November 25, 2024 • 50 mins
Join us for a poignant exploration of grief and healing with our special guest, Henry Cameron, a certified grief and survival counselor who has turned immense personal loss into a beacon of hope for others. After experiencing the heart-wrenching loss of his son, Cameron, to brain cancer, Henry shares his transformative journey towards rediscovering joy. His work with the Lost Travelers Club introduces the concept of Peregrines, offering a supportive community for parents who have outlived their children. Through thought-provoking discussions, we tackle the societal expectations surrounding grief and embrace it as a universal life skill that everyone experiences at some point in their lives.
Henry's unique perspective on grief is informed by the principles of quantum physics, providing solace by illustrating how energy and essence endure beyond the physical realm. He candidly shares his 15-year struggle to reconnect with happiness and his realization that names carry frequencies, a discovery that led him to carry his son’s name within his own. This episode sheds light on the often-unspoken challenges men face when expressing grief, emphasizing the need for cultural shifts to allow more open and honest conversations about loss and healing. Initiatives like the Lost Travelers Club are paving the way for such necessary dialogues.
The episode also takes you on a geographical and emotional journey as Henry narrates his decision to leave Minneapolis, a city laden with memories of his son. From Gloucester to the serene landscapes of the South of France and Southwest Spain, Henry's travels reflect his quest for personal growth amid life's transitions. Through stories of resilience in the face of life's unpredictabilities, listeners are invited to savor each moment and connect with their inner strength. Henry's experiences in arts, philanthropy, and mental health offer invaluable insights as he inspires others to embrace life's transitions and find meaning in every chapter.
Find out more about Henry-Cameron here:
https://www.losttravelers.club/
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/thelosttravelerpodcast/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Lift One Self podcast, where we break
mental health stigmas throughconversations.
I'm your host, nat Nat, and wedive into topics about trauma
and how it impacts the nervoussystem.
Yet we don't just leave youthere.
We share insights and tools ofself-care, meditation and growth
(00:21):
that help you be curious aboutyour own biology.
Your presence matters.
Please like and subscribe toour podcast.
Help our community grow.
Let's get into this.
Oh, and please remember to bekind to yourself.
Welcome to the Lift One Selfpodcast.
I am your host, nat Nat, andtoday I am delighted to be in
(00:43):
the presence of Henry Cameron,and let me tell you, once you
hear his story and you feel hispalpable energy, you will want
to subscribe to his podcast thatI was on recently.
So, henry Cameron, could youlet the listeners know a little
bit about yourself before wedive into the podcast?
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Yes, Well, thank you for mentioning my podcast.
It's the Lost Traveler podcastand it is all about universal
life skills education for ourtime.
We are all learning the samethings and applying them daily.
It's not a question of whetherwe're learning, it's how well
we're learning them and fromwhom.
And how proficient was theirtoolkit right?
(01:26):
So that's really been thethrust of my work for many, many
years universal life skills.
I'm a theater artist.
I have the Folklore TheaterCompany, which is now the new
Folklore Theater Company.
It's virtual, which is kind ofexciting.
It's new territory for theaterwork and I also have a
(01:49):
foundation called the LostTravelers Club, which is an
empowerment organization forwhat we call peregrines parents
who have outlived our children.
Re-imagining the grief journeyand empowering a sense of
purpose again, that's the firstthing to go when we've outlived
our kids.
And so how do we get back to asense of purpose and bring value
(02:12):
to not only our lives but thelives of others, in honor and in
name of our children, allowingthem to live on within us and
through us?
So, and I'm an internationallycertified grief and survival
counselor and therapist, and soI do that work as well online,
(02:32):
and that has been incrediblyhealing for me.
Not that outliving a child canever be healed from, but the
process of living can be healing, and so having achieved my
diploma and certificationinternationally has opened up a
(02:56):
channel of healing that I didnot expect to discover in my
lifetime.
So that's kind of exciting.
So my passions are my art,mental health work and
philanthropy, and all under thearch of universal life skills.
So that's a picture.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
And it's as I said, listeners, you are not going to
want to miss this conversation.
Listeners, you are not going towant to miss this conversation
because there's so much tounpack and I know some of them
are like Peregrine, what is thatLike?
That just lit me up.
Yet, before we get in that,would you be willing to do a
mindful moment with me so thatwe can ground ourselves and open
(03:39):
our hearts for thisconversation?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
And, as you always hear listeners, safety first.
If you're driving whilelistening to the podcast, please
do not close your eyes yetyou're able to follow the other
prompts.
