adrienne maree brown: Can We Give Ourselves Permission to Be Free?

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
When you're avoiding grief, it always feels like it's going
to be way too much to experience.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
And I can't promise that it isn't.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
You know, not everyone survives grief, but I do know
that for most of my life, when I have turned
towards grief, I have been able to move through it,
and it has been a way to love my people.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
This is it's okay. That you're not okay, then I'm
your host, Megan Divine. This week on the show, Adrian
Marie Brown That is Right, Everybody, meme queen and author
of Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism, among other books, joins
us to talk about grief, love, the past, and the
future settle in Everybody. This very special guest is coming

(00:44):
up right after this first break. Before we get started,
one quick note, Well, we cover a lot of emotional
relational territory in each end every episode. This show is
not a substitute for skilled support with a licensed mental
health provider or for professional supervision related to your work.

(01:10):
Hey friends, So I have followed today's guest on Instagram
for a long time. Her meme selections are stellar, and
if you know her, you know what I'm talking about Adrian.
Marie Brown is the author of Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism,
among other works, and she's instrumental in opening conversations about bodies, power, grief,

(01:31):
and change, both personal and collective. Now, when I told
people that I was going to talk with her, the
excitement level was off the charts. So let me set
this episode up for you. I was feeling a little
nervous before our time together, So just before our meeting time,
I listened to a meditation from Prentice Temple, which I
will link in the show notes from a conversation that

(01:52):
Prentice had with Adrian. In that meditation, Prentice guided people
to breathe through the sides of their ribcage to explore
their width. And just that phrase explore your width, was
so helpful and so grounding to me, and it actually
turned out to be the perfect precursor to this conversation

(02:15):
taking up space in ourselves and in the world. I mean,
if you think about like breath work or breathing meditations,
we often think in terms of grounding and stretching right
that vertical access. But how often are we encouraged to
really explore our width, the true breadth of our presence
and our experience. In this conversation, Adrian and I move

(02:38):
back and forth between the personal, the body's experience of grief,
and the communal, the collective body of grief. We move
back and forth in time too. Ancestral grief is kind
of unspoken, like not out loud, but it is in
there in mentions of black history and family stories. We

(02:58):
sit in the present with all of its heart break
and its choice points, and we visit the future, the
long game, the very far off world. It all just
reminds me so much of the cadence of apprentices meditation
like contract expand time space taking up space. As you
will hear Adrian say, it's all grief and it's all love.

(03:23):
There is nothing to fix and there's plenty to change. Now.
We didn't even get to touch on pleasure activism or
emergent strategy to of Adrian's popular books, but it's all
in there. It's all a part of who she is.
We do discuss her fiction book, Grievers, which is a
story that explores a pandemic through the eyes of her
protagonist done. It's a gateway to talking about love and

(03:47):
grief and legacy and imagining what's possible. I don't want
to give too many spoilers away for that book, so
be sure to pick it up at your favorite bookseller. Also,
don't miss Adrian's vision of education in the future that
we get into in this podcast. If we could just
do that, just be that vision that she shared with us,

(04:09):
so much would change. And I'm getting ahead of myself
as I often do when I'm super excited about what's
to come. So all of that and much more coming
up right now in my conversation with.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
Adrian Marie Brown.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
Adrian, I am so thrilled to have you here with me,
with us.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
I'm glad to be here.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
I was telling you before we got rolling that I've
spent the morning listening to you and watching you on
video and just I want to start from just appreciating
thank you, you and your presence in the world. It
meant ah, I didn't mean to start crying right from
right but here we know, but like but here we are.
I mean, this is this is kind of the medicine

(04:55):
of you and your work that kept coming to me.
I was sleeping in your language and your word and
your presence.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
You know, Megan, I have to tell you that I
was looking at my calendar today because today is a
day that I would also say like, I'm not really okay.
And I've been like very emotional. I recently lost a
good friend and just kind of spun my whole life around,
you know, as it does. And then I looked and
I saw I was like, oh, it's okay, you're not okay.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Okay, Well here we are.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
And then I was looking into you and your losses
and your life and your work, and I just, you know,
deep bows to you for what you've been building with
your grief and your heart.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
As we do. I think that's what we do.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
That is what we do. Yeah, And that message is
so simple right that it's okay to be okay. One
of the one of the things that I drew from
you was that question of what if there's nothing to fix?

Speaker 1 (05:52):
What if there's nothing to fix? You know, my friend
I always mentioned this. I got this from my friend
spent In Kondawala, who was one of my teachers in
my somatic journey, which was basically ten years of learning
to return to my body. And part of what's not
okay right now is my body. And part of what

(06:13):
I've been noticing is I'm like, oh, I keep trying
to put my body on a back burner while I
go through life. And even though I know that's not
how anything works, you know, there's a way that I
do that. And then it's great that you're telling you
reminding me that I that there's nothing to fix, because
whenever I then turn my attention back to my body,
I'm like broke, broken, broken, broken, you know, nothing is functional.

(06:37):
And then it's like, oh no, there's nothing to fix.
There are ways that I can be more gentle with
the living creature that I've been tasked with doing through
this lifetime. And you know, bodies and back burners just
don't really mix. So there's something I have to do.
I have to shift the metaphor for how I'm being
in my body right now. And yeah, then nothing to

(07:00):
is actually a big part of it. It's like, yeah,
I'm grieving, Yes, I'm my life is very full. Yes,
I'm a little uprooted as part of life.

Speaker 3 (07:10):
You know, there's something really subtle in here that idea
that there is nothing to fix, but there are things
you can change. Yes, I think that's where a lot
of people get hung up, right, If there's nothing to fix.
Then this is just what it is and there's nothing
to shift. How do you navigate that subtlety?

Speaker 1 (07:33):
Well, I think one thing is that I'm like everything
that is is there's some kind of balance already happening
because all these things coexist.

Speaker 3 (07:41):
You know.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
I was putting my food away before coming to talk
with you, and I was like having the thought that
the same god or creator of the miraculous and the
beautiful and the wondrous and the mermaid, jellyfish whatever, you know,
I went to see the Little Marmaid this weekend, so
I was just like, oh my gosh, you know, this
same goddess of the ocean and stars and everything magnificent,

(08:05):
it's also the god of like mosquitoes and bug bites
and cancer, and like trying to old that when I
don't like that something is happening, or when I feel
discomfort or grief or rage, that there's something beyond my
comprehension in terms of the order of all things. And

(08:26):
I think that, particularly when it comes to human beings,
so much of what our species is up to is
learning how to harmonize and learning how to be in
relationship like I was if I was you know, trying
on for the moment like, well, why humans, Like why
would you make humans? Why would humans need to evolve?

