Good Grief

Francis Weller's new book, In the Absence of the Ordinary, gives us help to face these uncertain times. On the occasion of its publication we share an interview with Francis about his first book, The Wild Edge of Sorrow.

Grief touches us at the outer reaches of our experience, challenging us to respond to new and unfamiliar terrain in our own souls. Finding rituals and pathways to ...

How can we create an open conversation about the damages and continued disconnects which result from racism? Shakti Butler believes that "in order to manifest human rights and dignity for all, it is necessary that we seek union between the head and heart. It is the head that can recognize, analyze and strategize to overcome disparities. It is the heart that obliterates fear." Join us while we talk about the losses we all suffer as ...

In 2019 I interviewwed Tembi Locke after her first book, from Scratch, was published. As she launches her second, Forever Now, we revisit our hour together!

When Tembi Locke spent a college semester in Italy, it changed the course of her life. Meeting Saro, the man she would love and marry, filled her with joy and also challenged them both to bridge the gap between his Sicilian farm family and her Houston Texas family of civil righ...

Melanie DeMore, an outstanding and internationally recognized vocal artist, embodies her own principle that music can be a force for social and political change. Join us as we talk about how she uses her powerful voice to heal and transform. What experiences in her own life responded to music's healing potential? What led her to dedicate her life to sharing her gifts with adults and children throughou...

Singer Amikaeyla has spent her career sharing musical healing with people facing challenges around the world. Out of her own deep experiences with music as a force for healing, her work is fueled by a belief in its magic powers. So what has this last year during a pandemic, when her work was altered and sometimes unrecognizable, been like? What has kept her optimism and personal healing going? What lessons she learned over many yea...

Throughout the world, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex people continue to experience oppression, including physical attack, psychological torture and rejection by family, friends and communities. In his travels as a journalist, Robin Hammond began to meet people whose very identities are still illegal in their own countries. He set out to interview and photograph them, telling their st...

The war between so-called pro-choice and pro-life forces in America seem divided beyond repair. But where does that leave women who have made the often painful and important decision to have an abortion? As Kassi Underwood says, they are left with a choice between regret and relief, with few opportunities to talk about the experience and feel supported in their personal struggles. Kassi knows from personal experience that needing t...

Across the great divide in America, city dwellers and the nation's farmers often fail to understand each other. Marie Mutsuki Mockett set out to close the gap, going back to the place in Nebraska where her family owns a farm and listening with her whole heart to the many of the men and women who raise the food that keeps all of us alive; midwest rural America. She travelled to seven states to participate with them in harvest. In th...

Susan Hayden experienced three sudden losses that shaped her life; her childhood best friend, her father and her husband. How did she shape these losses into the creative voice she crafted over a lifetime? How did they change her? Going forward from loss, what do we take with us and what do we leave behind? Her first published memoir, Now You Are a Missing Person, makes poetry of loss, showing us how to integrate our love into a ne...

Abbe Greenberg and Maggie Sarachek have literally written the book on supporting yourself through anxiety and panic attacks. And of course, they tried it ALL to deal with their own anxiety, because experience is the best teacher! Join us to talk about how they each experienced anxiety, what they did to address it, and what it is like to support others through the same struggle. So much is lost as a result of anxiety; our freedoms, ...

What leads us to explore our relationship to death? For Angela Fama, it began when a terrible accident caused her to consider her own death. But she noticed that when she tried to talk about death, she met discomfort and resistance. Instead of dropping the conversation, she searched for ways to enter into it; to make others more comfortable with the subject. Out of this need of hers, the Death Conversation Game was born!

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