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When Love Asks You to Let Go: Parenting, Grief, and Surrender with Dr. Tasha Faruqui
Manage episode 513577966 series 3509546
A mother’s story of love, advocacy, and finding joy while parenting a child in hospice.
What happens when the life you imagined for your child suddenly changes forever?
For Dr. Tasha Faruqui, that question became her reality when her daughter, Soraya, was born with a rare and little-known genetic condition.
A doctor herself, Tasha thought she knew how to navigate the medical world. But nothing prepared her for the mix of love, fear, and relentless uncertainty that came with parenting a child whose life would look very different from what she’d dreamed.
In this week’s episode, Tasha — physician, advocate, and author of her debut book Keep Your Head Up: A Mother’s Story of Chasing Joy in the Face of Grief — opens up about what it means to grieve the child you imagined while fiercely loving the one in front of you.
We talk about how she’s learned to balance hope and surrender, the ways her other children have shaped her understanding of anticipatory grief, and how joy has become an act of resistance against the unfairness of it all.
Nina and Tasha explore:
- What it means to grieve the ideal while embracing what is
- How advocacy and agency intertwine in a child’s care
- The quiet grief of siblings walking their own path beside medical complexity
- Why hope and heartbreak can live side by side
- How spirituality and creativity help her family keep going
- Why joy isn’t found, it’s chosen, over and over again
If you’ve ever lived between grief and gratitude, this conversation will remind you you can hold both.
Guest: Tasha Faruqui, DO
- Physician • Author • Speaker • Advocate
- Read: KEEP YOUR HEAD UP
- tashafaruqui.com
- Fundraising & Merch
- @thefaruqui5
Hosted by: Nina Rodriguez
- Creator of Grief and Light, Grief Guide
- griefandlight.com
- @griefandlight
- Resting Grief Face on Substack
Grief Support Resources for the Road:
Thank you for listening! Please share with someone who may need to hear this.
Disclaimer: griefandlight.com/safetyanddisclaimers
Chapters
1. Preview & Intro Song (00:00:00)
2. Excerpt Reading of KEEP YOUR HEAD UP (00:00:37)
3. Soraya's Story (00:02:37)
4. The Balance of Physician and Mother, Hope and Surrender (00:10:03)
5. Agency and Advocacy in Healthcare Decisions (00:17:22)
6. Hope and Pediatric Hospice (00:25:42)
7. Anticipatory Grief and Sibling Dynamics (00:30:05)
8. Witnessing her physical decline while holding space for all (00:39:29)
9. "Suck the Joy Out of Life" (00:43:48)
10. Creative Problem Solving as a Family (00:48:05)
11. Religion, Spirituality and Connection Beyond the Veil (00:51:21)
12. A Message for Parents Navigating Anticipatory Grief or Life-Limiting Disease (01:01:29)
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