Episode Summary
Imagine standing at the crossroads of change, holding the weight of grief in one hand and the hope for healing in the other. Life is full of transitions—some we celebrate, others we endure. How do we mark the moments that shape us? How do we find meaning in the spaces where loss and growth meet?
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About the Show
Shame Piñata is hosted by Ritual Artist Colleen Thomas, a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher who helps people make sense of life through ceremony. Music by Terry Hughes.
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Full Transcript
Imagine standing at the crossroads of change, holding the weight of grief in one hand and the hope for healing in the other. Life is full of transitions—some we celebrate, others we endure. How do we mark the moments that shape us? How do we find meaning in the spaces where loss and growth meet?
This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. Welcome to episode 3 in our 4-part series looking back on the wisdom we have gained from our guests about the power of ceremony. Last season we talked about Rites of Passage and Authentic Weddings and today we will focus on Grief and Loss.
Before we start, I want to acknowledge and honor any personal grief or tenderness that you might be carrying today. If you happened upon this episode while searching for a balm for your heart, know that you are welcome. This space is for you. I hope you find something meaningful in our time together, something that speaks to you or sparks your creativity, something that resonates with you and brings some lightness or joy. Thank you for being here exactly as you are.
Losses come in so many shapes and sizes. There are the obvious ones, like losing someone we love, and there are the smaller and less obvious ones, like the conclusion of a long-term project we put our heart into or the end of a show we’ve been performing in. While smaller, these kinds of losses are still significant.
In the first episode in this retrospective series, we talked about a bunch of life transitions, such as leaving home to go off to college, getting married, or arriving at the empty nest stage. Each transition in life involves a bit of loss - even the “happier” ones like having a baby. There’s loss in all of these transitions because there’s change in all of them. Change involves loss. And most of us live in a society that doesn’t really do loss, doesn’t really do grief, and so it’s easy to feel a bit abandoned by society when there’s some kind of important loss happening for us. This can be true for the smaller personal losses we might not have words for, but it can even happen with the well-recognized ones. Being surrounded by friends and family at the funeral is one thing but that is often followed by a long path toward making peace with a loss on our own. This makes it even more important that we know our grief, and welcome it, and that we can find ways to make room for it, because a lot of the nurturing we can receive might need to come from us ourselves.
A question I often wonder about is: What does it look like to nurture myself through grief? How can I fill the gaps between what society can offer and what my heart needs? Well, today I have some answers to share with you from our former guests and how they each made it through a significant personal loss.
Let’s start off by listening to a bit of Alicia Connor’s story. Alicia was a guest in season 2 and she shared a very personal story with us, a story of realizing that she would someday lose her vision, and that that day might be sooner than she hoped. One of the first ways this change affected her life was around driving. She told us the story of her last drive, which actually turned out to be a 3,000 mile journey from Rhode Island to California.
Connor: I actually remember my last drive as like, like, an adventure, like it was fun. We set the date for January 1 we are going to leave the East Coast and start driving toward San Francisco. And what's interesting is around that time period, it was just that year, I had been diagnosed with hypoplasia of the optic nerve at the Rhode Island Eye Institute. And it was interesting that… it was… it was that year, right? Like I was diagnosed with this vision loss condition that was genetic, and told, like, I'm not gonna be able to drive someday but I didn't know when that was. And I could see well then and I could drive then and so it wasn't a problem at that moment, but it was an imminent problem.
Alicia did take that drive. And it ended on Haight Street in San Francisco.
Connor: But I remember when I parked that van, that I was like, "This is maybe the last time I'm going to drive." Like I just had that feeling. I was like, "This is it, I'm gonna not drive. This is happening soon. And like me in the van... like that's it.” And it wasn't something that I was like freaked out about. And I think it was because I could see well then.
Thomas: Yeah. So you're sort of in… like an empowered place within the realm…
Connor: Exactly. In control. And it's much easier to make, it's like if you're grounded and you're like, "Okay, this is the... it's on my side… like this is my decision now." Instead of the external. Like say, some people experience vision loss, very dramatic, right? There's an event and so can be very stressful and that's because it happened very quickly. There was no preparation for it, and so that's a totally different situation and that is much more challenging.
Alicia shared a great deal more in her interview about how she processed the loss, but she never lost her sense of adventure and self-care.
Connor: Letting yourself go through the transition and feel the feelings. Because sometimes transition can produce or increase anxiety, but that's the unknown and the fear of unknown. And things usually work out. We have a choice, like... like… go the fearful, anxiety-ridden, intense route and just kind of be a monster or... [LAUGHS] and not approachable or we could, you know, go through life and experience it, because there's a lot to experience and enjoy - much more to experience and enjoy the struggles.
