"I'm just carrying it. I don't know where forward is anymore." That's what Katie said when I asked her what carrying grief forward meant to her. And I think it might be the most honest thing anyone has said on this show.
In this solo episode, I do something I've never done on The Carried Forward Podcast before: I explain the framework that runs underneath every conversation. The Carried Forward Framework — five phases called Named, Heard, Reclaimed, Reframed, and Reconnected — is the map I use in my coaching work and the thread that runs through every episode of this show.
Using real moments from conversations with guests Katie Rizzo (episode 4) and Nikki J. Borger, I walk through what each phase actually means, what it looks like in a real person's life, and why the goal was never to get over grief — but to carry it.
We talk about:
- Why you can't carry something well if you don't know what it is
- What happens when grief goes underground because the world moves on before you're ready
- The difference between being defined by a loss and being built by it
- Why reframing isn't positive thinking — and what it actually is
- What it looks like to carry grief forward in ordinary, daily life
At its core, this episode is about one thing: wherever you are in your grief is a real place on a real map. You're not behind. You're not doing it wrong. You're carrying something that matters.
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The Carried Forward Podcast is hosted by Robert DelFave, grief coach, David Kessler Certified Grief Educator, and author of The Other Side of This: The Messy Truth About Grief for Teens.
What is Carried Forward?
Grief doesn't end, it transforms.
The Carried Forward Podcast is a conversation-driven show about what happens after loss. Not the moment of loss itself, but the long, slow, often invisible work of rebuilding identity, meaning, and purpose on the other side of it.
Host Robert DelFave is a grief coach, author, and someone who lost both parents young. He sits down with grief professionals, researchers, therapists, authors, and thought leaders to ask the questions his clients are living with every day. What does carrying grief forward actually look like? How do you rebuild who you are on the other side of this?