S4 E8 How Long Does Grief Take? (Irisanya Moon)

September 1, 2023

Episode Summary

Episode Resources

→ Irisanya Moon: https://www.irisanyamoon.com

Episodes by Topic

→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage

→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings

→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss

→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times

Support the Show

→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata

→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp

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.

Listen If

→ You’re feeling stuck

→ You’re going through a tough time

→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it

Love Shame Piñata?
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Follow on Spotify
Follow on Instagram | Connect on Facebook
Join us for a Ceremony | Follow on Podchaser

Full Transcript

Moon: I think death has always been a really great, so to speak force in my life, it has been the thing that has pushed me forward to do things that I might not have done. Or taught me that I can get through really hard things.

A significant loss can come in many shapes and sizes and has the power to change us at a fundamental level. That rebirthing we go through after a big loss is so important and can also be so painful. Two questions that can often come to mind are: “How long will this take?” and “Can I make it through?” This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions.

The journey of losing someone or something important can have such a step-by-step quality, moment to moment, one foot in front of the other. Just keep going. Does this sound familiar? Does your body resonate with these feelings? [SIGHS] Yeah. Today we’re going to talk about grief and loss and explore what one woman’s journey has looked like. Our guest is Irisanya Moon, who, if you’re a regular listener to Shame Piñata, you will remember from last month, when she joined us for a conversation about discomfort as ally.

I think it’s worth saying before we begin that every loss can have two time aspects. A feeling of not being okay in this moment and a fear of never being okay again. I believe these are separate and yet both legitimate feelings to have. And it’s the latter that can, in my experience, be the real kicker. So please join us for this conversation today, where we look at the bigger picture of making sense of loss over time. Here’s my first question to Irisanya.

Thomas: Do you remember what's the first time you became aware of the concept of something being a rite of passage?

Moon: Yeah, I was in my last year of college and I was friends with this one man named Jim. And we had dated a while ago and all of that… we sort of fell out of contact, and I got a message from my best friend, because we were all still friends, that he was in the hospital. And he's 22. He had, like, a really bad sore throat and then suddenly within a week he died.

Thomas: Wow.

Moon: And to have someone that felt so young, and was so young at that point, to have them die so quickly without any warning, really altered me and I think the moment that I recognized that was a rite of passage was… When you go to funerals of 20 year olds, it is horrifying. It's shocking to the system. It is everybody that they went to high school with. It is everybody that was on, like, the football team with this one… this person. Particularly, it is football players crying. It is all of that. And for me, it was the recognition that this can happen at any time and that my life is important now, as much as it is, you know, looking back on it. And it actually thrust me into a couple of decisions that were very important for my life at that stage. If he hadn't died, I wouldn't have decided to go in a certain direction with some of my relationships, or to go in some of the directions that I did with writing. So it sort of thrust me into that. And I think that that was one of my many rites of passage, slash initiations, slash like really just altering events.

Thomas: So that moment landed for you as a rite of passage because of the ceremony, or because it was a surprise, or it was such a big change in his life journey…

Moon: I think it was all of those things. I don't think that there's ever just one thing. I think that firstly, the dramatic impact of that moment, and the… Throughout the week, there was a slow progression of like, “Everything's okay. No, it's not. It is. It’s not.” And that was back in the day of pagers. So we all used to get like, paged on this and there was also a moment at one point where, you know, like, “Do you want to go see him?” And I didn't. I could not. I… that I was, whatever I was 20 something maybe I was a couple years younger than him. I couldn't do it. The idea of seeing somebody was just too much for me at that moment. So it was the process, and then also that ceremony and that being at the wake. Because I don't… I know that we went to church, but I can't remember that as well. But the wake it was just, you know, people everywhere and watching people figure out how to deal with this in this moment was instrumental and then everything that happened after that was part of it too. And to this day, it still, it still impacts me in some ways. His… the anniversary of that was actually about a week ago when we're recording this, and it's been like 24 years since then.

Thomas: So that was your first experience of death?

Moon: Now it's not the first experience of death. That was the first one that was really the most impactful. I… My grandparents died when I was younger, but I didn't have a close relationship with them. And while it was definitely something I can still remember, I can still remember seeing, you know, because they had open caskets and everything. And that was, you know, as a child that is strange and, but not upsetting. It just felt like, “Okay, that's grandma or whoever”. It just didn't upset me. But somebody that I knew and I knew really well, I had dated, you know, my first kiss… You know, all of the things… was just more real than it has been than my family had been. I never saw them, I hung out with this guy, and, you know, back in the day, smoked cigarettes and drove around the Midwest and played pool halls and all that stuff. And so, like, it was a little different and it was, it was the idea that somebody my age, I could go through that too. And, you know, people who are “old” when I was younger. (Now I feel really bad ever saying that!) You know, like, that was different. That's so far away. So that's not really a thing. That's what happens to people, you know, who have gray hair like me now. So yeah, I think that it's… I mean, there's plenty of deaths that I've been through that have been really instrumental. But that was the first one and I was.. it impacted me so much. I actually got pulled over because I was driving I guess radically after… I got pulled over and like, late at night after all of the food and everything. And had to tell and I was telling the police officer what happened and then he was like, “Okay, you can go.”

Thomas: Wow.

That was a huge rite of passage for Irisanya. Her first experience of someone her age passing away. Someone young. Someone who was not supposed to die. Death can be difficult to make sense of at any age, but especially when the person we lose was someone so dear to us, and someone so young.

After growing up and experiencing more loss and particularly speaking with a friend who had also gone through a lot of loss, Irisanya got to a point where she felt like she had a kind of formula of how loss worked for her. She said it’s not a perfect recipe but it’s been consistent for her. Now, keep in mind that there’s no universal formula for how to grieve and there’s absolutely no way to grieve incorrectly, but that said, it’s interesting to hear what other people notice about how grief shows up in their life.

Thomas: Cool. So if I came to you, and I said that, I don't know what to do. What would you… what might you tell me?

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.

Thomas: But I have to say, that's not super comforting for me in this moment, because I'm about to enter the second year of my mom being gone in a couple weeks. And I feel like the first year there were moments where I was just like, “I'm not feeling anything, and I think that's normal. But I feel like I should be doing something right now besides not feeling anything.” And it's making me think about some teachings I've been getting lately about digesting, you know, having time to digest transition, because it sounds like that's what the formula is. It's like, “Oh, my God, something happened”. And then, “Owe!” once I can feel it, right? And then it's like, “Okay, yeah, I've somehow, in the background, started to make a little sense of this. And it's not so weird now.” if that's even possible, right?

Moon: Right. I know. Right? I think that… yeah. I mean, blessings on the second year. I will not, I won't say that it was horrible the whole time. I would say that… I would say that… you know, it's… I think I was… I think I was ready to feel more. I think that that's probably what's true, for me at least, is that by the second year, I had worn down my defenses and my sort of like, “I can hold this together, and I can make it through the first anniversary of blah, blah, blah.” And by the second year, like, “I have to do this again”. And it's the realization of, “I'm gonna have to do this every year.” And it's a lot.

Thomas: Yeah.

Moon: But the third, I mean, it does happen eventually. And I think, you know, I think many of us if not all of us understand that on some level that it will eventually, sort of lessen. And just as like, the seasons change, the moon changes, all of that, everything changes and moves. So. Care for yourself wildly. Care for yourself in all the ways I developed quite a cupcake addiction for a minute, and I think that that was helpful for a minute. It was good. And then, mmm… Maybe we need to find something else. I thought my mom would be proud. She probably was. “Good job.”

Thomas: Proud that you're eating cupcakes are proud that you decided to stop?

Moon: Proud that I… probably both. She was a big fan of you know, indulge yourself. You work too hard. And also like, okay, reel it in! I think she would have said, I want you to grieve for an appropriate amount of time. But not forever.

Thomas: Yeah, totally.

[MUSIC]

Thomas: Well, to change gears slightly, I was curious. A question I sit with a lot. And I was wondering what you would think is, what do you think of the role of the witness? What's the role of the witness?

Moon: I think, first of all, it's a very important role that I want to say that first and foremost, I think that it is powerful to have someone else sit with you and not flinch. To have someone that can sit with you and not try to talk you through it, or try to say it's going to be okay. I think it's important to have someone just be there. Because that offers safety and it offers not comfort, necessarily, it does offer safety. And it offers the opportunity to know that you're not alone in this. And for me, that is the most important thing of any of this grief work and any actually any work, that you're not alone in the things you face. It's going to feel like it. But calling it a witness… it's also not something you necessarily need another person for like a human, like you can call in a whole bunch of different witnesses. And you can also be your own witness. But it's also like it is like sort of hopeful that you find someone that's outside of you. But it can also be a deity. It could be a tree, it could be whatever you want, right? Tell the tree what's going on and just be there. And allow yourself to be held in that. And I want to, like something that's just really bringing me in this moment is that… get the right witness. Because it really is important to have somebody who doesn't tell you what to do, doesn’t make a judgment, doesn't even I would hope not say anything, but just like just be there and sit with it until until. Because it might not feel better. But at least it won't feel invisible anymore.

Thomas: And that I think is where people who are witnessing or even just with us in our lives can have a hard time as if it doesn't feel better. If they feel like their role is to help us get through a hard whatever. And then that will mean that at the end of our five minutes or half an hour together, that we're smiling and we're ready to move on. And, and that's, you know, so not always… And sometimes I've found in situations I had to sort of pretend that everything was good to like, get somebody to feel like it. So that's not the ideal.

Moon: Not ideal. No, I mean, again, it's that discomfort, right? Yeah, like I… There's this one poem, the, the invitation by Oriah mountain dreamer and one of the lines goes something to the effect of like, “I want to know if you can sit with my pain and yours without trying to rush into fix it or save me save it…”, something like that. And yeah, I want to know if you could just sit with mine and sit with yours and just be here. There's nothing actually to fix. This is just something that's happened. I mean, I've never been sad forever. I haven’t, at least so far. And I've never been happy forever. It'll move.

It was at this point in our conversation that I realized that sitting with discomfort is profoundly anti-capitalist. Because at least American society is based on: Buy this, feel better. Buy that, feel better. Get this treatment, look better. Find a partner, feel better. It's all about happiness.

Moon: It’s all about seeking comfort… seeking… Comfort that it is temporary. And easy to be bought again.

Thomas: Right. Good point. Yes.

Moon: Here's the next thing. And here's the next thing because it does feel like it helps. And I'm not gonna say that I haven’t indulged in a little, you know, retail therapy to feel better sometimes. Sure. Refer to my cupcake therapy.

Thomas: I love that. Well Happy Mother's Day to you.

Moon: Yeah. Happy Mother's Day to you, too. What a day, right? Yeah, I spent… I went to the beach this morning because they usually do that on Mother's Day. And, you know, kind of talked with her for a little bit. And then… this is this is a funny story. So I got back to my car and my car wouldn’t start.

Thomas: Oh, wow.

Moon: And I was like, “Oh, no!. And of course, it's Mother's Day. So it took like a good hour and a half for somebody to get to me, to like, help me with my car. And after I hung up with them, I was texting a friend. I was like, “Gosh, I can't believe this is happening.” And I was like, “Oh no, I didn't invoke my dead mother in that phone call!” Because usually I would say something like, “Well, you know, my mom died. Can't you just… I'm really upset, can’t you like bring somebody?” She would have been great with that. She would have been fantastic with that. She's… I mean, you know, for everything that parents may put us through. I'm like, that is the least they can do. And that's what I texted my friend and said, and they were like, “Oh, totally!” because they lost their mom a few years ago too. And then I realized, I sort of took a breath and was like, “Oh, I'm in a different stage of grief.” Because it's not the first thing I thought of.