[music]
Another question I often wonder about is - how long will grief take? When something really big happens, a big loss that forces me to come to terms with the reality of the situation, and go through the deep grieving, I want to know how long that will take! Even though I went through some loss as a young adult, it wasn’t until my dad passed away that I got my first exposure to some basic grief education. I remember the day that my Hospice counselor gave me a handout illustrating all of the ways grief can show up. The list really blew my mind. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting… probably something along the lines of crying and being depressed for a while. But this list was so much more inclusive and included things like confusion, difficulty focusing, fatigue, insomnia, weak muscles, and joint pain. I was surprised to find that many were true for me. I remember that during the first few weeks after that huge loss, I felt like I was walking through jell-o. Nothing seemed real. And even though I was in so much pain, I also couldn’t really feel anything. As time went on and I returned to my day-to-day life, there was a period after the jell-o phase where I felt my insides were on the outside. I was super sensitive to fluorescent lights and I could only get my brain to think in a straight line for about an hour at a time - and my body would tell me when that hour had passed by giving me chest pains. Walking around the block seemed to give me that extra space to breathe, so I did that every hour for several weeks. It was kind of like juggling two opposite worlds and ways of being: the bright, click-click along of daily life, and the amorphous blob of heartbreak. They didn’t mix very well so I had to intentionally create time for all of the heart work my body was doing, all of the intentional grief work I was doing alongside the regular day-to-day.
They say everyone responds to loss differently, and everyone responds to every loss differently, so I knew I just needed to keep carving out space and time for my heart to do its thing. But I also often wondered, how long will this take?? So, as you can imagine, I was grateful to explore this question a bit with Irisanya Moon in season 5. She shared a theory with me, one she had been piecing together for herself over the years.
Moon: I would say… the first thing I would say is like how long has it been since this has all happened? Because what I think I know is that it takes years. The first year is the year of shock. Absolute shock, nothing makes sense anymore. To a certain extent, if you're not feeling all the things and you're not sort of grieving actively, that makes sense. Because it's just a shock. You're just going through the motions. Going through the day by day. Figuring out what life looks like without a person or a situation or whatever. And this goes not just death. And then the second year is when it hits. And at least again, not a perfect formula, but I know for me the second year was always like I felt everything because now I knew what was going to come. I knew about the anniversaries. I knew about people saying things that were ill-timed and I knew that I was gonna have another year of remembering how bad our culture is at grief and handling that and holding that. And then the third year, it just gets easier. It starts to make sense, it starts to get integrated. It's not that the pain goes away, but you kind of understand that it's there. And that it's… why it's there, and how it might show up. And for some reason, that third year for me usually is like, “Oh, okay.” And, “Alright, I have to figure out how to build a life around this,” if I haven't already. But that's kind of the formula and it really has worked with most of my things. So I'm curious if other folks decide to look back and go, “Is that true? Did that actually happen?” It also was really helpful for me, because it defined time. I could go like, okay, because some of the one of the things I hate as a Sagittarius or just as me, is that I don't mind going through stuff. Can you tell me how long? Because that would be great. You know, is this going to hurt forever? So by having sort of a container, it does also go like, “Okay, I can get through this next month. Year.” Yeah, I mean, it's worked with deaths, and my divorce and all of that it’s been really consistent with. So hopefully, that helps somebody. It helped me tremendously.
After the break we’ll hear an inspiring story about the healing power of community after a breakup, and take a deep dive into the wisdom of our dreams.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to today's show! Whether this is your first or your 50th episode, it's always wonderful to have you along. If there is something changing in your world right now, some shift you're going through, know you're not alone. Shame Piñata will continue bringing you stories to inspire your own creative response to a changing self. Subscribe today in your favorite player!
One super important part of making it through grief is the people we choose to surround ourselves with and how honest we are with them about what kind of support we need. Catherine Monahon sat down with us in season 2 to share a wonderful story of how their community showed up during a breakup. Sometimes friends showed up in little ways that had a big impact, as Catherine shared in this story.
Monahon: When I got there and people were helping me with all my stuff I looked at the bed and it's like a different size bed than I'm used to, you know, sharing a space with another person. I was used to a larger bed. And I just didn't even have sheets to put on it. And she was helping me move and she was just like, "Let me run down the street to my house. I have an extra set of sheets." And yes, I could have gone to Bed, Bath and Beyond or ordered some sheets online. But in that moment, it was so bleak. Looking at that mattress on the floor that was this... the wrong size for a single person, you know? Or the wrong size for what I was used to. And she went down the street with... like within 15 minutes... materialized with sheets that she... I still have them... they’re these dark, velvety purple sheets that I associate with that time. They're really soft and I will forever be grateful to her for that. So just people showing up in different ways, small ways that they probably don't even realize still.... I still think about it today.
Other times friends showed up for Catherine in longer-term ways, such as two friends who saw them through the liminal space between the relationship and being on their own again.
Monahon: My time with Amos and Eirik was very enriching. Even though I was sleeping in their living room, it was a very cozy space, there were plants everywhere. And they are both very into food. And I had a pretty bad relationship with food at that time. I hadn't been eating from grief, and just in general wasn't really eating fresh fruits or vegetables. And they are both vegans. And they sort of reintroduced like, fresh, delicious, seasonal food into my life just because it was all around me and they would share with me. They had plants that Eirik adored and cared for, and we always would talk about the plants and notice their growth. It was a very zen and peaceful place to be. And they're both super sensitive queers who are totally down to hold space or emotions, which was a major added bonus. So during that time, I was basically going to school doing homework, crying in the kitchen, eating fresh fruit, looking at plants and searching for housing.
