Why It’s Worth It | Here’s what nobody tells you about grief: we spend so much energy trying to cure it, fix it, or move past it that we miss the most profound truth. Grief and love exist on the same continuum. They’re not opposites; they’re dance partners. And the goal isn’t to stop the music.

In this episode of 10% Happier, Dan Harris explores this delicate balance with Cody Delistraty, whose mother’s death (and his subsequent choices), sent him on a quest to understand grief through every possible lens: science, technology, ancient rituals, and radical experiments. What Cody discovered challenges everything we think we know about loss, from the myth of closure to the surprising power of funeral selfies.

The conversation begins with Cody sharing his story: his mother’s four-year battle with melanoma that bookended his college years and his subsequent self-isolation by choosing a move to France. Like many grievers, he thought being “strong” meant not burdening others with his pain. This cultural programming runs deep; when people say “you’re handling it so well,” they usually mean “thanks for not making us uncomfortable.” But this approach left him profoundly lonely, viewing his grief as something to hide rather than share.

Dan guides the discussion through Cody’s remarkable experiments in search of a grief cure. There’s laughter therapy, where he found himself doing “axe laughter” exercises on Zoom, chopping the air while shouting “HA!” repeatedly until his downstairs neighbor probably questioned his sanity. Surprisingly, it worked. The physical release broke through his cerebral approach to grief, revealing how much pain our bodies hold. Then came his venture into AI, attempting to recreate his mother as a chatbot. While the technology couldn’t truly bring her back, it forced him to revisit a 53-minute interview he’d recorded with her days before she died, finally facing her actual voice rather than a digital ghost.

The conversation takes a fascinating turn when they discuss prolonged grief disorder, recently added to the DSM-5. It’s wildly controversial: does medicalizing grief that lasts beyond twelve months help legitimize real suffering, or does it pathologize a fundamental human experience? As one psychiatrist asked Cody, would we expect Sandy Hook parents to be “over it” in a year? The debate reveals our culture’s desperate need to contain and control grief rather than coexist with it.

Perhaps most striking is their discussion of how we’ve sanitized death itself. Before the 18th century, death was woven into daily life: people wore mourning jewelry containing loved ones’ hair, displayed death portraits in their living rooms, and used black-bordered stationery. Now, 70% die in hospitals instead of homes, and we can barely say the word “death” without discomfort. Cody traces this shift to World War I, when President Wilson literally asked suffragists to stop wearing black veils and protesting war deaths, converting grief into quiet patriotism instead.

Background | In this episode, Dan Harris hosts Cody Delistraty, culture editor at the Wall Street Journal Magazine and author of The Grief Cure: Looking for the End of Loss, who brings journalistic rigor to the most universal human experience. Highlights include:

• The physiological release: Grief lives in our bodies as much as our minds. Laughter therapy (despite sounding absurd) offers genuine cathartic release. The body needs to process loss through movement, breath, and yes, even forced laughter that eventually becomes real.
• AI as mirror, not cure: Creating chatbots of deceased loved ones reveals more about our relationships than it resurrects them. The real value isn’t in the artificial conversation but in confronting what we’d ask, what we’d say, and what remains unfinished.
• Ritual over closure: Instead of one expensive funeral aiming for “closure,” ongoing personal rituals serve grief better. For example, one person listened to their spouse’s favorite song every month; another started going to their partner’s hair salon. Repetition honors the ongoing nature of love and loss.
• Grief as addiction paradox: Brain scans show some grievers’ reward centers light up when viewing photos of deceased loved ones. This isn’t pathology but biology: we’re neurologically wired to seek connection, even with those who’ve died. Understanding this helps us hold grief without judgment.
• Community as technology: The most powerful “cure” isn’t medical or digital but human. Simply sitting with someone in their loss, saying nothing, being an “empathetic witness,” offers more healing than any intervention. We underestimate presence and overestimate words.
• Expanding the definition: Grief isn’t just about death. Divorce, climate change, ancestral trauma, and “ambiguous losses” deserve recognition. A man told Cody his divorce was harder than his wife’s death because no casseroles appeared at his door. We hierarchize losses at our peril.
• Memory as choice: Science may soon allow us to delete traumatic memories, but would we want to? Our painful memories connect us to love. As Cody realized, “I get to have those memories of my mom. Why would I ever want to lose that?”

Source | 10% Happier: The Science of Grief – Episode 872 (December 2, 2024)

About | Dan Harris is a former national news reporter who turned to meditation to manage the stressors of a high-pressure on-air career. A self-dubbed “fidgety skeptic,” he brings a practical perspective to a seemingly abstract practice. Dan currently hosts the 10% Happier (TPH) podcast, which delivers conversations with meditation teachers, researchers, and even the odd celebrity. He is also a former co-founder of the Happier meditation app. Dan’s over-arching philosophy is simple yet profound: he believes happiness is a skill that can be learned.