Thomas: I thought you were gonna say you invoked your mom and your car started.

Moon: I mean, that would have been a cooler story. But if… that would have been a real witchy story. But alas. Alas, I did not. I would have been sweet.

Thomas: Standing there with the red and the black cables. “Okay mom - ready! Do your thing!”

Moon: If my mom was there, she would be like, “Why don't you know how to use these?” “That's why we have AAA, mom!” Right now… So it was a fun moment… I was like I'm definitely going to bring that to this.

Thomas: Thank you, yeah.

I hope that, wherever you are on your journey after a significant loss, that you are finding ways to take care of yourself. Whether that is cupcakes or anything else that really makes you feel loved. It’s important that you know you’re not alone on your journey. So many people are making their way through loss today. And also, your loss and your experience of this particular loss is as unique as you are. So find your people, reach out if you need help, and, in the words of Irisanya, care for yourself wildly!

Irisanya Moon is an author, Witch, priestess, teacher, and initiate in the Reclaiming tradition. She is passionate about the idea that life is and we are a love spell, a dance of desire and connection, a moving in and out of the heart, always returning to love. Irisanya cultivates spaces of radical acceptance to foster trust and liberation to remind people they are not alone.

Our music is by Terry Hughes. Find us on IG and Twitter at shamepinata. Reach us through our website, shamepinata.com. And subscribe to the show on your favorite player. Also be sure to check out our second show, Daily Magic for Peace, supporting you as you support Ukraine. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

S4 E6 Surviving the First Year

July 7, 2023

Episode Summary

If you or someone you know is in an emotional crisis, reach out to the National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing or texting 988.

Episodes by Topic

→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage

→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings

→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss

→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times

Support the Show

→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata

→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp

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.

Listen If

→ You’re feeling stuck

→ You’re going through a tough time

→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it

Love Shame Piñata?
Subscribe on iTunes | Follow on Spotify
Follow on Instagram | Connect on Facebook
Join us for a Ceremony | Follow on Podchaser

Full Transcript

The first year after a significant loss can be so hard. As the wheel turns and the light changes, visceral memories can arise of this time last year when things were different. How do we create space for our hearts as we go through a year of firsts?

This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Just a quick note before we begin that I talk in this episode about how I felt right after my loved one passed away. If you are in a tender place, take care.

Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. So this is a follow-up to an episode from last season called "Surviving a Recent Loss". If you heard that episode, you know that my mom passed away last year. At the time that episode was recorded, we were just back from the funeral, the burial, the immediate time of saying good-bye. Those moments when the visceral memory of my mother's hand in mine was only a week old.

I mentioned in that episode that I needed more time sitting on the porch looking at the clouds - and I took that time. I intentionally stepped back from several beloved projects and made time in my schedule for me. For my heart. For my broken heart. Not in a dramatic way, but in a realistic, attentive, and responsive way.

I discovered that what I most needed was space. Space to feel. Space to remember. Space to breathe. Space to cry. Space to just be. I needed to find and trust my flow. To let myself drift toward whatever felt right. Some days it was sitting on the porch watching the birds. Some evenings it was photographing the changing light as the sun set. Some nights it was getting lost in my new favorite hobby, learning Ukrainian on Duolingo. In those moments when I had lost my flow, I asked myself, “What defies the call to get things done? What creates space for my heart? What feels right?”

There's something very special in carving out time when the heart needs it. Something that's actually counter-cultural because, at least in The United States, we're asked to be little capitalist robots who keep working no matter what. And as I really made a concerted effort to carve out space and time and my whole system was like, "Yes!" My heart, my head, and my whole body just kept giving me feedback that they so needed extra space and time. It's truly amazing how much bandwidth grieving takes up! It's called grief work for a reason!

A good friend of mine inspired me some years back by taking a trip to Brazil right after her mom died. And I don't mean like a week. I mean months. She kind of just went to Brazil to heal. I thought, wow, what an amazing way to create a container for the start of that new journey of life-on-earth-without-Mom. What a great way to disconnect from the day-to-day, and replace it with daily adventures and new experiences. Going someplace new, being a fish out of water, almost becoming a new person - because that's what's really happening when we lose someone, right? That essential connection being broken makes us a different person. There’s a necessary rebalancing, rebuilding, a recreating of self. And wow, what a great way to mirror that newness than to go live in a new place or switch it up somehow.

The first year after someone passes can be the most intense. I know it doesn't always magically get better after year one, but something about that first year can be like trial by fire. Especially because the wheel keeps turning and before you know it, there's a holiday, or an anniversary, or a birthday - another one of those poignant moments when the pain of that loved one being gone can be so awful. A year of firsts.

I hit my first first two days after my mom died. My first birthday w/out her. I just kept telling people, “Not this year. No. Later. Not now.” I even replayed a video of my mom singing happy birthday to me and felt nothing. It was a horrible day.

The next one was Thanksgiving. No thank you. I felt no desire to be around people and put on a happy face. My husband went to join the family and I stayed home alone. While that might sound sad, it actually turned out to be a beautiful day. Being on my own gave me space and time to do what I really needed to do which was to be with Mom. I spent the day chatting with her as if she was around, just kind of telling her what was going on, what I was seeing out the window, what I was making to eat, things I wanted to catch her up on. It was kind of like an all-day phone call with a quietly attentive companion and it turned out that it was exactly what I needed: a full day with mom.

Then came Christmas. I thought about Christmas a lot and especially how my mom handled Christmas when she became a widow. We’d always celebrated Christmas at her house, but the first two years after dad died, she didn't want to be in the house at Christmas. No way. No how. Did not want to be there. So so came out to be with me instead. The third year, she was ready to be at home again (granted it was a new house, but she was ready) but she wanted a man around. She was very clear about that. So she asked me to come home and bring my husband. After that, she was able to have Christmas at home again, but that was three years of strategic holiday planning and asking for exactly what she needed. Three years. That was something she modeled for me. Taking her time. Asking for what she needed.

So this Christmas I reached for a new thing, something to consciously step away from the traditions that had been taken from me. No tree. No ornaments. No family. Instead, my husband and I went on retreat and had a very quiet and simple day together sleeping in late and opening a couple presents in the sun. Just the two of us. I think there might have been a wreath somewhere, but that was it. It was really good.

The wheel has turned full circle now and the light is falling just the way it did when she left us. My heart is still broken and will never fully heal. But I can smile again and even mean it. And mostly, I’m so grateful to have survived the first hellish year. In hindsight, the worst part was my anticipation of the many special days. The actual days were tender but bearable - it was mainly the concept that I would be facing them without her that was the hardest on my heart.

MUSIC

So how has ritual been a part of my journey in this first year on my own? Well, I mentioned in the “Surviving a Recent Loss” episode about the "I Know What To Do" ring that helped me make decisions during the process of dealing with lawyers and insurance companies. I also mentioned my daily meditation practice at the workspace altar. I suppose that, like those, most of my rituals have developed out of necessity, a kind of follow-the-heart approach. Feeling into what needs to be felt, and who I would like to have there alongside me while I feel it.

Here's a look into three rituals that came about in this way.

Ritual #1: Mom Joins Us on Zoom. Around the 6-month mark, I hosted a Zoom call for Mom's friends. This was a loosely facilitated gathering which allowed me to surround myself with her inner circle to share some memories. At the end of the gathering, I played a short recording I’d made of Mom and me on a different Zoom call, one in which mom sang me a bit of a song she loved from a 1950’s musical. I shared it that day with her friends so we could all hear her voice again and see her in a happy moment sharing something she loved. What I didn’t anticipate was that on the video, the one with Mom, after she sang the song, Mom and I had said good-bye. And since I shared this video clip at the end of the group call, it had the unintended effect of Mom saying goodbye to the group. “Bye, love you! Talk to you Tuesday." It was unexpected and just lovely. There were many tears.

Ritual #2: The Magic Mom Ball. When mom entered Hospice care, I began collecting the little random things she said during the day, so I wouldn't forget them. Just simple things, like "I love you" or "You're good at that." Once she had passed away, I sat down, looked through them, and picked my favorite ones. I then ordered a custom Magic 8 Ball on Esty. I call it The Magic Mom Ball and it sits near her photo in its little box. To be honest, I haven't actually used it yet. I'm still in the phase where all I want to do is hurl it out the window as soon as I pick it up, so I can safely say I'm not ready. But I imagine that someday it will be a nice way to hear her voice again, so to speak, randomly telling me things in 32 characters or less.

I'll close with Ritual 3: Shouting from the Rooftop. It's actually a bit personal of a story but feels significant, so here is my telling of it, partially through speaking with you now and partially through playing a voice note I recorded to document at the time. This was a spontaneous ritual early on that helped me give voice to that immediate grief I was swimming in right after the funeral. It allowed me to shout out my pain and be heard in a way that I’ll never forget.

Shortly after we returned home from the funeral, I pulled out the video game "Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild". Breath of the Wild is an open-world game where the main character, who's called Link, wanders around the land of Hyrule doing questy-things and avoiding monsters. Link is pretty much on his own all the time, but he lives within a community of non-player characters, townspeople, monsters, and his trusty horse, which he can call to his side by whistling. That day, just back from the funeral, when I switched on the when I switched on the console, Link was hanging out in the last place we'd been, a little seaside community called Lurelin Village, a place with a cheerful little Caribbean theme song. While I normally find that song soothing, that day I didn't want to be in Lurelin Village didn't want to hear that theme song. It seems too happy. Here's the voice note.

So I left and I went up out of the village and then up a hill and kind of turned around and looked back over the ocean, the cliffs and the town. And I was far enough away that the theme song had stopped. And I realized that I just wanted him to shout out to the whole land of Hyrule that mom is dead, that my mom is dead. So then I just kind of shouted out in my mind and my heart, "Hey everybody in Hyrule: My mom is dead. I need you to know that my mom is dead." Because it feels like that's all I want to do in my life is just stand on that roof of my house and just yell that and have the whole world stop because the whole world has stopped in my heart, even as it goes on. And so what I did was I had Link whistle three times and that was him telling, me telling, the world that my mom is dead. And I know that gameplay will continue and it will be the same. That Bobokins will be the same. You know, everything will be the same, but they will all know. To look at it, there won't be a change but they will all know. Zelda and the old king and the random people doing their random routines. The family of three that lives in the big house in the village. They will all know. And we'll never talk about it but we won't have to.

I closed the game that day and somehow I felt different. I didn't feel so alone. The Hyrule community had somehow been able to honor this incredible loss with me. These three rituals are just snippets in time, moments of taking intentional action that helped me make sense of some very strong feelings. Ritual doesn't have to be a big deal. Ritual can be very simple. And ritual can be very profound.

If you are in transition right now, grieving a loss, letting go of something or someone you care deeply about, I encourage you to carve out time for yourself and for your precious heart. Grieving takes time and it takes space. It is work. It is actually a lot of work! And as you walk down the path of anniversaries, may you go gently and always surrounded by love, time, and care.

MUSIC

Our music is by Terry Hughes. Find us on IG and Twitter at shamepinata, reach us through our website, shamepinata.com and subscribe to the show on your favorite player. Also be sure to check out our second show, Daily Magic for Peace, supporting you as you support Ukraine. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

S4 E4 The Power of Tears (Ryan Kluttz)

May 5, 2023

Episode Summary

When someone passes away, the loss can bring us to our knees metaphorically - and sometimes literally. When it’s literal, that’s the body talking, echoing the heart. Crying can be like that too. Today we look at intention, death, and tears.

