Getting Back Up Podcast: Finding Life After Death
Two fathers. Two stories of loss. One mission to get back up. Real conversations with two men learning to navigate life, raise children, and find love again…after loss. Hosted by Jamal Jones and David McClain, Getting Back Up: Life after Death is a real, raw, and often humorous podcast about what comes after the unthinkable—losing a partner, facing grief, and finding your way through it. As two widowers, now devoted girl dads (and one remarried man), Jamal and David create space for honest conversations around healing, identity, and starting over. Getting knocked down is part of life. Getting back up is how we live.
Episodes
Episode 50: What Happened When We Put Widowers in a Room Together | Widower Reset
What happens when you put a group of widowers in a room and give them permission to stop being strong for a weekend?
Jamal and David created the Widower Reset because 49 episodes of conversations about grief and life after loss had made one thing clear: men needed more than a podcast. They needed a place to be honest, vulnerable, underst...
Episode 49: Dad, I Need to Talk to Mom
Sometimes there are moments in raising children when you can almost hear the words: “I really wish Mom was here for this.” For a widowed father, those moments can be especially difficult—because sometimes your child needs the parent who isn't there, and you have to figure out how to show up anyway.
In this deeply personal episode, Jamal and David talk about the ...
Episode 48: Nobody Knows What to Do With the Empty Chair
When your spouse dies, your family doesn't simply become the same family minus one person. The entire family changes.
In this episode, Jamal and David explore the roles their wives occupied that became even more visible after they were gone. Mother. Wife. Daughter. Sister. Friend. Family connector. Tradition keeper. The person who remembered the birthdays, manag...
Episode 47: The Signs You’re Healing (Even If It Doesn’t Feel Like It)
Healing after loss rarely announces itself. There’s usually no big breakthrough or morning when you wake up and suddenly feel “better.” More often, it shows up quietly—in the first laugh that doesn’t bring guilt, making plans months into the future, sleeping a little better, enjoying time with your kids, o...
Episode 46: The Man I Never Expected to Become
Loss changes us. That's unavoidable. But every so often, if we're paying attention, we realize grief hasn't only taken something away—it has quietly shaped us into someone we never expected to become.
In this episode, Jamal and David reflect on how life after loss has transformed them as fathers, husbands, leaders, friends, and men. From becoming more emotionally av...
Episode 45: The Lasts We Never Saw Coming
Some of the hardest moments after losing a spouse aren't the anniversaries we prepare for. They're the milestones we never realized would become "lasts."
In this episode, Jamal and David reflect on the quiet grief that can surface as children grow up and life keeps moving forward. An eighth-grade graduation. A final middle school concert. A birthday. A driver's license...
Episode 44: Grieving a Future After Loss
Grief isn't only about losing the person you loved. Sometimes it's about losing the future you spent years imagining together.
In this episode, Jamal and David explore one of the least talked about dimensions of grief: mourning the life that never got the chance to happen. Retirement together. Watching your children become adults. College acceptance letters. Weddings. Grandchil...
Episode 43: What If I Forget Her?
One of the fears many widowers carry isn't losing a memory—it's losing the connection behind it.
In this episode, Jamal and David tackle a question that often goes unspoken: What if I forget her? They share the moments that stop you in your tracks—the conversation you can't quite place, the sound of her voice that's harder to recall, the story whose details have become fuz...
Episode 42: I’m Tired of Being Strong (What everyone sees after loss)
For many widowers, strength becomes a role they never asked to play. You keep showing up. You take care of the kids. You pay the bills. You go to work. You handle the responsibilities. And somewhere along the way, people start telling you how strong you are. But what happens when you're exhausted?
In this episode, Jamal and David talk op...
Episode 41: When you don't feel like yourself
After loss, there comes a moment many widowers quietly experience: you look in the mirror, go to work, attend a family event, or scroll through old photos and think... I don’t even recognize myself anymore.
In this episode, Jamal and David explore the identity disruption that often follows the death of a spouse. They discuss how grief changes more than your emo...
Episode 40: Why Am I Still Angry?
For many widowers and grieving spouses, anger doesn’t always show up in the beginning. Sometimes it arrives later—after the funeral, after the shock, after life gets quiet again. And when it does, it can feel confusing, constant, and directionless.
In this episode, Jamal and David have an honest conversation about the anger that lingers after loss. The short patience. The ...
Episode 39: I Felt Guilty for Laughing Again After Loss
There’s a moment many widowers and grieving spouses experience—but rarely say out loud: the first time you genuinely laugh again… and immediately feel guilty afterward.
In this episode, Jamal and David unpack the emotional confusion that comes when life starts feeling okay again. The normal moments. The unexpected joy. The dinners, trips,...
Episode 38: When Your Child Has an Emergency — Why It Hits Different After Loss
There’s a moment every parent dreads—the call you weren’t expecting… the one that makes your heart drop before you even have the full story.
In this episode, Jamal and David open up about their first real “emergency” moments with their daughters—times when they weren’t there, cou...
Episode 37: When Life Hits Again - Unemployed after loss
What happens when life knocks you down… again?
In this episode, Jamal and David step into something raw and unfiltered. Just weeks after being laid off, Jamal shares what it feels like to take another hit—after already navigating the loss of a spouse and rebuilding life once before. This isn’t a reflection episode. This is real time.
There are ...
Episode 36: Finding Passion & Purpose Again
There comes a moment in the journey where survival isn’t the question anymore… it’s now what?
In this episode, Jamal and David dive into one of the hardest transitions after loss—moving from just getting through the day to actually building a life again. They explore what it means to rediscover purpose when the life you once knew no longer exists...
Episode 35: In-Laws or Out-Laws? — Dealing with Their Family After You Move On
Moving forward after loss isn’t just about you—it can shift every relationship connected to your past. In this episode, Jamal and David tackle one of the most complicated dynamics widowers face: navigating relationships with in-laws while building a new life.
They share their personal experiences—from deep bonds that...
Episode 34: Bitter Sweet Sixteens — Navigating Fatherhood Through Milestones
Turning sixteen is supposed to be a celebration — a moment where parents look at their daughters and realize childhood is slowly giving way to adulthood. But for widower fathers, milestones like a Sweet Sixteen can carry a different emotional weight.
In this episode, Jamal and David reflect on their daughters’ sixteent...
Episode 33: Am I Depressed… or Am I Grieving?
In this episode, Jamal and David take on a question many widowers wrestle with quietly: Am I depressed… or am I grieving? It’s a question that usually shows up late at night, in the quiet moments when the distractions fade and the weight of loss feels hardest to understand.
Together, they unpack what grief often looks like in men — exhaustion, irr...
Episode 32: Telling the Story With Heart — A Conversation with Dr. Nicole Clark
In this episode, Jamal and David sit down with Dr. Nicole Clark, Emmy award-winning anchor and reporter for Spectrum News Texas — but before the newsroom, before the camera, there was nearly two decades in psychology.
Nicole opens up about how her background as a Ph.D.-level psychotherapist shapes the way she tells storie...
Episode 31: Grief Beyond Death — A Conversation with Jocelyn Barrera of The Christi Center
In this on-location episode in Austin, Jamal and David sit down with Jocelyn Barrera, Executive and Clinical Director of The Christi Center, to explore grief in all its forms — not just death, but displacement, illness, violence, and the quiet losses that reshape families.
Jocelyn shares her journey from bilingual se...
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