(08:49):
What is the purpose of something that can reason? It
would be to have a species that gets to play
with choosing right relationship and really putting a lot of
intention and energy into what it means to have this
gift of aliveness and sentience, like ultimately moving towards love,
not in the simply romantic sense, but in the really massive, interconnected,

(09:13):
my celial way like love, love, love, you know, that big,
big all connectedness. And so then when something happens that
I'm like, that doesn't make any sense. Why how does
my friend just die all of a sudden That just
doesn't make any sense. I can't reconcile that with miraculous
nature of all things. But then since my friend passed,

(09:37):
I have been feeling his presence and his clear energetic
message to me is about the interconnectedness of all things
and the peace that exists just beyond the flesh and
the completion. There's just like, oh, there's just completion to
each experiment, and it's not in our hands necessarily. So yeah,

(10:01):
I'm kind of sitting in that place where I'm like
there's nothing to fix, but there are things to learn,
and as we learn them, we don't have to keep
learning them over and over again. Oh, we learned with
polio how to navigate that in the human body. You know,
one of my favorite authors is is Octavia E. Butler,
and in one of her novel series, they have figured

(10:24):
out how to harness cancer, which is very important to me.
You know that they've harnessed it and figured out how
cancer just becomes this generative force. And I'm really interested
in that because I have so many people in my
life who are in that dance with cancer, and so
many who it feels like, are being stolen because of cancer.
And we're living on an earth right now that has

(10:46):
a lot of conditions that seem cancerous and cancer producing.
So I'm like, what do we do with that? You know,
for me, imagination is the place where I build that
bridge between looking at the world and seeing that things
need to change, but also looking at myself and saying,
there's nothing to fix here. I am the outcome of

(11:06):
the world I was born into, and I am the
alchemist for the world that I want to generate.

Speaker 3 (11:13):
I love this. You just unlocked something for me in
sovereignty and agency right that you can look at just
speaking personally here and not collectively globally, but like personally,
you can look at I am a product of all
of my experiences, all of my relationships, everything that I've
learned about myself to myself and myself to the world.

(11:33):
And it makes sense that I am anxious around here.
It makes sense that I lose my temper. It makes
sense that this and this right. It's not that those
are things to fix, but it's about having that gentleness
with self to say, I am a product of everything
that I have lived, And where can I bring agency

(11:55):
and sovereignty?

Speaker 2 (11:56):
Yeah, and what conditions? But I want to shift right.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
So I was born into a generation that was spanked
and highly disciplined, and where I was told to be
very quiet about what I was feeling, and my parents
were very loving and supportive and encouraging and inviting my magic.
And still generationally that's how children, you know, were situated,

(12:21):
and there was a very clear set of norms that
I was supposed to occupy. Now, my sister is raising
three kids who are all hitting their teenage era, and
it is fascinating to see what we have all made
subtle and not so subtle shifts in how we're aunting
and parenting and grandparenting and adulting around them that encouraged

(12:43):
them not to be quiet, not to sit on their discomfort,
not to worry about physical punishment or really any kind
of you know, they're not punitive. They're not being raised
in a punitive environment. And it means that things happen
when you're shocking. Sometimes you know, they'll say stuff and
we're all looking over my dad or look at my mom, like,

(13:06):
I mean, how are we going to deal it? That's
intergenerational moment, and then we all survive that moment and
we're like, oh, it's okay. They're just being true to
themselves and they're not hiding that they know about these
things they know about the world, and they get to celebrate,
you know, the aspects of themselves that they're most excited about,
and then they're going to create next level conditions for

(13:28):
the generations that come after them. So it's always you know,
more and more freedom hopefully in the journey.

Speaker 3 (13:34):
Yeah, and that idea that we get to see evolution
happen in a way that there is always an unfolding relatedness.
If you like, I keep having this this image of
like if you get in that driver's seat of your
own life, which is such bump bumper stick or talk
man like, but if you if you get to that right, like,

(13:56):
it isn't about I think sometimes, especially when we're talking
about grief related to death, that's like you needed to
learn a lesson here, which like what kind of rude,
reductive bullshit is that? What I hear you really saying
embracing is the multiplicity of it.

Speaker 1 (14:13):
The multiplicity and because there, you know, I always feel
the du out that it's like there's dual and then
multitudes multitude multitude, right, So I'm like, there's patterns, and
I do think we're meant to learn from patterns. So
I'm like, there's probably a massive pivot we do need
to make in response to cancer, and a massive pivot

(14:34):
we need to make in response to suicide, and a
massive pivot we need to make in response to massive
gun violence. Because these patterns of death are teaching us
something at a species level about how committed we are
to protecting the miracle of aliveness. But at an individual level,
my job is to climb out of any of these

(14:55):
constructs I've been placed in and really figure out what
to do with the humanity that I have been given right,
which is you know, infinite and also finite because I
will not live forever, and so my life will just
be what I do in this period of time. For
the folks who are aware at this level, you know,
I often think like, who knows what happens at the

(15:17):
next level, and that mystery actually gives me spaciousness, and
you know, it helps me to be like, there's something
more that happens beyond the body. But while you're in
the body, you can do a lot of things, and
not every single thing. I keep thinking about this because
most of my adult life I has spent in social

(15:38):
justice work, very explicitly hands on trying to figure out
how do I support frontline organizers to bring about justice
for blackness, for reproductive justice, for the climate, for how
do we get in there and fix this society right.
So for me to say there's nothing to fix fair

(16:00):
radical inside, you know, it's hard for me to rocket right.
And what I have come to is the organizing can't
be about manipulation. It can't be about forcing someone else's hand.
There has to be something about living fully and becoming
compelling to others because of how I can connect with others.

(16:22):
And so that's what I'm sitting in now. You know,
a lot of my work now is creative. It's song,
it's fiction, it's poetry, it's spells. But it's like, when
is the truest sound? If I was a bell, what
is the truest sound that I can make? That's the
only sound I need to focus on making. You know,
that's mine, And I think everyone has something like that.

