Working on them! 🙂

Jellis Vaes
Hey, welcome to another episode here on the podcast of Inner Path Seekers. I’m Jellis Vaes, and I founded Inner Path Seekers, which is a space for mental health support for those who feel ready to work on their mental health. It’s really been created because I struggled massively in the past with my own mental health. And I mean, mental health is something that’s ongoing, right?

Life is gonna throw challenges at us nonstop. And one of those challenges is grief and loss. I mean, we’re all going to lose someone at some points in our life. Yes. We don’t learn a lot about grief. Actually, we learn nothing about it. We don’t learn how to grieve or how to be there for someone who has lost a person.

Therefore, I wanted to dedicate some episodes to loss and grief. And in this episode, I’m talking with Phil Cohen, also known as The Grief Guy, who lost his 14-year-old son, Perry. And I mean, I’m going to let Phil share in just a moment what happened. I really hope that if you are going through a grieving process yourself, that these episodes — the ones that we have already done on loss and grief, the ones that will come soon, and this one with Phil — can provide some of that support that you might be missing.

Let’s dive now into this episode with Phil Cohen, also known as The Grief Guy.

Phil Cohen
Yeah. So on July 24th, 2015, almost ten years ago, my 14-year-old son Perry and his close friend were last seen leaving the Jupiter Inlet, which is out of South Florida. They were on a 19-foot fishing boat. There was a really bad storm that came out of nowhere, which often happens in South Florida and coastal cities, where you’ll get these storms that whip up and then are gone within five minutes.

One of those came through — 40-mile-an-hour winds, heavy rains. The Coast Guard was notified, which then led to one of the largest, if not the largest, Coast Guard search in the history of the Coast Guard. They searched for my son and his friend for seven excruciating days. In the end, neither of the boys was ever found.

And exactly what happened at sea that day still remains unclear. I could piece it together, and I think I kind of know, but I’ll never be 100% certain. So that’s what happened that day. And since then, my life has been completely different from that moment forward.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. Wow. Seven days, they tried to look for your son and his friend, and they…

Phil Cohen
It was all over the national news, which adds another layer of complexity, right? Because when everybody knows your story, it just makes it a little different.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. You’re very much put in the open then. Everyone knows it’s you.

Phil Cohen
Yes, yes. And then when you walk around, people know who I was. I literally remember, a couple of weeks after, thinking to myself: What’s a man who lost his son at sea supposed to look like? People were looking at me with pity and remorse. And I get it — looking back, I understand people’s reactions. But at the time, I just didn’t want all that pity.

Jellis Vaes
So it wasn’t helpful when people were overly sorry for what happened.

Phil Cohen
Right. And now with the work that I do, I hear so many stories of people who’ve lost loved ones, and I think, “My gosh, I can’t even imagine.” So I get it. But when everyone knows why you’re sad, it adds another layer of weirdness.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. Let’s come back to that in a second. But first — seven days they were searching for your son and his friend. And after ten years, they still haven’t…?

Phil Cohen
Yeah. The story part of it — honestly, it would take me eight hours to explain all the people, places, and things. What happened was: they went missing on a Friday. They found the capsized boat 67 miles off the shore of Ponce de Leon, about 40 miles north and 67 miles out. The Coast Guard jumped in from the helicopter, but nobody was on the boat or around it.

They threw in what’s called a tracker beacon so they could locate the boat later. But it didn’t work. They lost the boat, found it again, lost it again. Then about eight months later, a Norwegian shipping vessel found the boat with the other boy’s cell phone inside a watertight compartment. I thought there’d be a lot more information, but Apple couldn’t get the data off the phone. That’s a whole other story.

Eventually, the boat was recovered, but neither of the boys’ bodies were ever found.

Jellis Vaes
Wow.

Phil Cohen
Yeah. It’s crazy to think about. I like to imagine the boat capsized and both of them got hit in the head and drowned quickly. But is that the reality? As a parent, you torture yourself with thoughts like: Did they float until they couldn’t anymore? Did they suffer? Did he get eaten by a shark? Did someone pull him out of the water? Having to think about your child in those situations is absolute torture.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. That’s horrific. That’s the worst nightmare for any parent, I’d say.

Phil Cohen
It really is. It’s cliché to say you wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy — but you truly wouldn’t. It’s that bad.

Jellis Vaes
And now it’s been ten years. You’re telling me this calmly, but isn’t it still bizarre in some way to be saying what happened to your son?

Phil Cohen
It is. It’s just the chain of events. About six years ago, I was sitting with a friend saying, “I don’t know what to do. I’ve never lost anybody before.” I googled how to grieve because I wasn’t sure if I was doing it right. Even today, that’s why I do what I do — because there aren’t resources out there. You’ll find the “five stages of grief,” but honestly, I could talk all day about why people shouldn’t pay attention to them.

