Transcript: Player's Own Voice podcast with Dina Bell-Laroche

Transcript: Dina Bell Laroche on Player's own Voice podcast

Anastasia:  After thirty years of work in Canadian Sports, mostly on the communication side, Dina Bell-Laroche   has witnessed her share of lows and highs. But the event that changed the course of her career was the death of her sister, nearly twenty years ago.  The grief and her sports experience led Dina to a unique discipline…she coaches and counsels athletes dealing with loss in its many forms.

With national athletes everywhere encountering the Post Olympic Blues right now, this is a good moment for some clear thinking about love and loss.

 It's Player's Own Voice.  I'm Anastasia Bucsis

[music]

Anastasia: Thank you so much for joining me. I'm going to butcher this introduction, so just in your own words, what do you do?

Dina Bell-Laroche: I own a company now called Sport Law, but in my heart, I'm an integral coach and that means I get to accompany people in their life transitions and one of those life transitions is helping people work through grief after they've suffered through a loss. And I have a lot to share about that with you. But yeah, I've been an advocate for a more humanistic approach to Canadian sport since I first entered in 1991, and I haven't really looked back since then.

Anastasia: We chatted about two months ago and you gave me more clarity on my future than I think I've ever received. But why sport, why sport and marrying it with grief and loss?

Dina Bell-Laroche: You know, I worked in sport for the first 15 years, right? So I served on five Olympic teams as either the press chief or a media attache and then a dozen other games. And so  I've had this long standing love affair with Canadian Sport since I was nine and that was during the