Grief is a Language ™ with John Onwuchekwa
Grief Is A Language™ is a podcast about grief, loss, love, loneliness, healing, and what it means to be human. Hosted by John Onwuchekwa, each episode weaves together powerful stories, conversations, and insights from psychologists, neuroscientists, artists, authors, comedians, and everyday people navigating loss. Together, they explore grief in all its forms—from the death of a loved one to divorce, friendship, identity, illness, and the life we imagined but never got to live. Because grief isn't a journey to finish. It's a language we learn.
Episodes
September 27, 2026 • 88 mins
What if your body knows you’re grieving before you do?
In this Part 1 episode, John Onwuchekwa sits down with Dave, Rich Perez, and James Roberson for a deeply honest conversation about grief as body language: the exhaustion, tears, anxiety, tension, and physical reactions that can surface when loss has nowhere else to go.
Together, they unpack grief after death, friendship changes, leaving ministry, losing community, and o...
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September 23, 2026 • 13 mins
Tembi Locke shares how widowhood changed her relationship with grief and inspired From Scratch. Using grief as a rock in the road, she explains why she stopped trying to get around her loss and instead learned its shape, lived beside it, and eventually used it as raw material to create something new.
RESOURCES:
Tembi Locke
Website | tembilocke.com
IG | @tembilocke
John Onwuchekwa
Website | johno.co
IG | @j...
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September 20, 2026 • 62 mins
In this episode of Grief Is A Language, John Onwuchekwa sits down with Tembi Locke for a beautiful conversation about grief, language, memory, writing, love, and the slow work of turning loss into something that can hold meaning.
Together, they explore why grief is not something to rush, fix, or “move on” from, but something we learn to speak with more honesty, patience, and tenderness. Tembi reflects on writing throug...
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September 16, 2026 • 10 mins
Grief and joy are often treated like opposite emotions, but what if they can exist at the same time? John Onwuchekwa and Jessica Hurley unpack the “shoulds” we place on grief, why we police our own emotions, and what it means to let grief and joy intersect.
RESOURCES:
Jessica Hurley
IG | @jessicahurley__
John Onwuchekwa
Website | johno.co
IG | @jawn_o
Grief is a Language™ is produced by EPYC Me...
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September 13, 2026 • 76 mins
In this deeply reflective episode of Grief Is A Language™, John Onwuchekwa is joined by EPYC Media Network’s founder and producer Jessica Hurley for a conversation about anticipatory grief, ambiguous loss, joy, purpose, patience, and the loneliness that often accompanies them all.
Jessica shares what it was like watching her newborn fight for his life in the NICU, caring for her father through stage four cancer, navigating d...
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September 10, 2026 • 7 mins
Psychotherapist Dr. Zoe Shaw shares how becoming pregnant at 15, being sent away to a pregnancy home, and hiding the adoption of her first daughter shaped decades of complex shame. She explains why achievement became a way to outrun her past, why shame eventually caught up with her, and what it took to begin separating shame from her identity.
GUEST RESOURCES:
Dr. Zoe Shaw
Website| drzoeshaw.com
IG | @drzoeshaw
RESOURCE...
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September 6, 2026 • 60 mins
Grief is like a shadow that follows you, waiting to meet you when you think you've outrun it.
In this pilot episode of Grief is a language, host John Onwuchekwa welcomes Dr. Zoe Shaw to unveil the complex landscape of grief, offering a transformative perspective on emotional healing.
Dr. Zoe highlights complex shame as a deeply personal experience that goes beyond traditional understanding, revealing how trauma and unresolv...
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September 2, 2026 • 7 mins
Hospital chaplain Joon Park explains how to support someone who is grieving without trying to fix their pain. He and John explore why grief has no timeline, how well-intentioned advice can add another burden, and why quiet presence may be what a grieving person needs most.
GUEST RESOURCES:
J.S. Park
Website | jsparkblog.com
IG | @jspark3000
RESOURCES:
John Onwuchekwa
Website | johno.co
IG | @jawn_o
...
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6: What Witnessing 1,000 Deaths Taught Hospital Chaplain Joon Park About Grief, Faith and Loneliness
August 30, 2026 • 76 mins
Some people catch dreams, but others catch grief — holding space for pain, honoring loss, and ensuring no one suffers alone.
