Loss and the Massive Need for Community (Now More Than Ever) With CoFounder and CEO of Modern Loss Rebecca Soffer

Going Beyond with Randi Zinn

*This conversation is from our pre-Corona recorded episodes but clearly the subject matter is so relevant during this time!
Loss. It’s a topic on our minds now more than ever. Many of us have navigated its crushing waves and some are experiencing the reality of grief during this time pandemic for the very first time. We are wondering why we feel so alone when we go through it, knowing that everyone goes through loss at some point or another? How do we continue to process even when grief arrives again, many years later? How can community better support the experience of grief in our culture?

Join Randi and Rebecca Soffer, cofounder and CEO of Modern Loss, a digital and IRL forum for grief and resilience within a contemporary context. Whether you have been through loss a million times or this is your first loss experience, Modern Loss is a website and community where everyone is welcome. Rebecca is also coauthor of Modern Loss: Candid Conversation About Grief. Beginners Welcome, which The Cut recently named one of the best books on loss for a younger generation. She is a former producer for the Peabody Award-winning The Colbert Report. Rebecca has spoken nationally on loss and resilience at Chicago Ideas Week, HBO, and Amazon, and has led multi-day retreats at Kripalu. Her writing has appeared in outlets such as The New York Times, Marie Claire, and The Wing's magazine No Man's Land, and she has been profiled on CBS Sunday Morning.

In this conversation, Randi and Rebecca get raw and vulnerable about their own profound losses all while acknowledging the discomfort, humor and surprising creativity that comes with it. Randi and Rebecca connect deeply as two women with ironically similar stories and who aren’t afraid to open up and share for the benefit of others.

In this conversation Randi and Rebecca explore:

-Rebecca’s platform Modern Loss. Why she felt the need to create a modern and inclusive community to process loss.

-The need for collective support and storytelling during a time where you are relearning how to cope with life. How storytelling can pull us all together and help us feel less alone.

-The taboo nature of death in our culture. How can we begin to normalize it and why we need to give ourselves a break when it comes to confronting loss. How can we bring in more empathy and understanding?

-Randi and Rebecca’s own experiences with loss and grief in their family and what it was like being only children.

-Parenting through loss. The complexities and even creative moments of being pregnant and bringing up children without our own parents.

-Why it’s okay to do what YOU need to do when dealing with grief.

-What it was like for Rebecca to create Modern Loss after the death of her parent and how she used her professional skills to curate and produce a meaningful community.

Tune in now!