Grief 2 Growth

We tend to think of grief as something we feel — a heaviness in the heart, a fog in the mind. But what if grief is also something we store, physically, in the body? And what if the breath you take without thinking could be the very thing that sets it free? In this episode, I talk with Kurtis Lee Thomas — the "Man from the Stars" — about a path to healing that didn't begin in a wellness studio, but in suffering. A five-year stomach condition no doctor could diagnose. The loss of his brother to...

The casseroles arrive. The flowers fill the house. For a few weeks, people show up. And then they don't. For most grieving people, the silence that follows the funeral is one of the loneliest parts of loss — and one of the least talked about. In this episode, Brian sits down with Kelly Edmondson, a trauma nurse, grief counselor, and Shining Light mother who lost her son Darius on January 3rd, 2023. Kelly spent years delivering devastating news to families in the ER. She thought she understood...

What happens when the person you've loved since childhood is suddenly gone — and you're left at 29 with three small children and no idea how to be an adult without them? Courtney Pray Duke doesn't answer that question with easy comfort. She answers it with her life. Widowed after her husband Andrew was killed in a cycling accident, Courtney walked through the kind of loss that rewrites everything — and came out the other side not unscathed, but transformed. In this episode, Courtney and Bri...

What if your daughter spent years telling you exactly how she was going to die — and then kept communicating after she did? That's the extraordinary story Louise Crist lives every day. In this episode, Louise shares the most remarkable account of a child predicting their own death and continued after-death communication I've ever featured on this podcast. From premonitions that began at age four, to the moment Jilly's voice came through minutes after the accident saying "I jumped — I didn't...

What if those unexplainable feelings you get — those quiet nudges that something is about to change — aren't just anxiety or imagination, but your soul preparing you for what's ahead? In this deeply moving episode, I talk with Tami Pitetti Sanders, an intuitive guide whose journey began with subtle intuitive signs before death that she didn't fully understand until after loss transformed her life. Tami shares how she received "unknowing knowings" about a year before her father's passing — sch...

Some struggles don’t make sense. You do the work. You try to heal. And yet the same emotional patterns, grief, anxiety, or disconnection keep resurfacing. In this special Grief 2 Growth episode, Brian D. Smith welcomes back Dr. Lotte Valentin, medical doctor, psychotherapist, ancestral healer, and two-time near-death experiencer, for a profound conversation about inherited emotional patterns and why some challenges may not have started with you. Dr. Lotte shares how grief, trauma, and unresol...

Before the microphones were turned on, Richard Ashworth asked Brian for his birth information. What followed was an unexpected and deeply personal moment—Richard identified a pivotal event at age seven that reshaped Brian’s view of life. He was right. In this episode of Grief 2 Growth, Brian and Richard explore how grief, destiny, and choice intersect—and how ancient systems like Bazi can help us understand the moments that quietly define us. This is a conversation about: Childhood loss and l...

What happens when grief collides with faith — and suicide shatters everything you thought you believed? In this candid and raw episode of Grief 2 Growth, Brian sits down with Rachel Powell, widow, author, speaker, and founder of Hope Speaker, to explore the complicated intersection of grief, faith, suicide loss, and hope. After losing her husband André to suicide — and surviving suicide attempts herself — Rachel shares her story with courage, clarity, and compassion. This conversation goes be...