Laurel O'Sullivan, Grief Advocate

12/06/2026

The Things That No Longer Scare Me

Here's something I've become profoundly aware of in the four years since my son died by su***de:

When you're living through catastrophic grief, the scale of suffering shifts.

Things that once seemed frightening, uncomfortable, or overwhelming lose their power because they are no longer competing against ordinary life. They are competing against the worst thing that has ever happened.

Four days after we buried my son, I found myself spending hours inside an MRI machine at the Mayo Clinic preparing for risky surgery to remove a vascular tumor embedded in my spinal column.

It was my fourth set of scans in less than a month, and strangely, I'd begun to make peace with them.

Most people dread MRIs—the confinement, the noise, the feeling of being trapped inside a narrow tube while the machine pounds and rattles around them.

But by then, I had already survived the thing I feared the most.
Inside the scanner, I didn't have to answer questions. I didn't have to make decisions. I didn't have to absorb another person's sympathy or disbelief. For an hour at a time, I could surrender to the machine's relentless rhythm and disappear from a reality I still couldn't comprehend.

Years later, I have noticed something similar while moving to Spain.

New language. New systems. New customs. New routines. The kind of upheaval that understandably stresses many people.
And yet, I rarely feel overwhelmed.

Not because I am unusually adaptable. Not because I'm fearless.
But because somewhere along the way, my internal measuring stick changed.

When you've sat in a funeral home choosing a casket for your child, a bureaucratic mix-up doesn't feel like a crisis.

When you've lived through the phone call that divides your life into before and after, getting lost in a foreign city barely registers as a problem.

This isn't a superpower. I wouldn't recommend the path that leads to it.

But it is one of grief's strange byproducts: an altered relationship with discomfort. A recognition that many things we fear are survivable, inconvenient, uncomfortable, even painful—but not catastrophic.

I forgot I even had this photo. Looking it at it now I’m struck by the fact that I’m smiling. Not because my life was okay-it wasn’t. I had buried my son four days earlier and I was preparing for spinal cord surgery. I was smiling because the tumor was benign and I was still able to walk.

I'm curious if you have experienced profound loss in your life if you have noticed something similar?

What is something that used to intimidate, overwhelm, or frighten you that simply doesn't carry the same power anymore?

(originally posted on Subtack, if you want to follow me there: https://substack.com/)

09/06/2026

Who Am I Now After Everything Has Changed?

(From a Substack post, link below if you want to follow me there for more on this conversation....)

For the past several years, I’ve been living with a question that I suspect many of you know intimately: Who am I now?

Not after one specific event, but after life has fundamentally changed.

Sometimes that change arrives through profound loss. Sometimes through illness, divorce, relocation, retirement, caregiving, empty nesting, career disruption, or simply reaching a point where the life that once fit no longer does.

In my own life, this question has been unfolding for years. Long before we sold our house and packed up our lives and moved to Mallorca, Spain. Long before I began writing a book about the loss of my son and the ensuing transformation. Long before I could articulate what felt different.

I’ve spent countless hours reflecting, journaling, writing, walking, swimming, and trying to understand what comes after an identity no longer fits.

What I’ve come to realize is that many of us are living in this in-between space where the old chapter has ended, but the new chapter hasn’t fully arrived.

And yet we’re expected to keep moving forward as though we know exactly who we are.

I’d like to create a space to explore that together. Not a workshop. Not coaching. Definitely not therapy. It might even turn into a podcast but for now...

Just a small, thoughtful conversation among people navigating transition and asking, “How do we navigate the grief, the uncertainty, of becoming someone new, while still living the life we currently inhabit?”

I’m considering hosting a 90-minute Zoom gathering for a small group of interested readers.

If this speaks to you DM me and share:

• What chapter of your life has ended, and what chapter has not yet fully begun?

• What are you hoping to discover about yourself through this conversation?

I’ll read every response and, if there is enough interest, I’ll send details about the gathering in the coming weeks.

I don’t know exactly what this will become.

Perhaps that’s fitting. After all, uncertainty may be the one thing we all have in common

Original article:

The In Between Chapter

28/03/2026

This is hands down one of the most brilliant and truthful assessments of how grief transforms us that I have ever read. I’ve always been a deliberate and truthful person in a world where performative
ness is rewarded but losing Patrick made me less tolerant of people who cannot dwell in the space of truth.

Grief as an integrity filter

28/03/2026

This is one of the most absolutely brilliant articles I have read on grief in the last four years. While I’ve always considered myself a straight shooter with low intolerance for performative ness her summation of how grief recalibrates our integrity filter is spot on.

Grief as an integrity filter

16/03/2026

In our newest podcast episode, we talk about the surprising intersection between grief and travel — and how stepping outside the places where a loss occurred can sometimes give us enough space to breathe and see our lives a little differently.

Not because grief disappears. But because new landscapes can sometimes help us begin to imagine life again when the map has been completely rewritten.

If you’ve ever wondered why travel can feel so meaningful after a difficult season, this conversation might resonate.

🎧 Listen, subscribe and share here: https: open.substack.com/pub/laurelosullivanjd/p/travel-in-peace-episode-8-when-the?r=cixyl&utm_medium=ios

11/03/2026

"There is a particular loneliness in child loss that is difficult to explain. The world continues. People return to their routines and their children. And you are left standing in a wilderness without a map." My intention for sharing this most recent post on Substack is to offer hope and a map of sorts to any other parents or families struggling with the loss of a child from su***de.
LINK: https://substack.com//note/p-190085567?r=cixyl&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web

09/03/2026

What makes a place feel like home?
In our newest Travel in Peace podcast episode, Tim and I talk about leaving Girona and arriving in Mallorca—and the deeper question it stirred for us: what is home, really?
Is it a place? A country? A relationship?
�Or is it something we carry inside ourselves?

This conversation touches on change, belonging, grief, and the tension between wanting stability and embracing freedom. It turns out we each experience “home” very differently.

We’d love to hear your thoughts too—where do you feel most at home?

🎧 Listen here: https://open.substack.com/pub/laurelosullivanjd/p/travel-in-peace-episode-7-moving?r=cixyl&utm_medium=ios

17/02/2026

In our first episode, we talked about why we moved to Spain — and the idea that after catastrophic loss, you have to grow your life bigger than your grief.
In this episode, we talk about what that actually requires internally.
A few weeks after arriving in Girona, we began navigating the Spanish residency card process — something many people warned us would be frustrating and opaque. What surprised us wasn’t the bureaucracy.
It was our response to it.
We explore how repeated loss recalibrates your relationship to control, how accepting the unknown becomes less optional after grief, and why curiosity can become more powerful than certainty.
This episode is about paperwork on the surface.
But underneath, it’s about learning to live with what you cannot control — and discovering that grief may prepare you for more than you expected. LINK in bio.

17/02/2026

Episode 5 is out! One of the biggest lessons Tim and I have learned since losing Patrick is this: our grief doesn’t get smaller.
Instead, you learn to build a life big enough to hold it.

In this episode, we share how navigating the Spanish residency process in Girona revealed something deeper: grief had fundamentally changed how we respond to uncertainty.
We talk about control, curiosity, and how loss reshapes your tolerance for the unknown — not just in big life decisions, but in everyday frustrations like bureaucracy & broken boilers.
This isn’t really about residency cards.

It’s about what grief teaches you about living. Link to the episode:

In our first episode, we talked about why we moved to Spain — and the idea that after catastrophic loss, you have to grow your life bigger than your grief.

14/02/2026