Grief Is an Identity Shift With Donielle Young
- 18 hours ago
- 2 min read
There is the grief everyone sees. The crying, the dark room, the casserole on the doorstep. And then there is the grief nobody names. The one that comes after. The loss of the woman you were before it all happened.
That is where Episode 5 lives.
For the first time in the history of Purpose, not Pity, I had Donielle Young, known as the Grief Disruptor. Donielle lost her husband to stage four colon cancer. She was his primary caregiver for two years. She has raised their son alone. And then she did something nobody else was doing in the grief space: she built a framework for what comes next. The G3 Method. Grief, grit, glow up.
But I did not want an interview. I wanted a real conversation. Two women who know the cost of rebuilding, sitting together with no script.
We talk about the moment you realize the person you were before the loss is not coming back. We talk about what it means to numb yourself just to survive and why that is sometimes exactly what you need to do. We talk about the glow up, and how I thought I had finally arrived there before losing my job two weeks after recording my Season 1 finale.
Donielle is honest that healing is not linear. That she still goes back into the deep dark. That she calls them waves, not stages, because waves can crash into each other all at once.
We also get into something that does not get said enough, the guilt that comes with joy. And where that guilt actually comes from. Donielle's answer will sit with you.
And toward the end, I asks the question that anchors the whole episode. What do you say to the woman whose loss did not come from a funeral? The woman grieving a marriage, a career, a sense of self? The one whose grief nobody brought a casserole for?
This episode is for her.
Connect with Donielle Young at mhdsmedia.com
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