I Lost 14 People By Age 30. Here Is What Grief Actually Taught Me.
Many people view grief as a monster to be avoided, but it can actually be one of life’s most profound sources of wisdom. In this episode, Irene Weinberg welcomes grief coach and author Kat Farace to explore how Grief, The Teacher can guide us toward healing and rebirth. Kat shares her raw, personal journey of losing 14 loved ones by age 30 and her decades of professional hospice experience, offering a compassionate, practical framework for navigating loss. She introduces her new book and her platform, Balance in Grief, as essential resources for those seeking steady, grounded support. Together, they discuss the importance of honesty with children about death, the power of recognizing signs from our departed loved ones, and how shifting our perspective can transform sorrow into a doorway for deep personal growth.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL HEAR ABOUT THINGS LIKE:
- How Kat’s early experience of losing 14 loved ones by age 30 shaped her journey of avoiding—and eventually embracing—grief.
- Why viewing grief as a “teacher” rather than a “monster” can shift your perspective and lead to profound healing and rebirth.
- The “five prospects” of grief—Shock, Detachment, Anger, Perspective, and Connection—and how they offer a more realistic, non-linear alternative to traditional clinical stages.
- Heartwarming, real-world stories of receiving signs from departed loved ones, including the unique “Hibiscus” sign that validated Kat’s connection to her mother.
- Essential, practical advice for parents on how to be honest and open with children when someone in the family is dying or has passed away.
SOME QUESTIONS IRENE ASKS KAT:
- How did experiencing 14 deaths before the age of 30 initially shape your understanding of grief and the human spirit?
- You mentioned that you were dragged into hospice work “kicking and screaming”—what was that transition like for you, and how did it change your perspective?
- Can you share the story of working with a patient named Kathleen and her son, Nathan, and what that taught you about holding space for others?
- What are the “five prospects” of grief, and why do you find this framework more helpful than the traditional clinical stages?
- What is the one essential practice you recommend for anyone currently struggling to find their way back to joy?
📘 Get Your FREE ‘Grief the Teacher’ Companion Workbook!
Kat is gifting our listeners a free, fillable/printable PDF of her companion workbook, plus access to her monthly Balance in Grief Newsletter.
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Via Email: Shoot a quick message to offer@balanceingrief.com and we’ll slide the workbook straight into your inbox. Or visit https://www.balanceingrief.com/grief-and-rebirth/
Via Instagram: Head over to @balanceingrief, follow the page, and drop the comment “Irene promo” on any post!
📖 Grab Your Copy of ‘Grief the Teacher’ Today!
Ready to transform how you view loss, healing, and life? Grab Kat’s powerful new memoir, Grief the Teacher: The Teacher We Never Wanted with the Lessons Only Love and Loss Can Teach, and discover the profound insights that can help you find your steadiness again.
Order your copy now through your preferred bookseller:
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I Lost 14 People By Age 30. Here Is What Grief Actually Taught Me.
I hope this message finds each of you very well. I’m speaking to you from my studio in West Orange, New Jersey. I could truly not be more delighted to welcome Kat Farace, whose relationship with grief began at just eleven years old. By the time she turned 30, Kat had endured the loss of fourteen family members and close friends, including both parents and all her grandparents. These early experiences, combined with 25 years in hospice care, have given Kat a rare, compassionate understanding of grief as both a deeply personal journey and a universal human experience.
Over the course of her hospice career, Kat has walked beside thousands of individuals and families offering presence, honesty, and grounded support through the realities of death and loss. She’s an author, speaker, and grief coach, whose work centers on holding space, honoring loss, and helping the bereaved find meaning and connection in the midst of sorrow. Through her platform, Balance in Grief, Kat offers free grief tip sheets, resources, and a supportive newsletter for those navigating life after loss. She is soon launching her YouTube channel, Big Grief Questions, where she’ll answer real questions about grief and healing.
Kat is the author of Grief the Teacher and its companion workbook, as well as the BEST Results Grief Work curriculum. Its accompanying reflective workbook. Her newest book, Grief the Teacher: The Teacher We Never Wanted With the Lessons Only Love and Loss Can Teach, is a powerful memoir, weaving together her personal story with the stories of patients and families she has saved. I should just say she has served, but I’m sure a few of them you’ve also saved.
Each chapter offers a lesson from Grief the Teacher, a moment that shifted Kat’s perspective and opened a doorway to transformation, offered as hope for anyone walking their own path through loss. With both lived experience and decades of professional expertise, Kat brings a grounded, practical, and deeply human approach to grief work. She believes that while grief is hard work, it is possible to find balance again, to create a new normal, and to meet each day with a little more steadiness and compassion.
In this episode, Kat joins me to share her wisdom, her story, and her belief that healing is not only possible. It is possible for you. I’m looking forward to speaking with Kat, joining us from Apple Valley, California, as we explore what to say to children when someone in the family is dying or has died, how to recognize the difference between grief and avoidance, and the hidden compounded losses that arise when we cling to narrow definitions of what grief should look like.