Today, host John welcomes Joon Park, a hospital chaplain who has witnessed over 1,000 deaths, for an insightful conversation about being a “grief catcher.” As the author of the book "Take As Long As You Need: Permission to Grieve", Joon shares his unique approach of providing presence and s...
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August 26, 2026 • 12 mins
What happens when the smallest detail suddenly reminds you that someone is gone? In this segment of Grief Is A Language™, Natalie and John explore the sharpness of absence, the loneliness of remembering alone, and why grieving people often want us to ask about the people they’ve lost. From tall grass to old toothpick cases, they reveal how ordinary objects can preserve connection, memory, and love.
RESOURCES:
Natalie Laure...
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August 23, 2026 • 72 mins
On today’s episode, John Onwuchekwa sits down with Natalie Lauren Sims to explore what grief actually feels like when loss comes in waves. From losing multiple family members in a short span of time to navigating numbness, rage, memory loss, faith, and radical acceptance, this conversation offers a powerful framework for understanding grief beyond clichés and stages.
John shares his four-part model of grief as body language,...
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August 19, 2026 • 11 mins
John Onwuchekwa and Trip Lee explore how the brain learns to live after loss and why chronic illness creates a uniquely lonely kind of grief. Trip opens up about grieving his health, energy, and independence without a funeral, anniversary, or community that always recognizes what he has lost.
GUEST RESOURCES
Trip Lee
IG | @triplee
RESOURCES
John Onwuchekwa
Website | johno.co
IG | @jawn_o
Grief Is A Language is p...
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Grief, chronic illness, and unshakable resilience—this powerful episode dives into Trip’s raw 18-year journey with chronic fatigue syndrome.
Today, John Onwuchekwa sits down with Trip Lee, Christian rapper, singer, and preacher, for an insightful conversation. John and Trip unpack the silent weight of living with an invisible illness, especially how it steals not just energy, but dreams, identity, and certainty.&...
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August 12, 2026 • 10 mins
Why does your brain still expect someone after they die? Grief neuroscientist Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor explains how the grieving brain processes loss, why loved ones become encoded as “everlasting,” and why you may still reach for the phone or expect them to walk through the door. Discover how the brain gradually relearns a world changed by loss—and why grieving is not forgetting, but learning a new relatio...
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Grief doesn’t only live in the mind. It changes the brain, affects the body, and can reshape our understanding of who we are.
In this episode of Grief Is A Language™, John Onwuchekwa sits down with renowned grief neuroscientist Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor to explore the science of love, loss, and the grieving brain. Dr. O’Connor explains why our brains continue to expect someone after they have died, why absence ca...
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August 5, 2026 • 10 mins
What if the five stages of grief were never meant for the people left behind? Dr. John Onwuchekwa and KevOnStage challenge one of our most familiar beliefs about loss and explore why grief doesn’t move in a straight line. Through personal stories of losing their brothers, they offer a more honest framework: grief is not a journey to finish, but a language we learn so we don’t have to carry loss alone.
RESOURCES:
KevO...
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July 31, 2026 • 10 mins
In this segment, Jessica and Jordan Rice open up about the complicated reality of dating after losing a spouse young. Jessica shares what it felt like to enter the dating world as a widow in her twenties, carrying both love for Jerron and uncertainty about who she was becoming. Jordan reflects on the awkwardness of starting over after Danielle’s death, the gift of her blessing to build a life again, and the fear that he might...
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July 26, 2026 • 75 mins
Jordan and Jessica Rice never expected to have this much in common.
Both lost their spouses unexpectedly in their twenties. Both found themselves navigating a kind of grief that few people around them could understand. And both eventually faced the same impossible questions: Can you fall in love again after losing the love of your life? How do you build a future without leaving your past behind? Can your heart make room for both?
...
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July 26, 2026 • 68 mins
What happens when the person who knew you best is suddenly gone?
In this powerful and unexpectedly funny conversation, comedian, creator, and entrepreneur KevOnStage talks about the loss of his older brother, Jason. Together, they explore why grief doesn't feel like a journey, why the popular "five stages" framework often falls short, and how loss reshapes the way we move through the world.
Kev opens up about the strange realitie...
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At some point, grief finds all of us.
Sometimes, it arrives through the death of someone we love. It may also come through divorce, illness, disappointment, loneliness, a lost future, or the painful realization that life did not unfold the way we hoped it would. Yet for something so universal, many of us struggle to find words for what we're carrying. We feel isolated in experiences that millions of people have lived before us.&nb...
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