Guest: Claudia Coenen, Grief Counselor & Thanatologist

Have you ever been told to just “get over it already?” Today on the show, grief counselor and thanatologist Claudia Coenen talks to us about complex grief (grief that is clouded by ambiguous circumstances and takes longer to resolve) and disenfranchised grief (when our grief is publicly minimized or de-legitimized). Straight spouses often experience disenfranchised grief when there is pressure to be “over it,” or when anger at an LGBT spouse is not seen as politically correct. “There is this external pressure from the outside world, from society, from what people consider to be the norms…that there’s some sort of timeline you’re supposed to stay inside of, and anyone who’s grieving a deep loss will at some point have somebody say to them, ‘why aren’t you over this yet’.” She gives us advice and strategies for coping with enormous grief and anger.