(16:44):
But the constructs of gender or race, or class or
what nation you're born into. There's all these things that
I think shape us to I don't know if us
shape they confuse us. They confuse us about understanding what
our particular purposes, what our callings are. I think a
lot of life, especially I'm in my forties now, so

(17:06):
I think a lot of getting to this point was
figuring that out, Like what is my bell? What is
what is ringing in me? And then now hopefully I
get some time to ring as loudly as possible.

Speaker 3 (17:21):
I love this idea that there is a a true
sound and a true shape, right like if we think
about the way that sound waves travel, and somebody's going
to tell me I'm incorrect in my metaphor here, but
you know that it's all those ripples, right, It's all
that those ripples go out and you get echoes back, right,
and that echo back tells you about the shape you're

(17:42):
in and the sound you're making.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
Yes, I mean, we're like the bad part of us.
I think that, like all the other creatures that exist,
we can learn from them. I'm like, aren't we also
at least emotionally ecolocating?

Speaker 3 (17:55):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, because I like, I mean this, one
of the phrases in it's okay that you're not okay,
is you know, life is an a vending machine. That's
call and response.

Speaker 2 (18:04):
That's right, right, and that is.

Speaker 3 (18:05):
That echolocation of where can I come into right relationship
with myself? And so much of your work is about
care for self and boundaries for yourself. One of the
videos that I was watching before we met you talked
about your sobriety in self sabotage or sobriety from self sabotage.
That's right, and that that is that that's a boundary.

(18:28):
It's you can you tell me what you mean by that.

Speaker 1 (18:30):
I think that there's a lot of things that I
started to understand or sabotaging behaviors in life like ways
that you're like, oh, here, I'm trying to move towards this,
this is what I want, but I'm doing exactly the opposite,
or I'm doing something that's going to have the effect
of moving me in the opposite direction. And some of
those are things that we think of, oh, drinking, you know,
I'm drinking to the level of alcoholism, or I'm high

(18:53):
all the time, or I'm taking things that really have
a negative impact on my body, or I'm not stretching,
or I'm doing these things. I'm like, this is sabotaging
my goal for being healthy and mobile and present, et cetera.
And I think for a long time I've been like, well,
you only get sober if you're drinking, or if you're
using drugs, or if you're doing something like that. But

(19:14):
for me, it's more of like a whack a mole.
My sabotaging behavior will just adapt and adapt and adapt
and adapt and adapt. Right, So I have to sort
of step back and look at the larger pattern and say, oh,
I say I want to be writing all the time,
and I just change, change, change, change, change the things
that keep me from writing. And it can be stuff

(19:36):
that looks great, like being very productive and scheduled, you know,
but I like, if I'm overly scheduled, I can't the
muse can't get in the door, you know. But if
I'm overly high, the muse can't get in the door.
But if I'm externalizing all my interest into other people,
the way that I used to fall in love and
date was really to like take my heart and just

(19:56):
put it in someone else's.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
Box and just be like care of that.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Oh my god, you're not taking care of that, and
just sort of yelling from outside the box about what
they weren't doing. So there's all these modes that I'm like,
if I look back, I can see this larger pattern
of self sabotage. And so if I see it all
as a pattern, then I can be like, hold on,
this is a whole situation. If I'm going to be
sober from it, it means I have to really be very
attentive and mindful in my life, which doesn't mean there's

(20:23):
any one particular behavior that I'm avoiding.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
It's why am I doing this?

Speaker 1 (20:28):
And I really look at the cause of my behavior,
the choices and like you said, the age and see
the sovereignty inside of it. Like if I'm getting high,
which I do love to get high, but I'm like,
if I'm getting high, it's like, did I write today?
Is there something I'm trying to avoid feeling that I
actually probably should write about? You know, I'm a songwriter

(20:50):
and one of the things that happens for me is
sometimes I'll get high and then I'll start singing, and
then I'll realize how I'm feeling. Once I'm like halfway
into a song and I'm like, Hi, I'm devastated about
this thing, but I needed to almost like back into it.
I'm okay with that. That's still moving in the direction
I need to move in. So I just have to
really be in touch with like I want it as

(21:11):
often as I can be running towards that, that true
sound of myself and not away from it. And that's
very it's very internal. You know, I'm the only one
who knows which direction I'm going in, but I when
I am heading in the right direction, I tend to
get the feedback from the world of like a vibrancy
that people feel in me, or you know, people will

(21:32):
say I'm coming through in the work, and you know,
there's the feedback loop of the world will be like yes, yeah, yes,
that's it, you know, And when I'm off, the feedback
from the world is often like we're not getting enough
from you, or we can't really feel you, or like.

Speaker 2 (21:48):
How do we get more?

Speaker 3 (21:50):
There's something that you said when you were talking about sobriety.
Actually I want to go back to addiction for a second, Like,
since we're borrowing addiction language here, like a efective and
effective in air quotes, but effective addictions treatment is you
have to identify why you're using, what you're using, what
purpose does it serve, what does it save you from,

(22:12):
what does it numb you from? And if we can't
identify that and come into a different relationship with it,
then it does turn into the whack a mole.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
Exactly right, exactly.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
It's been very frustrating for me to admit that it
would be so much easier if it was like, one, clear,
this is the problem at least for me. I the
grass is always greener, But I think it would be
easier if it was like this is just the one thing. Instead,
I feel like I'm dealing with this very wildly clever seductress.
You know that I'm like, what are you doing?

Speaker 3 (22:43):
And then like, if you're anything like me, like then
you get like, at least, okay, I'm going to just
speak about myself when I get in there. Then the
addictive behavior turns into endless self analyzation over why am
I doing these things, which is for me, another way
of not doing the thing that my heart waltz. That's right,
that's right, Like the brain, the complexity of the brain

(23:06):
that gets in the way of all the things.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
So I think there's also something that's like I want
to demonize or I want to make things good bad,
even though in a major way, in a philosophical way,
I'm like, oh, that's not how anything works. But I
want to be able to make things good bad. It
feels like I'd be easier to manage. And so it's
particularly hard when I recognize that I'm usually self sabotaging

(23:32):
out of an urge to protect myself, and there's something
that it's taken care of in me. So when my
friend passed, he was an art lover and he always
had like gorgeous framed art in the house and all
the walls, and I was like, well, I'm not drinking,
you know, I'm not numbing myself. But then I noticed