So I tried everything: therapy, books, workshops, groups. Grief forced me to choose — either be completely consumed by it, or educate myself.

Jellis Vaes
And when did you make that choice? Because I can imagine it wasn’t day one.

Phil Cohen
Oh no, not day one. The early days were indescribable pain. I couldn’t sleep for weeks. Every time I tried, my body would sigh uncontrollably — I later learned it was my body forcing a release that my mind couldn’t comprehend.

That led to a conversation at a bar with a friend. I was complaining about the five stages of grief, and he said, “Man, you should do a TED Talk about that.” So I did. It was called Transforming Grief.

Jellis Vaes
For people listening, I’ll link it in the show notes. You did that like three years ago, right?

Phil Cohen
Yeah. And before that, I wasn’t really talking about Perry openly. That TEDx experience blew me away — so many people reached out to me from all over the world. At first I thought, “Why? I’m not a doctor.” But I realized people just need hope. They see someone who’s been through something hard, and they want to know how you got to where you are. That led me to really reflect on what steps I actually took.

Phil Cohen
Grief affects so many parts of you. It affects your spirit, soul, and body. It affects your relationships, your goals, your identity — all at once. And most people have no idea how to manage that when it all comes at once. We live in such a grief-illiterate society that nobody knows what to say or how to help either.

Jellis Vaes
I couldn’t agree more. All the more respect to you for what happened and what you’re doing today. You’re right — there aren’t a lot of great resources on grieving. Society doesn’t give us much space to grieve.

Phil Cohen
No, we don’t. People who love you are afraid to mention it because they think they’ll make you sad. They don’t realize you haven’t forgotten — you already know. So when they don’t say something, that’s what hurts. It’s not mentioning it that upsets us. Say their name. Bring up a story. Say something you admired. You’ll never offend anyone who’s lost someone by saying that. What’s unhelpful is saying things like “They’re in a better place,” “Everything happens for a reason,” or “They wouldn’t want you to be sad.” Those aren’t helpful.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah, because people say those a lot. From your experience and your research on grief, why are those not helpful?

Phil Cohen
Because they’re not true. They’re not in a better place — the best place for them is here with me. “Everything happens for a reason.”? Why did the ocean take my son? What’s the reason? There isn’t one. You can always stitch together a story — like, “Because of this, you’re doing what you’re doing today.” And yes, that’s true. But I’d give all of this back in an instant to have Perry back.

Before this, I was VP of sales at a tech company. I was doing well, making good money. When I stopped and started this work, I made a lot less. But I realized I was good at it. I was helpful without training. I often say: I don’t have a master’s in psychology, but I’ve got a PhD in experience.

Jellis Vaes
That’s very real. Even more worthwhile in a way, because you actually lost someone. Like you said, you can be a beacon. People lose hope, and you can provide at least some hope that at some point they can bear the pain better.

Phil Cohen
Yeah. And you can become better in different ways. You’re never the same. You’ve lost a child — you’re not going back to who you were. There was Phil before July 24, 2015, and Phil after. But that doesn’t mean you have to be worse. You can be better in some ways.

Jellis Vaes
How long did it take for you to actually get to that more positive outlook?

Phil Cohen

It took a long time. Grief brings you to a place that’s indescribable. You lose so much of yourself. As a father, and Perry being my only child, I lost my identity. When I went back to work a couple months later, I remember sitting at my desk and just peeing in my pants. That’s how much I didn’t care. I didn’t feel like walking to the bathroom.

Eventually, I texted a coworker, and she was kind enough to buy me jeans. I share that because grief makes you do strange things. It took a while. In my TED Talk, I explained how I was curled up on the floor in a ball when I saw and heard Perry. He was almost mad at me — “Get up, Dad. Enough.” That was pivotal. I realized this wasn’t serving me, or him, or the people who loved me. Nothing good was happening from me lying there. It was either end it all — which I’d never do, though I thought about it — or start doing something. So I started taking one step after another.

Jellis Vaes
How many years was that before you had that sort of call from your son?

Phil Cohen
About two years. The first two years, I avoided. Like many people, I ran from it. It was too painful to face.

Jellis Vaes
So for the first two years, you were living a nightmare.

Phil Cohen
Yes. I’m grateful that before all this, I was a man of faith. I also believed in personal development and psychology. I knew the power of my mind. I knew I had to pay attention to this, because it’s so easy to let something like this take you down for good.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah, it happens very easily.

Phil Cohen
It’s all about focus. Where focus goes, energy flows. If you focus only on the pain, you’ll stay there. And it’s important to focus on it sometimes — you can’t just avoid it. But you can’t live there constantly. There are good things to focus on too.

