The Story Behind the Title | How I Killed My Mother Podcast
This is the episode you've been waiting for.
After sixteen chapters of laughter, heartbreak, forgiveness, and healing, Jon-David finally tells the story behind the title How I Killed My Mother.
When his mother's successful lung surgery is followed by a devastating and unexpected medical crisis, Jon-David travels to Northern California to help care for the woman who had become not only his mother, but one of his closest friends.
What follows challenges everything he thought he knew about love, guilt, faith, responsibility, and what it truly means to help someone at the end of life.
As his mother quietly reveals that she is ready to leave this world, Jon-David is forced to confront impossible questions that have no simple answers. Is honoring someone's wishes an act of love? Can guilt and compassion exist together? And how do we live with the choices we make when there is no perfect outcome?
With extraordinary honesty, humility, and tenderness, Jon-David shares the most difficult story he has ever told—not to provide answers, but to invite listeners into one of the most profound moments of his life.
This episode explores themes of:
• End-of-life caregiving
• Family love and responsibility
• Grief, guilt, and forgiveness
• Spirituality and personal faith
• Autonomy and dignity at the end of life
• The complexity of saying goodbye
• Love that continues beyond death
How I Killed My Mother is a memoir podcast about family, forgiveness, humor, spirituality, caregiving, and discovering that our greatest struggles can become our greatest teachers. If you enjoy memoir podcasts that blend heartfelt storytelling with humor, personal growth, and spiritual reflection, you're in the right place.
This chapter is the emotional heart of the memoir. Everything that came before has been leading here, and everything that follows grows from what Jon-David learned during these extraordinary final days with his mother.
Visit HowIKilledMyMother.com to learn more about the podcast, receive updates about the upcoming memoir, join the mailing list, and explore bonus content.
If this episode moves you, please follow the podcast, leave a review, and share it with someone who has loved, lost, cared for, or said goodbye to someone they will never forget.
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"I didn't kill my mother. I loved her enough to help her leave the way she wanted to."
— Jon-David

The Blog That Recorded the Beginning of Goodbye | How I Killed My Mother Podcast
Sometimes we don't realize we're documenting the beginning of the end until years later.
In this deeply reflective episode of How I Killed My Mother, Jon-David looks back on an unexpected project that would become one of the most important records of his life—a daily online journal called 50 Days of 50, written as he approached his fiftieth birthday.
At first, the blog was meant to be a humorous and honest look at aging, relationships, creativity, and life's unexpected detours. But everything changed when Jon-David's mother quietly revealed she was facing surgery.
As memories from the blog intertwine with present-day reflection, Jon-David revisits the remarkable friendship he and his mother had built during the twenty-eight years following family therapy. Along the way, he shares some of the most meaningful conversations they ever had—about love, relationships, identity, forgiveness, and the freedom to live an authentic life.
What begins as a story about writing gradually becomes something much more profound.
It's the realization that, without knowing it, Jon-David had already begun documenting the final chapter of his mother's life.
This episode explores themes of:
• Memoir writing and personal truth
• Mothers and adult friendship
• Relationships, love, and self-acceptance
• Creativity and storytelling
• Aging, change, and personal growth
• Anticipatory grief and intuition
• Cherishing the people we love while they're still here
How I Killed My Mother is a memoir podcast about family, forgiveness, humor, spirituality, caregiving, and discovering that our greatest struggles can become our greatest teachers. If you enjoy memoir podcasts that blend heartfelt storytelling with humor, personal growth, and spiritual reflection, you're in the right place.
This chapter also introduces the real-life blog that became an unexpected time capsule, preserving the conversations, emotions, and quiet moments that would later help Jon-David tell this story with honesty and compassion.
Visit HowIKilledMyMother.com to learn more about the podcast, receive updates about the upcoming memoir, join the mailing list, and explore bonus content. You'll also find links to Jon-David's earlier works, including Mafia Hairdresser, The Glow Stick Gods, and The Mafia Hairdresser Chronicles, which all connect to the larger story of his life.
If this episode reminds you to call someone you love—or to finally write down the stories you never want to forget—please follow the podcast, leave a review, and share it with someone who believes our memories become even more precious with time.
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"I thought I was writing about turning fifty. I was really preserving my mother's final chapter before either of us knew it had begun."
— Jon-David

The Therapy Session That Changed My Mother Without Her Ever Being There | How I Killed My Mother Podcast
The most important person in therapy... never showed up.
After years of conflict, resentment, and emotional distance, Jon-David reaches a breaking point. Convinced his relationship with his mother cannot survive without professional help, he issues an ultimatum: family counseling—or no more holidays, birthdays, or family gatherings.
His mother refuses.
Unexpectedly, his father says yes.
What follows becomes one of the most transformative experiences of Jon-David's life.
Together, father and son begin untangling years of hurt, misunderstanding, guilt, and misplaced expectations. But the greatest surprise isn't what they discover about Marie, Jon-David's mother.
It's what they discover about themselves.
Guided by an extraordinary therapist, Jon-David learns one of the most life-changing lessons of his adult life: forgiveness is not something we wait to receive—it is something we choose to give.
As old resentments begin to dissolve, a new relationship slowly emerges. One built not on winning arguments or rewriting the past, but on empathy, honest communication, and the courage to love someone exactly as they are.
This episode explores themes of:
• Family therapy and emotional healing
• Forgiveness and personal responsibility
• Father-son relationships
• Parents, communication, and understanding
• Letting go of resentment
• The power of empathy
• Choosing love over being right
How I Killed My Mother is a memoir podcast about family, forgiveness, humor, spirituality, caregiving, and discovering that our greatest struggles can become our greatest teachers. If you enjoy memoir podcasts that blend heartfelt storytelling with humor, personal growth, and spiritual reflection, you're in the right place.
This chapter represents one of the memoir's defining turning points. The lessons Jon-David learns in therapy become the foundation for every meaningful relationship that follows—including the remarkable reconciliation with his mother that gives this memoir its heart.
Visit HowIKilledMyMother.com to learn more about the podcast, receive updates about the upcoming book, join the mailing list, and explore bonus content.
If this episode reminds you that healing often begins when we stop trying to change someone else, please follow the podcast, leave a review, and share it with someone who may need the courage to forgive—not because the past changes, but because the future can.
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"Forgiveness wasn't something my mother owed me. It was a gift I finally gave myself."
— Jon-David