So, henry Cameron, I'll ask youto get comfortable in your
seating and, if it's safe to doso, gently close your eyes and
you're going to begin breathingin and out through your nose and
(04:08):
you're going to bring yourawareness to watching your
breath go in and out throughyour nose.
You're not going to try andcontrol your breath.
You're just going to be awareof its rhythm, allowing it to
guide you into your body.
There may be some sensations orfeelings coming up.
That's okay.
(04:29):
Let them come up.
You're safe to feel.
You're safe to let go.
Surrender the need to control,release the need to resist and
just be, be with your breath,drop deeper into your body.
(04:54):
There's probably some thoughtsor to-do lists that have popped
up in your mind, and that's okay.
Gently bring your awarenessback to your breath, creating
space between the awareness andthe thoughts and dropping even
deeper into your body, allowingyourself to just be with the
(05:16):
breath, keeping your awarenesson the breath.
Again, other thoughts may havepopped up.
It's okay.
Bring your awareness to yourbreath, beginning again,
creating even more space betweenthe thoughts and the awareness
(05:41):
and dropping deeper into yourbody, allowing yourself to just
be, be with your breath.
Now, at your own time and atyour own pace, you're going to
gently open your eyes whilestill staying with your breath.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
How's your heart doing good nice?
Speaker 1 (06:12):
calm now.
Many may wonder why, henrycameron.
So could you let the listenersknow about your name and why
it's hyphenated?
Speaker 2 (06:24):
it's's a great story actually Several months after my
son, cameron, passed from braincancer when he was 13,.
He was my only child, I was asingle father, and so it was a
real shift in my existence, Iguess is a good way to put it.
And when I was living inMinneapolis, minnesota, I
(06:49):
couldn't go to the marketwithout somebody falling apart
in my arms because he wasbeloved in our community.
We both were and are, and Ifound myself in a position of
holding others through theirgrief journey early on without
being able to really hold myselfthrough mine, and so I needed
(07:13):
to get out of Dodge and feel mysmallness again.
You know, when you're fightingin hospitals for two years and
then out of hospitals and tryingto save your child, you're
something of a superhero andyou're trying to be, and on the
(07:34):
flip side of that, I felt likemy scale was off.
I needed to go find mysmallness again, and the closest
thing I could think of was theGrand Canyon.
And there are these longstretches of maybe 70 miles in
the open desert where, beforeyou even get to the canyon,
where there's no civilization atall, you have to fill up your
tank before you even go intothose zones and it was about
(07:57):
three in the morning and I wasdriving toward the canyon and it
was anky, black, except for theheadlights on the road and the
stars.
And there was one brighter starthat seemed to be lower in the
sky and I was hoping it was agas station or something on the
(08:17):
horizon.
And I made it there and it's alittle little enclave of three
buildings in the beam of ahundred foot tall lamppost.
There was a small motel, therewas a, an indigenous trading
post and a post office, nothingelse.
For miles and miles and miles.
But it had its own zip code andI looked up and it was Cameron
(08:38):
Arizona.
Kind of a twilight zone moment,right, whoa, okay, here I am in
the middle of nowhere in thedead of night and here I am in
Cameron Arizona.
So I caught 40 winks in themotel and I woke up and stepped
out.
It was a beautiful day andthere was a I think she was Zuni
(08:59):
, I'm pretty sure she was Zuniand she was an elder and she was
sitting on her blanket in frontof the trading post selling
jewelry that she had made.
I bought this ring from herthat's my Cameron Arizona ring
and I asked if I could sit withher and have a conversation, I
could tell she had a lot ofwisdom and she invited me to sit
(09:24):
and I said, said you know, myson passed away recently and I'm
struggling with my own identitynow because people will ask me
new people in my life, who youknow over the past months, of,
who I've met, oh, do you haveany children?
How do you answer withoutcrowbarring open your chest and
pouring your most sacredpersonal pain out onto a table
(09:46):
where the person you're tellingcouldn't possibly empathize
because they hadn't been throughit?
And I said I've looked at everylanguage that I can think of to
find a word like widow ororphan, to turn to.
That can.
Let it be enough of anexplanation.
(10:07):
You don't have to go into it.
And I couldn't find a thing,not in any languages.
I looked in indigenouslanguages around the world, I
looked in dead languages andancient you know Sanskrit and
everything else.
There's nothing.
And so I said is there anythingin your culture or language
that holds this?
(10:30):
She said well, in my cultureyour name would change, because
your name is the expression ofyour identity to the world, and
so I might refer to you as Henry, whose son is gone.
That would become your name.
I would introduce you.
That way, people who aretalking about you when you're
not in the room will use thatname Even if they think about
you.
They use your, they think aboutyou with your new identity,
(10:52):
henry whose son is gone.