These were just two stories of the many friends who showed up for Catherine during that transition. Toward the end of the transition, when Catherine was set up in their new place and had slept on those purple sheets, Catherine gathered all of these friends together at a brunch to acknowledge that the transition was complete, and to thank them for their support by sharing a map with them showing exactly how important and impactful their support had been.
Monahon: So I invited nine people two weeks beforehand and three of them couldn't come. So the people who couldn't come, I texted them a picture of their part of the map that I had made. And I still, like thanked them and told them why... I even invited my friend Liz, who lives in Philadelphia. I knew that they couldn't come. But the invitation they got it.
Thomas: So what was the map like?
Monahon: So the brunch was kind of like: I had moved twice. It had been three months. And so the map that I made was essentially just a list of memories. Everybody had, like, you know, a bunch of green dots of like, highlighted dates. You know, August 22, we went camping. August 3, I had that meltdown in public and my brother gave me an omelette, or something. And so... if like my three friends who couldn't come, I took a picture of their part of that list I had made and was like, “Hey, you know, you really showed up for me in these ways and I really appreciate that about you.”
Thomas: Wow. That would be such a nice thing to receive, to have somebody like, remember some random thing that I did, or that happened between us like writing it down and putting a date on it and sending it to me as part of like a thank you or acknowledgement. That's so thoughtful!
Monahon: You just don't know how big of a deal it is when you do something like that. Like for you, it might be a couple hours of your morning on a Saturday and your friend's cat has died. And for them, it's like, I'll never forget that Colleen showed up on this made up scenario. [LAUGHS] But like, yeah, I think, yeah, what? They got me through it.
We have one final story to share with you today, and it touches on the wisdom from our deeper self that can come to us through our dreams. Dreams can provide subtle hints, symbolic messages, or even a-ha moments of clarity about what’s going on in the depths of our hearts. They might even reveal emotions we haven’t fully acknowledged or point us toward a deeper understanding of the journey we’re on. Tristy Taylor joined us in season 2 to tell us about her decision to let go of the idea of having children and how her dream life supported her through that heartwrenching time.
Taylor: It does start with the journey my husband and I were on to make a baby together. And after trying the usual routes and discovering that nothing was happening, we entered the world of fertility treatments, medical intervention and all signs started to point to this was gonna be painful and challenging and not really get us where we wanted to be. And my husband and I talked for a long time about what that choice meant to be child-free. And being someone who really tries to show up to what's happening in my life, regardless whether or not I understand it, I realized that I needed to honor this loss and to really allow some space and time. And being an interfaith minister, I read a lot about all sorts of rituals and I had recently read a really beautiful piece about the modern day of sitting shiva for someone who had passed away from the Jewish tradition. And, knowing that shiva means seven, seven days and I really like felt the like ritual power behind that. I mean, it's a ritual... but that seven days like I really felt how... to devote seven straight days to my grief where grief came first and nothing else had precedence over my sitting inside of my grief... My whole body just resonated with that. I just was like, Yes, that's what we're gonna do!
During the time of sitting shiva with her grief, Tristy had a dream. In the dream, she was out in the snow looking into a kind of hut, a hut that felt very ancient. Inside the hut women dressed in animal skins were gathered around a very, very pregnant woman, putting oils on her and celebrating her. There was a fire in the hut but Tristy was outside in the cold and she knew through the knowledge that comes in dreams that she was not allowed into the ritual because she was not fertile and she would be bad energy for the pregnant space.
Taylor: And I woke up crying, and hurt, very hurt by the dream. And I also know from doing dream work all my life that no dream ever comes to hurt us and be like, "Look at you, you know, you're stuck. Haha!" You know... Our dreams always come for health and wholeness. And so I really sat with the dream. I drew pictures from the dream... I felt into it. And and the gift that came out of the dream, cause I do think all nightmares have a gift. The gift that came out of the dream was this idea for an unbaby shower. Because it didn't feel fair to me that I should be left out in the cold. And this transition that I was making is just as valuable as the transition of becoming a mother, the transition to not be a mother.
This was only part of the story of Tristy’s transition. You can hear all about the various stages of Tristy’s amazing grief work by listening to her original episode. In fact, you can here more from each of the guests you heard from today in our archive. Check the show notes for a link to our collection of episodes on Grief and Loss.
I hope that some of the stories we shared today are inspirational and that they might help you feel into if ceremony, or ritual, or just an intentional something-or-other might help you make sense of a loss, or find yourself again after a loss, or even rediscover hidden threads of connection between you and whatever you might have lost.
We will have more episodes soon offering new stories from creative, talented individuals who turn to intentional actions to make it through something big. You might even get to tell your story if you created something you would like to share. If that’s you, contact us through our website, shamepinata dot com.
Our music is by Terry Hughes. Find us on YouTube and IG at shamepinata. Reach us through our website, shamepinata dot com. And subscribe to the show on your favorite player. Also be sure to check out “Everyday Magic for Ukraine”, our ongoing series of 10-minute meditations that support you as you support Ukraine. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.
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