The ‘Sorry, I’m Sad’ podcast aims to navigate grief amid hope

You can’t go over it, you can’t go under it; you’re just going to have to go through it.

That’s the family mantra for the Snow family, spawned from a popular song for preschoolers called “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt”, says Kelsie Snow, who created the Sorry, I’m Sad podcast in light of her husband, Chris Snow’s, ALS diagnosis in 2019.

At the time, the Calgary Flames assistant manager was given six to 12 months to live. The couple has two children.

“I’m not an expert on grief or sadness, I am just a person who has been forced to reckon with mortality and loss in a very constant way,” Kelsie says of why she originally launched her Kelsie Snow Writes blog and before starting the podcast.

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She says it’s not easy to relive, to relive these sad and tragic milestones her family has been through, including when Chris lost his smile and when he was given a feeding tube to help eat.

“I always say they’re really heavy and hard things to relive, but somehow at the end of them, you come out of it feeling lighter. You have to go through it kind of you know, that’s the way that sadness works. There’s no way around it.”

Kelsie started the podcast last year, detailing the heartbreaking experiences of Chris’s ALS diagnosis. The second season launches today and picks up where that season left off, around the time Chris started to lose his smile.

“Right around this time a year ago, it was the middle of August that he first told me that he was starting to have something with ALS patients, that’s very common when they’re first having some swallowing issues,” she explains.

“In late September, we started to have to cross foods off the list that he couldn’t eat and started choking on. He started having issues with liquids in September, and then October got harder and harder.”

Reliving those details as she now records season two is hard for Kelsie, who delayed filming the first episode earlier this week, but she gives herself some grace periods to go through the emotions recordings can bring.

“I know it’s important for people to understand what this has looked like, because I think people can see us on the outside, like, ‘Oh, my gosh, they’re doing really, really well.’ And for the most part, we are but we’ve had some pretty difficult periods.”

Kelsie knows her podcast has helped others growing through emotional times, too.

“I started sharing our story on my blog first, and I started to get a lot of messages from people,” she says adding, even though she was writing about her specific grief, she was getting a lot of responses from people who identified with it.

“I just felt like there’s this hunger to have more spaces to talk about the hard things we’ve gone through and ultimately, talking about those things helps a lot of people, it just makes you feel like you’re not as alone.

Kelsie says the community has been great in offering messages of hope and support while also donating money towards the cause that is near and dear to their hearts.

“They want to do something to show you that they’re there. They’re those things that are really impactful, and we feel really lucky to live in this city. We love it here, and we love the people here.”

Chris’s use of a promising experimental ALS treatment has already more than doubled his life expectancy. The Snow family hopes to continue to raise money towards ALS research and this is how you can help.  

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