Episodes by Topic

→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage

→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings

→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss

→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times

Support the Show

→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata

→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp

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.

Listen If

→ You’re feeling stuck

→ You’re going through a tough time

→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it

Love Shame Piñata?
Subscribe on iTunes | Follow on Spotify
Follow on Instagram | Connect on Facebook
Join us for a Ceremony | Follow on Podchaser

Full Transcript

Kluttz: I just feel so at peace with what happened now and I just think that some of my family members are not there yet, and so I try to be careful about what I say because I don't want to dishonor their grief if it's taking them, you know, longer than it took me because everybody has their own journey in it.

When someone passes away, the loss can bring us to our knees - metaphorically and sometimes literally. When it’s literal, that’s the body talking, echoing the heart. Crying can be like that too. Today we look at intention, death, and tears.

This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. Today I would like to introduce you to Ryan Klutz, a Women’s Marriage Coach based in Southern California. Ryan’s work was recommended to me by a friend who really admires how intentional she is.

Kluttz: I get up at about 5:15 so that I can have a solid hour, hour and a half to myself because I don't like to talk when I wake up and I don't want anyone talking to me either. So instead of forcing my family to be silent when they wake up, I get up early so that I can have that time and space to myself. And then I get to journal and meditate and drink my tea and then I take our puppy for a walk. And by then I'm ready to function on some level and, you know, if we run into someone who wants to interact with her or has a dog, you know, I'm fully ready to have a conversation with another human being. And then I come inside and everybody is starting to get up. And that's definitely the most important piece for me. So yeah, starting off the morning, doing journaling and meditating and then making sure that I have little bits of mindfulness throughout the day to keep it going.

Thomas: Do you have lists or things put around the house to remind you to drop into that place?

Kluttz: I put it in my list of things to do for my daily tasks for work because I've… Yeah, someone pointed out to me that because if I do struggle with that, then the place where I don't struggle is my to do list. And so if it's on my list, I'll do it. And that's what's been happening. [LAUGHS]

Thomas: Nice, nice. I just had this random memory pop in my mind of when I was working at a new job and I had a big list of things to do to remember how to do everything as I was being trained and I was very nervous. I stepped away from the desk, and I came back and somebody had written… somebody had seen my list, which I felt a little bit embarrassed about that somebody had seen that I had this list, and they wrote, “Do a little dance” at the end of it. [LAUGHS] So I did a dance and I checked it off. And I yelled, “I did a little dance!”

Kluttz: That's great. Yeah, that's, that's kind of the types of pushes that I need. You know, my husband will sometimes come out of the bedroom and see me hunched over my desk, and he'll try to gently say, “Maybe you should take a break. Maybe you should go meditate or something.” And normally what I was doing before was brushing it off and, you know, kind of feeling like “Don't boss me around.” Even though he wasn't, you know, he wasn't bossing me around. He was making a suggestion and trying… because he could see that that could be something that would be helpful for me in the moment. But I get… I would get tunnel vision on what I was doing. And so now, and this is just really within the last couple of weeks, because my grandpa passed away at the end of February. And it really… as difficult as it was to deal with at first. I mean, he was 96, so it wasn't like we were completely shocked about it, you know, we were just sort of enjoying the time that we had with him while he was still here. But when he actually passed away, it allowed me to see things differently. And to start recognizing that as much as I love to check off boxes and complete tasks, is that what I want to be able to be to say that I did when I potentially reach 96 years old? Or do I want to have, you know, I really enjoyed myself. And that was one of those things that I've read and seen… that list of the Top Five Regrets of the Dying. I'm fully aware of the idea of enjoying your life and I do implement a lot of pieces of those ideas but it just sunk in on a deeper level.

So when Ryan and I first met to chat and get to know each other before the interview, we thought it would be wonderful to have her come on Shame Piñata and speak about rite of passage she had been through with her husband and offer some perspective in the realm of conscious marriage. However, during the interview when she shared about the loss of her grandpa, the energy just kind of changed and I think we both knew that that was what needed to be spoken about that day. So you’re going to hear more about Ryan’s Ryan’s grandpa Jack. And I want to give you a heads up that her grandpa passed in kind of a sudden and kind of a sad way.

Kluttz: He was still skiing at 93. My dad actually had to go visit him in Maine where he lived by himself in the middle of the woods with just his dog and say, you know, “Hey, I think it might be time for you to not ski anymore given your age and, you know, the fragility of your bones possibly …” And I thought that was funny. And I know at 94, he learned to ride a snowmobile… And he was just constantly doing things. And one of the things… my husband and I asked him what the secret to life was, and he said, “Never sit down.” And, you know, we took that to mean exactly how he was - he was always doing activities and enjoying himself, you know, because he talks about how other people who were also WWII vets, they passed away sooner because once they retired, they just stopped doing anything, because they felt for some reason that, you know, retirement meant doing nothing. And he was still driving, still plowing other people's driveways for them when it would snow because he lived in Maine and snows a lot. Winter is very long in Maine. So yeah, he was just a really incredible human being and for me to have... As sad as I can get that he's gone, the ability to use that grief to change my own behavioral patterns has been really, really powerful. And so I'm grateful for that. And I'm also grateful that he gets to be with my grandma now, because she passed away almost 12 years ago, and he really, really missed her still. So it's just sort of like a completion and I've become accustomed to grief and so I just wanted to start to sort of use it instead of fight it.

Thomas: Hmm. Can you say more about that, about using it?

Kluttz: Yeah, I mean, I definitely, you know, when I found out… it wasn't… It was an accident, actually. He had been plowing people's driveways and he pulled his truck into the garage, shut the garage door, went in the house, and went about his evening, had dinner and everything and then went to bed. He never turned his truck off.

Thomas: Oh, wow.

Kluttz: And so his… his bedroom was right beside the garage, basically just down a little hallway. And so carbon monoxide got into the house. And so he did go peacefully in his sleep. He blocked… the dog past as well. She was a very sweet dog. And so I allowed myself to have that time of just feeling the grief, just allowing the sadness to come out however it wanted to come out. I took off a few days and let myself just do whatever I felt like doing which ended up being part of the way that I saw I could be allowing myself to be doing way more of what I want to do on top of building the career that I'm working on. And so once I was able to let that part pass, it became, you know, the sort of the things I mentioned earlier of how do I want to feel about my life if I reach 96? Or, you know, whenever it's the end for me, how do I want to feel? And I don't think that I would be proud of myself to say, “Well, I checked off all my boxes”, you know… So I just started to sort of pivot and and be inspired by his life instead of being… instead of continuing to be sad, you know. I'll always miss him. But I felt like, for the first time, in losing someone, I really felt like I could ask myself the question, “How can this serve me?” Because going forward, you know, we all lose people in our lives and I can fully sit with the idea that you have to let the emotions pass, but I also want to learn from it. So that was a way for me to learn from the grief itself, what can I pull into my life that I loved about him? And that way, he, you know, continues to live on.

Thomas: Definitely. That's so beautiful.

[MUSIC]

If you enjoy Shame Piñata, consider checking out Daily Magic for Peace. Daily Magic for Peace is a totally different kind of show that invites you to grab an item and do a simple ritual for peace in Ukraine. Episodes are less than 10 minutes long with a focus on calming the nervous system and keeping your heart open. You can find Daily Magic for Peace wherever you're listening to this podcast.

Thomas: It's so rare for people to give themselves permission to feel the grief when they lose somebody and especially what we've been experiencing with COVID, I think we've all become sort of extra numb to… It's been so overwhelming and it's been difficult. And then there's the personal and there's the collective and there's the global and there's so many layers to it. So I think even now, it's even more amazing when people can give themselves the time to really feel. So healthy.

Kluttz: Yeah. I mean, within the last year, I think people either were forced to feel, or, you know, just tried even harder to push it down, which is super difficult when you're stuck at home and you don't get to see anybody. But yeah, that's part of what I teach is letting your emotions out. Because someone once said to me, “What comes up must come out.” And if we don't address it… and I think people get scared when they think of, “Oh, I'm going to address my emotions.” And I learned several years ago that our emotions are really just feedback about how we're feeling. And it's not, I think we tend to feel like, the way I feel right now is I'm going to feel for the rest of my life, if I let it out. I'm scared of letting it out. And if we do let it out, it passes so much more quickly. It's been a week and a half and I really miss him, but I don't get choked up when I talk about him anymore. And you know, a few days ago, I still was, so I just give myself the time and space to let it out. And now I can feel the acceptance and the peace and the joy of who he was and the connection that we had. And I'm also really happy with the relationship that we had. Because, you know, sometimes when someone passes away, you immediately think of all the things that you should have done or that you wish you had more time for. And I felt completely at peace with the fact that we visited him, I called him, we emailed, and I texted him pictures of our daughters and our dog because he really loved dogs. And so I didn't have that feeling of, “Oh, I wish we would have, you know, seen him more.” You know, we did a lot and we actually were planning on seeing him this summer. So there was a part of me that was missing that and was, you know, because… even though he was 96, I really hadn't even thought about the possibility of not seeing him this summer. And so that was actually probably one of the hardest parts of the grief for me was accepting that. But yeah, I agree that a lot of people don't allow them to sit… don't allow themselves to sit with their emotions and I think it's just kind of a societal norm that you need to just suck it up. Keep on going.

As the interview went on, our conversation turned to the power of tears, how they help us, cleanse us, rebirth us. How they are a physical process highlighting our body’s innate ability to heal and self-regulate. And we both acknowledged times when we didn’t want to cry out of a desire to protect someone else.

Kluttz: Actually just… four days after I found out, I was listening to soothing music laying on the couch and like going in and out of crying as my, my girls were sitting on the couch watching a movie. And I wanted to be able to let it out but I didn't want to…. I didn't really want to talk to them about it in the moment. So I was, you know, sort of in this in-between place where I know, it's okay for me to cry in front of them, but I just kind of want to lay here and let it out. And as you know, the tears were coming out, it felt like, I had this thought of, “This as a physical manifestation of just my body needing to release these emotions.” And it's really powerful.

Thomas: And then if we follow it and let it happen, you know, if it's a safe enough place, or we're just able to go there, let ourselves just drop into that, it can really just do what it needs to do.

Kluttz: Yeah, it's just it feels counterintuitive to do that.

Thomas: Yeah. Have you noticed your tears being different for different kinds of crying ever?

Kluttz: Actually, no. I have not noticed that. But I feel like the next time I cry about something, I will start to pay attention. Like, you know, how it feels when they're when they're coming out. That's very interesting.

Thomas: When I'm really emotionally attached to something, and I'm really like, “This is unfair!” … and I'm creating, like a lot of content, that my tears are sort of small and hot. But then I had this other experience where it's some… I don't remember what even what it was, but a couple of times something was just breaking my heart that was just… it sort of had a beautiful quality to it. It wasn't like tears of joy, but it was just… there was a lot of selfless feeling to it…. an innocence. I don't know how to explain it, but the tears were, like, cool and large. And they just had such a different feeling to them. And I was like, “Wow, this is crazy! My body creates…. I cry different apparently depending on, like, what I'm processing.”