(23:53):
that I had spent a lot of money on art,
like in the very short period of time. And it
wasn't like you know, originals or anything. It was like
just framed pieces from museums. But it's still like for
my budget, not in it, right, And I was like, oh,
this is how I'm numbing. Now, this is how I'm

(24:15):
doing it this time. And as soon as I could
see it, I was like, okay, pause, you're grief shopping.
And you could have just as easily been grief drinking
or grief smoking, or grief fucking or grief something else,
but this time you chose grief shopping. And there we are, right,
So now I.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
Can see it.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
And the hard part in that is just like what
if you went directly to just grieving instead of the
coping behaviors around it? And you know how hard it's like,
well what if I what if I can't come through it?
You know, it always grief when you're when you're avoiding grief,
it always feels like it's going to be way too
much to experience. And I can't promise that it isn't

(24:57):
you know, not everyone survives grief, but I do know
that for most of my life, when I have turned
towards grief, I have been able to move through it,
and it has been a way to love my people,
you know, more all the way.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
You know, I think of it like I'm loving you
all the way.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
I'm loving you into this other realm. Same with rage,
you know, I'm like, there's just so much more there
when you turn and get into it. So I understand
why we run. But you know, I'm trying to stay,
to learn and fight, learn, learn to stay and fight,
stay and be in it.

Speaker 3 (25:28):
And that that is an expression of love, I think
is a really powerful part of that. Right, It's love
for yourself, and it's also love for the people and
the the anything, the anything that has left this realm.

Speaker 1 (25:44):
One of the books I'm working on, or one of
the series of books I'm working on, is the Grievers series,
and so much is being unveiled to me. This like
stuff I know, but as I'm writing it, it's like,
oh no, but for real, like the way we think
of the realms, or the way we think of life
and death is not quite it, And there's just so

(26:08):
much more overlap and interplay and dynamic. I don't quite
know how to say it, which is part of like
I'm in the process of writing.

Speaker 3 (26:16):
This is the challenge of writing, is that you're supposed
to be able to talk about what you're writing when
you don't know what it wants to be yet.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
And I'm like, it's not quite there yet. But there's
something around this feeling I have had for most of
my life that the air is thick with presents is
not wrong, and that that presence is connected to everyone
I've ever lost and everyone that has ever been quote
unquote lost, and that maybe I can find them, and

(26:42):
maybe I can find more if I can trust that.
I'm like, oh, it's not just a sense, but it's real.
It's just you know. This is why I love the
metaphor of my cilium and mushroom, because I'm like, I'm
walking through the forest and I don't see the my cilium,
but it's everywhere, and it's connecting everything that's around me,
and I'm like, I think that maybe those that we

(27:03):
think of as ancestors might also function that way amongst us.

Speaker 3 (27:16):
Hey, before we get back to my conversation with Adrian,
I want to talk with you about getting help inside grief.
You know how people say, like, maybe you should talk
to somebody. While finding skilled grief support is hard, we
get a lot of messages from people wanting to speak
with me directly. We used to say no because I
didn't have much time, but now we're saying yes for

(27:39):
a limited time and a limited number of people. So
to apply for one of the grief consultation spots on
my calendar, send us an email at support at refuge
in Grief dot com, or you can use the contact
form at Megandivine dot co. If individual work with me
is out of reach or that waiting list gets too long,

(27:59):
you can join me every month for a live Q
and A at patreon dot com backslash Megan Divine. It's
my open clinic for grievers. Details on both options are
in the show notes. I want to get into Grievers
the book a little bit here, so I'm really glad
that you brought it up. I can't remember if you
wrote this or if it was a review of your

(28:20):
book that I read, but it says the premise of
Grievers is a crucial one that perhaps in our morning
we do not just grieve the dead, we also grieve
the realities of our own lives, which, in spite of everything,
we still desperately want to live.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
That's right, that's right, That's what it is. You know.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
I think often I don't even realize how much I
have planned until it's taken from me. Until I'm like,
I don't get to do that plan, I don't get
to grow old with that person, I don't get to
love that house, you know that it's gone, and then
all of a sudden, I'm clear. I'm like, I had
a whole life there, and it kind of is in

(29:00):
some ways it plays out. It's like this parallel thing
that walks along your life. You know, I had, like
topic pregnancy, and there's this parallel life in which that
is a child in my life, where you know, there's
just parallel lies, parallel things happening, which I think also
thick in the mood and thick in the space. And

(29:20):
so for grievers, there was a desire in me to
explore what it would look like if like the way
it feels when grief happens, that everything stops and nothing
makes sense and you kind of just have to move
into that what if it happened to everyone at the
same time or in such a quick time that everyone
had to just stop and and then you just had

(29:43):
time to be with your grief. Because that's the thing
I hunger for a lot, is I don't want to
do or anything but feel my grief and think about
the life I was going to live and cry and
eat cake and you know.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
Do the things.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
And you know, I wrote it before COVID, but then
with COVID, COVID has unveiled a lot to me about
where that's what that story was coming with in that way,
because now I feel like we live in a delusional world,
you know, where it's like, oh, the grief happened, and
we all stopped, and then we just started again, and

(30:20):
the losses are still happening, but we're just moving as
if they're not. And it's one of the many delusions,
you know, right now we live in a current like
multitude of delusions. But yeah, it was fun. It was
a fun thing to write about, even though it was hard.

Speaker 3 (30:37):
Yeah, you wrote, I didn't want grievers to feel optimistic.
I wanted it to feel realistic. Yes, which is a
cool distinction. So what's that distinction? For you optimistic versus realistic.

Speaker 1 (30:48):
Well, you know, I've spent a lot in my life
being a very optimistic person. Like I would facilitate and
I would come in the room and be like, we've
got this, you know. And I think sometimes, especially when
you're writing about the near future, writing about the future,
there's a way what to be like it's going to
be all right, y'all, And instead I wanted to say,
what if, what would it look like to just be

(31:10):
realistic about what's coming. What's coming for most of us
in most places, I think all of us in all
places is a certain degree of devastation just because of
the decisions we have made as a species. Devastation is coming,
and it's going to come like COVID did. It's going
to come in the form of viruses. It's going to
come in the form of the climate catastrophes we've been experiencing.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
It's going to come in the form of economic fall out.
You know.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
I'm looking at all these kids now who are like
graduating and coming into a world where there's no real
clarity about what a path could look like for them
to work. And there's this thing on thing on thing
on thing, while we're all being distracted by this sort
of intentionally uninformed foundation, you know, fundamentalist.

