Great Grief with Nnenna Freelon

For many people, holidays are a time of celebration marked by family, faith, and food. This time of year can also be a period of remembrance. Yes, grief has a seat at the table. But grieving in the holiday season doesn’t have to be a solo or solemn affair. In this special, Nnenna invites you into her home for live music and an uplifting conversation with some of her closest friends that explores loss, love, and how to move forward with grief during the holidays.

Nnenna’s gotten well-acquainted with grief in the past three years… so much so that it often feels like she’s in conversation with her. When Nnenna talks to Grief, Grief talks back. In this episode, we hear from the voice of Grief herself… and she’s got a lot on her mind.

Grief is held in the body – including in our hair. For Black women, hair holds a lot: identity, memory, sexual allure and yes… grief. In this episode, Nnenna reflects on growing up in a beauty salon that her mother and her sister co-owned and tells a story about the complex relationship between loss and hair.

Six months after losing her husband Phil in 2019, Nnenna also lost her only sister, Debbie. It’s taken her a long time to process what that second, equally devastating loss has meant to her. In this episode, she tells the story of her sister’s life with breathtaking tenderness and love and explores what it means to be a sister.

Fall is a season of transformation and loss. Leaves fall, preparing for the long winter and the rebirth awaiting us all on the other side. In this episode, Nnenna contemplates falling as she returns to a once-familiar place for her and her late husband Phil: the Duke Cross-Country Course.