Women In Black
“Women in Black” is an audio + video podcast hosted by two Black women who are showing up without performance, polish, or pretense. We speak from the deep well of Black womanhood to build a space where all women feel seen, heard, and held. Rooted in faith, laughter, and truth-telling, this podcast holds space for both softness and strength and reflects the beauty in being both whole and human.
“Women in Black” is where we put down the cape and pick up the mic being authentically who we are, where we are. Unmasked. Unfiltered. Unapologetic.
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Women In Black
What Grief Really Looks Like — It’s Not Always Tears
In this week’s episode, we dive deep into one of the most human topics — grief.
From delayed emotions and awkward family moments to how we’re expected to look when we’re hurting, this episode unpacks it all with laughter, transparency, and truth.
✨ Follow us on IG: @WeAre.WomenInBlack | @DezDoesItAll | @SaySomethin_Josh
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#WomenInBlack #SoftHustleLife #GriefTalk #BlackWomenPodcasters #HealingInRealTime #SelfCareConversations #FaithAndHealing #GriefJourney #MentalHealthAwareness #BlackExcellence #PodcastForWomen
God, God is my witness. When my dad passed away, he took my emotions with him. Like, God was like, we're gonna just take this. My dad was like, God, take that up out of her. Cause it just left. He was like, God, take that from my daughter, because I don't need her over here sad and stuff. You was just numb, maybe. I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:I don't chuckle me or anything. Like they just be like, oh, she got she got this, she got this. And it's like, maybe I don't. But you ain't asking. Yeah, like maybe I don't got it right now. Like maybe, maybe I am grieving. Maybe I am hurt. Maybe I don't. I can't see the way out or I can't process right now. But they so used to you being strong in so many different areas that they just Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:We ain't gotta worry about her.
SPEAKER_00:You ain't gotta worry about her.
SPEAKER_04:Josh is good.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, she'll always figure it out.
SPEAKER_04:Three months later when Josh pushed you behind that. Yeah, I'm crazy. Y'all should have checked on me in December. Right, right. Like, you know what I mean? But it didn't hit me, so everybody's like, oh, Josh is good. Like, we know she had a family member pass away, but she did. Months later, I have an employee at work pass away. That's young. I cried for this lady as if I knew her. They couldn't mention her name because I was crying every time they mentioned this girl's name. And it was just like my grief is delayed a little bit.
SPEAKER_01:Woman in Black is where we put down the cape and pick up the mic, being authentically who we are, where we are, unmasked, unfiltered, and unapologetic.
SPEAKER_02:So, how are you? I'm good. Um yeah, I'm good. Just good. I'm just good. I think um I was just drained this week. It's not, it wasn't the whole week. What happened was it was yesterday, and that's all I'm gonna say. Okay, and so I think my body just like, did I take my vitamins?
SPEAKER_04:Did you? Is that it?
unknown:No.
SPEAKER_04:I was about to say, girl, you walking around with your vitamins in your pocket.
SPEAKER_02:I do that though. Do you I have a little container?
SPEAKER_04:Oh, so you just that in the house?
SPEAKER_02:I I um I count out my vitamins and I put them in these little things. Yeah. And so because I I have to take them while I'm eating, and sometimes I um I uh intermittent fast. Gotcha. Okay. Sometimes I forget to get my pocket. So it'll be the night. I'm like, oh shoot, I forgot to take the vitamins. So this it don't be surprised. I'm saying that because don't be surprised if I pull them out with my pocket. Yeah, because I just thought that's what you pulled out your pocket.
SPEAKER_04:I'm like, wait, you vitamin ready? I say I leave mine right in the uh the medicine cabinet. Like, I got a little section, it's not medicine, they're all vitamins in the kitchen because in the morning time that's where I'm gonna go to drink my water, get my tea, because I've been drinking tea now, y'all.
SPEAKER_02:Um I love tea, so I'm poor. I'm all so I get on this tea binge and then I stop and then I get back on, but now I'm doing it more consistently because coffee gives me the jitters like a cricket, and it gives me anxiety, and yeah, yeah, and depending on the type of coffee, because I could because I don't never drink all the coffee, but if I have a moment where I do drink it, I can see the difference. And that freaking one downtown, I don't know where they get their coffee coffee.
SPEAKER_04:If you got good coffee, my mom would probably be like, that's some good coffee because she's my mom stuff. I can't do it, I can't do it. That's why when I get stuff like that, be having this much coffee and this much sugar. That's why you be having a chair.
SPEAKER_02:That's a part of the coffee.
SPEAKER_04:That might be it.
SPEAKER_02:That is it. You can't be getting all that stuff in there.
SPEAKER_04:No, I didn't really mean that.