That way, people are holdingyou in your grief even when
they're not around you.
I thought, oh, what a beautifulexpression.
Right, it didn't quite fit intothe global lexicon of
introductions.
I didn't want to go aroundintroducing myself as Henry
whose son is gone, so I decidedI just had this idea to
(11:13):
hyphenate his name with mine,the way people do when they
marry.
Sometimes they hyphenate theirnames to as an identity, a new
identity, to express to theworld that they are bonded
together.
They maintain theirindividuality and yet there's
this link between them.
To hyphenate his name with myname is also a mathematical
(11:35):
equation.
It's Henry minus Cameron in thephysical sense, and that was
enough for me at that time to beable to express who I am now
and who I was then, especiallyearly in my grief.
And so that's the story.
And so people around the worldcall me Henry, cameron, and it's
(11:59):
also a frequency.
You know our names when wespeak them, carry a frequency.
You know our names.
When we speak them carry afrequency, and after, especially
, a child passes, you rarelyhear their name spoken again,
even by family members, becausenobody wants to upset you, right
?
They think they're going to bea drag or take you into a dark
(12:22):
place.
And I missed hearing his nameand so I decided to add it to my
name so that I hear his namespoken.
That frequency, as I feel italive in me, is now expressed
through me and reflected back tome.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
So, yeah, and reflected back to me, yeah, and
you can feel the delight andthat you've allowed yourself to
feel joy again and still holdthe grief.
And you know, not push it away,not suppress it.
Engage with the all the end,and both and more, not just
picking one or the other.
(13:03):
And I think, with grief, thejourney of allowing yourself to
feel joy again is reallychallenging.
Was that your experience?
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, it took me 15 years to reconnect with a sense
of joy.
It's not that I'm not a happyperson, I'm inherently a happy
person.
Anybody who knows me can tellyou that.
That I'm not a happy person,I'm inherently a happy person.
Anybody who knows me can tellyou that.
But I did feel for 15 yearsthat my joy had left with
Cameron.
And it wasn't until last yearbecause it's this is the 16th
(13:38):
year, um that I had thisincredible feeling that well and
it came after a series of whatI call paralysis epiphanies I
experienced sleep paralysis andat first it was really scary
(13:59):
because I thought am I having astroke?
Am I dead?
Am I in a coma?
But then I realized it was mybody's way of protecting me from
waking triggers, and what thatdid was it brought me into
another dimension of realitywhere I had control in a way
that I didn't have control in mywaking, and a lot of wisdom
would come to me in my sleepparalysis state, where I could
(14:23):
bring it across the thresholdinto my waking state.
And that was sort of one of thethings that eventually led to a
book.
But it was using quantumphysics as a metaphor for the
grief journey, themultidimensionality of it, the
unpredictability of it, uh, theadventure of it, the wonder of
(14:46):
it, the curiosity, theinterconnectedness of everything
.
And that's really what broughtme back to an understanding that
death as if you're looking atit through a quantum physics
lens, also called quantummechanics, quantum theory um,
that death is an illusion, thatit's not actually a thing, that
(15:10):
it's something we've beenconditioned to believe is an
ending of something where we nowknow it's been tested and
proven that frequency energydoes not die.
It does not, it just changesform.
It can't be created either,right, it just keeps going.
(15:32):
Where did it come from?
We don't know.
We don't even know whereconsciousness is.
Right, no scientist on theplanet can tell you what
consciousness is.
We just know that we experienceit.
And so that that brought meback to when I broke out of that
paralysis moment.
That wait a minute.
Well, if death is an illusion,then what does that mean for my
(15:57):
joy?
What does that mean forCameron's existence?
He's still very much alive,right here.
I know precisely where he is.
This is why, when people sayI'm sorry for your loss, I'm
like loss.
He wasn't a set of keys or afavorite scarf.
I know precisely where he is atall times.
I didn't lose a thing, exceptin the physical sense, right,
(16:21):
but even that is to a degreeillusory when you start peeling
back the layers.
And so I reconnected with myjoy, because for 15 years I had
been under the assumption thathe had gone and that my joy, the
way I experienced joy, the waypeople experience joy, was
(16:44):
elusive to me.
I couldn't really secure that,but it came flooding back into
me with that realization thathe's very much alive, living in
and through me, and he neverwent anywhere.
It's me that went somewhereelse, right, the me of me
(17:06):
separation of self.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Uh, just, you know, to the psyche and grief.
And if we're not given thetools and a different, you know,
perception and construct of it,it does feel like a loss, it
feels like you were robbed ofsomething, it feels like you're
the life that you knew has ended, which you know, and that has
some facts of it.