We’ll also dive into her remarkable experience involving the well-known medium, John Edward, the moment she first sensed a continued connection with her loved ones after their passing, and so much more. Kat’s journey reminds us that while grief is undeniably painful, it can also become one of life’s most profound teachers. Our hardest losses often become the very soil where deep revelations take root, offering insights that reshape how we choose to love, live, and show up in the world every day.
Kat, a warm welcome to the show.
Thank you.
I’m excited to have you here.
I’m so excited to be here.
There are some people who come on, and I get to know them, and I like them. There are other people who come on, and the minute they come on “I wish you didn’t live in California.” We could be friends. There you go. Each other’s supporters.
That’s right. We’ll just be miles apart, friends.
Your story is amazing. I’m excited, and you have so much to teach people. I’m very excited for you to open a lot of eyes and open a lot of hearts with your story. Does everybody lose fourteen loved ones by the time they turn 30? Including parents and grandparents. Could you explain to us how those early experiences shaped your understanding of grief and the human spirit?
Navigating Early Loss and the Cycle of Avoidance
I have to say, the early experiences of it, which have drawn me to do the work I do, are that I didn’t learn from them. I was in avoidance mode. Nobody talked to me about it. I remember my aunt, who was my favorite aunt. You have that favorite aunt. She was Auntie Jo. We’d go to her house, and she’d put up the paints and the palettes and let me paint away. She had a big swing in her yard, and I loved to swing on her swing. We weren’t going to Auntie Jo’s anymore, and I didn’t understand why, but I was eleven.
Mom had told me, “She’s just sick. When she feels better, then we can go back over.” Apparently, she never got better. It was Halloween when I didn’t have a costume. We didn’t even talk about it. I went into my mom’s room because I knew she was in there to say, “Are we going to do Halloween or trick-or-treating?” As an eleven-year-old thinks only about themselves. I opened the door, and she was sobbing on the side of her bed, so I just closed the door. A little while later, my dad came in. He said, “Sweetheart, I’m very sorry, but we’re not going to do trick-or-treating.” I said, “Okay,” and that was it. I didn’t know my auntie had died that day.
Nobody talked to you. There was no communication.
Nothing. In many ways, my parents just didn’t know what to say, so they didn’t say anything. I went to school the next day, and then casseroles started showing up and people from the church. I understood, “Maybe Auntie died. She must have died.” It was never explained to me, and never talked about. We just never went there again. it was my parents’ way. I don’t think they knew better. I don’t think they knew what to say. They were uncomfortable with the conversation. They were in their own grief. My mom, particularly, was very close to her sister. A year later, my grandmother died. I did get to go to that funeral.
Is this your mother’s mother or your father’s mother?
My mother’s mother. I got to go to her funeral. I don’t know if maybe because I was a year older and we already had one death in the family. They maybe thought that was okay, but just how cold it was. Everybody just saying how beautiful she looked because it was an open casket. I thought, “She looked blue or gray. That’s not my grandma.” They put lipstick on her, and she never wore lipstick. I just sat there quietly in the corner with a smile on my face, nice and quiet like a good girl does. Again, no real conversations about it. The next year, my mother was diagnosed with cancer that killed my auntie.
Did they die of the same cancer?
Yes. She went through radical mastectomies, and eventually it went to her lungs. She survived another five years. Meanwhile, all the radiation and chemotherapy went on, but there was no real discussion about it. I learned at a very young age that you avoid grief. You don’t talk about it. You shove it down. You don’t ask questions. When someone dies, they go to Jesus.
What does that mean?
I was very lost as a young adult. People continued to die, and I just avoided and did what I was supposed to do. I will get married and have children. I avoid and shove it down and don’t talk about it. Whatever you do, don’t talk about it. On Mother’s Day, people would be talking about their moms or their dads on Father’s Day. If I brought it up, everybody would get uncomfortable. I learned very quickly I can’t talk about my dead mother. She’s not only dead. She never existed.
She’s invisible now. Is this what drew you to hospice care later on in your life?
Finding Purpose in Hospice and Facing Unresolved Grief
I’m going to tell you straight. I was not drawn to hospice. I felt like I was dragged to hospice, kicking and screaming, because the way my life went, career was never a discussion. College wasn’t there. People were dying in my family. We weren’t talking about the future. That just didn’t happen. Eventually, we became very involved in the Pentecostal church. We didn’t go to church once a week. We went five times a week and were very much involved. I ended up in my adult years working for the church. What happened was that my job ended under terrible circumstances, and I needed a job because I was going to get a divorce. Grief was chasing me down every avenue, whether it was the loss of family and friends.
Now you have a job to grieve, also in addition to everything else.
