directly? Join our patreon community for live monthly Q&A grief clinics: your questions, answered. Want to speak to her privately? Apply for a 1:1 grief consultation here.

Check out Megan’s best-selling books - It’s OK That You're Not OK and How to Carry What Can’t Be Fixed

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