Speaker 2 (31:54):
I guess, fundament I don't know what it is.

Speaker 1 (31:56):
It feels like the looney tunes of it all is happening,
and it's like, literally, our news cycle is obsessed with
the looney tubes of it all, and so it's like
no time gets spent on the actual, true, devastating conditions
that are unfolding. So part of writing for me was like,
what if I just tuned into the realist in me

(32:17):
and was honest about, like, everyone's not gonning nessarty to
take care of each other right away. People do want
to climb in their bed and stay there for months.
Folks run away in fear and try to avoid this thing.
That's what really happened during COVID, That's What's really happened
many times in my life where I was like, I
thought everyone was going to run towards each other, but

(32:37):
we ran away. And so I wanted to write something
that gave space for that running away and then say,
what does having an analysis and what does having a
commitment to the collective do inside of that instinct? And
I'm still exploring it, but it was really beautiful for
me to get into grievers and give doom room to

(32:58):
be and then room to long for others, because that
also feels really important to me that like, whenever I
go through grief, the people around me are no longer
enough and for a while that's just true. It's like,
you're all fine, but you're not the person that I want,
and I need to go through that experience and kind

(33:19):
of now, you know, get to the place of like,
I accept that this is true. It doesn't feel normal.
It's never going to feel great. There's just missing, you know.
I think it's Elijah at the table, like leaving an
open seat, right. It feels like I have my life
at the table of my life has many open seats
in it, and so that you have to go through

(33:39):
that and then decide, Okay, what can I still build
from here? How can I still risk forming new friendships
and new relationships with people when I know how hard
it is to lose them? And I wanted to write
a book that gave me room to explore that and
to explore, yeah, what's left.

Speaker 3 (33:57):
I love that image that at the table of your life,
if there are many empty seats, so that that practice
of leaving the door open and a table set for Elijah,
knowing that he may never come. Yeah, but we're going
to We're not going to pretend that absence isn't there.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
Or that doesn't have a big impact, and it doesn't
exactly no one else should sit in that chair, So
I might, you know, have to make a bigger and
bigger and bigger table. And I've done that, you know.
But it amazes me even now this year, I'm making
new friendships that are really ambastic and thrilling and beautiful,
and it's humbling to be like, damn, now, I know

(34:34):
what's going to happen. I'm not a kid anymore. I
know I'm going to lose you or you're going to
lose me. Life's going to fuck this up. I'm still
down for it, you know.

Speaker 2 (34:43):
Let's I think that's like.

Speaker 3 (34:44):
To me, that's the central commitment of being human, right,
like knowing that this world will break your heart and
choosing to love it anyway, which is a paraphrase from
some poet that I have completely forgotten. Yes, but that
coming into it with a soft body and an open
mind and an open heart saying I'm going to do
my best to keep myself at my growing edge with

(35:07):
good boundaries and good roots and love this world as
best I can, knowing that this choice will break my heart.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
One of the songs that I'm working with right now
has the line of little.

Speaker 2 (35:20):
Life That's worth your grief.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
And I just keep sitting with that. It's like, that's
the instruction, is Okay, for whatever reason, this person has died,
and I'm here, and so I have to live a
life that's worth grieving for this person and not like
do everything they were trying to do, but I have
to really do everything I'm supposed to do.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
You know.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
I feel like I got to take this seriously and
that's humbling. But like I wake up, this has been
my daily practice for a little while, is just waking
up and being like, ok hey, today, how do I
make it worth my grief?

Speaker 2 (35:53):
Like how do I do it?

Speaker 1 (35:55):
And it's surprising how small the answers are, Like it's
not actually getting everyone on Earth to recycle or whatever,
you know, some of the large scale goals I have,
But it really is like really being present to the
beauty of the world around me, really showing up fully
in a moment of connection. I am learning so much

(36:17):
about communicating honestly what I want and need in a
given moment. That's been like the holy grail of my life,
and it's just been like that's an unattainable non exist
that's just not a thing that doesn't exist. And it's like,
oh no, I had a friend to teach me this
year that it's okay to have tension in a conversation,
which as a facilitator and a mediator, you would think

(36:39):
I would be like the you know, super skilled at that,
and I'm like it's great for other people, love it,
but for me, I'm just like, you know, I bus
fix this tension that is Rula right and instead being
like right and nothing they fixed. There's real tension. We
have a disagreement, we might fight, and we might go apart.
All of that is okay because otherwise we're wasting our

(37:00):
life with this like bubbling thing rumbling under the surface.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:03):
The amount of energy it takes to pretend you don't
know what you know and not name what's in the
room like that, that is expensive energy.

Speaker 2 (37:13):
Yeah, it is. It's extensive.

Speaker 1 (37:15):
And then I think about like you can literally see
it in your mind if you are busy holding a
door shut. What else can you do with your body? Right,
You're just holding that door shut all the time, you know,
and you're in one place holding it, And I'm like,
I want to run around, I want to go do things.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
I want to leave my house. I want to write books,
I want to do yoga.

Speaker 1 (37:39):
There's a billion things I need to do with these bones.
So I cannot stay and hold this thing shut anymore.
And in families, I think that that changes everything, right.
I think that in the evolution of a family, you know,
family can exist for a long time until the family
starts to say the truth out loud to each other
and let the truth be there. It's like the family

(38:01):
is stuck in a certain traumatic pattern. And I think
in a friendship the same thing. It's like, if a
friendship can't handle here's the truth of our dynamic and
the awkwardness, and there's this money shit over here and
attraction stuff or whatever it is, you got to just
be able to say the things. And now not everyone
seems to want to live this way, you know, And

(38:23):
I acknowledge that too, But for me, I'm really interested.
I keep thinking the wholehearted life, like I'm really interested
in like going all in and then passing that along
that I'm like, I can testify that, you know, I've said,
you watched that interview the style like you I talked about,
I feel like one of the freest people to ever live,
and I can testify that that doesn't mean you have

(38:46):
only good days, but it means that in general, you
can really feel a certain kind of peace with your
life because you're like, I am fully in it and
I'm not caging myself in any way. So if there's
external people who are still trying to put limitations on
my freedom, what they come up against is this thing

(39:06):
I'm cultivating from within that is so expansive and uncagable.
And then I'm in relationships with other people generating that right,
and I don't know, that just feels very especially right now,
it feels very important when there's so much backlash and
so much like people are so angry about all the
ways that we're just being ourselves, and I'm like, you're

(39:28):
only angry because you haven't given yourself permission to do
it too.

