Listen without Prejudice-A Singapore-based Professional Counselling Service

I spoke about caregiver grief with CNA 938's Susan Ng, as a lead up to my talk on May 26 with Caring Wheels and PA. https://www.melisten.sg/podcast/playlist/Family-Ties-2592636/Understanding-Caregiver-Grief--James-Leong--Grief-Specialist-%26-Registered-Counsellor--Listen-Without-Prejudice--3335866

Caregiving can be an act of love - but it can also come with grief, guilt, exhaustion and isolation.
This week on Family Ties, we discuss the emotional realities many caregivers quietly carry, from ambiguous loss to caregiver stress, and how healing can begin through understanding and support.

For seminar information visit https://webapp.caringwheels.limited/s/g26f

Family Ties with Susan Ng. Saturdays at 11am & 4pm on .

Listen to Family Ties podcasts here:
https://www.melisten.sg/podcast/playlist/family-ties-2592636

I will be speaking with CNA 938 's Susan Lim on the importance of caregiver grief. Listen here@ https://www.channelnewsasia.com/listen

It's the number one book in SG and the author Prof Teo You Yenn asks how the richest, most educated families in the world can still experience unease and even unhappiness.

No one likes to spend their weekday evening confronting their grief, but I believe those who turn up would have lost something or someone in their lives and are tired of feeling stuck by their wave of emotions.

On Tues May 26, I won't just be talking about grief because grief is too complex for words.

Instead I want the audience to feel, see and listen to grief, and I will be using the power of storytelling, video and audio to enable this.

Is grief recovery possible? A caregiver, who lost bother parents and her struggle with cancer, will also be onsite to talk about she made meaning out of her grief through writing and reciting poetry

Please register for The Weight of the Unspoken--Understanding Caregiver Grief on Tuesday May 26 ,7pm near Hong Lim Park at

The Weight of the Unspoken: Understanding Caregiver Grief Caregiving is a cycle of frustration, exhaustion, and duty. Yet beneath the surface of the daily grind lies a deeper, quieter reality: grief

That's not my Brucey but Joy, a member of the Human-Animal Bond in Ministry, which leverage on the power of animals to bring healing and connection.

My work privileges me to be with men at their most vulnerable, and these are FIVE things I learned about a man shedding tears in public, regardless of status:

1. A man never, ever, ever wants to cry in front of others because it is a sign of weakness--period.

2. Men seeing another man cry reminds them of their weakness, so much so that it produces discomfort, which in turn translates into jokes, trash talk or simply shutting down.

3. There is nothing more emasculating to a man than feeling invalidated by other men after crying in public.

4. When men do cry in public, it is never coerced or orchestrated but it comes naturally.

5. When men do cry naturally, the jokes and trash talk are noticeably absent and it is replaced by a respectable silence.

I celebrated a female friend's 80th birthday with her three girlfriends. As the only other man at the dinner table, I saw how women relate to other women in a way men don't.
It's not new that both genders communicate differently, but when we reach the last stages of our lives, it does require a rethink.
One woman spoke about how she was pickpocketed on her first day on holiday in Spain, and another shared how she finally cried for the first time after her mother died. These women had no hangups about being vulnerable, and their conversations were peppered with shared experiences of joy and pain. It looked so effortless and natural.
When men reach their lowest points and choose vulnerability, it is marked by restraint, almost like pulling a stubborn wisdom tooth out. I think this is because men respond by looking away or gently patting them as if to say:"You will be fine."
Either way, these responses feel invalidating and exacerbates the isolation men already experience.
I don't know the solution, but it has something to do with the courage to sit in the uncertainty of not knowing and not fixing.

Grief is a subject matter nobody wants to hear about, but here's what I learned when people show up for a talk on grief:

1. Everyone is feeling a sense of unease and it has something to do with grief and loss, but they can't put a finger on it.

2. Grief goes beyond death and funerals, but relationships, health and anything or anyone that is meaningful to you. People get it.

3. When grievers come together under one roof, there is a quiet sense of solidarity that you are not alone, even in the unspoken.

4. Grief work is hardly transactional but mostly relational, and that is done through storytelling that includes triumph and tragedy. The outcome is safety, which encourages sharing, witnessing and not solutioning.

5. This talk was done in a church, and grievers find relief and recovery in their own faiths, but at their own time.

6. A big part of the self is lost in grief, but eventually a small voice prompts them to "detach" from that loss and love themselves.

7. Recovery from grief is possible, but it is deeply personal, and looks, feels and sounds different for everyone.

8. If we don't address grief, we are looking at more isolation, especially amongst men. Men only know anger and frustration, but they are grieving. Nobody wants to be around an angry man

Grief is a subject matter nobody wants to hear about, but here's what I learned when people show up for a talk on grief:

1. Everyone is feeling a sense of unease and it has something to do with grief and loss, but they can't put a finger on it.

2. Grief goes beyond death and funerals, but relationships, health and anything or anyone that is meaningful to you. People get it.

3. When grievers come together under one roof, there is a quiet sense of solidarity that you are not alone, even in the unspoken.

4. Grief work is hardly transactional but mostly relational, and that is done through storytelling that includes triumph and tragedy. The outcome is safety, which encourages sharing, witnessing and not solutioning.

5. This talk was done in a church, and grievers find relief and recovery in their own faiths, but at their own time.

6. A big part of the self is lost in grief, but eventually a small voice prompts them to "detach" from that loss and love themselves.

7. Recovery from grief is possible, but it is deeply personal, and looks, feels and sounds different for everyone.

8. If we don't address grief, we are looking at more isolation, especially amongst men. Men only know anger and frustration, but they are grieving. Nobody wants to be around an angry man.