Podcast
Great Grief
Hosted by Nnenna Freelon · EN
A podcast about loving greatly through grief WITH NNENNA FREELON.
Jazz singer Nnenna Freelon extends an invitation to improvise with loss in her award-winning podcast Great Grief. As a widow and self -described grief sojourner, Freelon uses tools she learned as a jazz musician to live with sorrow’s song.
Bearing witness to loss and change with musically supported storytelling, listen to Great Grief with Nnenna Freelon. Find it wherever you find your podcasts.
11episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Season 3, Episode 7: Last Dream Home
3w ago00:09:45Tap to summarizeIn this final episode of Season 3, I reflect on endings, beginnings, and the mystery of what it means to let go.Through story, song, and remembrance, I share the journey behind Last Dream Home — a song born from love, fear, grief, and the quiet unfolding of acceptance. Together, we sit with the unknown, with the tenderness of goodbye, and with the hope that peace may meet us on the other side of sorrow.Thank you for walking with me through this season of Great Grief. It has truly been a joy to be in community with you.
Transcribe →Season 3, Episode 6: Love and Kindness Tea
Apr 1400:06:41Tap to summarizeIn this episode, I share a reflection from my book Beneath the Skin of Sorrow—a poetic “recipe” for caring for ourselves in the midst of grief. Loving Kindness Tea invites us to slow down, breathe deeply, and return to gratitude, silence, and love.Through story, meditation, and a touch of ritual, we explore how healing can live in small, intentional moments—and how we can begin to live greatly through grief.
Transcribe →Season 3, Episode 5: Window Woman
Mar 3100:09:48Tap to summarizeAfter my husband’s passing, I found myself searching for language that could hold both my grief and my continued capacity to love. Then, a stranger offered me a new way of seeing.
Transcribe →Season 3, Episode 4: Encore
Mar 1700:07:12Tap to summarizeIn this episode, I reflect on the idea of an encore—that unexpected moment when you are called back to the stage. As a young jazz singer on my first European tour, I experienced my first encore and discovered something powerful: the space between what we plan and what we are asked to give in the moment is where the real magic lives. Through story, music, and reflection, I explore how that lesson returned to me years later through grief. Sometimes grief calls us back to the stage of our lives when we feel unprepared, uncertain, and afraid. Yet in those moments, we are invited to trust, to improvise, and to find healing in the unexpected. If this episode resonates with you, I invite you to subscribe to Great Grief Podcast, and to join my community as the season unfolds. New episodes are released bi-weekly!
Transcribe →Season 3, Episode 3: What's Love Got to Do With It?
Mar 300:55:53Tap to summarizeValentine’s Day can stir many things — joy, memory, longing, even sorrow. Not everyone greets it with candy and flowers. So instead of wishing you a happy Valentine’s Day, I offer you something else: a love bouquet from my heart to yours.Recorded live at Moorhead Manor on Valentine’s Day, this episode reflects on love through the lens of loss. What is this thing called love? What happens when grief reshapes it? When marriage, partnership, and shared life change form? When the question stops being theoretical and becomes deeply personal?
Transcribe →Season 3, Episode 2: A Meditation on Loss
Feb 1700:09:35Tap to summarizeWelcome to Season 3 of Great Grief.In this episode, I sit with the word “loss.” What does it mean to lose something? A bag. A job. A sense of direction. A beloved. What does it mean to feel lost yourself?Through meditation, storytelling, and song, I explore the difference between something being gone and something being changed. I reflect on grief as a landscape—where the map no longer matches the terrain, where you show up but feel estranged from your own life.