Also, the divorce. The whole thing. I lost my home. I moved away from my church. All of them.
Those are all forms of grievance, aside from all the people you lost. How did you begin to work at hospice?
A friend of mine worked at hospice, and I was intrigued by that because I had never heard of hospice. When my parents died, hospice wasn’t even on the West Coast at that point. I thought, “I could have used hospice. That would have been nice.” He worked for it, and as a chaplain, he said, “I’m leaving my position. I would like to recommend it to you if you need a job.” I thought, okay. I wandered in.
With everything else in your life.
The guy hired me on the spot because he thought, “You have lost that many people? I’m going to trust this guy and trust that he has sent me the right person. I immediately jumped in.” I was old. I knew what hospice was, but just the emotion because I didn’t experience emotion, expression, and conversation. Now, I was the person who was supposed to help buffer that, to help teach how to get through that.
Instead, it sounds like they were teaching you.
I felt triggers in every house I went. They immediately put me not just as a chaplain, but in the bereavement role because I had a knack for it.
You do have a knack with your personality. It’s true. You called grief the honest teacher and avoidance the ruthless guide. Did that come as you were working with hospice or later on did you start taking those lessons about grief?
Grief is an honest teacher because as grief continued to pursue in my life, it kept bringing up things for me that I kept trying to shove down. When you shove down grief, when you do not talk about it, when you try to avoid it, when you try to shut the door on it, you’re going to get sick. I had chronic colitis. I could not eat unless I took medication. I ended up in a clearly not good marriage for a lot of years and put up with a lot of things I should not have.
I have made decisions that were made in avoidance to maneuver through my life without making decisions. When grief showed up, I started to recognize it. It was when I was sitting in the homes with people. I realized that all the platitudes and the crazy little statements that people gave me when I lost someone did not feel good to me.
I was trying to use them on my hospice families and could see it was useless. Grief showed me to say the things you needed to hear or do not say anything and be present. When I started opening that door with my grief families, I realized that because I was going through so many visits. We had to make 21 visits a week. That did not count if you were on call on weekends.
You’re also seeing different cultures and the way they handle grief, which must have been amazingly eye-opening for you.
Different cultures and different belief systems. It also was a very big eye-opener to my own beliefs. It broke those open because I could see that I was disenfranchised and uncomfortable with the response from the church to the hospice families. There were a few pastors. You would call them because they wanted to see their own pastor. I would call, and we would come see them. A few would, but most would not.
These families were on their deathbeds, wanting to see their church family, but the church was avoiding them. I get that. This is where my message comes out because grief is something we are choosing as a society to avoid. Not having honest conversations, to not talk about the feelings, and to be uncomfortable sitting in the emotion when everybody experiences it. All of humanity is going to experience grief in one form or another.
We’re going through it in many ways in our societies. My own fear and personal feeling is that unresolved grief is a significant part of what is wrong with the world because people are so upset, and they’re displacing all those unhealed wounds and emotion onto other people or countries onto other countries. It goes everywhere. You were avoiding it. Now, you’re letting it teach you.
Shifting Perspectives: Reframing Grief as a Teacher
How did this lead to your new book, Grief the Teacher: The Teacher We Never Wanted with the Lessons Only Love and Loss Can Teach? How do you get there? I know each chapter, which could be so helpful to our audience. How does each chapter offer a lesson that can open a doorway to transformation when someone is walking through loss? Tell us about Grief the Teacher. How did this lead to that? Also, what else would you like to tell us about your book?
I worked for a hospice for 25 years. I learned and became very successful in the bereavement arena. I became a mentor for the Western region of hospices, helping people with their bereavement programs in different hospices. However, I learned that instead of looking at grief as a separate, terrible thing we have to go through, like a grief monster none of us want to experience. It’s the teacher we do not want.
If we could change how we look at grief from being that monster to being a teacher that guides us to a shift in our lives. It would expand our view on what life is and how it should be lived. That’s what inspired Grief the Teacher. It’s to put that grief monster into a teacher role. Irene, I’m sure you probably agree that the lessons you have learned through your grief process could not have been taught to you in any other way to the expansion that you now have experienced.
It changed my whole life. Everything.
How you relate to someone else?
Grief the Teacher: The Teacher We Never Wanted with the Lessons Only Love and Loss Can Teach
It led to this show. It led to everything. It changed everything. It’s amazing. In your book, each chapter offers a lesson. Is there anything else you would like to add? It blends your personal story with the stories of patients and families you served, which must be very helpful to people.
I have stories.
I bet you do.
I was doing it for a long time, and I saw thousands of people. I could tell you stories. Some of the stories in the book will make you say, “Are you kidding me?” I am a storyteller. I have been writing for years. This is my first book I have published. However, using those stories, I could show how grief is teaching in those circumstances. I tell a lot of stories because all of us can relate to a different story from someone else.