Speaker 3 (39:32):
I think you know, I agreed, Yeah, Yeah, I mean
that's that's classic, right, Like attacking the thing that makes
you feel things you don't want to feel right, and
you would not be hooked by somebody else's being if
there wasn't a place to get hooked.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
Exactly you exactly, Yeah, I always say that. I'm just like, yeah,
I'm like, if you're really scared about my queerness, you
should probably explore your own desire, you know, if you're
really challenged by my fatness, you should really learn little
bit more about loving your body, like because none of
it has any Yeah, this doesn't have anything to do with.

Speaker 3 (40:05):
Me, and all of that, Like there's such a there's
such a wide net here of that. This is why
we tell people you have six weeks to get over
this grief. You can't be this way for long. And
that is all just that projection of like I have
generational backlogs of pain that was never acknowledged, and you

(40:26):
being sad in front of me is really harshing my buzz.
Yeah right, like yes, whoa.

Speaker 1 (40:31):
Yeah, well, and you know, I keep thinking about these
like imaginary dream schools of the future and imagining these
situations where like, oh, you go to school and like
you really learn a lot about managing your emotions and
you learn a lot about being in healthy conflict and
you learn a lot about being in community and finding

(40:55):
what your alone time needs are and meeting them, and
like that that's what school was about, you know, at
least for the first five ten years of it. And
then and then you can be like, Okay, now I
want to specialize in and learn the like math and
the spelling and all the other whatevers, you know, but
first I need to know how to human because like

(41:15):
that's such a big part of what.

Speaker 2 (41:17):
I'm going to be doing my whole life. And relate.

Speaker 1 (41:20):
Yeah, I find myself really humbled by the next generation
of kids that are coming up who have gone through
the pandemic and had to really figure out like how
to be in homes and relate and socialize or haven't
figured out, you know. Like it's just like it's so clear.
I'm like, oh, relating is the core skill set, and

(41:41):
they're hungry for it. We're all longing to belong to things,
you know, And I'm like, what if that was what
education was at first? It was just like here's how
you learned to belong to yourself and you know, to
the people you love.

Speaker 3 (41:55):
Yeah, Like, what kind of world is possible when we
start there as a foundation right. I feel like that
this is my eternal question and has been through my
whole life, Like what will we create for ourselves and
with each other if we just stop being repressed stupid jerks.
I probably don't phrase that in the kindest, most welcoming

(42:16):
way at least, you know, not inside, But it's my way.
It's it's it's you know, it's the inner.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
It takes care of both their rage and the vision.

Speaker 3 (42:26):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's naming what's true. Like, y'all just
stop being mean jerks to yourself, to each other and
to the rest of the inhabitants of the planet and
the planet herself, and then let's see what we can
build together. But like, you gotta you gotta stop being
jerks first, which is a whole, a whole other thing.

(42:46):
I love that you brought up this, like optimism for
the younger generations. I want to bring us back to
Dune and grievers for a minute here, But you wrote,
Dune felt like the right window doing as a character,
Dune felt like the right window to talk about grief
because so many young people's lives have been shaped by grief.

Speaker 2 (43:03):
Yeah, you kind of.

Speaker 3 (43:05):
Touched on that a minute ago with like this generation
that was young during the pandemic. But how do you
see so many young people's lives have been shaped by grief.
What does that look like?

Speaker 1 (43:15):
Well, I think that we're in this really interesting period
right now where young people are very aware of the
circumstances that they're in. Like all the young people I
know are like, I know that the police kill us,
and I know that the climate is in a crisis,
and I know that love doesn't last forever, and I
know that they're homophobic and transphobic people.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
And you just know so much more than I remember knowing.

Speaker 3 (43:40):
At because it's all being said out loud, it's all being.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
Set out loud, and it's all on the Internet, which
they find ways to access, right because because we're obsessed
and addicted to the internet, they can't, you know, they
can't really avoid that. And I think it's just like
the world is shifting into this place that is harder
and harder to survive, right, which is anytime there's a
global shift towards fascism, young folks have to start to

(44:05):
figure out will I join with those who are reductionist
and limiting, or will I push against that and try
to be free at the risk of my safety, potentially family,
potentially belonging. Right, So all of that is happening concurrently.

Speaker 2 (44:20):
Plus they know.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
More than they've ever known before of what all else
is happening concurrently. Right, Like when I think back when
my parents, you know, I'll talk to them sometimes they're like,
what they knew was happening in the world was very local,
you know, it was very much like, this is what's
happening in my house, this is happening in my school
and in my town, and then some national news you know,

(44:41):
would come in and it wasn't like there was a
crisis and grief inside of all that. Folks were struggling
and suffering. But I think there's a really different experience
of struggling and suffering when it's local and like at
the level of the village versus when you are nine
trying to hold all the global grief that is out
there in addition to figuring out who you are. So,

(45:03):
you know, I have a lot of young people in
my life, and I really am astounded by how they're
just like this is this is the world, and they're
so smart, and there's so much that's going on that's
really interesting, like all the kids are on the spectrum,
all the kids have ADHD, all the kids are sensory overload,
all the kids are like developing all these other ways.

(45:24):
You know, something is evolving inside of their bodies, minds,
and ways of being in response to these conditions, and
we're in the middle of it. So I think we're
going to look in the next twenty thirty years and
what it means to be a human being in relationship
is going to be radically different because all these new
senses and attention and all this is shifting, right, which

(45:46):
is cool if you're a futurist, but is challenging if
you're living in the moment, And it's challenging if you're
like I'm fourteen and I can't handle my emotions, and
I have a lot of kids in my life who
have parents who have split or not together, and patriarchy
is falling apart. So if one of those parents is
someone who's embedded in patriarchy, that's also something the kids

(46:09):
are having to deal with very intimately, is the spinning
out kind of I don't know who I am that
a lot of men are going through right now that
I mean, there's just levels on levels and levels, right,
And so it was really exciting to me to write
this character who's like trying to figure out gender and
trying to figure out sexuality and trying to figure out

(46:30):
you know, both of Dune's parents are organizers and social
justice people, but Dunes like, I don't know, I don't know, yeah,
you know, like I'm trying to figure out how to exist.
And I also keep imagining a future in which we
don't orient around jobs, but we orienter around interest and
creating and making, and that necessitates having a different relationship

(46:51):
to the earth, one that's like, oh, the earth is
abundantly nourishing us and provides everything we need to have
a home, to have food, and if we live.

