Meet Cheryl
Cheryl Espinosa-Jones is a certified therapist, author, and the host of the Good Grief podcast. She has spent a lifetime exploring human loss and revelation and helps others transform their relationships with themselves and with others, finding a way forward.
As an unwavering advocate for authenticity, her podcast, Good Grief draws potency from her personal transformations as an out lesbian, the crushing loss of her first wife at a young age, and every significant loss she has experienced since. With an extensive ‘been there’ credibility earned over time, Cheryl inspires a wide range of diverse individuals. By growing forward after life's difficult challenges and deepening her ability to feel all of what she feels, she gained valuable insight into what empowers others to believe in themselves, to love themselves, and to live their lives more fully.
My Story
During my education as a Marriage and Family Therapist, my first wife was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, which was at the time a uniformly terminal illness with a six month to one year prognosis. In the eight years that followed, I engaged daily in the work of preparing for her death. I was trained during this period by Stephen and Ondrea Levine (Who Dies and Grieving Into Life and Death, A Year to Live) and Richard Olney (founder of Self-Acceptance Training). After my wife’s death, I immersed myself in my own multifaceted grief, which surprised me with frequent moments of joy and taught me that human beings are capable of astonishing epiphanies and inspirational grace.
Along with my private therapy practice and the Good Grief podcast, I was the Manager of Professional Education at the Women’s Cancer Resource Center in Oakland, CA for three years, offering monthly CEU training for licensed therapists and other health care professionals. I have trained extensively with Erving Polster, leader in the field of gestalt therapy and author of Everybody’s Life is Worth a Novel. I was a Clinical Director at the Alternative Family Project, which served the therapeutic needs of LGBTQ families in San Francisco.
I am also a writer. I wrote a column for the San Francisco Bay Times called Motherlines and ran Considering Parenthood groups for the LGBT community. I have also been a contributor to two books, Journey to the End and Who Will Take Care of Me When I Die, which led me to write my first novel, An Ocean Between Them, out of a belief that fiction is the perfect vehicle for telling the truth.
“Grief is a creative process.”
— Cheryl Espinosa-Jones
Finding Love Again
One of the most generous acts I have ever experienced was the demand by my first wife that I love again after she died. Although I couldn’t have imagined before her death that I would want another forever love, over time she proved to be correct; I would become ready. A few years after her death I met Deb and a year after that we married before family and friends. My father, a Baptist minister, performed the ceremony and, though our union would not be legal for several years, our marriage began that day, May 9, 1998. As we celebrated our 25th anniversary I was so grateful for two great loves, the forever kind, that have graced my life and made me who I am.
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