One of the things I learned in grief, especially when I was doing the work, was that nobody knows how you feel because nobody knows how I felt. I had a patient named Kathleen, which is my formal name. She had a son who was twenty years old, which was the age I was when my mother died. His name was Nathan, just like my oldest son.
There are no accidents. I’m seeing a bit of a spiritual theme unfolding here.
Kathleen had breast cancer that had metastasized to her lungs, just like my mom’s. They called me to see if I could console the son because she was in her last hours. I went to the facility she was in, and I could plainly see all the similarities of, “I’m walking through my past,” and triggers. I immediately realized this was this son’s experience with his mom. I walked in, and he didn’t want anything to do with me. I said, “I’m just here to offer support if you would like some support. If there’s any way I can be of help, please let me know. Would you like to talk?” He said, “No.”
I said, “I respect that. I understand that. I’m just going to go sit in the lobby for a while. If you feel like you just need to get some air, you want me to come sit with your mom, or you want to come out and sit with me, or if there’s anything I can get you, I’m here for you.” I went and sat in the lobby, and about an hour and a half later, he came out, and we started talking. He just poured his guts out. His feelings were so much like what I experienced when I was saying goodbye to my mom at twenty years old.
I told him, “I can’t imagine how you must feel because this is your experience. I lost my mom too, but nobody could tell me how wonderful she was and how awful this is.” He respected that, and I kept in touch with him after his mom died, and he did very well move on, but I never told him the similarities. I never told him that we had walked the same paths, given the very fact that grief is unique to you. What you learn from grief is for you.
What you learn from grief is for you. There is a shift in your spirit, in your heart, with your experience, with your loved one that is specific for you and your growth. Share on X
There is a shift in your spirit, in your heart, with your experience, with your loved one that is specific for you and your growth. That is my hope with the book. It’s to help people see that there is a shift that takes place that will expand their life into rebirth, as you say. It will give you some enlightenment, not only for your own life and how to live it, but also the relationships you continue to have here on Earth. When my mother passed away, my dad passed away, and I’m raising kids. I didn’t have anybody to go to and say, “These kids,” but I did go within my own heart and mind and said, “What would my mom do?” I feel like I brought her into raising my children because I had that connection with her.
You immediately had the sense that she was with you?
From the time she passed. I was shocked that she passed because nobody discussed it with me. I know she was in the hospital, and she was bad. She’d been in the hospital before and was bad. I just thought, “This is a bad spell. She’ll get over it. We’ll move on.” I didn’t see it. When it happened, it was such a big shock to me, even though she had been suffering from terminal illness for years.
That was probably hardly talked about in your family also. That’s unreal.
They didn’t have words. I don’t want to point out that they just didn’t want to talk to us. I feel like they didn’t have the words.
Beyond Clinical Stages: Introducing the Five Prospects of Grief
There’s a way that they learned certain things, but they didn’t learn with an emotion like you. They didn’t learn how to express it. We’re now changing this through shows like this and through people like you. I know that in your chapter, Grief’s Hidden Curriculum, you introduced the five prospects. How are they different from the traditional five stages of grief? Why do you call them prospects?
The traditional five stages of grief work well for the terminally ill patient who is in the dying process and the grief that they are experiencing as they are passing away. For the stages to work for the bereaved, grief is more messy than stages. It’s up, down, in, or out. You can’t put a clinical stage on it. The one stage of bargaining, but there’s no bargaining now. There is when the patient is alive, but not when they’ve passed, so it doesn’t even fit.
I came up with prospects because I didn’t want to make them clinical or call them stages. Prospects as a noun. It means it refers to the likelihood of something occurring. This may happen. That’s why I called it prospects. Also, if prospects were a verb, it means to explore. If you’re prospecting, you’re exploring. Grief is an exploration as well. The five prospects I came up with are, first, shocking. Most people go through some form of shock. Even at that, I know a lot of my bereaved families were alarmed by the shock. They’re like, “They’re in shock. That’s terrible. How do we get them out of shock?” They just needed to learn that shock is a protection for you. Shock is a very good thing.
Shock is a protection for you. It protects your nervous system to be able to absorb the information in a timely manner and to walk through the hours and days ahead. Share on X
It helps you to survive. It helps you to function in that moment when everything is upside down.
It protects your nervous system to be able to absorb the information in a timely manner and to walk through the hours and days ahead of all the things that you have to do that you never wanted to do. The next prospect is detachment. You feel detached from yourself, from the world, from what was normal. Nothing feels normal anymore. Do you remember walking into a grocery store and feeling like you’re just standing there and the world is just spinning around you?
I had that exact experience. I am so relating to it as you’re talking about it.
Very common. You’re detached.
You’re more like a witness of what’s going on, but you’re not a part of it.