Kluttz: I've never noticed the difference in temperature. But I guess the amount that comes out sometimes can differ. I actually… when I watched a live stream of the funeral and you know, I have… I had already allowed so much of my grief to come out that when other people were speaking and crying… especially my dad when he was speaking, because he was the second oldest but my uncle that was the oldest died in a plane crash, gosh, almost 20 years ago now. So he's been the oldest for a while and so he spoke and it was a good mix of sad and then light things that made people chuckle. And I had my husband makes fun of it when they show it in movies, but I'd had one single tear went down! And then other times, it's like across your whole bottom of your eye and it feels like it's just like gushing, but I don't know what the difference is as far as how I'm feeling when those things happen or when other things happen. So I'm gonna definitely watch out for that.

I’m glad that you got to spend this time with us and that you got to meet Ryan and hear a bit of her story. And I hope that your relationship with your own tears is a connected and loving one. The people we love are such a gift and losing them can be so very hard, like a hole ripped into the tapestry that is us. I encourage you to be as gentle as you can with yourself today if you are going through a recent loss and know you’re not alone.

Ryan Kluttz is a marriage advocate teaching women to empower themselves in their own marriages. She has been married herself for 16 years and knows what it takes to make it amazing. Ryan currently lives in Southern California with her husband, two daughters, and their puppy. Find her work at married and manifesting dot com.

Our music is by Terry Hughes. Find us on IG and Twitter at shamepinata, reach us through our website, shamepinata.com. And subscribe to the show on your favorite player. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

S3 E5 Surviving a Recent Loss

June 30, 2022

Episode Summary

What do we do when the unthinkable happens and we lose someone we love? How do we create space for our heart, our pain, and our love which is now expressed as an overwhelming grief? How do we do that while simultaneously putting one foot in front of the other each day?

Episode Resources

→ National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988

Episodes by Topic

→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage

→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings

→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss

→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times

Support the Show

→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata

→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp

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.

Listen If

→ You’re feeling stuck

→ You’re going through a tough time

→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it

Love Shame Piñata?
Subscribe on iTunes | Follow on Spotify
Follow on Instagram | Connect on Facebook
Join us for a Ceremony | Follow on Podchaser

Full Transcript

What do we do when the unthinkable happens and we lose someone we love? How do we create space for our heart, our pain and our love which is now expressed as an overwhelming grief? How do we do that while simultaneously putting one foot in front of the other each day?

This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. You know how when you go through a really big transition, the world seems different? Like you’re still you but everything around you has changed and the pieces don’t fit together anymore? Well, I’m coming to you from one of those times right now. My mom recently passed away and life is different.

Today’s show isn’t going to be a regular episode of Shame Piñata because my heart is needing space and time right now. We will bring you a regular episode of Shame Piñata soon, and I'm really excited that we will be speaking with Megan Sheldon, creator of the world's first ceremony creation platform, an app called Seeking Ceremony. It gives you the ritual tools you need to create your own ceremony. Please check it out in the App or Google Play store and join us again next time to hear how it was created.

MUSIC

So my mom passed away a month ago. We spent a week coordinating and holding the funeral and the burial and dealing with those immediate sorts of things and then I spent two weeks sitting on the porch watching the clouds. I need more time with the clouds, more time with my memories, and more time with the shifting sands of being the only remaining member of my family on the planet.

But I wanted to reach out to you, to tell you we're still here, and share a little bit about the daily rituals that are helping me make sense of this transition. So consider this an honest reporting from the early days of big personal loss.

Some of the rituals that are helping get by are tending with great care to the emotions that arise, however irrational or unrelated to the loss they might seem. I know that on the journey of losing someone who cared for me at an early age, feelings may come up that are from earlier days, or that don't make sense, or that are from my unconscious mind. So that's number one, being tender, open, and attentive. I suppose that's more of a state of being than a ritual but it informs how I'm living my life and structuring my time right now.

Another thing that's helping is inviting my community to sit with me for maybe a half hour at a time one on one to let me talk about my mom and the experience of losing her. Basically each conversation revolves around the question: What is today feeling like? This was actually an offshoot of having so many amazing friends come at me the week she died asking, "What can I do?". I was in no fit state to speak with anyone those first few days but I knew their support and presence would be invaluable later on in that oh so quiet period after the funeral is over and everyone else has gone back to their regular life. So one day on a whim, I created a spreadsheet and asked them to sign up for a time to have a phone call over the next few months. This actually turned out to be a really lovely act of self-care. It's given me constant support, taken the pressure off of my husband to be my sole shoulder to cry on, created space to reflect deeply on how this change is affecting me day to day, and given me a built-in schedule of connection with some incredible people, some of whom I'm just starting to get to know.

On the practical side, I have two rocks that I hold every day. Holding one in each hand allows their energies to meet in my heart. One of them is from the land where my mom was buried. They connect me to that land where my heart is also buried. I have a journal or two. I have a favorite necklace of my mom's that I wear everyday and I have a daily meditation practice at a dedicated altar/workstation (because there are still many death-related tasks to do so a workstation seemed very important).

I also found a way to make a small space serve two functions. When I am meeting with my friends, I sit in the studio in front of the computer with my warm table lamps on either side. When I need to have business calls, I sit in the same space, but use the overhead light alone. This makes the space feel much more businesslike and less cozy. It in effect makes it a different space which is what I need it to be. Different states of being. Different aspects of going on after the death of a loved one.

If you heard last month's bonus episode where I spoke with Catherine Monahon on the Material Feels podcast about everyday rituals, you heard me mention my "I know what to do" ring. This was a ring that I had purchased on a whim last year while my mother was recovering from a health crisis. At the time, I had seen someone wearing a lot of rings who seemed very confident and decided (very rationally) I just needed a great ring, that would help me know what to do! That would help me handle that difficult situation! This ring is the final piece I bring in when it's time to do business or insurance paperwork, sitting under that overhead light. Simply put, it puts me in the role of the one who knows what to do.

So this is a bit of my honest reporting from the early days of a pretty major loss. In the future, as the time feels right, I'll share more about my process and what I'm learning from it. If you are in transition right now, healing from the loss of someone you care deeply about, whether that be a recent or ongoing, please know that you are not alone. Please reach out and ask for exactly what you need. Please don't be shy or feel that you will be a burden. Friends are essential, family is essential, professional grief support is essential - and you are allowed to have all of these things.

If things are really dark, or you feel unsure about how to put one foot in front of the other, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Seriously. 800-273-8255. You can call them, and in these modern times, you can actually also chat with them. I'll put the link in the show notes. Seriously consider reaching out if you feel this way. There are amazing people on the other end of the line and it's okay to just to reach out to say you feel like crap.

However you feel, do whatever you need to make space for your heart and your grief. Thank you for joining me today and we'll see you next time.

Our music is by Terry Hughes. You can follow us on IG and Twitter at shamepinata. You can reach us through the contact page at our website, shamepinata.com. And you can subscribe to the podcast on Radio Public, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite player. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

S2 E11 The Last Drive (Alicia Connor)

December 20, 2021

Episode Summary

Initiations come in all shapes and sizes, from graduating with a formal degree, to becoming a parent, to losing a parent. We can't control what experience the universe sends us, but we can meet each change with our full, honest selves. Alicia Connor inspires us with a story of taking a change and flowing with it on her own terms.

Episode Resources

→ Alicia Connor: https://www.aliciaconnor.com
→ Quick & Delish: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT0DBT0dF_qEeiePwcxamMw

Episodes by Topic

→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage

→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings

→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss

→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times

Support the Show

→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata

→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp

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.

Listen If

→ You’re feeling stuck

→ You’re going through a tough time

→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it

Love Shame Piñata?
Subscribe on iTunes | Follow on Spotify
Follow on Instagram | Connect on Facebook
Join us for a Ceremony | Follow on Podchaser

Full Transcript

Connor: Like say if I'm traveling like in a car with somebody else. You know, they're driving, so I can't trust them. When are we going to go the bathroom? Where are we going to eat? Where are we going to get to drink something? So I just bring everything with me. It's not that I have trust issues, but I take care of myself. [LAUGHS]

Initiations come in all shapes and sizes. From graduating with a formal degree, to becoming a parent, to losing a parent. We can't control what experience the universe sends us, but we can meet each change with our full, honest selves. Alicia Connor inspires us with a story of taking a change and flowing with it on her own terms.

This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. Sometimes we see change coming and sometimes it's just kind of suddenly there. When it arrives without warning it can create a numbing, a blocking out, a wanting to turn away. This is so human. The cool thing is that as humans, we are incredibly adaptive and creative and often times we will take actions to find our center again without even realizing that's what we're doing. Like cutting our hair after a breakup. That could be conscious, that could be unconscious, but either way it's a step toward owning what's happening to us. Owning the change

Alicia Connor joins us today to share a story of going with the flow of life even when it flowed in a challenging direction. Alicia began to have some issues with her vision when she was 17. She saw some different health practitioners. They told her different things. Then, there was a diagnosis and a realization that things were going to change.

Connor: I got glasses when I was 17 because that's when my vision loss started. But I didn't know it was this genetic thing that was going to actually cause vision loss, like ongoing. So when I was 17, I went to like, your average, eye store whatever, eye world in Boston, and I was getting this pair of glasses. And I remember the optometrist, he was like... he was like, do these do anything? Like, there was a sense... he was not confident that they did anything. It was basically like putting clean glass in front of my eyes. So like, a hair or two better, right? But I felt like, well, I'm driving, they help a little bit, so I should wear them, right? And like, what else? Like, am I... I didn't know that. I could say like, I don't think they do anything, because there was some difference. And he didn't seem to know enough to be like, "If they're only helping you a little bit, let's talk about that, and I could maybe like refer you to somebody else, or maybe you should see a like... somebody else". But there was definitely a lack of confidence in his voice that I remember, like his surprise. And then the reason why I went to the Rhode Island Eye Institute was after when I was 19, I went to get a second pair of glasses, because I was like you you're supposed to get new glasses every so and so whatever. Right? And you know, it seems like these aren't doing anything. And the optometrist that I went to at that time, she was hardcore. And she was like, "I don't know, I can't figure it out. I can't correct you. There's nothing I can do. I don't know what's going on." She called the Rhode Island Eye Institute right then and I was dilated, I was dilated... and I love it when people go out of their way and just go the next level, and she got me an appointment that day when I was dilated.

Thomas: Oh, wow.

Connor: So I literally just walked 20-30 minutes to the place and then was tested.

The result of her test at the Rhode Island Eye Institute was a diagnosis of a genetic condition that would mean that her vision would decline over time and that someday she would need to stop driving. A short time after Alicia received the diagnosis, a sudden opportunity came up to really change things up in her life. It involved a long drive. A long drive that would ultimately become her last drive.

Connor: I actually remember my last drive as like, like, an adventure, like it was fun. I was 19 and I just dropped out... A good friend of mine from that I knew since fourth grade was going to school in Western Massachusetts, and I was going to school in Providence, Rhode Island. But she asked me just before Thanksgiving that year if I would be interested in to move to San Francisco. And she was like, "Oh, by the way, I need to know in three days." So I was like, "Okay, I'm on it. I'm thinking, I'll get back to you." And I knew like when she says three days, then that means three days, it doesn't mean five. And I had mean some awesome connections in Providence, Rhode Island, but not enough to like ground me there. And there was enough challenging experiences that year to to not see like, like... a new chapter would be helpful at that time. And so I turned back and I told my friend after three days, "Yeah, let's do it!" So 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.

I'm not going to be able to drive someday. That's a huge thing. Most of us expect to stop driving in our 80's, not some significant time before that. As I listened to Alicia's story, I began to wonder if this drive, this last drive, was a kind of rite of passage.