SPEAKER_02:If you're having this much oat milk, this this much sugar. Girl, it's just probably the caffeine and the sugar together. Like one or the other might balance it out a little bit. Yeah, so one and half.
SPEAKER_04:Just sugar, not coffee.
SPEAKER_02:I'm just saying, like a sugary drink versus a caffeinated drink.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, you're right. You're right. I'm like, okay, you just want me to drink sugar? No coffee? I could do that. I'm sure I can. That's loaded. But I don't really, I only like ginger ale really. My week been good. My kids, I got two kids working. Hey. Jace is going to Jace's been here before. So he might already had a job in his previous life. I don't know. That's like the uh seriously. They might have really been here before. The boy, I'm gonna share this with y'all. I told my son, I asked him. I said, we were having a conversation. I'm like, well, how are you gonna, you gonna be okay when I get married? And he was like, I don't think you're gonna get married again. Like, again? Like, because the last one didn't work. I never was married to your father, sir. I said, I was not married to your dad. He was like, dang, you didn't even make it past the engagement phase. Why he do that? I don't know, but who told you that? So now he's about to just run with it. I was like, I didn't. I'm not about to go back and forth with a 10-year-old. He said, dang. Like he put emphasis on dang, you ain't even make it past the engagement phase. Oh god who told you about that anyway.
SPEAKER_02:He is wild.
SPEAKER_04:It's always your kids. It's always your kids. You don't never know what they're gonna say.
SPEAKER_02:Nope. I got two of them like that. You do, and I just I one of them is growing out of it, thank God.
SPEAKER_04:Which one? Nia. I think I think she is, or if you think she just gonna say it in a different way, she might just she's gonna just say it differently.
SPEAKER_02:She yeah, she says it more maturely. Yeah that have you think think about it like that. She's still gonna say whatever. She might say it different. That might just have you like, well, yeah. Now, DJ, I don't know if he ever gonna grow out of it. Maybe he might he he gonna be a like he probably gonna be in his 20s by the time he grow out of it.
SPEAKER_04:If not, because he gonna just that boy is a fool, pure fool. Like she got him a costume. I could share this. Yeah, so we were talking about being twins for Halloween. We were gonna be vampire. Well, she went and got him a different costume.
SPEAKER_02:Allegedly, when she showed him the costume, he was happy. He was so happy, it was a Batman costume, and he was just watching Batman with his dad, and he was like, Ma, you gotta be my favorite character. You did that, Ma, you're the best mom ever. He's for.
SPEAKER_04:But then when I walked in the house, he if this is the costume, he was like, he looked at me and he said, and looked at her, like you see what she got me, girl. Why? And that just proves that these men start young. Yep, and I'm sorry, ladies. They start young. Like, protect your daughters, because I don't know what this is. The way they just played in her face and tried to make me feel like I don't really want this costume, but she's gonna get it for me. Yeah, but he was doing stuff different.
SPEAKER_03:Like, you the best vibe ever. You do, but they're gonna switch up on me with Josh came in the door and he like, you see this?
SPEAKER_04:I can't even believe she did the like.
SPEAKER_03:I was appalled. I was like, oh, it's okay. He be doing stuff like that.
SPEAKER_02:Yesterday, um, when my sister was here, I don't even remember what happened. He was acting up or something, and I told him to cut it out. He's like, okay, okay, I'm gonna cut it out. Okay, okay. And then he did something else. I said, DJ.
SPEAKER_03:And it's like, what, beautiful?
SPEAKER_02:What? You want your favorite candy thing? Come here, beautiful. Come here, get you your favorite candy. And then he gave me like a Hershey bar. I don't even really eat that. I said, it's not my favorite candy. He was like, he's like, Well, you eat chocolate all the time. I just eat it.
SPEAKER_03:I was like, excuse me. Sorry.
SPEAKER_04:Sorry, girls. I just think it's the future. Yeah, go upstairs. Cause that'll be bad at you again. Because why, DJ? Yeah, I can't help it, so never met a four-year-old like him.
SPEAKER_02:No, no, oh my god, he's a handful. Me either. That's what I'm dealing with. But are you ready for today's topic? I'm ready. You sure? I'm gonna be ready. I'm gonna get ready. All right, you sure you ready? I don't know, because now I don't know. Oh god, where my little thing, I don't got it. So what does grief look like?
SPEAKER_04:You always doing stuff wow. Why? Because it's right here on the You started. What does grief does grief have a look? Do you believe that grief has a look?
SPEAKER_02:Well, apparently, I think you can notice it on a lot of people, but then some people you don't.
SPEAKER_04:So does grief have a look?
SPEAKER_02:No.