Exactly. Well said. I do think that’s a good thing as well, because that’s where the shift starts to begin to rethink the way we look at life. The way we participate in life, the way we think about death, and the way we think about the death of our loved one. We detach from our old beliefs. We start to reexamine those things and ask if they hold up. Detachment is a big part of it. It is a possibility of what people will go through. The next one is anger.
We all go through a sense of anger. Anger is a healthy thing for you. You should get angry. That anger is what propels you into change. It tells you things have to change. The way I look at things. The way I do things and the way I relate to other people. I’m not saying to get angry and beat people up, but to recognize that anger is a part of grief. I never felt angry at my parents or anything like that, but I did get angry at the God I understood at that time.
Anger is what propels you into change. It tells you things have to change: the way you look at things, the way you do things, the way you relate to other people. Share on X
That anger often involves yelling, “How could you let this happen to me? You betrayed me,” or all of that.
I know in my belief system, I felt so separated based on the teachings I had. That when someone dies, they go up to be with Jesus in heaven, and you’ll see them again when you die. Over and out. Peace out, people. That wasn’t my experience. My experience was when my mom passed away, I readily felt her presence. When my dad passed, when my friends passed, I felt their presence with me.
That’s a blessing. A lot of people aren’t aware of that, or they close it down. It’s coming at them, but they push it away.
That’s the thing. I closed it. They push it away. I believe it’s always there for every person, but because of your belief systems, you may be shutting it down. For me, I was taught to think of a spirit, but any other way their spirits would be present with me or speak to me was considered voodoo or woo-woo or something bad. That just wasn’t my experience. I could feel my mom’s promptings. I could feel her love for me.
That’s such a blessing.
I still feel her love for me every time. I’ve had people, when I worked with them in hospice, a week or two after their loved one passed, they would say to me, “Is it bad that I talk to them? Is it weird? Is it weird that I’m talking to them?” I said, “It would be weird if you didn’t. You need to talk to your loved ones. They’re there listening.”
You need to talk to your loved ones. It would be weird if you didn't. They're there listening, and they hear you if you're willing to open your heart to receive something. Share on X
They hear you and they are around.
They will respond if you’re willing to open your heart to receive something.
We’re going to talk about that in a little while also because you opened up the mediumship, which I did too, which is a huge help. After anger, what’s the next prospect?
Perspective. In grief, you get a perspective that you don’t get in any other way. Trauma gives perspective. Grief gives perspective. It’s the dichotomy of life. You have to know off to know on, and you have to know down to know up. Your perspective begins to grow in grief, where you’re getting a grander perspective of what this life is about and your place in it, if you’re willing.
You gain a more universal perspective. You start to realize you’re not the only person on this planet grieving. What does that look like? It opens you up. Is there one other, or is that the end?
There is and that’s connection. The connection that we get with our loved ones who have passed on. I wanted to put that forth because I want people to look for it. I want people to know that it exists. I want people to know that they can find healing through that connection for themselves and in their continued relationships.
Not only on the other side, as they’re starting to do that. I want your opinion on this, please. A lot of relationships for me changed after my husband passed because I changed. Some of these relationships did not fit who I was becoming. It’s not something to be upset about. It’s just something to recognize. It’s normal. Did you find that happened to you also?
Yes. If we could marry the word shift with grief, it would be a good parallel because grief shifts you into understanding a world in a new perspective with new connections. Those things will drop others who are not on that shift with you. I wouldn’t say it’s a negative thing. For me, it usually happened very naturally.
Grief shifts you into understanding a world in a new perspective with new connections. Share on X
Initially, in my first many years, I learned not to talk about my connection with my loved ones because everybody thought that was weird. I didn’t, and I wish I would have now. My life maybe would have taken a different trajectory, or maybe not. Maybe it went exactly as it should to get me where I need to be.
You’re exactly where you’re meant to be.
I know. I just wish I got here faster.
That makes two of us. Is that perspective one of the three truths you teach about grief?
Yes. We dive into perspective in the sense that what goes along with perspective is a willingness to perceive life in a different way. I had to look at my own faith beliefs, my own limiting beliefs about life and death. I put all of them to challenge. Do I believe in this? Do I believe in that? I would go on a search and go on a hunt. I remember when I broke down fully. I sat in my car in the parking lot of my hospice office. I told Spirit, “If you’re there, then you’d better show me because all this other stuff I have lined up here that I have been believing is not cutting it.”
How did Spirit respond?
It took time. I had to continue. It didn’t come quickly for me. It came with a pursuit and a willingness. That’s a key thing. That connection is willingness. Are you willing to open up your thoughts, your heart, and your mind to accept whatever Spirit is wanting to bring to you? What your loved ones are wanting to bring to you? What your guides are wanting to bring to you? If you are, you will be so surprised.
Honest Conversations: Guiding Children Through Loss
Pleased and transformed. This is a big question for me. You were so young when you experienced your first loss. What do you believe we should say to children when someone in the family is dying or has died? If it could be done again, and you could coach the people in your family, what should they have said to you?
