A grief podcast with representative voices from across the UK

The Bereavement Room Podcast is a safe space for those from different faiths and cultures to tell their personal stories of grief and loss. Host Callsuma started the podcast as these stories are rarely covered by mainstream platforms and she wanted to provide a space to feature representative voices from across the UK.

While all episodes of the podcast tend to focus on stories of grief, two episodes in particular centre around suicide bereavement. Season 1 Episode 12, with guest Kalwinder Singh Dhinsdsa, touches on the taboo of mental health within Muslim and Sikh communities, experiences of therapy and language around suicide bereavement. Kalwinder speaks about his father who died by suicide in 2006, and his use of poetry as a form of expression when navigating this grief. Kalwinder also admits that he was not sure what words to use when his father died. To begin with, he said he used the word ‘committed’, however the more he spoke about it the less comfortable he became with the criminal connotations of the word. Importantly, Kal discusses the barriers of shame and pride when it comes to dealing with your mental health within Muslim and Sikh communities. He says that mental health is rarely discussed as people may view this as being ‘weak’ and instead the attitude of ‘just getting through it’ is preferred, but this taboo must be overcome.

In Season 1 Episode 16, Callsuma speaks to Sue Guerrieri, a mindset and life coach, and newly trained grief coach. Sue lost her daughter Geneva to suicide in 2018 at age 22; she talks about who her daughter was and what she was like. Sue now uses her experiences to work with individuals to help them go from a fixed negative mindset into a positive growth mindset. This episode also touches on questions around the student population and whether the education system does enough to support students and their mental health. Like in episode 12, Sue and Callsuma talk about generational trauma within minority ethnic groups and whether stigma can be a barrier for people which stops them doing the work to deal with this.

Overall, we would recommend listening to these two episodes of The Bereavement Room as it is always important to hear lived experience stories, and in particular those that are representative and from across all parts of society.