What happens when the floor drops out from under you, and then it keeps dropping? Dana Killian knows that question in her bones, and I am so grateful she sat down with me to talk about it honestly.

In this episode I’m joined by Dana, an author and trauma-recovery voice who lived through a devastating eight-year stretch of loss: discovering her alcoholic husband’s secret double life, losing her mother to pancreatic cancer, divorcing, caring for her father until he died, moving across the country where she knew no one, and losing her oldest son, Alex, to a fentanyl overdose. We talk about grieving a marriage, a parent, and a child, and how to keep a wound from becoming lifelong suffering.

We dig into:

✨ Why grieving a betrayal or the end of a relationship is a real loss
✨ How to process the question “Was our love real?” when someone you trusted lived a double life
✨ What Dana calls the “story of why” and how to use it to find closure
✨ Why creating a story of why isn’t lying to yourself
✨ How laughing at the absurdity of life can be a healthy coping tool in grief
✨ Grieving two parents years apart, and why each loss can feel completely different
✨ What it’s like to caregive for a parent while your own life is falling apart
✨ Starting over in a new city where you know no one after multiple losses
✨ Losing an adult child to fentanyl
✨ The nightly mantra that became Dana’s first step toward healing
✨ Why time alone does not heal grief
✨ Dana’s tough-love message for anyone letting the past run the present
✨ Dana’s book, Becoming Unbreakable: A Big Sister’s Guide to Trauma

If you’ve ever felt like your grief doesn’t fit neatly into one box, or you’ve been waiting for time to do the work for you, I hope this conversation meets you right where you are. You are not stuck, you are not behind, and you are so not alone.

Connect with Dana

• Website: https://www.danakillion.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dana_killion_author/

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