The truth is the bottom line.
Do you tell a child mommy or daddy has gone, too?
Everyone has their own faith system. I know that I’ve worked with thousands of people where children were a part of that experience. I always tell people to honor their own faith experience. They need to do that. If they’re comfortable in saying they went to heaven, they went to be with Jesus, or maybe they’ve just passed away. Whatever your belief system is, tell them the truth from your point of view. Let them ask questions, like, “What does that mean?” The main truth is saying that the physical body has stopped working. It has died.
You’ve stopped breathing, the heart has stopped, and the physical body has stopped. Who was your mom or dad? That love, that personality, that consciousness is still very present. I liken it to when I worked with children whose parents had passed away. I would say, “Tell me, do you feel like your mom still loves you?” They go, “Yes.” I go, “Do you still love them?” They go, “Yesh.” That’s it. There’s your connection. They will always love you. You will always love them.
You will always feel that love. They will never depart from it. At any time, you want to feel their presence, you just sit quietly and remember how much you love them, and they will meet you there. They will be right there in any way. If you want to talk to them, talk to them. Honestly, kids are way better at grief than we are. They are very open, very intuitive. They’re willing to explore and understand. Sometimes, I would find kids had a connection with a loved one who passed away, and the parent was saying, “No, stop talking like that. That’s weird or that can’t be happening,” or they would be concerned.
Can you imagine how hurtful that is for a child who feels their mom or dad is still there, and someone is telling them, “Your perception is not true?”
For me, that was a key thing. I didn’t get those true conversations. I didn’t get to ask the questions. I was left alone in wondering and just perceiving what the adults were doing, which they were avoiding. I thought, “I guess that’s what I do.” Bring your kids in. I think about how wonderful it would have been if my mom, when I first walked in after her sister died, had embraced me at that moment. She could have explained like, “She died, and I miss her. It hurts my heart. I know you’re going to miss her, too.” We would have embraced each other and shared an intimate moment of love that we did not get to have.
She’s still going to be here with both of us, and all of that, even though we miss her physically.
Grief will open up that opportunity for intimacy with your children if you will be honest with them.
Seeking Signs: Mediumship and Continued Connection
Now, you opened up to mediumship. Was the first person you spoke to John Edward, who channeled?
No. Honestly, I didn’t even speak to John Edward. I haven’t even been to a medium.
You haven’t? That’s amazing to me. That’s overdue.
I know, but I’ll tell you why. Initially, before I recognized all the connections. I was taught that it was wrong, so I didn’t do it. I was always intrigued. When the internet started blowing up and you could see these stories of people and watch the mediums work with them and the connections that they have. I was so hungry and I ate it all up. My connection with John Edward was, I was watching a video of John Edward.
By the way, for those who are reading, John Edward is a very well-known Medium. My own personal story is he’s the first person who channeled my husband. When the accident happened and Saul transitioned. Go ahead, tell us about the story with John Edward.
John was being interviewed, and he was telling a story to the interviewer, and I don’t remember who it was. He was telling a story about his own skepticism about being a Medium, and how he struggled with even believing that these connections were true. His mother had passed away, and he was extremely close to her. He asked for a very specific sign from her, and it had to do with doves. He told the whole story about how his mother connected with him in a very profound way, utilizing doves. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that was his mother.
He talks about that personal connection. After I watched that video, I thought, “This is cool. I’m going to try it.” I said, “Mom, I want you to send me a connection.” This wasn’t even that long ago, but I had never done that. I said, “Hibiscus, Mom.” I live in the high desert. There’s no hibiscus in the high desert. It’s a tropical plant. It doesn’t grow well here. I can attest to that because I’m trying to grow one in my yard.
I said, “Send me a hibiscus.” I don’t care how it comes. It can be a flash up on a TV. It could be somebody says the word to me. It could be somebody bringing me hibiscus. It could be anything hibiscus. Nobody talks about hibiscus when they discuss flowers. They don’t say, “I got a bouquet of hibiscus.” It’s a bouquet of roses or similar. I thought, “This is a good one. This is good. It’s rather unique.” I thought, “You’re being silly.” I forgot about it.
Three weeks later, my grandkids were visiting me and my sweet little Skylar just turned ten years old at the time. She plays a guessing game with me. She says, “Grandma, guess what my favorite flower is?” Not even thinking about the hibiscus, I said, “Roses. Daisies. Sunflowers. Tulips.” I was just naming them.
She would say, “No,” and giggles. She pounces out with “Hibiscus.” I sat back and said, “What did you say?” I said, “Hibiscus?” She said, “Yes, look, I have these pictures. There’s a shirt with a hibiscus on it, earrings with hibiscus, and a necklace. I want these things.” My mom died before my own kids were born, let alone my grandchildren. They know nothing of her. They knew nothing about my mother’s favorite flower. To have that come back to me was like, “Mom, you got me.”