Connor: It just kind of is interesting, in hindsight, but looking back at the story that my life... that it was that year that I actually like, was there any thought on like my visual loss in like what I was going to do? Like, I have no idea maybe the subconscious was like, you gotta just do this because of the I don't know, who knows. We don't know what Alicia's spirit was thinking then, but I was decisive, which is really cool. And so yeah, so what was interesting was I was the one that rented the extension van, you know, not like a regular van, but like an extension van that could, like we could store both of our stuff in there. And I was literally taking everything I owned and she wasn't taking everything she owned because she had parents that could store stuff for her. And so that was also an interesting detail. Like, this is all of my stuff. So I picked up the truck in Providence, Rhode Island, and then I drove to Boston, by myself, picked her up, and then we went to like, New Year's Eve party. And then the morning of, we hit the road. And we took… because she… my friend had a couple friends she wanted to visit along the way. So we took, like this really weird route.

They went to Memphis and hung out with Elvis's stuff in Graceland, through Kansas and Colorado, switching off driving the whole time. And then they got to Utah.

Connor: ...and when I was driving in Utah I just started crying. And when I was like packing and everything in Rhode Island and I like had to you know give notice in my apartment, I had to give notice my job, I had to drop out of school...

Thomas: Wow, so much!

Connor: Yeah, and like get rid of stuff and, "Okay, do I really want this?" I get rid of all these things. And I had to get my cat, the cat that I grew up with, I had when I was in Providence for like, I don't know, three quarters of the time, and I had to give that cat to my mom and... there was just a couple details. Basically, I didn't figure out that I had done something really big and like I was in huge transition, right, until I got to Utah. There was a delayed response and this is, you know, this was kind of common for me in terms of emotions. I'm more of an observer, or was more of an observer as a kid and a younger adult, or... in terms of my younger years. And so it made sense that it I was like, all of a sudden, like, "Oh, my gosh!" And so my friend was like, "You got to pull over." And it happened to be in this part of the highway where it's not ideal to pull over, but she was like, "Pull over. You have to like... we have no choice." So we pulled over and then we sat on the curb, and or like, whatever... it was, like a curb like section that we sat down. And I was like... [SOBBING SOUNDS] You know? And she was like, "What's up?" And it was just like, "Everything!" Right? There was no answer. It was like, like, I don't even know what I said. But I knew it was like everything. Yeah... the unknown. And I knew, like, I didn't have that much money, like, a couple hundred bucks. And then I knew I had like a check for like, $300 that was going to be sent to my temporary apartment from my work. And so it was just like, all of these... all of the uncertainty in everything just crashed. And so my friend was nice and comforting and everything. And then she took over driving. And it was just... It was actually, I think it was a relief that that happened before we actually got to San Francisco. Because I remember when we got to San Francisco, like we were on Haight Street, and we parked either after we moved all our stuff in my friend's sister's apartment. 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."

Thomas: Wow.

Connor: And I was just very conscious of it, not in like a stressful way, and I wasn't talking about it with my friend. It was just something I just knew that it would be better because I could drive then. I think it's better to make a decision when you know about something and be able to process it before you are forced to. Because I think... I mean, it's not possible all the time, but if you have like a suggestion of like, "Hey, maybe this is something you should look into", or whatever - it could be related to health, it could be anything, you know - preventing any sort of struggle, or any kind of like issue in the future is always a great strategy. And I was thinking randomly once in a while, like when I had my license, like I was like, "This is my last like driver's license."

Thomas: Hmmm. Wow.

Connor: So I did… I didn't think about it, but it didn't. 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.

[MUSIC]

I want to invite you to take a breath with me (breath) and invite you to appreciate yourself for being here to listen to Alicia's story. This is a story about the human body and illness and disability. These are words that can make us unconsciously close down, or turn away, or kind of leave. When I first began working in the disability community, I was taught that sometimes we don't rush with gusto toward these concepts because being differently abled or having a chronic illness, is a club that anyone can join at any time and that's really scary.

And bodies change and illness happens, and they make up some of the million transitions we go through in our lives. Each one, a journey. The transition from one experience of being in a body to the next experience of being in the same body (that's different now) is a journey. As choreographer Bill T Jones (who, by the way, is HIV positive and who lost his partner Arnie Zane to AIDS) as he says, "My body is a spiritual experience that's constantly growing and changing."

[MUSIC]

Connor: I think... I think transitions are really interesting and I tend... I've had a couple of experience where I'm kind of like the all... it's not like the all or nothing ,but like deal with everything all at once. Like when I broke up with long-term relationship. It felt... I was like, going through a lot. My father passed away around the same time and it was just like this thing. It was kind of like... it was a similar, a very similar experience of when I was given this opportunity like, "Hey, Alicia, do you want to move to San Francisco? I need to know in three days," I was given this opportunity and then I was forced to assess my life. And my father's death was that opportunity to assess my life and how I was living it. Because when somebody passes away the reflection on what... how life is going with the person could me is a common experience. And here I was forced to look at my life because my father passed away... And it was a good thing, he was a Vietnam vet, an alcoholic, and it was time for him to go. He had enough time on this world and I'm sure he's rocking it in his next life. And so it was like relieving and everything, but it's still like death and grieving. And I think the main thing about transitions is like seeking out the support you need and talking about it with others. And sometimes we might not want to talk about it and that might be a great time to journal, just to get it out.

Thomas: Mm hmm, yeah.

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 the fearful, anxiety-ridden, intense route and just kind of be a monster or... 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.

Thomas: Wow. Well, thank you, thank you so much for telling, telling me the story, telling us the story, and the insights that you have into it. And I just think it was so brave of you to just... to just take that risk and do that move. And I feel like it's very in line with the spirit of you that I know. You're very bold, and you're very brave. You're strong.

Connor: Thank you. Thank you so much, Colleen.

Letting ourselves go through the transition and feel the feelings. Seeking out the support we need by talking about it with others. These are the reasons I love Alicia. She's so keyed in to the essence of being human, of being vulnerable, and being bold at the same time. Life surprised Alicia with a big change and she took action to own that change, to flow with it on her own terms. In a way, the cross-country drive was part of how she marked the transition, how she reinvented herself at a time when the universe had thrown her a curveball. I hope Alicia's story and spirit inspire you to do something bold today, something maybe you're not even sure you can do.

Alicia Connor is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and Chef in San Francisco. She is the creator of "Quick & Delish by Alicia Connor," a meal planning and cooking series on YouTube that brings wellness to people by helping them create meals that are quick, delicious, and nutritious. Learn more about her work at https://www.aliciaconnor.com.

S2 E7 A Brunch to Acknowledge Heartbreak (Catherine Monahon)

September 17, 2021

Episode Summary

Catherine Monahon (producer of the wonderful Material Feels Podcast) shares their journey from breakup to new home. At the start of the journey was heartbreak. At the end was a celebration of the love that had supported Catherine all along the way.

Episodes by Topic

→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage

→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings

→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss

→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times

Support the Show

→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata

→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp

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.

Listen If

→ You’re feeling stuck

→ You’re going through a tough time

→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it

Love Shame Piñata?
Subscribe on iTunes | Follow on Spotify
Follow on Instagram | Connect on Facebook
Join us for a Ceremony | Follow on Podchaser

Full Transcript

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.

How do we create ways for the people who care about us to show when we need it? When is it okay to ask for help? Does asking for help mean we are weak? Does it make us needy? We'll speak today with Catherine Monahon who asked for help when things were hard, and whose community showed up in a big way.

This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions.

So today we have a great story to share with you. It’s a story of loss, of heartbreak, of healing, of hope and of gratitude. And not only gratitude but a brave showing of gratitude, a public sharing of love and appreciation. A ritual of love and appreciation.

You know when you go through something really hard and you dare to be real about how hard it is with your friends? When you dare to ask for help? Today we’ll talk with Catherine Monahon who produces and hosts the Material Feels podcast. Catherine and I met through radiogines, listserv for women, femmes and gender non-conforming folks in San Francisco Bay Area who work in audio.

When I asked Catherine if they might like to speak about a rite of passage they’d gone through on Shame Piñata, at first they couldn’t think of anything, but then they realized that the brunch they organized to thank the friends who helped them get through a breakup was a significant moment. We’ll get into why and it was significant in a bit.

First, though, the journey. Catherine was 28 and had just been through their first major breakup. It was a time of uncertainty and pain. Not wanting to stay in the home they had shared with their partner, they struck out looking for a new place to live in the Bay Area, which was hard because housing is hard to find and because they were heartbroken. Catherine placed an ad for housing and that ad was seen by two good friends, Amos and Eirik, who hadn’t even heard about the breakup yet.

Monahon: And it was actually an amazing moment because I was sitting with my two friends watching some live music outdoors and I remember I had looked up at the sky, and I was like, “I just... I can't imagine trying to find the right home for me right now. I just need something to fall into my lap.” And then I looked at my phone, and Amos was like, “Hey, I saw your ad. Like oh, my gosh, what happened between you guys? Do you need a place to land? You can live in our living room.”

Thomas: Wow! That’s magical.

Monahon: I responded within 30 seconds. I was like, “Yes, yes. And yes!” Yeah. So I... I had a handful of people help me move into that living room for the indefinite future, you know, a couple months. And then I had some people help me move from that living room to where I live now near Lake Merritt.

Thomas: Nice. So your community really showed up for you.

Monahon: Yeah. I also, like, emailed 15 people, and I was like, “I need support!” Maybe not 15, maybe like 11... but for the first couple weeks, while I was sort of in shock, I had, by just by chance, three of my very close friends checking on me everyday, in but they would... it was weird. It was like they were coordinating with each other but they weren't. The rhythm of those friendships sort of kept me going for the first month or two while I was looking... because I was looking for housing. I didn't hear from Amos and Eirik for the first month of that experience. I was like sleeping on couches and like, yeah, so… And then I did, I sent an email out once I realized I had a place to live temporarily and people helped me go through stuff. I mean, I couldn't even think about all the crap I had to look through, like. They and they took stuff. Like I had one friend who was really excited about all of these things that I had that I was like, “If I look at this, I'm gonna cry” like, “I don't want this anymore”.

Monahon: That was a relief that they... she found joy in that stuff. So one person just basically helped me get rid of all my stuff.

I didn’t realize at first that Catherine was basically couch surfing for the first month after the breakup. It was only in the second month that they found a place to land in the living room with their two friends. Here is a quick description of what life was like those two months in Berkeley.

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.

That sounds like a pretty good place to be doing the liminal space dance in, doesn't it? I asked Catherine if receiving that support from Amos and Eirik helped them feel ready to put the word out to a wider crowd, if it helped them feel that support would be there if they reached out.

Monahon: Yeah, yeah. And I think also with moving, I don't know.. You've... there are literal things to do. You know, “Put this in a box. Move this up the stairs”. And I knew that people were probably worried about me. I mean, this was... I was in a relationship for six years and we... these were mutual friends that you know. So yeah, I knew people want... people would check on me. And I'd be like, “I can't deal with you. I want... I want you to be able to help me…” So I was like, I was like, and also moving was gonna be I had a feeling it would be really upsetting. So I was like, well, at least I can try to turn it into some kind of like, party not even… maybe party’s the wrong word, but barbecue vibe.

Thomas: Right. Right. As opposed to just heartbreak and tears and Kleenex boxes lining the walls and...

