TED Talks Daily
We don't "move on" from grief. We move forward with it | Nora McInerny (re-release)
16 Jul 2025
In a talk that's by turns heartbreaking and hilarious, writer and podcaster Nora McInerny shares her hard-earned wisdom about life and death. Her candid approach to something that will, let's face it, affect us all, is as liberating as it is gut-wrenching. Most powerfully, she encourages us to shift how we approach grief. "A grieving person is going to laugh again and smile again," she says. "They're going to move forward. But that doesn't mean that they've moved on."This episode originally aired on December 25, 2019.For a chance to give your own TED Talk, fill out the Idea Search Application: ted.com/ideasearch.Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:TEDNext: ted.com/futureyouTEDSports: ted.com/sportsTEDAI Vienna: ted.com/ai-viennaTEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Full Episode
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. Like so many of us, I've experienced deep loss and heartbreak, and it's always bothered me when people have said, you'll move on. That statement has always felt, well, a little out of touch.
In this archive talk that's both hilarious and heartbreaking, writer and podcaster Nora McInerney shares her hard-earned wisdom about life and death. She shares things we all need to hear about heartbreak, even if we'd rather avoid them, and encourages us to rethink our approach to grief, not as something to move on from, but as something to move forward with.
So 2014 was a big year for me. Do you ever have that, just like a big year, like a banner year? For me, it went like this. October 3rd, I lost my second pregnancy. And then October 8th, my dad died of cancer. And then on November 25th, my husband Aaron died after three years with stage four glioblastoma, which is just a fancy word for brain cancer. So I'm fun.
People love to invite me out all the time. Packed social life. Usually when I talk about this period of my life, the reaction I get is essentially, I can't imagine. But I do think you can. I think you can, and I think that you should, because someday it's going to happen to you.
Maybe not these specific losses in this specific order or at this speed, but like I said, I'm very fun, and the research that I have seen will stun you. Everyone you love has a 100 percent chance of dying. And that's why you came to TED.
So since all of this loss happened, I've made it a career to talk about death and loss, not just my own, because it's pretty easy to recap, but the losses and tragedies that other people have experienced. It's a niche, I have to say. It's a small niche, and I wish I made more money. I've written some very uplifting books, host a very uplifting podcast, I started a little nonprofit.
I'm just trying to do what I can to make more people comfortable with the uncomfortable, and grief is so uncomfortable. It's so uncomfortable, especially if it's someone else's grief. So a part of that work is this group that I started with my friend Mo, who is also a widow. We call it the Hot Young Widows Club. And it's real. We have membership cards and T-shirts.
And when your person dies, your husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, literally don't care if you were married, your friends and your family are just going to sort of look around through friends of friends of friends of friends until they find someone who's gone through something similar, and then they'll push you towards each other so you can talk amongst yourselves and not get your sad on other people.
So that's what we do. It's just a series of small groups where men, women, gay, straight, married, partnered can talk about their dead person and say the things that the other people in their lives aren't ready or willing to hear yet. Huge range of conversations. Like, my husband died two weeks ago. I can't stop thinking about sex. Is that normal? Yeah. What if it's one of the Property Brothers?
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