For example, I know people who’d give up everything to have a child. I was fortunate to have one, and I had 14 and a half amazing years with Perry. I know I’ll see him again — that’s my belief. I can choose to focus on all the parts of me that died with Perry, or I can focus on all the parts of him that he left in me. And that’s a choice.

Jellis Vaes
For someone who has just lost a person, that’s a tough thing to hear. In the beginning, it doesn’t feel like you have a choice. You feel like you’ll be miserable forever.

Phil Cohen
For sure. In the beginning, don’t even pay attention to what I’m saying. When people say there’s no right or wrong way to grieve — I disagree. There is a wrong way, and that’s if you’re harming yourself or others. Drugs, alcohol, dangerous behavior. In the beginning, you do what you need to survive. But at some point, you have to choose. Am I going to sit at the bottom of the ocean and drown, or push off, reach the surface, take a breath, and start swimming toward land? It’s one or the other.

Jellis Vaes
I want to come back to something. You said you googled how to grieve and found nothing helpful. The five stages of grief didn’t help. Why not?

Phil Cohen
Right. I could talk for hours about why people shouldn’t rely on the five stages. They were developed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in 1969 for terminally ill cancer patients to process their own mortality. They were never intended for the bereaved, though that’s how they’ve been applied ever since.

For people dying, those stages make sense. For the bereaved, not so much. I didn’t experience them that way. I experienced fear, revenge, and confusion — things not covered in the stages. And often all in the same day. So when people use the stages like a checklist — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance — it confuses them. They think, “Why am I not at this stage yet? Am I doing it wrong?” That’s unhelpful.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. It can feel like a checklist. “Oh, I’m not there yet, maybe something’s wrong with me.” But everyone’s heard of it. There isn’t really another great model besides that.

Phil Cohen
Exactly. That’s why in my TEDx talk, I introduced the idea of the grief continuum. Instead of stages, it’s more like a continuum, with acceptance somewhere in the middle. We move back and forth on it. Because even the word “acceptance” sounds like failure to me — like it’s the end, like nothing comes after. But there is life after grief.

Jellis Vaes
The grief continuum. Okay. Acceptance in the middle.

Phil Cohen
Yeah. For some, the first reaction is anger. For me, it was fear. And eventually I experienced positive things too. That’s not in the five stages.

In mental health, think of a scale from -5 to +5. Zero is “normal.” When something bad happens, you’re between 0 and -5. Most therapy aims to get you back to zero. But there’s so much more than zero.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. They want to get you back to a stable place.

Phil Cohen
Which makes sense. But there’s more to life than stability.

Jellis Vaes
And what have you found, because I know that you started to work with people. You mentioned earlier that you now work with those who’ve lost someone. How does that look? I checked your website, I saw workshops, but what else do you do?

Phil Cohen
After my TEDx talk, people started reaching out. I wasn’t charging, I just talked with them. Then I started recognizing patterns and realized I was good at this, even without formal training. Invitations came for paid speaking. I felt called to do this.

One of my mentors told me something I’ll never forget: We are always most powerfully positioned to serve the person we once were. That hit me. Anyone listening now — you’ve been through something, you’ve learned lessons. There are people who could benefit from those lessons.

I wasn’t trying to become a grief coach. I was just sharing my story. But over time, I realized you can’t do this work in two or three sessions. You can’t even do it in 12, but 12 is a good start. Grief affects your health, relationships, goals, identity — all at once. Most people don’t know how to deal with that.

So I developed a workshop called The Inner Garden. It compares grief to a garden. The soil is your health — mind, body, and spirit. Weeds are old belief patterns. Advice and outside voices are things getting in the way. The creatures that visit your garden are your emotions — some beautiful like butterflies, others sting like bees.

The framework gives structure where grief is messy. We cover eight core elements of the garden in the first eight weeks. The last four weeks are about integration and growth. I work one-on-one with each person, keep the group small, and the group element itself is very powerful.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah, that can be huge. Hearing others going through a similar journey makes you feel less alone.

For people listening, I’ll link your website. How do you say your last name?

Phil Cohen
Cohen. Or just search “The Grief Guy” and I’ll pop up.

Jellis Vaes
Okay, so you can do that, or check the show notes.

This makes me want to ask: what actually helped you personally? You said you already knew about psychology and mindset, which is huge. But what helped you most? And what advice would you give to someone in chaos who’s just lost someone?

Phil Cohen
For someone in early grief, unless you’re harming yourself or others, there are no rules. It’s survival. Tiny steps are key. When your body is flooded with cortisol, your brain tells you: don’t move, don’t go out. That response isn’t meant to make you happy — it’s meant to keep you alive.

But eventually you need to break that pattern. Take a small step. Walk outside. Stand in the sun for five minutes. Don’t overwhelm yourself with “I need to go to the gym.” Just take a walk. Almost always, you’ll feel better afterward.

