If you love, you experience loss.

Looking back over the last few years, who or what have you lost? A loved one, a friendship, a relationship, a pet, a job, your health, your community? Something else?

Have you had time to reflect on and grieve your losses and find meaning and sense in all you experienced?

And how do you talk about your losses with those around you, if at all?

We cannot engineer the experience of grief out of our lives, but many try, at a significant cost, to their well-being, their relationships, and their ability to function, connect, and lead.

Grief will always do its job regardless of our response to grief’s presence. And the more we try to avoid the heartbreak, mess, awkwardness, outrage, and vulnerability, the more we disconnect from our humanity and those around us.

So, the question for us is: How will we respond when grief comes knocking in our personal lives, work, and world?

Joon ‘J.S.’ Park is a hospital chaplain, former atheist/agnostic, sixth-degree black belt, suicide survivor, and Korean-American, a person of faith and valuer of all.

He is the author of As Long As You Need: Permission to Grieve, part hospital chaplain experience and memoir, and The Voices We Carry: Finding Your One True Voice in a World of Clamor and Noise.

J.S. currently serves at a top-ranked, 1,000+ bed hospital and was a chaplain for three years at one of the largest nonprofit charities for the unhoused on the East Coast.

Content note: This conversation covers topics around sexual abuse, suicide, and experiences of racism. Joon’s message and heart feel healing and gracious as he shares some tender issues. But please take care of yourself as you move through this beautiful conversation.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

The physical toll of unacknowledged accumulated grief that J.S. took on through his chaplaincy training
How contending with pervasive and severe suffering daily challenged and reshaped J.S.’s faith
How he began to grapple with his experiences of abuse, racism and internalized shame
Why we need to learn to engage with a range of grief and validate our responses to it to heal
What we can learn about others when they use clichés and platitudes in response to grief
How working closely with grief has changed J.S.’s concept of what it means to be successful

Learn more about J.S. Park:

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Resources:

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