Yet we're not taught about theenergy and being able to connect
(17:31):
on the other side of love, tofeel that frequency, to feel
that presence, that energy, thatexistence, because nervous
systems create other nervoussystems, so that electrical
frequency is.
That's why there's anattachment and a bond.
Yet just because it's no longerthere, that life force is still
there.
It didn't die with that nervoussystem.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
And that's grief, is a universal life skill.
Every human being on the planetis going to experience, is
going to meet grief, at whateverlevel, whether or not you have
children, whether or not youhave loved ones around you uh,
who pass they, you know, weexperience.
With any major life change, weexperience grief.
We grieve our youth, right, wegrieve, you know, moving to a
(18:20):
different location,geographically we move, the
beginnings and endings offriendships, you know, and all
of those cycles, um and and whenyou hear something often enough
, you're more apt to believe it.
That's what conditioning is,that's what programming is.
It's like you've been handedthis tape and you're expected to
(18:42):
play it on a loop throughoutyour life and pass it on to your
children.
Right, you've inherited it,you've had to accept the
inheritance.
But when nobody tells you isthat way, back in the closet,
under a pile of old coats andblankets, there's a box full of
empty tapes that you have accessto anytime.
(19:05):
And you know, permission is apowerful thing.
You're allowed to pop out thatold tape that was never yours to
begin with and put in a blankand record your own music, right
, and so this is the journey forme.
This is what, what brought meback to joy, what brought me
back to opening myself up and Ithink being open is is key um,
(19:32):
and and tapping into thischildlike wonder of it all.
There are so many things we'llnever have the answers to while
we're here in the physical state.
Release it, release that needto know everything.
Some things, it's okay to justlean back, take a breath and
(19:56):
relax into it.
You know, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think it's something that wehave a lexicon around, grief
that we keep perpetuating andlearning, and the word loss is
one of them, and so I avoid itand I try to talk about it.
(20:19):
I think it's time for a newlexicon, because that will open
people up to new concepts thatthey may not have met before.
And um, whole reason why Icreated the podcast I was gonna
say I appreciate the platformhere to be able to talk about it
openly, because I know that I'mnot unique in finding this um,
(20:42):
people finding in different ways, in different words, but I
think that there is there is a,a longing for a new way to
handle and break through the,the vortex of mourning.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
I call it so at the beginning you spoke about
peregrine.
So you created a title and ifyou could give I know the story,
yet the listeners may not know,so if you could give them the
story of how you got to thistitle and the reason why.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
It was another sleep, paralysis, epiphany A Peregrine
falcon flew down and landed infront of me and looked up and
said it's time.
And I broke out of my paralysisand I started researching the
word peregrine, peregrine, and,and I've seen peregrine falcons
my whole life.
(21:37):
I've lived all over the worldand it's native to every
continent except Antarctica,right.
So it's a universallyrecognizable symbol.
When you go back to the Latinroot of the word, peregrine, it
means lost traveler, it means astranger in a field, it means a
(21:59):
pilgrim on a sacred journey andit ticked all the boxes it's
genderless, it's wildlyuniversally recognizable as a
symbol in most cultures.
It represents courage,resilience, strength, and those
are all things that we, asperegrines, must tap into to
(22:24):
move forward in our lives.
It takes great courage andstrength and resilience to move
forward beyond that event that'shappened, even if it's expected
, which in our case we weren't100% sure but with that kind of
brain cancer that Cameron had,he lived twice as long as they
(22:47):
expected him to.
So there was, you know, thataspect of the conversation about
.
You know he may not survivethis, but it's in the, it's in
the journey, right and.
And so Peregrine fit, andimmediately I changed my logo
(23:08):
for the lost travelers club.
It's now a Peregrine.
I wrote a Peregrine manifestowhich is on the front page of
the website, and it's allpositive language.
It avoids using the term loss.
It avoids using the term lossno-transcript.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
let's bring it back and make that part of the new
lexicon I know many listenerswill feel a sense of probably
home, that feeling that they'reseen and that somebody finally
gets it.
Because I know when youexplained it to me also, when
people, people would ask you,you know, do you have children?
(24:08):
And you didn't know what to sayBecause it's like, do you even
have the capacity to understandthe grief that I'm going to?
Just you know, show you andshare with you?
Yet Peregrine gives that titlethat somebody could be curious
and let you know that they'reemotionally available or they
can just keep going and not haveto open up that part, which I
(24:32):
think is needed, because ifsomebody says I'm a widow,
somebody will say, or I'm anorphan, or they'll see whatever
capacity they have to open upthat space.
And I don't think it's.
You know, a lot of times Ithink.