It’s about action. You can’t just sit still. For some, journaling helps. I didn’t want to, but it was powerful. Getting thoughts out of your head and onto paper helps. One of the most powerful things I did was write a letter to Perry — everything I wanted to say, what I’d miss, what I wished. I kept adding to it until I felt I’d said it all. It was incredibly healing.

Different things work for different people. But early grief is survival: tiny steps, talking to someone — friend, family, therapist. Don’t do it alone. Grief wants to isolate you. It doesn’t reach out. But you need at least one person there for you.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. Someone I know who had a miscarriage said she just kept her door open. Friends came over to eat together. Even if you’re not hungry, sitting together at a table helps.

Phil Cohen
Totally. It’s so important. People ask, “What should I do? There’s nothing I can do.” But there are things. Don’t ask the bereaved, “Let me know how I can help.” They won’t tell you. Don’t leave the burden on them — they’re already suffering. Be proactive.

Don’t try to fix it or pull them out of it. Just sit with them in the rubble, in the pain. That’s the best thing you can do. Observe what’s difficult for them. Ask: “What’s been really hard for you lately? Getting out of bed? Walking the dog? Picking up the kids?” Then just help. But mostly, just be there.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. It’s not about saying the right thing. It’s about presence.

Phil Cohen
Exactly. There is no “right thing.” The one thing you can say is some version of: “I’m so sorry. I have no idea what you’re experiencing. I just know you’re in pain. I love you and I’m here.” Don’t say, “I know how you feel.” Even if you’ve lost someone too — you don’t know their relationship, their story.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. That’s so important. Because even if we’ve both lost someone, I don’t actually know what you are going through.

Phil Cohen
Exactly. I learned that the hard way. A couple of years after losing Perry, before my TED Talk, I met a man who’d lost his son. I said, “I know how you feel.” He snapped: “No, you don’t.” And he was right. Since then, I’ve never said it again.

Jellis Vaes
It’s well-intended, but not helpful.

Phil Cohen
Right. Same with “How are you?” People asked me that a few weeks after Perry died. And I thought, What the fuck do you think? I wasn’t going to say “I’m fine.” But I also didn’t want to unload on them. Even something innocent like “How are you?” can trigger you.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. One thing I want to add — don’t underestimate how helpful presence can be. When my mom lost her dad, the most helpful thing anyone did was a man who walked in, gave her a hug, and left. No words. Just that. She still remembers it.

Phil Cohen
Yeah. In Jewish tradition, there’s something called Shiva. Seven days of mourning. People sit on the ground, cover mirrors, and bring food. There are rules: before entering, you cleanse yourself — symbolically preparing, being aware of the situation. And you aren’t allowed to speak to the bereaved unless they speak first. You’re just there, sitting with them.

At the end of seven days, there’s a ceremonial walk outside. It represents re-entering life. Symbolic, but powerful. Compare that to Western funerals: people come, say nice things, stay a couple of days, and then disappear. That’s it. Shiva emphasizes community presence. We could learn a lot from that.

Jellis Vaes
Oh yeah, so much. It’s the community carrying you through grief. In the West, we grieve alone too often.

Phil Cohen
Yeah. It’s unfortunate.

Jellis Vaes
It is.

Jellis Vaes
Is there a last piece of advice you’d give to anyone listening who’s lost someone — something most people don’t know?

Phil Cohen
Yes. No matter how barren, dry, or dead things feel right now, something is crawling underground. The smartest thing you can do is tend to your inner garden. Don’t let it decay or fill with weeds. Take small actions to care for yourself.

If it’s been years and nothing has changed, please talk to someone. Therapy, groups, workshops — try again. If one didn’t work, try another. There are people who can help you integrate grief into your life. The pain will always be there, but it can be carried differently.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. It’s always worth trying. Even if you feel hopeless, just send a message — to you, to a therapist, to someone. As long as there are options, there’s hope.

Phil Cohen
Exactly. Humans have been losing people for thousands of years. We can survive it. The question is how. What steps will you take? That’s why resources matter. And that’s why I work so hard to change things.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. Thank you, Phil, for sharing parts of your story and about Perry. For everything you’re doing. You’re turning pain into meaning, and that’s huge. I’m very grateful.

Phil Cohen
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Jellis Vaes
And that concludes this conversation with Phil Cohen, also known as The Grief Guy. I really hope you gained something from this episode — insights, feelings that can help you move forward in your grieving process.

To find anything mentioned in this conversation, check the show notes in the description. Or go to theipsproject.com/podcasts and search for Phil to find the show notes.

If you gained something from this or other episodes, leaving a rating and review on whichever platform you use would mean so much to me. It helps spread the information shared here by guests like Phil to others who need it.

I hope I get the chance to welcome you to another episode. Until then, this is Jellis Vaes, signing off. Bye.

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