Speaker 2 (47:01):
That way, we can actually spend most of our life creating. Right.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
We don't live that way. We spend most of our
life trying to earn a living and pay taxes. And
I keep being like, I want the whole theoretically, at least,
I want the whole economy to fall apart. I want
all of the nation, state boarder stuff to fall apart.
But even for me, I'm like, what does that actually look.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
Like in practice?

Speaker 1 (47:23):
How do you practice becoming part of something that is
not a nation state or a global economy. Where do
you fit in? And I'm trying to answer that through
one person, one story, you know, one set of perspectives,
one place. Because Detroit, you know, my mentor Bracely Bugs
is a Detroit elder and she's an ancestor now, but

(47:44):
she was an elder and she always said, Detroit is
what the rest of the country has to look forward
to when it comes to economy, when it comes to civilization.
We're living in a very uncivilized time. And so I'm
really interest I'm like, Okay, if that keeps coming apart,
what are the new things that we've in order to
hold on to each other?

Speaker 3 (48:02):
I think that can get when you start looking at
the whole machine, it can get really really overwhelming.

Speaker 2 (48:09):
Yes, right, And.

Speaker 3 (48:10):
It's that peristaltic motion, right of like the contraction to
the intimacy of the self and the body and the
expansion to the systems, the systems that we have created
and also the systems that are Yeah, and how do
you contract expand back and forth with those, understanding the

(48:32):
interrelatedness and not getting flooded by one or the other. Yeah,
And that is such a tricky place to be.

Speaker 1 (48:41):
I mean, I have found it to be very much
tied to my emotional well being in a given moment.
I can tell now like, for the past couple days,
I've been feeling like not this not okayness that feels
like in my body, in my attention, i feel grumpy,
i feel like complaining more, and I'm like, oh, I'm

(49:04):
trying to take in way too much. When I'm trying
to take it all in, my system does intelligently get
overwhelmed and it creates things to try to bring me back.
It's like, get back here to the body. Just pay
attention to this, handle this right and emotionally, if I'm
able to tune in and be like, what is something
that I can actually put my hands on a place

(49:25):
where I actually am in relationship okay with my sisters,
Can I just tune into getting that flowing when we
spend that time together and get our little sister thing flowing,
I'm like, all is right with the world and it
can be that simple. Or with a dear friend, I'm like,
let's really drop in and sometimes just say what's happening

(49:45):
in the world and how we're feeling about it, you know,
because sometimes I too try to say to people I'm
depressed about the entire state of the world. That's a
real state I get into. I feel responsible. I feel
like I haven't been a good enough organizer because if
I as, we'd be free by now all that hits,
you know, and then I need to have people in
my life will be like, take a deep breath in,

(50:07):
let it out, you know, notice where your ego is
in this particular emotional cycle, and then like, what is
something you could do that would be self caring? What
if somebody you could do that would help you attend
to your home? When's the last time you ate a vegetable?
Are you hydrated? Like just really breaking it back down
into like, oh, right, then I can remember that there's

(50:31):
no one human who's responsible for the whole thing, but
actually it's the multitudinous nature that is the miracle of
it all. And I'm like, can I allow people to
be making their own life decisions? And can I be
responsible for mine? And you know, when I imagine this nation,
I do imagine the US what we're calling polarization now

(50:52):
actually formalizing into some splitting. You know, I think a
lot of us were young when we were younger, there
was the USSR, and now there's not. Everybody's kind of
split up and doing their own things, and some of
them are fighting, some of them are not, you know,
they're doing their own things. I think the US is
heading in that kind of direction right where I'm just
sort of like there's a center that cannot hold when

(51:15):
people are allowed to go so far off the deep
end of not dealing with facts and science and like
you know, relationship and stuff. And I'm like, we're here
for that time period. Part of our job is to
figure out what are the new lines, what are the
new borders or ways of thinking about our safety, What

(51:36):
are the new ways of identifying that are beyond a
two party stratified system that allow us to actually find
each other, find our people. What are the new ways
of relating to the earth that allow us to you know,
I think so much of this time period is about safety,
and so I think about that a lot. It's like,

(51:56):
what is the safety that we can access in this
moment and what is a safety that we can start
to codify and civilize around. So once my mind starts
attending there, I'm like, Okay, write a book, write a story,
write an essay, write some ideas down. When my brain
starts generating again, then I know I'm okay. When I

(52:17):
start thinking, oh, there's nothing to do, it's just there's
hopeless We're all going to die, I'm like, yeah, well,
we're definitely all going to die. Put period on that sentence.
What's the next sentence? Because we're not dead yet. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:28):
That's a perfect segue into our closing question, which is
knowing what you know and living what you've lived. What
does hope look like for you? But I don't want
you to jump into answering it yet, because I want
to pull out what I hear in everything that you
just said, and for me, everything that you just brought in.

(52:53):
How we deal with all of that is coming home
to this body and this moment and tending to the organism.
And that is true when you get a tough diagnosis,
or when someone dies, or the world is not the
world that you wanted to live in, Right, how will
I tend the organism in this right? That all in

(53:14):
a way, I mean not to put too much heaviness
on it, but it's like all of the burdens of
the world and all of the complexity in the world.
We only have agency or a sense of hope when
we can come into our own bodies and tend that
organism and listen for what is needed now in this moment,
in this space. Right, then it's human. Then it's manageable.

Speaker 1 (53:37):
Yeah, I feel like hope is a function of scale
for me, right that It's like, sometimes if I take
the broadest view, I can feel very hopeful. A lot
of times that one overwhelms me and I need to
come into the smaller scale and then I can feel hope.
Sometimes the human scale is still not quite right. But

(53:58):
if I step into my back yard and I watch
how the blue heron in my backyard moves across the
pond and then moves across the pond, and then moves
across the pond, and the geese come flying in, and
there's just these hummingbirds that'll come all of a sudden,
there's something that unlocks. I'm like, oh, And this may

(54:19):
not seem hopeful to all your listeners, but for me,
it's like, if humans are not here, the earth continues,
and it will be absolutely stunning. If some humans are
here and are figuring out how to be in relationship
with the earth, that actually gives me a ton of
hope as well. Right, I feel like we're at a
kind of rock bottom in a way, at least in
the US right now. And I think anytime fascism is

(54:42):
on the horizon or in the periphery, it's we're in
that rock bottom of humanity place. But for me, the
hopeful thing is, well, then we know that there's an
up from here, right, We know that there was something
better behind us. We know that there's something better ahead,
even if it's our own extinction. And I I think
I say that with all the heaviness and all the

(55:03):
gravitas of it, right, which is not my number one
top hope. My number one top hope is that we
find right relationship with this and then we get to
meet the aliens and everybody's kicking in space and it's
just like so freaking us on and the Earth is healthy.
Like that's top hope, but like it's on the list, right,
it's on the list of possible viable futures that will

(55:24):
be okay. There's no future in which it won't be okay.

