About this episode

Dr. Celeste Birkhofer shares her personal journey through grief and mental health challenges in a heartfelt conversation.

In this revisited episode from November of 2025 I had sat down with Dr. Celeste Birkhofer, a licensed clinical psychologist, longtime Stanford educator, mother, and upcoming author whose work centers on grief, suicide prevention, and the emotional weight of perfectionism. Dr. Celeste opens up about growing up in a military family, navigating a parent’s alcoholism, and how her own experiences with depression, compulsive exercise, and an eating disorder eventually led her into psychology. She also shares her forty–year marriage, a partnership strengthened through separation, therapy, and hard-won healing. The heart of our conversation is the greatest loss of her life: the death of her son, Wiley, who fought bipolar two disorder with everything he had for nine years. Dr. Celeste speaks with heartbreaking honesty about his vibrant childhood, his acceptance into Stanford, the onset of his illness, and the unpredictable nature of suicidal ideation. She talks about the day Wiley died, the grief that reshaped her family, and the fears she faced returning to work as a therapist while questioning everything she believed about mental health treatment. We explore the complexity of suicide…

People in this episode

Guest: Dr. Celeste Birkhofer

Topics covered

• mental health
• grief
• suicide prevention
• perfectionism
• personal experiences
• family dynamics

Keywords

• mental health
• grief
• suicide prevention
• perfectionism
• depression
• eating disorder
• family
• therapy

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Stanford, Cloud10

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