Category: Grief & Loss

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Living With Physical and Emotional Pain June 9, 2015

Host: Armand DiMeleGuests: Ben Starr, Giullian Gioiello
Category: Emotions & Inner Life, Grief & Loss

Physical pain and emotional pain feel utterly different, yet both demand surrender rather than resistance. Armand DiMele, joined by co-hosts Ben Starr and Giullian Gioiello, takes calls from listeners navigating broken bones, chronic back pain, heroin withdrawal, and the grief of losing parents, exploring how we sometimes choose painful patterns and what it takes to move through them.

Hatred Vengeance and the Hateful Self March 25, 2014

Host: Armand DiMeleGuests: Giullian Gioiello, Linda Vanella
Category: Emotions & Inner Life, Grief & Loss

Hatred is not a demon to be hidden but a feeling to be explored honestly. Armand DiMele and Linda Vanella, LCSW-R, trace hatred from childhood helplessness through jealousy, control, and vengeance, with a moving call from a man who lost his brother on 9/11 and has since been cut off from his nephews and nieces.

Transitional Objects and Unfinished Grief January 30, 2013

Host: Armand DiMeleGuests: Giullian Gioiello, Lisa Arnone
Category: Emotions & Inner Life, Grief & Loss

When a divorced woman fell into depression the moment her ex-husband removed his things, Armand DiMele recognized a classic pattern: the husband had been buffering unresolved grief over her father’s death. Armand, joined by Lisa Arnone, LCSW, and co-host Giullian Gioiello, explores how people, music, and objects absorb original pain, and why the loss of a substitute can hit harder than the original wound.

Parenting Through Schizophrenia with Randy Kay August 23, 2011

Host: Armand DiMeleGuests: Randy Kay
Category: Family & Parenting, Grief & Loss

Randy Kay, author of “Ben Behind His Voices,” joins Armand to trace her five-year journey recognizing her son’s gradual-onset schizophrenia. They examine how parents normalize early warning signs, why diagnosis so often comes only at crisis, and how education, NAMI, and redefining hope made recovery possible.

Complicated Grief with Nicole Alston January 4, 2011

Host: Armand DiMeleGuests: Linda Vanella, Nicole Alston
Category: Grief & Loss, Trauma & Healing

Prolonged grief can quietly hollow out a life for decades. Linda Vanella, LCSW-R, describes her group work helping bereaved parents move a lost child from unconscious suppression into conscious memory. Nicole Alston, LMSW, shares her own stillbirth loss, two-year withdrawal from life, and how that experience led her to found the Sky Foundation and produce a documentary on infant death in the African-American community.

Mothers Remembered and Mourned May 4, 2010

Host: Armand DiMele
Category: Family & Parenting, Grief & Loss

Mother’s Day triggers some of the deepest and most complicated feelings people carry. Armand DiMele traces the holiday’s activist origins, examines why therapists are trained to watch for crisis around it, and opens the phones to callers sharing tender memories, estrangement, infertility, and the particular ache of becoming an orphan at any age.

The Weight of Caregiving September 9, 2009

Host: Armand DiMeleGuests: David Travland, Rhonda Travland, Sherri Siegel
Category: Family & Parenting, Grief & Loss

When devotion to a sick partner becomes all-consuming, caregivers lose themselves. Armand DiMele and co-host Dr. Sherry Siegel, M.D. speak with David Travland and Rhonda Travland, authors of “The Tough and Tender Caregiver,” who each survived years of spousal caregiving and argue that self-care is not selfishness but survival.

Surviving Crisis and Finding Strength with Mark Matusik June 25, 2008

Host: Armand DiMeleGuests: Mark Matusik
Category: Grief & Loss, Personal Growth & Change

What do you discover about yourself when crisis strips everything away? Author Mark Matusik discusses his book drawing on interviews with Joan Didion, Ram Dass, and others who survived profound loss, illness, and trauma. The recurring insight: real strength only emerges when the fictional version collapses.

Early Onset Alzheimer’s with Pat Moffitt June 5, 2008

Host: Armand DiMeleGuests: Pat Moffitt
Category: Aging & Mortality, Grief & Loss

A husband’s love story that becomes a caregiving ordeal. Pat Moffitt, author of ‘Ice Cream in the Cupboard,’ recounts his wife Carmen’s early onset Alzheimer’s diagnosis at 53, the bewildering behavioral changes that preceded it, and how he learned to face a loss that arrives long before death.

People Come Into Your Life for a Reason Undated

Host: Armand DiMele
Category: Grief & Loss, Love & Romantic Relationships

Relationships arrive as reasons, seasons, or lifetimes, and recognizing which is which changes everything. Armand DiMele works through the framework with callers, including a widow who cannot move on from her late husband and a mother estranged from her daughter for seven months, drawing out what each past relationship gave us even after it ends.