Did something also happen with your stepson and his wife?
My stepson Ryan and his wife Ashley were out visiting, and they came the next day. I was telling them my hibiscus story with Skylar and how cute that was. They kept looking at each other. Ryan held up his phone. It was a picture of a hibiscus bush, and he said, “I just sent this to Ashley to ask her if she wanted this because my boss is digging them up and giving them away or something like that.” I didn’t pay attention to the story as much as the fact that he was holding a hibiscus in his hand. We all just sat there.
It’s there. She’s here, and she heard me. How has grief expanded your understanding of the soul from where you were coming?
The Evolution of the Soul and Healing Family Wounds
In every way possible. It has expanded my understanding of the soul in every way possible. Grief makes a shift that, as I said, challenges you to examine what you believe. What did I believe about life? What did I believe about death? What did I believe about the soul, and where it goes and how it communicates, or does it communicate?
It is in that deep sorrow, in that pain, where you’re longing so much to hear from your loved one, to know that they’re okay, to feel a sense of their presence. That’s grief giving you an open door to say the soul is here. The soul continues. The soul is connected to you. You will never be separated from the soul. We are all part of the same consciousness.
We are all part of the grander scheme, the grander spirit, the God, whatever you want to name it. We are all a part of each other here, but we feel a separation in our humanity. We feel a separation in our bodies. It’s when a body leaves, and if we’re willing to change but not so much change, but to truly open our hearts and minds to learn more. We will be pleasantly surprised and find the expansion we need.
Tremendous. It’s so comforting to know that it’s not over when it’s over. That this person that you’ve lost, you’re going to see them again. They’re around in your life. It changes everything for you. When people are very skeptical, I say they’ll find out when they cross over. I’m not going to argue with them. I’d love to know your story about your father with his response to your mother’s death and how that affected your relationship with him and your children.
My Sweet Daddy-O, as I call him. He was such a funny guy, very goofy. Another part of my story is I was adopted by my mom and dad. They wanted children so badly, and I felt very unconditionally loved by these people. They were my heart and soul, my mom and dad. They protected me and gave me such a wonderful childhood.
My dad was goofy and fun, always joking around. I remember him playing music on the stereo. He’d stand over it like he was conducting. He was just a goofy guy, and he adored my mother. I witnessed an unbelievable marriage between the two of them. They were inseparable and loving. They cherished each other and adored each other.
When my mom passed away, I always say I lost my dad, too. He died that day, too. He was never the same. I didn’t see the jovial guy. I didn’t see the fun, and he was brokenhearted. It’s hard for me now, with all my so-called wisdom about life, death, and grief. I could have helped him then, but I was young. I didn’t know, and we did what we knew, which was to avoid. It was difficult to see he was heartbroken.
He was heartbroken and filled with this emotion, but he didn’t have anyone or any process or anything to help him process it. Even when I started having children, he loved my kids. He would come over and see and play with the kids, but he would have to leave because he would start crying. He would say, “Your mom is missing all of this.” Every avenue in his life, every step he took brought him back to what he was missing. I honestly feel that if the teachings he received were that, “She is still right here. She is still loving you. She wants you to hug those kids for her. She wants you to play.”
He tried, but it was just so hard. I feel I lost the dad I knew. My kids never got to know the dad I knew. Grief was now expanded in that way in the sorrow. I have witnessed so many families that do the same thing. They are so caught up in our definition of what grief is, the monster, the deep sorrow. You’re going to be miserable. You’ll never get over grief. These statements that perpetuate on social media and everywhere else are just so false. They’re destroying people who are grieving and the continued relationships they have with others.
Completely. It’s heartbreaking because it’d be so much different. I would love to know, because you have a platform called Balance in Grief that you are blossoming like a hibiscus to do all these additional things in your life. Tell us about Balance in Grief. You also have a special offering for the show audience.
Balancing Grief: Practical Tools and Resources for Healing
I sure do. Balance in Grief, I started in 2025. I’m new to all of this and learning by myself.
That makes two of us.
I feel that the name Balance in Grief comes from the fact that we understand grief is a great catastrophe. It’s very difficult. I’m not trying to minimize the pain in any way of what people are experiencing but the balance is that there’s more to that story. There is hope, healing, joy, connection, perspective, and a shift in your life. That’s why I have a platform called Balance in Grief. Come see me there.
You can get some free resources and tip sheets on different topics, whether they be holidays or loneliness. I also offer my curriculum, called BEST Results Grief Work Curriculum. BEST is an acronym where B stands for brain, because I talk about how the brain works, how we receive and give information, and how we get stuck in ruminating thoughts and emotions because of those things.
