Discussing Early Mother Loss on Got Grief Podcast

I’m honored and excited to share this podcast episode, released March 21, 2021 and titled “Carmel.” Got Grief is hosted by Craig Henry & Holly Sumpton in the UK and is about adults bereaved as children.

This conversation was just that, a conversation with two other adults who experienced mother loss in childhood and the discussion was enjoyable, easy and deep at the same time. The questions put to me by Holly and Craig were insightful and specific and I had the opportunity to share about my move to the US, my experience of working on rollercoasters in Wildwood, NJ and how my husband’s response to my loss has changed and evolved over time. My husband particularly enjoyed this podcast episode and I hope if you get the chance to listen, you will too. I like how it dips into various aspects of my life’s experience, deep questions about a child’s perspective on illness and death, a look at my writing process and how I came to write my memoir Briefly I Knew My Mother, how I met my husband and a little about life in Portland.

I’m getting more used to interviews at this point, and when my friend Liz Scott said to me, two years ago in Powell’s Bookstore “You should do some podcasts!” I thought “Me? What do I have to say that anyone would want to listen to on a podcast?” A few months later Jenny Doman Lisk reached out to me to do an episode on The Widowed Parent’s Podcast and I haven’t looked back since. I’ve also been a guest on The Dougy Center’s Grief Out Loud podcast which came out December of last year.

Thanks to all of you who have supported and encouraged me over the years. I know talking grief is not a joyful, light everyday topic but this episode with Craig & Holly was enjoyable. The three of us laughed together, empathized and shared stories and the recording proved to me, once again, how necessary grief conversations are to those of us who have experienced significant loss. I’m grateful to them for inviting me on as a guest. By doing this work I get to carry my mother, Kathleen, into the present with me and assign some kind of meaning to the loss I experienced at age 11 when she died.

Got Grief has a page on Instagram and you can listen to them on Apple or Spotify. I’ll include a link here if you wish to listen from your device or computer today.

Carmel X

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Carmel Breathnach is a freelance writer, born in Ireland and living in Portland, Oregon. She holds a B.A. degree in English literature and Irish language studies from NUI Maynooth, and a Diploma in Education from St. Patrick’s College, Dublin. Carmel writes on the themes of childhood mother loss, grief and gratitude. Her work has appeared in The Irish Times, Huffington Post, Upworthy, Scary Mommy, Voice Catcher, Modern Loss and Pendemic.ie, as well as in the anthology Hidden Lights published by Golden Dragonfly Press. Carmel is currently working on a memoir about mother loss titled Briefly I Knew My Mother.