Transcribe →Season 3, Episode 1: My Grandmother Perry
Feb 300:12:49Tap to summarizeWelcome to Season 3 of Great Grief!This season I’m listening closely—to stories, songs, and the quiet places where grief lives beneath the surface. In this opening episode, I share ancestral stories of my grandmother and great-grandmother, reflecting on grief, memory, and lineage. Through music, storytelling, and poetry, I explore grief not as something to fix, but as a journey—one that can be honored, felt, breathed with, and sometimes sung through. This season holds a culturally wide lens and a feminine gaze, creating space where sorrow and joy can coexist. If this episode resonates with you, I invite you to subscribe and join my community as the season unfolds. New episodes are released bi-weekly. What has grief taught you about listening? Share in the comments.Website - http://nnenna.com/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/nnennafreelon/ Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nnenna-Freelon/32336396896 Twitter - https://twitter.com/OfficialNnenna Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/artist/4WkgNR9kn136k50T4pc7RS#GreatGrief #NnennaFreelon #LiveGreatlyThroughGrief #GriefJourney #GriefAndHealing #MusicAndGrief #StorytellingAsHealing #AncestralMemory #GreatGrief #GreatGriefPodcast #GriefAndHealing
Transcribe →Holiday: Home is Where our Spirits Reside
Dec 1600:10:22Tap to summarizeDecember has been calling all year long. This holiday offering from Great Grief is an invitation to pause, to listen, and to remember what the heart craves — belonging, rest, and communion with spirit. Featuring a summer moment of joy and reverence with Paperhand Puppet Intervention, this piece honors our oldest ancestors and calls to our beloveds on both sides of the veil. Every goodbye ain’t gone.🎧 Season 3 of Great Grief returns weekly beginning January 13, 2026.Great Grief is a podcast about living greatly through grief and is available everywhere you get your podcasts. Special thanks to Naima Harrell, Andrew Berinson, Donovan Zimmerman, and Larkin Consulting.
Transcribe →
Seasons of Change, Episode 6: Great Grief Live! On Holiday Part 2
Dec 26, 202400:33:53Tap to summarizeGrief comes to live with us all eventually, and she needs no invitation. In this bonus holiday episode of Great Grief, Nnenna Freelon appreciates the quiet moments shared in the kitchen with her late father and wonders aloud how to curate her space for the holidays now that grief has made a home in her home. In this previously-recorded live edition of Great Grief, Nnenna Freelon shares her memories of the lessons her grandma's wooden spoon and wisdom gave her about gathers with community to create a warm space for us to sit with our loves and our losses in the company of those who also know suffering. The seasons are changing—an apt metaphor to talk about the shedding, withering, and falling away that accompanies the most painful parts of grief. This season, Nnenna looks to nature and the cyclical movement of time to delve deeper into loss, creating rituals and making discoveries that help us reconnect with ourselves, each other, and the ones we’ve lost. --- Unlike other podcasts on grief, Great Grief by Grammy-nominated vocalist Nnenna Freelon doesn’t give you a blueprint for how to get over it. Instead, she offers her own experiences as a wife, a sister, a Black woman, and a powerful jazz artist to help you get into it. Each four-episode season is organized around topics that intertwine our grief experiences—topics like sisterhood, the inevitability of change, and Black love. A new collection drops every quarter, accompanied by a live opportunity for us to gather around our griefs in different cities across the South. Check out the archive of essays in Scalawag's grief & other loves series. Join the Great Grief Facebook community.
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Seasons of Change, Episode 5: Great Grief Live! On Holiday Part 1
Dec 23, 202400:33:54Tap to summarizeGrief cannot tell time. She comes and goes as she pleases. In this bonus holiday episode of Great Grief, Nnenna Freelon remembers the lessons of her grandmother, honors those we've lost, and holds space for our holiday grief with poetry and song. In this previously-recorded live edition of Great Grief, Nnenna Freelon shares her memories of the lessons her grandma's wooden spoon and wisdom gave her about gathers with community to create a warm space for us to sit with our loves and our losses in the company of those who also know suffering. The seasons are changing—an apt metaphor to talk about the shedding, withering, and falling away that accompanies the most painful parts of grief. This season, Nnenna looks to nature and the cyclical movement of time to delve deeper into loss, creating rituals and making discoveries that help us reconnect with ourselves, each other, and the ones we’ve lost. --- Unlike other podcasts on grief, Great Grief by Grammy-nominated vocalist Nnenna Freelon doesn’t give you a blueprint for how to get over it. Instead, she offers her own experiences as a wife, a sister, a Black woman, and a powerful jazz artist to help you get into it. Each four-episode season is organized around topics that intertwine our grief experiences—topics like sisterhood, the inevitability of change, and Black love. A new collection drops every quarter, accompanied by a live opportunity for us to gather around our griefs in different cities across the South. Check out the archive of essays in Scalawag's grief & other loves series. Join the Great Grief Facebook community.
Transcribe →