Speaker 3 (55:28):
And it goes back to that radical truth telling, right,
like this the situation that we are in personally and
collectively it's fucking dire. Yes, yeah, And until we can
see that and say I see you. Yeah, Like all
we've got is blind, illogical, faux optimism or a collapse

(55:49):
into despair, which is not super helpful.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
And then you know, I choose.

Speaker 1 (55:55):
I'm like, each day, I'm like, I can still generate, right,
I think give the generative impulse inside of humans as
the thing we must protect. So even if I'm like,
sometimes they can't always protect it myself and I protected
a child around me, I'm like, Okay, you are still
pretty geeked out to be here and figure out how
to walk like you are freaking.

Speaker 2 (56:17):
Jazzed about this.

Speaker 1 (56:19):
Let me just tune into that right because the rest
of this will come later. They'll still be love, there'll
still be connection, they'll still be good cuddles. All that
is available right now today. You know, I can read
a great book of poetry. I can make myself an
incredible meal. You know, the miracle is available each day
and I have to bring my attention to it. That's

(56:39):
my mind ful.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
This practice right now.

Speaker 3 (56:41):
I love that and it reminds me of so many
things from pleasure activism that we're not going to have
time to get into today. But it's really that that like,
yes is the way, and yes it is the future,
which is me quoting you here right, like finding those
pockets yeah and feeding them Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
You know I want to say to you, and then
I know we have to go.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
But I recently got to be in a talk with
my friend to Rona Burke, who started the Me Too movement,
and she's so brilliant. One of the things she said was,
you know, we're winning. So things are so dire in
a large part because of the backlash against all of
the awakening that we're doing. You know, patriarchy is fighting,
White supremacy is fighting. You know, those who want to

(57:25):
dominate the earth are fighting, but they're not winning. The
culture is shifting. Kids are like, we know what matters.
That gives me hope. Also that I'm like, you can
try to box our queer magical life force.

Speaker 2 (57:40):
Uh, it's too late.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
You already lost the war culturally. And how many times
humans have tried to put each other into tiny little
boxes and disappear each other. It's never fully worked. We
persist that part of us that wants to be free
and alive and in touch with the earth and which
and queer and all the things. It persists and it

(58:04):
will continue to do that that I absolutely believe.

Speaker 2 (58:07):
So I liked that.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
You know, on a good day can feel like, oh yeah,
we're winning. I wonder you're spinning out, so we're losers,
but you don't get to inherit the ears. Thank you
so much for this time.

Speaker 3 (58:20):
Thank you. So I'm going to link to your website
and the books in the show notes. Is there anything
else that you want people to know about where to
find you or where to look for you?

Speaker 2 (58:28):
Right now, we'll see.

Speaker 1 (58:29):
I'm on Instagram, like if I'm doing anything in the
social media realm, I was doing a lot of meme posting,
but I haven't had it. It hasn't aligned with my
grief self. So we'll see what happens with that. But yeah,
I post like what I think of as the good
news of the world in my Instagram space.

Speaker 3 (58:46):
Okay, so we'll link to that too, all right, everybody,
I will be right back with your questions to carry
with you right after this break. Each week I leave
you with some questions to carry with you until we

(59:07):
meet again. So many things stuck with me from this conversation.
One thing I really appreciated was when we were talking
about humor and Adrian's use of memes, and she said, quote,
memes aren't the form that suits my grief right now.
There's so much in that statement, right like, you get

(59:27):
to listen to what is true for you, and different
losses will take different forms. Even when people expect something
from you, you do not have to give it if
it does not serve you. Who There's so much more
in that that I'm going to carry with me. How
about you? What's stuck with you? In this conversation. Everybody's

(59:52):
going to take something different from today's show, but I
do hope you found something to hold on to. If
you want to tell me how today's show felt for
or you have thoughts on what we covered, let me know.
Tag at Refuge and Grief on all the social platforms
so I can hear how this conversation affected you. You
can also leave me a review on the pod platforms
that have space for reviews. Reviews are a fantastic way

(01:00:14):
to reach me, and they also have the added benefit
of encouraging other people to listen. We love reviews. I
love your reviews. All right, follow the show at it's
Okay pod on TikTok and Refuge and Grief everywhere else
to see video clips from the show and use the
hashtag it's okay pod on all the platforms, so not
only I can find you, but others can too. None

(01:00:37):
of us are entirely okay, and it's time we start
talking about that together. Yeah, it's okay that you're not okay.
You're in good company. That is it for this week. Friends,
Remember to subscribe to the show, share it with your people.
It is great for opening conversations, right Like you could

(01:01:00):
send a link to your friend and say, let's listen
to this and discuss. Fantastic conversation starters Coming up next week,
Steven Cutler, the extremely prolific author on topics like flow
state and peak aging, joins me to talk about the
limits of the body and why a lot of his
work is just a cover for rescuing dogs. Follow the

(01:01:22):
show on your favorite platform so you do not miss
an episode. Want more on these topics, Look, grief is everywhere.
As my dad says, daily life is full of everyday
grief that we don't call grief. Learning how to talk
about all that without cliches or platitudes or simplistic dismissive
statements is an important skill for everyone. Get help to

(01:01:45):
have those conversations with trainings, professional resources, and my best
selling book, It's Okay that You're Not Okay, plus the
Guided Journal for Grief at Megandivine dot Co. It's Okay
that You're Not Okay. The podcast is non produced by
me Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown, co produced
by Elizabeth Fozzio, Logistical and social media support from Micah,

(01:02:09):
Post production and editing by Houston Tilley. Our intern this
season is Hannah Goldman. Music provided by Wave Crush and
background noise provided by me Vigeting in a slightly squeaky
chair because I have had too much coffee

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