We know death is coming. We just don’t like getting close enough to see it. And sometimes, that means pulling away from the very people who need us. This episode reflects on the ideas of death and dying, with a powerful conversation about how we can show up for the dying.

After the death of a dear friend, Steph reflects on the visits people meant to make, the messages that arrived too late, and the loneliness that serious illness can bring. Her friend was deeply loved. He also sometimes wished he saw more of the people he loved—a painful contradiction that gives this conversation its urgency. Steph knows what it means to be on the other side of that absence. After her father died when she was fifteen, and her dealing with her mother's chronic illness, she and her siblings were left struggling while the adults around them didn’t know how to help. The people who withdrew weren’t villains. They were overwhelmed, frightened, and unsure what to do. But the consequences were real.

Jonah challenges the idea that showing up is always the right answer. Having an open afternoon is not the same as having the emotional capacity to sit with someone else’s pain. Together, they distinguish honest boundaries from avoidance, and consistency from the impossible promise of always being available.

And Steph admits something that complicates the whole conversation: sometimes connecting is difficult because saying goodbye hurts so much. Facing that fear won’t make loss easy. It may, however, keep fear from deciding who gets left alone.

The Good Love with Steph & Jonah is hosted by Steph Campbell and her son, Jonah Swotes.

What happens when an old wound enters a conversation before you notice it? In Episode 16 of The Good Love with Steph & Jonah, a discussion of projection and transference becomes personal when Steph recognizes what was happening inside her during an exchange with her son. A meeting earlier that day had left her feeling overlooked. She connects that feeling to childhood exclusion, the fear of becoming invisible as she ages, and the complicated experience of being deeply proud of Jonah while worrying that people would rather listen to him. She also acknowledges that her reading of the meeting may not be what actually happened. Jonah starts with an everyday example of assuming someone else feels the way he would. Later, he describes his own anxiety and desire to keep everyone happy, despite having had a loving childhood. Together, they consider why reassurance sometimes fails to reach a painful feeling and why awareness still takes work. The conversation returns to what Steph hoped to give her son: enough steadiness to recover when life hurts.

Content note: This episode discusses childhood violence and emotional distress, and includes a brief mention of suicide.

Righteousness can make cruelty feel justified. When a belief is used as proof that someone else is beneath you, the harm you cause can be rooted in, thus disguised by "the right thing to do." In Episode 15 of The Good Love with Steph & Jonah, Steph and Jonah examine that turn: how conviction becomes a weapon in families, relationships, and the wider world. Their conversation runs into a difficult contradiction. If someone’s certainty is hurting people, how do you challenge it without becoming just as certain that your own view is beyond question? Steph keeps pressing that tension as they move from public power and religion to the agreements people make with one another. “Going rogue” becomes one way to recognize the pattern: deciding that because your reason feels right, an agreement no longer applies to you. Jonah brings the problem closer to home. The belief that you must never quit, must fix every relationship, or must live by the rules you inherited can hold you hostage long after those rules stop helping. Righteousness can become a weapon against yourself, too, making an alternative seem wrong before you have even considered it. That raises another question: what are we protecting when we refuse to admit there might be something we do not know? The conversation ends with Steph reading a poem she wrote as a child about the world’s unanswered questions. After an hour of testing what it means to be right, that young voice leaves room for discovery. Steph and Jonah keep returning to the need to challenge harm; the ending asks whether we can do that while remaining curious enough to question ourselves.