Who Sits With You Now

Grief, and the relationships it changes

Joanna Reyes-Villanueva2 episodes2 min of audio75 playsEpisodic

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S1 · E2Feb 5, 20260:5347 plays Preview

We Lost Our Son and Stayed Married

Ramon and Cielo lost their son at nine. Most couples around them expected the marriage to end. They explain how they grieved differently, fought about it, and found a way to stay.

S1 · E1Jan 1, 20260:5428 plays Members

The Friends Who Came and the Friends Who Didn't

Joanna lists who turned up in the months after her husband's death and who disappeared, without bitterness. A listener in Cebu, widowed at 41, compares her own list.

About the show

When Joanna Reyes-Villanueva's husband died in 2021, the people she expected to hold her up were not always the ones who did. Who Sits With You Now is a fortnightly show about what grief does to every other relationship: the marriage that bends after losing a child, the siblings who fight over a parent's things, the friends who go silent, the friends who surprise you, dating again as a widow, and the in-laws who are still family or suddenly are not. Joanna talks with widows and widowers, bereaved parents, adult children who lost a parent young, and the people who stayed. Episodes are 35 to 45 minutes, recorded in Manila and on calls across the Philippine diaspora, and each ends with a small practical idea for anyone trying to support a grieving person this week. It is for the grieving, for the people around them who do not know what to say, and for anyone who has lost someone and then noticed everything else shift.

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