E is for examination. To examine your own beliefs, your limiting beliefs, what you thought about life, and what you can think about life now. S is for self-care, which is very important. This is the time for self-care. You can call it being selfish. That’s good. Be selfish with yourself and take care of yourself. T is for technique. This is why I was drawn to grief coaching, because it’s about the day-to-day. How do I get through this minute? How do I get through this moment? How do I go back to work? How do I go back to socializing? How do I clean out the closet? All of those things are just the practical steps.
How do I resume my old life when there’s a new thing going on here and it’s so different? You have a leg in both worlds. It’s helpful to get help. I know we’ll provide a link because you have a companion workbook for your Grief the Teacher. You’re going to offer that to our audience, right?
For everybody reading, if you would like. It’s a digital companion workbook for Grief the Teacher. It comes in a fillable form, or you can print it, whatever is more comfortable for you. It’s offered for you. You can get it at Promo@BalanceInGrief.com.
It sounds like a helpful vehicle for people. Would you like to tell people how willing to engage with grief, which is a universal experience. How can that profoundly shape your healing journey?
It’s that key step of being willing. It’s being willing to look at everything you ever thought about life and how your life is going. I know for some people, they say, “I just want to get back to normal.” Sometimes I ask them, “How good was normal?”
Normal’s changing.
Was it all that good? We’ve got a list of things that we have to get done. This grief shifts where it makes you look at all the things that you’re doing. Are you spending your days doing mindless things that are not serving you? Are you taking for granted the time that you have with your loved ones that are still in your life? Grief is showing you all the little aspects of your life that it wants to shift into a more expanded, healed, joyful experience than what you have previously had. Grief can be a teacher for you instead of that dark cloud that’s following you everywhere, if you are willing.
To work on it. If you’re willing, it’s like opening yourself up when you’re dropping a lot of the pain and you’re changing your perceptions about things.
It’s scary. You’ve climbed to those things.
It’s very scary, but it’s also incredibly freeing and empowering. Is there one essential practice you recommend for finding joy again?
Trust. Trust yourself. Once you’re willing to look at different things, you need to begin to trust yourself again. Trust your ability. Believe the wisdom that’s coming through your heart and your mind. Believe the connection that you’re getting from your loved ones. Trust it. That’s where some people also get hung up. I could tell my hibiscus story, and some people might respond, “Great, whatever.” It’s entrusting that my mom was connecting with me that filled me with joy. It filled me with healing because I was not only willing, but I also trusted it. I trusted.
Once you're willing to look at different things, you need to begin to trust yourself again. Believe the wisdom that's coming through your heart and your mind. Share on X
Look at what’s going on, and how you’re helping people with this. It is truly wonderful. Kat, as we close, I want to read this insights-filled quote from your wonderful book, Grief the Teacher: The Teacher We Never Wanted with the Lessons Only Love and Loss Can Teach. “Grief taught me that death is physical, not final. It expands perspective. It invites wiser choices. Resilience is not getting over loss. It is expressing my feelings fully in each moment. It is expressing my feelings in each moment the grief visits. Grief the Teacher shows us how life is meant to be lived moment by moment with awareness, compassion, and courage. Without fear of death, for life is a continuum, just transformed to new realms.”
“While grief is devastating, it is also profound. It can initiate changes that lead to unexpected wisdom, peace, and even joy. I now feel a deep responsibility to share this understanding with others facing profound loss to help them see that even in the midst of devastating grief, there is still a path towards peace, connection, and healing.” That is just one passage from your wonderful book, which can be such a comfort to people. I just want to thank you for teaching us that while no one chooses grief as their teacher, the lessons it offers can transform how we live every day. I want to thank you, Kat, from my heart for this wise and powerful interview. I truly wish you abundant blessings always.
Thank you so much, Irene. I appreciate you so much and your audience. I send my love to all of you that are experiencing such loss. I hope for your healing and joy.
We’ve just brought you a beautiful resource named Kat. To be continued, as I like to say.
Guest’s Links:
- Kat Farace on Instagram
- Balance in Grief
- Balance in Grief on Instagram
- Balance in Grief on Facebook
- Balance in Grief on Substack
- Bookshop.org
- Grief the Teacher – Bookshop.org
- John Edward
- Get Your FREE ‘Grief the Teacher’ Companion Workbook
About Kat Farace
At 11 years old, Kat Farace (pronounced: Fa-raw-chee) began facing a series of losses that would shape the rest of her life. Fourteen family members, including both parents, grandparents, and 2 close friends, died before she was 30 years old. These experiences, combined with 25 years of hospice care, have given Kat a rare perspective on grief, as a deeply personal journey. and a universal human experience. She has walked alongside thousands of individuals, helping them navigate the profound realities of death and loss with compassion, honesty, and presence.
Kat is an author, speaker, and grief coach whose work centers on holding space for grief, honoring loss, and helping the bereaved find meaningful perspective and connection in the midst of sorrow.