Monahon: Yeah, and and most of these people who ended up at that, at the brunch that we'll talk about, they saw me in the... in those stages, you know. They... we had all been connected in some way, whether it was my heartbreak or something that they were going through. And I kept track of it too. Like I journaled about how each person showed up for me, and I really internalized those memories, like they were so that I they're so fresh. I kind of wanted to celebrate them, those people I mean, yeah.

Thomas: Yeah. So was the brunch a celebration?

Monahon: It was part... it was part celebration of, like how I felt each person had brought such special gifts to my experience and so different. And it was part... like, I've had that experience before I went to boarding school at a very young age so I've moved a lot. And I've always... I know what it feels like to move into a room, and then suddenly be like, “Well, I'm here,” like, “It's over,” you know? And that's awkward, that waking up. So I...I kind of anticipated that that would be even worse. So it was it was like part celebration part.... I didn't... I wanted that day to be a good day. And then it was also like a closing, I was like, “That time... Although I loved living with Amos and Eirik, That time is over now. The time of feeling ungrounded not knowing what's going to happen. Feeling like, I'm falling apart. Like, these people saw me through it and I want us all to, to like, kind of kiss that time goodbye.

Thomas: That's awesome because it's really insightful of you because all these people have been, like watching you and supporting you and keeping an eye on you probably and all these things and, and it's so it's kind of like I can see it. Like if it's my story. It's like I'm getting to this place and I'm like, “Okay, I'm good. And thank you and you know, you can tone it down like 90% of how much you're worried about me now like I got this,” to kind of let them, like disengage.

Monahon: Yeah. And just kind of it's almost like a performance too because it was like, “Okay, you're doing it. You woke up and your new apartment. And... and you're gonna say thank you to all your buds and then you're gonna move on.” Whether or not that really happened, that it was still it... I think it... it worked a little bit. But then I feel likeI would remember the brunch, I'd remember those people and those moments like, it I felt like it was creating something that I could almost like a worry stone where I could like, go back to it.

Thomas: Nice. Do you have any mementos that you physically have from that brunch or that time?

Monahon: No, I think other than that page of my journal. Because I invited... I actually wrote their names down. I'm just gonna count them real quick. 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.

Welcome to today's show! Whether this is your first or your 25th 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!

Thomas: You said that you felt like something that was wrapped up nice and tight at the brunch.

Monahon: Yeah, it was a very emotional… it was a very emotional day. And I wasn't expecting it to be. Like when I had prepared to, like appreciate everybody in front of everybody. And I just wanted everyone to see everyone, like to know how amazing everybody at that brunch was and how much they impacted me. And so I like made a... I set a couple... I made it short, too, because I had one I have one friend who really doesn't like to be appreciated in public. So I really tried to do it like just short Cliff Notes/spark notes and it was wild to see people who like aren't necessarily tight. They are not close friends necessarily. But because we, it created this really sort of this like little bubble of like, trust and love. And my brother who, you know, doesn't really know my chosen family that well. He got really emotional and he sort of gave this speech at the end where he... he like cried. We’re both cryers and you know, he was just like, “It means the world to me that Catherine has this support network...” And then he said a bunch of nice stuff about me and I was like, “This is not why I’m throwing this brunch.” And everybody’s all, “Oh, we love you.” I was very mushy and gushy. gushy and it's not something I normally do. So, I guess, feeling held by like, it just felt very safe and I felt very present.

Thomas: Did you have a little bit of trouble taking that in at the time? Was it too much or was it okay?

Monahon: It was okay. Because nobody tried to... everybody was just kind of sitting with it, you know? It was because I think it was a brunch to acknowledge heartbreak and my empty new apartment room. So I don't think I think there was no, like... I didn't have to worry that anybody was going to be uncomfortable at the brunch.

Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I love this story. Because I love how much you're obviously taking care of yourself in it, you know, it's... I can see that you're honoring the people who helped you. And also, it was so bold of you to ask for help and to accept it. And then you had this whole brunch, which you could have just written them all, like, notes or emails or said thanks for something that you call them together and you put, you know, energy into it is just inspiring. And it's another example of how we can take care of ourselves through little things that we could call ceremony or ritual, or we could just not. But they kind of serve a purpose of, you know, of intention. Everybody knew what the meaning was of that whole time for you.

Monahon: Yeah, and I didn't really think about it like that until I listened to your show. Like, listening to the way that you talk about ritual and ceremony. And I started thinking like, What does that apply to my life? You know, as someone who doesn't… I... other than my art practice and creative endeavors, I don't feel particularly connected to it. And then I realized that the brunch kind of kind of tapped on that, or edged up against that, and overlapped with a lot of what you've talked about on the show. I was like, “Oh, that's what that was.” [LAUGHS]

Catherine is the producer and host of Material Feels, a podcast that explores the intimate relationship between artists and their materials. This means that Catherine speaks with artists about watercolor and clay, glass and wax. Recently they have been musing on and speaking about ritual as an art form.

Thomas: I know, you've been exploring ritual a little bit yourself on Material Feels and I'm curious, what has been moving for you about that? Or what have you noticed? Or has it... has anything shifted for you as you played around with it a little?

Monahon: I think one thing that I have noticed about myself and the way, like, my sort of ritual personality is that I really like... I like tradition and I like anniversaries. So you know, the day I dropped my first episode was like Valentine's Day and that's like a big deal to me. Valentine's Day is now always going to be a big deal about the podcast, about my creative love for the world and myself.

Thomas: Nice.

Monahon: But then, like, also, what I've learned as I'm exploring ritual and ceremony is witnessing and including other people. So, I've made art my whole life, but I've never I never included anyone else in it. It's always been very personal and private. But now with the show... there's this, like, sacredness to the audience for me. Like, whenever I start, whenever I start thinking about the next episode, like, organically thinking about it, I'm... I'm talking to my listeners in my head. So I think the ceremony of producing a show where I… I really want my listeners to be like intimately with me. And I think learning more about... like creating the container, as you say, sonically... I mean, that's been really cool to think about and try to try to move forward with.

Thomas: Yeah and Material Feels has so much sound richness and playfulness and it's... it's got such a unique container. It's kind of like, I just thought this... it’s kind of like a... like a stained glass prism that turns different ways that... it's like, yellow here, and then blue here, and then opaque here and translucent here. And it's just... it's always changing as I listen to it, like the episode. And it's... but it's not like discongruent or whatever the word would be, you know? It's not like, “All these things… What? What’s going on?” But it's kind of like no, no, it's it's art. And it just keeps changing. And it's such a unique format and it's so you.

Monahon: Oh, thank you. Thank you for saying that about the prism. That is really cool. I like that.

Catherine's story illustrates how taking a risk and getting vulnerable can not only open opportunities to receive support ourselves, but can provide our friends and loved ones with a chance to show up for us. And that's what we really want to do, right, show up and love each other? Because it feels good, because the struggles of the folks we love touch our hearts, and because we're all human and we all have something to offer, from carrying away some heartbreak-soaked stuff to bringing a friend a set of sheets.

I am super grateful to Catherine for sharing the ups and downs of their breakup journey and giving us a look into the brunch itself. I am also thrilled to have had a lot of time lately to talk ritual with Catherine. If you'd like to hear more of this conversation, told through the Material Feels lens, check out the latest episode of the Material Feels podcast, called Emotion (Ritual and Ceremony). It explores the elements, storytelling, and finding what needs to be moved.

Catherine is an audio storyteller with a background in art. They facilitate workshops and create podcasts with a focus on creative practices and art materials. Their writing about art, illness and disability has been published in The New York Times, WIRED Magazine and the Leonardo Journal. Learn more about Catherine's work at www.cxmdesigns.com.

Our music is by Terry Hughes. Please follow us on IG at shamepinata. You can also follow us on Twitter at shamepinata. Reach out directly through the contact page at our website, shamepinata.com. And subscribe to the podcast on Radio Public, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite player. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

S2 E5 The UnBaby Shower (Tristy Taylor)

May 7, 2021

Episode Summary

When Reverend Tristy Taylor and her husband decided to stop trying to have a baby, she honored that loss with a special ceremony. During her time sitting shiva, "grief first" was her mantra. Then a dream inspired her to create a celebration of her decision to not become a mother.

Episode Resources

→ Tristy Taylor: https://www.createwithspirit.com

→ Tristy's Blog Post on The UnBaby Shower: https://revtristy.blogspot.com/2012/03/un-baby-showers-ritual-crafting.html

→ Video Tour of Grief Ritual Art Journal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=xnojPZci5Lg

Episodes by Topic

→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage

→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings

→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss

→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times

Support the Show

→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata

→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp

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.

Listen If

→ You’re feeling stuck

→ You’re going through a tough time

→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it

Love Shame Piñata?
Subscribe on iTunes | Follow on Spotify
Follow on Instagram | Connect on Facebook
Join us for a Ceremony | Follow on Podchaser

Full Transcript

Taylor: Yeah, it's a major life transition for women that's not acknowledged, you know, or talked about really.

Thomas: It's just like a failing, or a loss, or a...

Taylor: A giving up.

Thomas: Yeah, exactly.

On our journey through life, we will come upon moments that invite us to reinvent ourselves. Big changes can do this like moving away from home, getting married, starting a family or choosing not to start a family. How can we slow down in these moments and really honor what’s changing, really honor how we’re changing? This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions.

Today we’re going to go deep. Are you ready? We’re going to dive into one of those moments that’s really a rite of passage, an initiation, a change. One of those moments that ceremony is perfect for because it invites us to use all of our creativity and all of our heart. And what’s more, it invites us to use ceremony for what ceremony does best, to create the container to hold the strong emotions that come up with big changes. Tristy Taylor joins us today to share the story of her unbaby shower, a three-part ceremony she designed when she and her husband decided to stop trying to conceive. She took her time. She followed the threads of what was changing in her and she ended up creating a beautiful ceremony that both honored her grief and was also a celebration.

Taylor: Yeah, I mean, I think... 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 started down that road, which included some pretty powerful hormone therapy that was... quite a journey to be on that. Basically, all my emotions were at 11 all the time. [LAUGHS] So like, you know, small inconveniences became like fiery, mountainous, rage-fueled tirades. [LAUGHS] And eventually did end up having a pregnancy, but then that pregnancy was... the pregnancy ended up being ectopic. So the fertilized egg and embedded in my fallopian tube. And, you know, we didn't know that and I ended up going to the emergency room one night with just intensive abdominal pain and they took one look at me and said, "You're bleeding internally, and we need to open you up immediately." And then that's when they discovered that... that my tube had ruptured... my fallopian tube had ruptured. And after that experience, we kept trying but it started to... 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 he kind of took it in stride and sort of said, "Well,I'm gonna use that energy to do other things." And he, like started his own business and, you know, spent a lot of time away from me and away from home kind of diving into almost a little bit avoidant perhaps of his own feelings. But building this business that he'd always wanted to create and felt free to create now that we weren't trying to create a family and all the sort of pressures that might have come with being a parent. It kind of freed him up. And kind of the opposite happened to me where I just felt like my life had been pressed pause... like the pause button had been pressed on my life and I didn't know what happened next. 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. So... and to really allow some space and time to feel the grief of the loss of being a mother and and even this particular pregnancy loss with the ectopic pregnancy. 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! And that's what I did. And I didn't, really... Other than my husband, I didn't talk to anybody. I ended up doing a lot of crafting, which felt really good. I ended up making these kind of heartfelt... heart-shaped sachets with like lavender and different herbs in them... calm... these sort of calming craft/sewing kind of stuff that would that was very focused, but I was also kind of putting my grief into these pieces that I was making. And yeah, it was... it was very powerful time and spent a lot of time in nature and just cried a lot. And didn't think about the future or what my life would look like, I just really tried to focus on the moment, which is challenging, you know. Our Western culture really pushes us to get over our grief as soon as possible and not to dwell and like... all of that stuff... When really, I think the more we can show up for our grief, the more can beautifully move through us. And we can truly let it go. We have to feel it first.