SPEAKER_04:Well, but it does. But it does, right? Yeah. Um, I don't think grief has a look, right? Because stuff has happened to me over a lifetime, and it'll happen in the moment. And I I look normal. I'm acting normal. Like, I'm fine. I never break down in the moment. Months later, that's when I'll I'll be grieving and no one will know. And they're like, what's wrong with this girl? You know, I'm gonna give you an example. I had a little cousin um that passed away in a car accident. Uh I when I found out, I was just like, dang, passed away, like, dang, you know what I mean? Just had started a new job, couldn't go to the funeral, like, literally, because cousins were not on the grievance policy, so I couldn't go. You know what I mean? I was I wasn't fine, like dang, my little cousin passed away. Dang, like, you know what I mean? But it didn't hit me. So everybody, like, oh Josh good. Like, we know she had a family member pass away, but she good. Months later, I have an employee at work pass away that's young. I don't know what triggered it. We know what triggered it now. My I cried for this lady as if I knew her. Every time they mention, they couldn't mention her name because I was crying every time they mentioned this girl's name. And it was just like my grief is delayed a little bit.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, because it's stages, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Like it was delayed. So here, long and behold, I'm not crying for sis. Like it's sad that the girl passed away, but I'm really crying because my cousin passed away and it's just hitting me because somebody else just passed away. Ain't that weird? I think that's so weird.
SPEAKER_02:You don't think that's weird? I I think that to maybe most people and how they process it, it might be weird to them. But I've definitely have close relatives who act like that. So I am used to their reaction now.
SPEAKER_04:So when I see stuff on social media, when people pass away and stuff, like if like let me think of somebody, like uh when celebrities pass away, right? And people be in the comments, like his wife up there smiling. What you like, what the what is she supposed to look like? Is she supposed to look sad for y'all? Like, why are we so judgmental on what grief is supposed to look like? Yeah, you do you want to see me? That's the problem. They want to see us down all the time. Y'all want to see me around here with snot coming down my nose and just depressed and all of that stuff? Like, why if this lady's husband passed away or this man's wife passed away? First of all, y'all don't know what they're going through behind closed doors.
SPEAKER_02:Second of all, why they gotta be on the internet like yeah, I think people are doing the most when it comes to how they judge people. I do feel like for the majority of individuals, sometimes you can no, it might just be me. I about to say you can see what they're carrying. You know, that might be a discernment thing, actually. But I think for the majority of individuals, you can see that they're going through something or carrying something. So you can see some of the grief. But I do feel like there's a subset of people who respond exactly how you respond, whether that is to um any type of loss, I should say. Because you can grieve, you can grieve old relationships, you can grieve jobs, you can grieve the old version of yourself, you can grieve so many different things. Um, and you have to go through that process. You know, sometimes it starts with denial. Yeah. Does it start with denial? I don't know. But denial is a part of that. Yeah, denial is that. Yeah, it's a part of the the grieving process, but it all comes back to losing something and then kind of accepting that life will no longer be what it was when that thing was there. When it was there, yeah. And some people grieve fast and they move past it. Right. Some people grieve for a very long time. And then some people have a delayed grief. And so I think that when you say it, when you express it the way you did, then grief doesn't look the same. It doesn't look the same for everyone. Right, right. You know, but you know, so Yeah, that's tough. Me and my siblings all grieved my dad very differently. One of them just had no emotion at all. I'm just like But then later years uh they started to grieve it. But I also think um the type of relationships you have with people might trigger grief different. So yeah, I think I'm pretty I'm pretty consistent in my grief when it comes to passing and death um and other things. But I think um where I can ad identify with you, I don't hold on to grief and pain or I'm not very expressive in the moments when it comes to certain type of loss. Right. Yeah. And people will think, Oh, she got like they will they don't they won't check on me or anything, like they just be like, Oh, she got she got this, she got this. And it's like maybe I don't put you in ask. So Yeah, like maybe I don't got it right now. Like maybe, maybe I am grieving, maybe I am hurt, maybe I don't, I can't see the way out or I can't process right now. But they so used to you being strong in so many different areas that they just like she'll be oh she'll be yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:We ain't gotta worry about her. You ain't gotta worry about her. Josh is good, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:She'll always figure it out.
SPEAKER_04:And then three months later when Josh cussed you behind out, now I'm crazy. Y'all should have checked on me in December.
