Skylar Jackenthal launches ‘Good Grief’ podcast to help young people navigate loss

PARK CITY, Utah—When Skylar Jackenthal saw an Instagram post from a friend-of-a-friend about a podcast network seeking new hosts, she felt a rare kind of clarity. The Park City native and co-founder of the Live Like Sam Foundation had long been searching for a creative outlet to explore her personal journey through grief—one that felt like her own, distinct from the nonprofit created in honor of her brother Sam.

“I had never even thought about doing a grief-related podcast,” Jackenthal said. “But in that very moment, the idea came to me, and I just kind of ran with it. It felt very right from the start.”

The result is Good Grief: Life After Loss, a new podcast aimed at young people grappling with the death of someone close to them. The show, part of the Be the Change. Media Network, is now available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Jackenthal was 14 when her brother Sam died. At the time, she didn’t know anyone her age who had experienced a similar loss. “It felt very much like I was the only one,” she said. That changed when she was invited to join a grief group at her high school—a turning point that not only helped her feel less alone, but also laid the groundwork for the kind of open, accessible resource she’s now offering others.

“My grief journey started with a grief group when I was so young,” she said. “And I think I’ve just become very comfortable talking about grief and loss in general.”

Jackenthal said Good Grief was born out of a frustrating absence of relatable resources for grieving youth. “All the resources were for adults,” she said. “They were all for parents who had lost children or grown-ups who had lost a parent. I really struggled to find anything for someone my age.” And even those she did find often felt too clinical, too distant, too emotionally flat.

“I didn’t want to read a medical journal,” she said. “I wanted to hear from someone my own age and hear their stories.” Her podcast aims to do just that—sharing authentic stories from young people navigating real-world grief. “I was all over Reddit trying to Google specific scenarios like, ‘How do I tell my boyfriend about my dead brother?’” she said. “There were just so many weird, niche things like that that didn’t exist.”

The tone of the podcast, she added, isn’t uniformly somber. “A lot of my episodes are going to get into humor—maybe dark humor—but just acknowledging that grief is sometimes funny and awkward and uncomfortable. There’s so much in it we don’t talk about.”

Though Good Grief stands apart from the Live Like Sam Foundation, it echoes the nonprofit’s ethos of turning pain into purpose. “Both are rooted in Sam’s memory,” Jackenthal said. “But it’s important to me that the podcast is more of my legacy. Live Like Sam will always be about Sam’s legacy.”

Now nearly a decade into her grief journey, Jackenthal hopes the podcast will become a space for what she calls “hope-filled healing.” That phrase, she explained, points to the podcast’s emphasis on life after loss.

“Your life does not end when the life of your sibling or your parent ends,” she said. “Unfortunately—and fortunately—life goes on. And finding a way to make good out of that is so important for healing.”

For Jackenthal and her father, that meant building a nonprofit. But she’s well aware that’s not the path for everyone. “A lot of people, unfortunately, turn to drugs or alcohol or other vices,” she said. “My goal is to hopefully present all the positive ways you can take this deep pain and turn it into love and healing and joy.”

So far, the response has been affirming. “I wasn’t feeling very nervous until the episode was actually live,” Jackenthal said. “But then I started seeing the number of listeners go up.” The feedback, she said, has been deeply motivating—especially messages from people who experienced childhood grief themselves and wished something like Good Grief had existed for them.

Growing up in Park City shaped much of her perspective. “You just have an abnormal exposure to loss,” she said. “Especially untimely, unnatural loss.” She didn’t realize how unusual that was until she went to college and found that her peers had rarely, if ever, experienced death in their high school communities. “Now it feels like every time I’m home or talk to my parents, I’m hearing constantly that other young people in the community are passing away.”

That local lens helped her see how vital it was to create a grief resource that young people could actually relate to—one that meets them where they are. “Hopefully, getting to elevate those voices is part of what Good Grief can do.”

For more information or to listen, visit Spotify or Apple Podcasts.