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. And so I connected with two very good friends who are great ritual-makers and we started to piece together this whole ceremonial ritual around having this unbaby shower. And it started with the grief. It started with doing a grief ritual with these two women and really having their support and being in nature together, and making food together. And then that transitioned into this more celebratory shower-space where about 18 women came to my house and painted my body with body paints and gave me blessings. And it was so interesting because it was raining at the beginning of the shower ("the shower"). So we all had to like jam into my little, you know, 700 square-foot house. And then by the afternoon the sun had come up and then I was all like covered in body paint and we just went outside and we're just running around and it was so joyful. There was so much joy. And the way I kind of completed the ritual was making this dedication to being a creator, being a spiritual guide, being... offering my gifts to the world. If I wasn't going to be mothering a new life, then I would be holding this spiritual, creative space for others. And it always makes me think of that Dolly Parton quote, because she also couldn't have children. She tried and she couldn't have them and she just said, "Well, God just decided that I'm gonna be mom to everybody kids." You know, like, I just love that. And I love being, you know, an auntie to my friends', kids. And that feels really like a powerful and important role as as my auntie's were to me as a kid. So that's how that all came about.

Thomas: I love... I love that. I love... I love the way that you love ritual, and you lean into it and into your dreams. And I love your stories, because I love to hear you listening. The layers at which you listen inspire me. And remind me what you discovered about your grandmother and your great grandmother.

Taylor: Yeah. So my, my ruptured tubal pregnancy where I had to have emergency surgery was on March 3. And my... my mother told me that her mother, my grandmother, was born on March 3. And I remembered that her mother, my great-grandmother, died giving birth to her. So my great grandmother died on March 3 giving birth. And I had this emergency surgery that saved my life and I would have died through trying to become a mother. So there was this fascinating karmic Ancestral wound being healed, I believe. I didn't die, I survived. And I really do... from the ancestral work that I've done in my life, I've had visceral experiences. Because time is not linear in that world, like time is a spiral. It's past. It's present. It's future all at once. And so the healing that I did on that day and continue to do ripples back to my Ancestors. You know, and that's my female line. It's my mother's mother's mother, you know, that... all of that is relevant to my experience, you know. And of course, none of that was planned, it's just how it unfolded. It's one of those kind of magic, unexplainable moments, you know, where we've kind of put the pieces together afterwards. And it's like, oh, that seems significant! [LAUGHS]

Thomas: I've always loved the physiological connection that we have to our grandmothers, because... I always have trouble saying it... I... the egg that became me in my mother's ovary... that...

Taylor: ...Was in your grandmother.

Thomas: ...was in my grandmother's body - yes!

Taylor: Isn't that amazing?

Thomas: It's so crazy!

Taylor: Yeah. Incredible. And the work they've done about how, like, the stress and trauma of our grandmothers are in those eggs within eggs, like we're literally physically inheriting that trauma. You know, which is, you know, powerful healing work that we all can do as women.

Thomas: Mm hmm. Absolutely.

Tristy's story inspired me so deeply because of the depth of her commitment to the process. Letting the grief ritual come to her, sitting shiva for the 7 days, then creating the unbaby shower to return to her society as a woman who will not be having children. Listening to her story reminded me of my own journey on the road to motherhood and my ultimate decision not to go there.

Thomas: I so appreciate hearing the story of the baby shower because I went through my own process of figuring out... of having a moment in time in my life when I needed to decide which way am I going to go - towards somebody who might want to have a baby or stay with somebody I really like a lot who's very clear they don't want a baby. And I was at the age where I had to pick. And it was a little hard, you know, because I had... You know, I felt like I was losing a lot. But then when I sat with it, and sort of took apart all the pieces of being a mom, I realized that I only wanted certain pieces that were definitely not... didn't equate with having a child or trying to have a child... it just was like, not my thing, even though I felt so much pressure to be a woman in that way. And a lot of, like, legitimate grief and loss when I when I walked away from it, which isn't something I ever thought I would feel but it was there. It was like, wow, okay, to go through these feelings. And my partner was, really, really there for me. And I sought out community, I put an ad on Craigslist for women who had chosen not to have a child who wanted to chat with me about it and I had like four or five women have conversations with me.

Taylor: Oh, I love that!

Thomas: You know, there's nowhere to go to find those women. So I found a few and that really helped me feel like okay, I'm not alone. And then I asked my mom, you know, what do you think? And she said, "You never wanted kids, even when you were a little." And I was like, "Oh, okay, that helps. Thanks." [LAUGHS] Because you know, figure there was some wisdom there that she might be able to give me, plus she never pressured me to have kids, which was immensely helpful on the journey to decide, you know, what was right for me. So I... I know a little bit about I didn't go through the journey of trying, but I went through the journey of deciding, you know, deciding to walk away. Actually, I just had a flash... My parents loved antiques and they had this antique cradle. And my mom lived in Italy before I was born and she kept beer in it and she said the Italian neighbor would always come in and... I guess he'd bring her beer... I don't know... he would come in the house and he would say, "Where is the baby?" And she'd be like, "It's the beer goes in the cradle." Because at that point in her life, she didn't think she was going have a baby because they had tried and tried and tried and tried and given up and then they had beer in the cradle.

Taylor: And then you're all, "Surprise!" [LAUGHS]

Thomas: Yeah. Hi. Move the beer, there's a baby now.

Taylor: That's amazing!

Thomas: Oh, thank you so much for sharing this story with me and with us. And I look forward to sharing out your blog posts with which has the some of the images from your journal and you have the video walkthrough of your journal that you kept during that time.

Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm glad to share it with you and anyone who resonates or is inspired to create their own ritual. And, you know, I mentioned the blog post, that part of it was inspired by a woman who had a ritual around starting menopause and what that meant to her so I really, I really love to encourage others to think about those major life transitions, like even like leaving a job and starting a new one or moving to another state, which I'm about to do, like, I've been thinking about, like, "Oh, I'm gonna be letting go of California, you know, and what does that mean, to me is born in San Francisco, and, you know, born and raised here. So I think there's lots of space for ritual in our lives if we make it. Yeah. If we have that conversation, we listen and respond.

Tristy Taylor is an Interfaith Minister and Ritualist, providing support and companionship to those that live on the fringes beyond traditional religion. She firmly believes that ALL people deserve to have rituals and ceremonies that honor life’s transitions, regardless of their spiritual beliefs. She has had major personal life experiences around grief and death and is comfortable supporting others during these very human experiences. You can find out more about her work at www.createwithspirit.com.

You can hear a longer version of this same interview where Tristy shares more about what her time sitting shiva looked like on the KPFA Women's Magazine Archives. Look for the link in the show notes. Our music is by Terry Hughes. If you like the show, please take a minute to rate and review it on Apple Podcasts. Learn more at shamepinata.com. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

S1 E16 Inviting Grief to the Wedding (Tria Wen)

November 6, 2020

Episode Summary

It's the big day and there's a lot going on. Relationships are being redefined. Power dynamics are actively shifting and yet, in the words of wedding planner Tria Wen, "It's taboo to acknowledge or to express anything but joy." What would it look like to make room for some of the more complex emotions? To let everyone acknowledge the effect a wedding has on their unique relationship to the couple?

Episode Resources:

Tria Wen: https://triawen.com/

Episodes by Topic

→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage

→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings

→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss

→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times

Support the Show

→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata

→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp

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.

Listen If

→ You’re feeling stuck

→ You’re going through a tough time

→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it

Love Shame Piñata?
Subscribe on iTunes | Follow on Spotify
Follow on Instagram | Connect on Facebook
Join us for a Ceremony | Follow on Podchaser

Full Transcript

Chang: I was actually talking to a young woman the other day who is thinking about becoming a wedding planner. And she had one hesitation, she asked me, “I heard that people act irrational and crazy on wedding days, is that true?” And I had to be honest with her and tell her it's partly true. People behave in ways that seem bizarre and irrational on wedding days, but if you really strip away what's happening, to me it makes perfect sense the ways that they're acting out.

So it's the big day and there's a lot going on. Relationships are being redefined. Power dynamics are actively shifting and yet it’s taboo to feel anything but joy. What would it look like to make room for some of the more complex emotions? To acknowledge the effect a wedding has on their unique relationship everyone has with the couple? This is Shame Piñata. I'm Colleen Thomas.

I'm so happy to welcome Tria Chang and her wisdom back on today’s show. Tria and I met last year when she was in the process of planning her second wedding. She was working through a rich and complicated experience of weddings, being a former wedding planner who had participated in over 100 ceremonies and who had gone through a divorce during those years. As she looked ahead to her second wedding, she wanted to create a unique ceremony that was a perfect fit for herself and her partner.

At the time we met, I shared with Tria some of the details of my own wedding, specifically how it was designed to make room for all of the feelings, both happy and other. Weddings bring up a myriad of feelings and yet we're taught that there is only room for joy on the day. There's no above-board acknowledgement of how the new union will shift the family dynamics or sometimes push friendships to the back seat. We are not encouraged to sit down and have meaningful conversations about these things with our friends and family, about how the new union will change things for everyone. And when something is not brought into the light or given room for expression, it can take on a life of its own. Think people behaving irrationally at weddings. Think Bridezillas.

Shortly after that first interview, Tria and I sat down again to explore what all is happening at a wedding - the many people, the many perspectives, the many feelings. The big mash up of everything happening at once and the things that may not get acknowledged.

We typically think about the couple when we think of a wedding, but there are so many more people involved and each person brings their own perspective, expectations, and life experiences to that day. There's the couple, their parents and siblings and maybe even children, their friends and family who make up the wedding party, and the guests. In addition to people we could look around the room and see, there are also invisible forces that can influence the day. There's that phenomenon I call the female legacy, which women can be acutely attuned to by the mere fact that marriage has been a survival tool for women historically. I'm not sure how else to describe it other than to say weddings can be heavier for women. There also may be some acute losses going on, such as the loss of a father to give the bride away or the loss of a close friend missed by the entire community. And there's often this idea that it all happens in one moment, there's this wedding, and it happens in a day and boom, you're married and it's all transitions are finished.

Chang: To add the behind the scenes perspective even for the vendors, for most of the weddings that I planned, there were at least 8-12 different vendors working on things. And each of those vendors come in with their own goals and agendas. So for example, the makeup artist will of course be wanting to make the bride look beautiful because it's her day, but she also has her portfolio to think about. So she'll be wanting the photographer to get certain shots of the hair and makeup, be sending that to her or be recording it for herself for her own social media or website. The photographer's obviously working on a portfolio as well and they want to get a certain type of shot that can help them get on wedding blogs or gain the trust of other clients. And the planner or stylist has a certain look that they're trying to achieve so that they can also show their best work in their portfolio and attract future clients too. So there are a lot of desires going on on a wedding day, not just the personal, also the professional. And then there is that feeling of transition, as you said, and transitions don't happen in one moment that you're not a completely different person right after you have the ring on or right after you kiss. It's just part of the process. So there is a lot going on in the wedding day, and that you're supposed to pack all of these things in, and you're supposed to be thrilled about it the whole time. So everyone is really supposed to be on their best behavior, and it doesn't usually turn out that way.