Sometimes we think that peopleshould have the capacity to see
(24:52):
and feel our experience whenthat is harmful.
It's harmful to us to put thatexpectation on others.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
It really is.
It really is and to be able toidentify, to empower oneself, to
identify yourself as aperegrine.
If you're not in a mental stateor an emotional state where you
feel ready to talk about whathappened or to go deeper into it
with somebody, a stranger or afamily member or a friend, you
(25:25):
can lean on that, you can usePeregrine as an anchor to say
I'll only go deeper into it if Ichoose to.
I'm not in a position where Ihave to try and it's exhausting
trying to explain to somebodybecause they're bringing all of
their conditioning to what youknow.
Outliving a child sign what youknow.
(25:46):
Outliving a child signifies.
You know, you hear so manydifferent phrases over and over
again and that's how you knowthat it's a meme, right,
culturally.
Oh, you know, no parents shouldbury their child.
No, parents should outlive achild.
It's unnatural.
You hear a lot and you have togo into the explanation.
It's perfectly natural fromwhere I said, because it
(26:07):
happened yeah, and that's those,yeah, those are so helpful yeah
, but you know, I I've heardthem my whole life especially
out of north america, right, Iremember people saying things
like I don't have a creativebone in my body.
That was something that peoplewould say all the time, or the
(26:29):
phrase nobody's perfect.
How often have we heard that?
Right, but when you again, whenyou start to peel back the
layers and and understand wherethat comes from, um, and I think
for peregrines, maybe, maybeespecially for peregrines, it's
(26:50):
rather like losing an eye.
Right, you can look at somebodyand you have to look really,
really close at somebody who haslost an eye and popped in a
glass one.
Right, you start to notice thatonly one eye is moving or
something looks a little odd ora little askew, and that's kind
of the experience is that youare looking at the world through
(27:15):
a different perspective thaneveryone else in the room.
Unless they've also lost an eye, then they kind of get it right
.
And so there's that aspect to itwhere we need to be talking to
one another.
We need to be finding communityin our grief so that we can.
You know, grief is a verysolitary experience.
(27:38):
It's very unique to the personexperiencing it, to the grief
walker.
But on the path there are manygrief walkers and you can't
compare one to the other, butyou can walk alongside one
another with a knowing rightWith that, looking at the world
(27:59):
through a different perspectivethan most of the other people
around you, and there's greatvalue in that.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yeah, and you know the work that I do is holding
safe space, that you know thatyou're safe to like, as you
explained I don't have thecapacity to explain my whole or
that you, when you want to feelit, you have a safe space to
feel those emotions and they'renot going to be shut down.
I think in North Americathere's a lot of conditioning of
(28:26):
not being able to witness pain.
We're taught to be so adverseto pain where pain is embedded
in life and we have such anaversion to it that it creates
even more suffering because wedon't know how to integrate it
and let it, you know, strengthenus.
So you know the safe spaceholding and allowing people to
(28:49):
feel that's where the crux ofthe healing is.
Yet it makes it that cansomebody witness and not pull
away, not complain like thisagain, cannot go on about oh,
are you not over this yet?
Because they are that a lot too, yeah, or your child wouldn't
want you to feel this way.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
It's like, how do you know what my child would want?
I'm feeling this way because Ineed to feel this way.
I meant to feel this way,otherwise I'd be feeling another
kind of way, right, by usingthe word peregrine, especially
to people who are just meetingyou.
Then they ask you what's aperegrine, and you get to talk
about that.
You don't have to open yourchest up, right, you can keep it
(29:30):
.
You know, keep that force fieldaround you, right?
I think that's so important andwhat you're talking about is in
our aversion to addressing painand holding space for pain.
Most of my clients in my griefand survival counseling are men
and I've become something of aspecialist in men's grief
(29:54):
because we still are strugglingculturally, globally, with the
role of men and how men are, theexpectations put upon men to
sublimate their pain, to notshow their pain to not be open
(30:15):
to the full experience of ourpain, and I'm sure there are
women as well, and everyone inbetween, who feels the same way.
But when we're talking from acultural perspective, there are
so many expectations still putupon men fathers in intact
(30:35):
families who have to hold theirwhole family through their own
grief, still be a provider whenthey are very few safe spaces to
lean into their own griefjourney, and so I'm hopeful that
the work that I'm doing withthe Lost Travelers Club, with my
(30:55):
work as a counselor andtherapist, and also with the
book I'm hoping that that opensup a broader cultural
understanding and conversationabout those expectations that we
put upon men and where men veryoften feel trapped in a vortex
(31:16):
that they can't break out of.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
We are recording.
