For some time I’ve hesitated to accept an invitation to appear on a podcast on grief — “From Loss To Light” — hosted by Angie Hanson of Omaha, Nebraska and Michelle Cowan, who splits time between Council Bluffs and northwest Iowa.
Both women have suffered the untimely loss of loved ones. I know Michelle and have covered her work as an emerging Iowa author. A drunk driver killed her husband in Omaha. She writes searingly about the experience in her book “Better Not Bitter.”
This past week the episode with me dropped. I appeared as a guest to talk about grief and loss, and strategies for recovery, associated with career and job loss. My family lost the community newspaper that we had operated for three generations, 93 years, in Carroll, Iowa.
We are not equating job loss to the death of people, loved ones. That’s why I was not sure about the guest turn on “From Loss To Light.” Not worthy, I thought.
But Michelle persuaded me to go on the podcast.
Michelle and Angie wisely want to expand their mental health conversations and reach beyond death to economic dislocation. The two, tragically, are often paired. I heard this first hand this past summer as I traveled with Congressman Ro Khanna through the coal and auto-making and steel regions of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and through Mississippi River cities in Iowa.
In several locations, union leaders relayed stories of cascades of loss that ended in suicide and other personal tragedies.
In the podcast episode with Angie and Michelle we discuss what I experienced personally, the pain I saw my family endure, with the loss of our business, and what I reported and witnessed in cities and regions of the United States ravaged by off-shoring and economic disruption, greed and government incompetence. Candidly, I brought a hard-earned empathy to the reporting I would not have possessed even seven years ago.
Below are links to the podcast on Apple and Spotify. You can also click here to connect to other platforms for podcasts.
(Douglas Burns, a fourth-generation Iowa journalist from Carroll, is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Please follow other writers on the roster below.)
The hurt and sadness of loss is a learning journey. Individual and collective loss presents many challenges for moving forward. That movement is a daily endeavor. When my job of almost 38 years was eliminated (along with over 100 co-workers) I learned that being proud and grateful for what I gained from my job helped me move forward. This was a good listen and reflection for the day. Thanksx3
Thank you for this, Doug. Loss is loss. Grief is grief. For years I thought my losses were not as bad as others' so I did not deserve to feel pain. But when pain is there it must be acknowledged, respected, processed. Forgiven.