Sometimes Loss Is Freedom: A Conversation with Rebecca Woolf

We’re on break, creating all new episodes for season 3. In the meantime, here’s one of our favorite episodes from the past year. See you soon.

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. In this episode, 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

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, All of This: a Memoir of Death and Desire, hits the shelves last month.

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

Additional resources

It can be hard to find information about grieving the loss of a complicated relationship (an abusive parent, or an estranged partner, for example). Check out this post on grieving people you didn’t always like.

Get in touch:

Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of Here After with Megan Devine. Tune in, subscribe, leave a review, and share the show with everyone you know. Talking about difficult things gets easier with practice, and that’s why we’re here. Together, we can make things better, even when they can’t be made right.

Have a question, comment, or a topic you’d like us to cover? Visit megandevine.co to get in touch.

For more information, including clinical training and consulting, visit us at www.megandevine.co

For grief support & education, follow us at @refugeingrief on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok

Want to talk with Megan directly? Join our patreon community for live monthly Q&A sessions. All the info at this link.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.