I'm in Canada and you are inSpain and, as you said, you were
in Minneapolis.
I cannot say the word, mybrain's not going to let me say
it, but you were in the US.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Minneapolis.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Minneapolis, minneapolis, yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Borders Canada.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
You were in Minneapolis, and that's where
you know Cameron transitioned,yet you made the decision to
move to a whole differentcountry.
Yeah, what did that experience?
What did it look like for you?
Because I know some, as we say,grief is subjective.
They wouldn't want to leave thearea because they want to still
(32:05):
feel them in the environmentand feel like you know, it might
be the home, it might be thepark.
They still want to be therebecause that's where they feel
their presence.
You know so deeply.
Yet you made the decision tomove, not just somewhere outside
in the US, you moved to atotally different continent,
across the ocean.
(32:26):
So what invoked that?
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Well, I've been traveling my whole life.
My father was a culturaldiplomat for the US government
back in the 60s and 70s, beforethere was even a McDonald's
outside the US.
There was a time, and that waswhat his agency was to do was to
bring American culture overseas.
It was basically allappropriated culture wrapped up
(32:51):
in a red, white and blue ribbonand said hey, we made it better.
Now you can buy it back from us.
So, anyway, it was aninteresting way to look at the
world.
But I was very, very um, formany, many years when I came
back to live in the unitedstates, I never felt american.
I never felt that that was myhomeland, even though I was born
(33:12):
there.
Um, I felt kind of like a fishout of water, I guess.
And cameron was born inminneapolis, he was born into
and left from the same house.
So for 14 years, 13 years, he,he, um, that was home right and
(33:36):
was only home for me because hewas there.
And and, of course, mycommunity.
We had a large and lovingcommunity.
That was the hardest to leavebehind was a sense of community.
But I felt like I felt acompulsion that I had to move, I
had to surround myself with adifferent environment.
(33:59):
Since he was a little boy,cameron and I had talked about
moving to MassachusettsGloucester, massachusetts, about
40 miles north of Boston, whereI had been right after high
school.
I had been studying art inBoston and one of my instructors
said you have to go up toGloucester and see the light
there, because it's juststunning.
(34:19):
And I took the commuter rail upthere and it hit me in the
solar plexus.
I feel destiny calling here,and so Cameron and I had always
planned on moving to GloucesterMassachusetts when he was done
with high school, but hegraduated early, at age 13, and
(34:40):
I moved there.
For both of us that was thefirst impulse.
Again, it was hard to leave mycommunity.
I haven't been back toMinneapolis since.
I'm not one to go back anywhere.
My pull is forward and I was inLawster for about 10 years.
(35:02):
That's where I started theFolklore Theater Company to
preserve and protect the storiesthat are dying, with the people
that carry them.
How do we know who we are if wedon't know where we come from?
Not that we have to live there,but to know more about
ourselves through our stories.
We're a storytelling speciesand Cameron loved stories and
(35:25):
folklore and fairy tales fromall over the world, and so I had
after 10 years, I had anopportunity to join another
company that was looking tocreate an international touring
theater company that was rootedin those liminal spaces, the
(35:46):
spaces between the spaces.
So, as an experimental theater,we were looking for to play in
the space between the humanphysical experience and the
human call it, spiritualexperience.
Right, where's the middleground between the two?
They equally define us ashumans, and so where do we, you
(36:06):
know, move across that threshold, and so that's what the theater
was, and I was like, yes, thisis right up my alley, I love
this.
We were going to be, uh,establishing our base company
for touring in the uk, and so wewere exploring areas in the uk.
I lived there for a couple ofyears and we were waiting on
some funding before I was goingto get my residency in the uk
(36:31):
and this is pre-brexit and so Ihad some downtime, and so I
decided to travel a little bit.
I had never been to the southof france.
I thought I'll go, you know,rent an old, rustic farmhouse in
wine country.
I mean, it's the romantic in meand so my service dog, flat
(36:52):
Stanley they call themassistance dogs that mitigate
disabilities.
We went and rented this500-year-old farmhouse Beautiful
, beautiful place, and it waswinter, it was early January,
and so there were no touristsaround.
That's my favorite kind oftravel and we were there for a
(37:13):
couple of weeks and then Ithought, okay, where, where?
Next?
And oh, we're close to theborder of spain.
I've never been to spain orportugal.
My aunt, my mother's sister,lives in a tiny village here in
the Southwest of Spain, near theborder of Portugal, and so I
called her up and said hey, howwould you like a couple of house
guests for, you know a few days?
And so she said, yeah, come ondown.
(37:36):
So I took the train to Madridand took a you know, rented a
car and came down here Beautifularea, very remote and after, I
think, the first day she, shemet her neighbor outside and
told him I was here visiting.