SPEAKER_02:Right, right. And so I think that's that's the price of being a strong person.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, it's like you said, your uh you and your siblings all agree differently. I can't when my dad passed away, um, y'all gonna laugh. I put a blanket over my head. That's all I remember. Like I didn't cry. I didn't I didn't cry. I put a blanket over my head and I sat under this blanket. I didn't cry at the funeral. Like, I'm telling you, God, God is my witness. When my dad passed away, he took my emotions with him. Like, God was like, we're gonna just take this. My dad was like, God, take that up out of her. Cause it just left. He was like, God, take that from my daughter, because I don't need her over here sad and stuff. You was just numb, maybe. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know, but it was just like, I put a blanket over my head, and I don't know how long I sat there. I know it was a snowstorm. I remember one of my brothers got up and walked in a snowstorm, just walked out of the house. Like, I don't know, because I was under this blanket. Right. I don't know what everybody else was doing. It's not funny. It is. I can laugh now. I can laugh, it's my dad. But I was just under this blanket, like, under this blanket.
SPEAKER_02:Think you were at an age where you were able to process that type?
SPEAKER_04:I still don't know.
SPEAKER_02:And that was you like your first real introduction to grief.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, yeah. So I really don't know. And and granted, like I'm a um, I'm a grandmom cousin. I'm the grandma child. Like, I'm the cousin that's the grandmom, okay? You know everybody. I'm the cousin that I'm the grandma. So I've been to all the funerals for the uncles, the great uncles, all that with the grandma and the grandpa, everybody. I've seen one of my closest uncles that I really loved, my great uncle, Uncle Jesse. He passed away. I was at his funeral. I don't remember crying there either. He passed away before my dad. It's okay. I don't know. Like, this is something I gotta figure out about myself. We're gonna do some research.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, let's look this up right now.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, because I don't know. We're gonna ask Chet. But she don't be right all the time, and I'm gonna tell you why.
SPEAKER_02:Well, no, she don't. She don't. Well, we notice that when it's the topic sometimes. Okay. You wanna go to Google? Please. Google been here a little longer. Google been here, definitely been here longer. Three reasons. Somebody wrote about this. Three reasons why you don't cry when someone passes it. The death doesn't feel real to you yet. If the death happened recently, you may not have had time to let the reality of the death sink in. You haven't had enough privacy to cry. If you're around other people most of the time, you likely haven't had the chance to sit with the thoughts and have any time to yourself to actually process and cry. You're just not a crier. Grief is a whole body experience. But what does that what what does that mean? It means that in addition to being an emotional experience, grief also affects you on a physical, social, and spiritual level as well. If you don't cry when someone dies, your grief might be affecting you on one of the other levels. For instance, you might not be sleeping well, you might have stomach problems, you might have body aches, or be feeling disconnected from your family and friends.
SPEAKER_04:So when my dad passed away, I noticed and still to this day, people will be like, Smile. I I think I stopped smiling.
SPEAKER_02:All right, Josh. What you gonna leave the people with today? About grief and loss.
SPEAKER_04:Go seek help if you need it. I might be going to seek some help on Monday morning. So if y'all need it, go figure out what's going on. Yeah, go get that help y'all need.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, everybody's different, but we gotta ask ourselves is unprocessed grief holding us back from being a better version of ourselves, right?
SPEAKER_04:Exactly. What are you gonna leave them with? That's yep. Y'all, if y'all is if y'all are at work or y'all y'all work Monday through Friday, Saturday through Sunday, I don't care. But you have benefits, check it to them EAPs and go get y'all something.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:If you don't have the money to pay for it for real, I mean it was just free. So I was like, we have like eight sessions free. Eight sessions free. And then what I learned is check with your HR department. Um, it'll be eight sessions per condition.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, anxiety, ADD. You said what they're saying. Green, grease, all of the things, y'all. Listen, your whole mental health thing might be covered. Perfect. Go do that. They do it for addiction counseling, too. They did addiction, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And you know, stress and anxiety are two separate conditions. Stress is a condition, yes, the kit, work life, workplace stress, personal. All of these are different. Y'all better go better go take advantage because these companies are paying for these benefits. So let me ask to take advantage of it.
SPEAKER_02:Because usually they could call the whatever they could ask HR for whatever number to call to get more information. They don't have to necessarily talk to the person in HR.
SPEAKER_04:No, no, no, no. They just let HR know they don't even have to. Yeah, most people places have a portal, like a website where you could get your benefits and your EAP information. But you could just call HR and say, Hey, I need the EAP phone number. That's it. You don't gotta tell them nothing. They're not even gonna honestly, we're not even gonna ask you nothing. We're gonna be like, okay, here's the number because you're not supposed to. Yeah, it's up to you if you want to and we don't want to get into that, right? That's confidential for you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:So yeah, take advantage. Yeah, why don't we be calling mine Monday?
SPEAKER_02:Oh boy, listen, I hope y'all got something from this and uh buy us a coffee or a tea because we need it caffeine free, please.
SPEAKER_04:I need a tea. Yeah, y'all could put some honey jack in there. Cause clearly I got some working to do on myself. And honey jack's gonna have it might not, but in my mind. It might for me mentally. But yeah. All right, so until next time. See ya.
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