Thomas: Right. And we've had quite a few conversations about the other feelings, the feelings that are harder maybe, the feelings that don't fit in the pretty package, the feelings that we're not allowed to have at a wedding, they get discouraged, and maybe the even the unconscious losses that folks aren't even aware that they're feeling. What tensions have you seen come up at weddings?

Chang: Yeah, there have been a lot of tensions that come up, I think the most common one I've seen is usually between the couple and their parents. So sometimes there are mothers of the bride who are feeling protective, or like they don't really want to let go. So they start trying to control small things like the way the bride is getting her makeup done, or trying to change menu items last minute. It can really come out in ways that seem unrelated, but are just things that catch their attention and show them a way of having more control in that moment. I also had a client who… they were a slightly older couple and so they didn't have their parents involved in the planning at all. And when the mother of the groom showed up to the ceremony site, which was an art gallery, she was furious. She just hated the venue. She thought it was so ugly and she told me, “These pictures on the wall, they're awful. They have to go. There aren't enough flowers!” And, you know, in an art gallery you can't change the display. It's off limits. We did end up moving some flowers around for her. And she didn't like the concrete floor which was part of the modernist look. But I talked to the bride and groom and told them I think it would really help her if she could have some say. And so they were comfortable with us putting down an aisle runner, so at least having something cloth for them to walk down - f or whatever reason that became important to her in that moment.

Thomas: Right. And would you say that with a lot of these people, that these attempts to regain a little bit of control, feeling uncomfortable, that it was unconscious?

Chang: Yes, I definitely think it was unconscious, I think they were really focused on that tangible thing. Because that seemed rational to them that seemed like something they could handle. Whereas going within and taking those steps inside and recognizing I'm losing my son or my daughter in these small ways. That's a really daunting thing to look at. And you don't really want to look at that on a wedding day, because what if it breaks you? What if you break down and end up inconsolable? You don't want to be that person at a wedding. You want to be supportive and joyful. So yes, I definitely saw a lot of unconscious outbursts at things that were probably not the real problem. But after those outbursts, people did seem to be able to feel a little bit better or maybe they felt a little embarrassed about how they acted and were able to let go and get into the joy of it more.

Thomas: How do you think it would have been different for those in those situations, if the couple had said, "We don't want you to hold it together. We want you to just be here and have all your feelings."

Chang: I like that idea a lot. But I've also seen the dynamics between parents and their children can be so hard to change that even if their children tell them, “Be yourself, let go,” if that's not their personality, I'm not sure they would be able to do that. But maybe even just having that permission would have felt good. It's hard to say.

Thomas: Right.

Tria wrote an article for the Washington Post about the wedding my husband and I created, specifically how we worked in a section for grieving. To explain how our wedding came about, I need to take you back 20 years. In the year 2000, I moved to California to attend Matthew Fox's graduate program in Creation Spirituality. Fox is often described as a renegade theologian and it was his unique event called the Techno Cosmic Mass that drew me to his school. The Techno Cosmic Mass, or Cosmic Mass as it is now called, is a multimedia rave-like community worship experience that brings prayer and devotion off the pages of the hymnal and into the soles of the feet. During my years in school I attended almost every mass.

One thing I didn't know was that my future husband was also attending those events. But we wouldn't even meet each other for another 5 years when the masses were no longer being produced. So we met. And then 10 years later, we decided to get married and began considering what kind of ceremony might be a good fit for us. We were actually kind of stuck because we come from different traditions and nothing seemed to come organically. But as synchronicity would have it, Matthew Fox and his team began producing the Cosmic Mass again right around that time. And on a Sunday night, in a room full of people sweating their prayers under flashing dance lights we realized we found it - we'd found the way we wanted to get married. We were going to create the first ever Techno Cosmic Wedding.

The structure of the Cosmic Mass follows the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality. To give you some context, the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality are: The Via Positiva, a time of joy, awe and wonder; the Via Negativa, a time of darkness, letting go, and grieving; the Via Creativa, honoring ourselves as divinely creative beings; and lastly the Via Transformativa, a time of preparing ourselves to go forward as spiritual warriors. While we structured the entire wedding on these four paths, it was the Via Negativa that was most unusual to have in a wedding. Matthew Fox defines the Via Negativa as "a time of communal grieving for the suffering of the planet and all beings."

Here's how Tria described the Via Negativa section of our wedding ceremony in her article: "The room was dimly lit. Wedding guests were seated on the floor, eyes closed, some crying, some reaching out in comfort. Bodies swayed gently to a melancholic chorus, and a woman’s voice crescendoed with emotion... The speaker invited guests to summon feelings of loss - whether those be for the loss of loved ones, of faith, of youth, of passion - and to embrace feelings of fear, for the world or for themselves." It was important for us to include time for these harder emotions in our wedding ceremony because we wanted to make room for our full selves to show up both at the wedding in the marriage.

Thomas: And we've spent some time too talking about the idea of the Via Negativa which comes from the wedding that my husband and I had where we actually had a section of the wedding dedicated to grieving and we've talked about how that was very unusual.

Chang: Yes, and wonderful, I think.

Thomas: And you and your fiancé are planning something a little bit like that for your second wedding.

Chang: Yes, so we have such a small wedding and I think our guests tend to be on the more conventional side. So instead of having it at the actual wedding and having an orchestrated section of going through Via Negativa like you did, we've been spreading it out over the months leading up to the wedding, and we plan to continue making space for it after the wedding even in the years to come. Because I think it's important to realize that negative feelings, especially grief, they don't go away after one session. They can't be addressed very quickly. But if you make space for them in an ongoing way, I think it makes it easier to make joy the forefront of a certain day, in this case the wedding day. So what we've been doing is having conversations with people close to us and asking them what kind of fears they might have about how our relationship going forward might be or any fears for us as a couple, or just anything on their mind really that may be different from the regular congratulations. And then inspired by you and Rodrigo, my fiancé and I did our own kind of private Via Negativa with the two of us. We did it last week and we lit candles and turned off the lights and played some music and then I asked us to write down in a notebook all the things that we were scared about or nervous about for the wedding day. And then all of the things that made us have those fear feelings for marriage in general. And so we wrote for a little while and then we took turns sharing things and it lasted about two hours actually. We really got to talk about a lot of things. Anything from just where would we spend Christmases, like which family gets us at which time of year, to how will the dynamic change when we have children, and what will happen if, you know, one of our parents passes away, how will we take care of the other one? So we really covered a lot of ground and I think felt a lot better afterwards. But we also recognize it's a conversation that will continue. And then we had a special song to us and did the eye contact for a while to kind of let it all settle in.

Thomas: That's wonderful. That's so wonderful.

Chang: Yeah.

Thomas: So you've really laid the groundwork, then for yourself, each of you individually plus you as a couple plus the people in your life, to have space to share any fears, any, any worries...

Chang: Yes, yeah. Because we are both at a point in our lives where we recognize marriage is difficult, because life is difficult and you're attaching yourself to someone else's life. So you will get all their difficulties plus all your difficulties. And that is something to celebrate, because you'll have someone with you, but it's also something to be a little bit nervous about and having space for all of that really feels a lot better. And I do have you to thank for that because it kind of didn't click for me until I saw your wedding ceremony from the video you showed me. And seeing that Via Negativa and seeing the space you made made me realize that was what was missing in my wedding planning. Because I had been going to a bit of therapy and trying to deal with my own feelings of worry because I was married before and it didn't work out. And so I knew I had to do this second wedding and marriage differently. But I wasn't quite sure how. So seeing your experience really helped me.

I asked Tria how she worked with couples around the loss of a loved one at the wedding.

Chang: With acute losses, or grief in general, that can be a really difficult thing to handle at a wedding because, as we talked about, a wedding is supposed to be all joy and it feels scary to invite something in that will bring you grief and sadness. But sometimes people are important to us and when they're not there, to kind of brush it under the rug, it doesn't really feel real. So I think, in some ways, it could be interesting to expand what happens at a wedding to include some of the things that happen at a memorial or a grief ritual. So we can look to other cultures, for example, like the Day of the Dead. You know, they have these beautiful altars and flowers and favorite foods of that loved one, and they really presence them. And at most weddings I've been to where they've lost a loved one, they either have a line about them in the program or a picture or two kind of on a shelf in a corner that you can easily bypass if you want to. And they are honoring them, but they're making it really kind of optional and something that's easy to ignore if you're not comfortable with that. But it could be really lovely to actually invite that deceased loved one in and really have them there with a favorite food or some tradition that they loved. At my little wedding ceremony, we are having our... instead of place cards with people's names, we're writing cards to everyone with our heartfelt sentiments to them and we're writing them on watercolor painted envelopes and cards. And my mom was a watercolor artist and a lot of weekends, we would spend painting big sheets of watercolor together and then cutting out envelopes. And in those days, people used to mail each other letters often. So we would use those envelopes. So I had my fiancé make these envelopes with me and I really felt her there with me. And he's never met my mom so it was a great way for me to introduce her to him and show him this is how I would spend my weekends with my mom. And I know that having those envelopes there on the day, it's small, it's not going to be very distracting for people who didn't know her. But I will make a mention of the meaning that they have to me. And I think I'll feel her there more in that way.

Thomas: Hmm, that's a really beautiful way of including her.

As the interview came to a close, Tria and I touched on inclusivity at the wedding, how to include everyone even in a small ceremony.

Chang: We are actually having a very casual meetup at a cafe, the week after our wedding ceremony for all of those friends of ours who we didn't feel like we could accommodate at the ceremony because it's so small, but who we still wanted to celebrate with in some way. So we're just having some snacks at a cafe and a tarot card reader and a watercolor portrait artist. And that’s pretty much it we're just gonna hang out. For me, I'm so... I think I have a caregiving aspect to my personality that I have not been able to shake. So when I think about holding an event for people, I literally think of it from every single person's perspective and think of how to make it comfortable for them. So we're having 25 people at our wedding. And that's, you know, me thinking through the day 25 times and that seemed like my limit. I feel like I don't want to think through this in 125 ways, just 25. That's all I can manage.

Thomas: Is that something that you ever recommended to your clients when you were a wedding planner.

Chang: Oh, no. That's just a problem that I have. I don't recommend it at all. Yeah, I've even tried to imagine for my two year old niece, like, okay, she's gonna get bored around this time. So I'm like... put Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes on our playlist for the wedding. Like, make sure to have something for everybody.

Thomas: Oh, wow. That is super personalized.

Chang: A little kid playlist just for the cute little ones.

Thomas: That’s so wonderful. Well, thank you so much for your inspiration and for sharing your story of your, your second wedding, and all that you're learning and doing and experiencing and all that you bring from everything you've done before.

Chang: Thank you as well and, to use your term, for holding space for all of these conversations. And I think that there is such an automatic track that people get on when they wedding plan so I hope that hearing stories on your podcast will help people realize they don't have to follow an automatic track. They can do it as they want to. They can have a Via Negativa if they want to.

Thomas: They can!

Thank you so much for joining us today for this conversation about making room for all of the emotions on the wedding day. To hear more in Tria's wonderful written words, check out her piece entitled, “A Joyful Wedding Can Still Make Room for Grief” listfed in the show notes. While you're there, check out some footage of the Cosmic Mass on the Cosmic Mass website.

Tria Chang is a writer and organizer. Follow her on Instagram @tria_chang. Our music is by Terry Hughes. If you got something out of this episode, please share it with a friend. Learn more at shamepinata.com. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.