He said you know, if he wantsto stay longer than a few days,
I just remodeled my mother'shouse in a village 15 minutes
(37:58):
from here and I'd be willing torent it to him for cheap, right?
So I thought, well, yeah, thatsounds good and we're so close
to portugal that, you know, Icould use this as my home base
and travel around a bit.
So I did and we signed a leasemonth to month and I, uh, after
the first month I was like, yeah, I'm gonna stay another month
(38:19):
because I'm really loving it.
And it was in the middle of thesecond month that COVID hit and
I could not leave the country.
Americans were barred fromtraveling to Europe at that time
.
Airports were closed down, youcouldn't leave your house or you
would be fined like 600 bucks.
(38:39):
So I thought, okay, I'll juststay put.
In most of Europe, especiallyin this region you are, if you
are, uh, from a differentcountry, non-european country,
they have an arrangement whereyou can stay for up to three
months without a visa it's likea tourist pass and then if you
(39:02):
want to stay longer, you have toleave the country.
You can come back, usually foranother three months, but then
that's the country.
You can come back usually foranother three months, but then
that's the max.
You could stay very, you know,during a year.
So by then, and once they liftedthe, the state of emergency,
and people were able to go outagain with masks, I talked to my
colleagues and said you, youknow, rent is cheap here in
(39:28):
Spain.
The cost of living where I amis so inexpensive, why don't we
consider using Spain as our homebase, versus the UK or the US,
where property is much moreexpensive?
And for a touring company,housing was the big ticket item.
Right that you?
You have to house your, yourcompany, you have to build you
(39:48):
know complex for building setsand costumes and music
rehearsals and all that stuff.
So I looked into it and andthey decided that it was a good
idea for me to seek residencyhere instead of the UK.
And so I did.
(40:08):
And they have a kind ofresidency in Spain called
Arraigo Social, which means asocial route residency.
And if you could stay in thecountry undocumented for three
years without any kerfuffleswith the police, and keep your
nose clean, don't travel toomuch, just stay close to home.
(40:30):
They give you your residencybecause you've planted yourself
as you've rooted yourself in acommunity.
Everybody knows who you are,you participate in events and
festivals and people invite youto dinner and you invite them
and it's you kind of create yourspace.
It's a beautiful thing and rare, and so I decided to go that
route and so I stayed for overthree years and applied for my
(40:54):
residency, got it within twoweeks.
I mean, it was so fast.
And here I am and I love it.
My house is 800 years old.
It's gorgeous.
Look at my ceilings.
See that.
It's such.
It's such an amazing place andthe people are kind and gentle
and interested and curious.
(41:14):
The culture, the food here isamazing.
I haven't seen an airplane inthe sky in now almost five years
that I've lived here.
That's the life I want at myage and this stage of my life.
Everything I do is virtual,it's online.
So we have fiber optic cable,we have Wi-Fi, everything you
(41:41):
need and all the food is localand I know all the farmers and I
see the animals romping in thefields and it's perfect.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Everything it hits everything, of being fulfilled
in wellness and wholeness andbeing with you.
Know the ground Right now, aswe're recording this there was a
flash flood.
You know, six hours from you,in Valencia.
Is that how you pronounce it?
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
How is it for you as a human being, you know being so
close and to such a bigdisaster?
You know, and nervous systemsfeel energy.
How are you holding the spacefor yourself with this?
Speaker 2 (42:26):
the space for yourself with this.
It's not unfamiliar.
Last year and the year before,we had torrential rains here in
my region and we had flooding.
The cars were floating away.
It was not to the degree thatit is there right now, because
it's not.
I mean, we have mountains here.
My village is in the foothillsof a small mountain range, but
(42:53):
I'm remembering the tension ofthat time when we had torrential
rains.
And this is a rural community,so people understand the cycles
of nature, they are so connectedwe're in the heart of nature
here and and they understand thecycles and that sometimes
destruction has to come for newgrowth to come.
(43:16):
And I think it's the way I'mholding.
It is metaphorically, um, thatwhat?
What do we have to learn fromthis?
And what do we have to learnfrom this and what do we have to
teach from this experience?
Right, we can look at somethingand call it a tragedy, or we
can look at it and say I was oneof the lucky ones who triumphed
(43:41):
.
I walked through this fire andI came out of it.
I breathed air.
Today, there are millions ofpeople around the world who did
not have that privilege, and soreally holding that moment,
holding that every moment istransitional, right?
There's nothing static here,and so to surrender you used
(44:06):
that word earlier.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
So, to surrender you used that word earlier,
surrendering to the transitionalquality of a moment, I think,
is where I sit with most thingsright now in the world.
