Katy Friedman

Meet Katy!

Katy Friedman Miller, MSW, LCSW is a grief therapist with a private practice in St. Louis, Missouri.  After graduating from Vanderbilt with a B.A. in English in 1994, she worked in public health public relations in Washington, D.C., eventually finding her way to social work and graduating with a Masters Degree from the Brown School at Washington University in 2001.

As a home hospice social worker, she found meaning and passion while partnering with patients and families facing end-of-life issues.  She loves being a mom of her two teenage kids, and she loves storytelling and poetry.  Her poems have been published in a number of journals, including The Nashville Review, Pleiades, Natural Bridge, and the American Journal of Nursing.  Her essays and blogs may be found on Medium.  She hopes her work and sense of humor inspires courage, honesty, and compassion.

Katy Friedman’s TEDx Talk

Scared to Death and Showing Up Anyway:  The Heroism of Being There with Grief and Grievers

In our lives, we will all face illness, grief, and death, but so often we avoid even thinking about these things because we are afraid or feel totally inadequate.  When a person works in healthcare or any field that forces an ongoing relationship with illness and death, it might seem like the act of a brave person to even go to work.  But, in the end, even hospice workers are just regular people.  We are all regular, scared people.  And we need each other – even when our words are imperfect and our insides quake.