When Grief Remakes You

This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.

Hi, I'm Dr. Lisa Damour, psychologist, mom, author of several books including Untangled, and co-host of the Ask Lisa podcast. Each week, I sit down with journalist Reena Ninan, and we talk through the real questions that parents are facing as they're raising tweens and teens. We break down the science, share practical strategies, and try to make this whole raising an adolescent thing feel a little less overwhelming. Search for Ask Lisa: The Psychology of Raising Tweens and Teens wherever you get your podcasts. [gentle music]

Pushkin. [singing]

There was a lot of time where I was like, "I feel like I'm hanging onto a flagpole, and the flagpole is my old life." And I'm saying, "This isn't my life. This current life I'm living in is wrong. This is not how it should be. Theo's supposed to be alive."

In 2023, Ali Kramer received a phone call that changed her life. On the other end of the line, a doctor told her that her three-year-old son, Theo, had terminal brain cancer. In the months and years that followed Theo's diagnosis, Ali kept a steel grip on her old life until she had a realization.

That life doesn't exist anymore, and you're in pain holding on to a flagpole in the wind. You have to let go and let the wind carry you into your new life. [singing]

On today's episode, when grief dissolves one identity and creates another. I'm Maya Shankar, a scientist who studies human behavior, and this is A Slight Change of Plans, a show about who we are and who we become in the face of a big change. [singing] I met Ali backstage at a live event a few months ago. It was a chaotic scene, but the minute Ali and I started talking, I was fully locked in. Ali is one of those people with whom you find yourself immediately at ease. She is joyful and present and as curious about you as she is open about the most painful thing that's happened to her, the loss of her son, Theo. Within moments of hearing her story, I knew you had to hear it, too. When Ali and I sat down for this conversation, it had been two and a half years since Theo died. We started off by talking about how he lived.

Oh, God, Theo was, um... He was so vivacious. He was really magnetic. He was like sunshine. He had this curly, dirty blonde hair and these huge brown eyes, and he was just always on the move. He was always moving. He was always talking. He was really loud. He was a very tiny kid, but he was really big. Like, his personality was really big. His energy was big. There's that, like, extremely cliche saying that, "Dance like no one's watching. Sing as if no one can hear you."

Yes.

And that was how he lived. [laughs] I remember, um, right before his third birthday, he was dancing so crazily on the lawn at the Americana in Glendale. Huge public space.

[laughs]

So many people there, and it was as if he was totally unaware that there was anyone else there, and he was laughing and giggling, and I remember thinking, "I've never seen a person so free."

Mm.

There was no self-consciousness, and that is really inspiring. Everywhere we went, people noticed him in a way that was kind of crazy.

Like, he drew strangers to him. People were like, "Whoa, there's a light in