In this episode, I sit down with Carla Fernandez to talk about something most of us carry but rarely feel safe enough to name: grief. But not just the grief of losing someone you love—though that’s here too. We’re talking Renegade Grief—Carla’s fiercely compassionate framework for the untidy, lifelong grief that shows up when we lose a relationship, a role, a dream, a version of ourselves. The kind of grief that cyclebreakers know all too well.
Carla shares her story and the origin of The Dinner Party, a community space for folks navigating all kinds of loss. Together, we explore how grief isn’t something to “get over,” but something we’re meant to move with. To honor. To metabolize in community, not isolation.
We name the grief of growing up without what you needed. The grief of parenting while healing. The grief of estrangement, identity shifts, ancestral rupture. The grief that lives in the body—and the grief that, when tended to with care and ritual, can open the door to deeper presence, purpose, and love.
Some takeaways from our conversation:
Grief is not a problem to solve, but a process to be witnessed.
Community is essential—grief is too big to hold alone.
Cultural grief practices have been lost, but they can be reclaimed.
Rituals create space for the body to process what words can’t.
Grief isn’t just about death—it’s about all the ways we love, lose, and evolve.
Naming grief is a form of resistance in a culture that wants us to stay numb.
When we meet our grief, we meet our capacity for connection and resilience.
If you’re in a season of shedding, of awakening, of outgrowing… this conversation is medicine. You are not broken—you’re breaking open. I loved loved this conversation and I know you will too!
You can purchase her book on her website: https://www.carlafernandez.co/renegade-grief
AND the Dinner Party website is a wealth of resources for anyone that is grieving, she has created a curated list of books for each unique season and reason for grief: https://bookshop.org/shop/thedinnerpartyreads