I hear you, I hear you.
So I know many of the listenersare like OK, where do I get in
contact with Henry Cameron?
So can you let the listenersknow about the podcast, about
the book, about the services,the therapy, all that you have
to offer?
Send them where they can get intouch with you.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Just go to my name, henry Cameron Allen, dot org,
and it's no hyphen in thewebsite, because you can't put a
hyphen in a website.
So it's Henry Cameron Allen,all one word dot org, and it's
no hyphen in the website,because you can't put a hyphen
in a website.
So it's Henry Cameron Allen,all one word dot, org.
And there you have access toeverything that I'm doing, from
my arts to my philanthropy, tomy mental health work and the
(45:02):
podcast.
Everything is there.
That just makes it easy forpeople to find me.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
And you know, at any time, if there was any kind of
opening or you felt that therewas a calling, that's your
limbic system, you know,signaling to you that Henry
Cameron possibly has somethingfor you in your journey.
So reach out to him.
Don't ignore the little tugs,the little ahas, the little you
know, hair standing up, evenmaybe the tears that may have
fallen in this conversation.
(45:38):
Reach out to him because he hasthe lived experience to hold
space, to show you what ispossible and what you possibly
could access.
Is there anything that is onyour heart that you would like
to leave with the listeners, toempower them?
Speaker 2 (45:55):
I think I want to bring it back to that message of
the moment, the powerfulrecognition that a moment is not
a static place.
I heard a metaphor recently I'ma king of metaphors, I love
metaphor that life is like acigar and the enjoyment of a
(46:18):
cigar is the drag on the smokeand the smell and the wafting,
the beauty of the movement ofthe smoke and all of that.
The ember of the cigar, whichis called the cherry of the
cigar, which I love.
It's kind of a dual metaphorbecause it's like the cherry on
top of the sundae.
The cherry of the cigarrepresents the moment and it's
(46:44):
the space between what has beenand what is yet to be and
everything behind that ember.
That cherry is ash.
Let it be ash.
It's a reminder of what wasthat.
You experienced it, that youdragged on that smoke and you
(47:05):
enjoyed what you could enjoy ofit.
Sometimes you feel a littlenauseous and you have to put the
cigar down for a minute, letthe ember go out, but you can
always reignite it, right.
And that space around thecherry, around the ember, is
unpredictable.
It's not a regular structure.
Structure, right, it'sirregular and there's so much
(47:29):
cigar left to enjoy.
But you've got to be the one topick it up, reignite that ember
and enjoy the cigar.
And so I love that for ametaphor for not only the grief
(47:51):
journey right, the ash is ash,there's no going back.
You can't turn it back intowhole cigar.
It's past, it's a reminder ofwhat's past.
It's not that it's notimportant, but it's a reflection
.
It's an exercise in reflection,but there's still a lot of
fresh tobacco yet to smoke.
And tobacco is medicine, andand if you treat your life as
transitional, as uneven,unpredictable, I think we might
(48:17):
enjoy it a little more thecuriosity, the wonder, the joy
that's in the smoking of it.
Speaker 1 (48:25):
So Thank you for that .
Thank you for that visual.
I think visuals really impactpeople and then they get to.
They're like oh, that's whatyou're talking about.
They need that visual to reallyreinforce what that space is
and, you know, reallyunderstanding that time is a
tool.
It's not a toy, and we don'tknow how long we'll have the
(48:46):
tool for.
So use it to your best ability.
And, yeah, I want to thank youfor doing the alchemy in your
life.
You've taken the impurities andyou've turned them into gold.
Yet you haven't kept that goldto yourself.
You're sharing it with othersin a very profound way.
So I want to thank you forsharing yourself and giving us
(49:08):
the most valuable thing you havein life, which is your time.
So thank you for honoring uswith that valuable gift and
being here with myself that Iget to engage and be in delight
with you and also share thatwith the listeners.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
Thank you.
Thanks for holding space andcreating this beautiful platform
to share.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
Please remember to be kind to yourself.
Hey, you made it all the wayhere.
I appreciate you and your time.
If you found value in thisconversation, please share it
out.
If there was somebody thatpopped into your mind, take
action and share it out withthem.
It possibly may not be themthat will benefit.
(49:51):
It's that they know somebodythat will benefit from listening
to this conversation.
So please take action and shareout the podcast.
You can find us on social mediaon Facebook, instagram and
TikTok under Lift One Self.
On Facebook, instagram andTikTok under Lift One Self.
And if you want to inquireabout the work that I do and the
(50:13):
services that I provide topeople, come over on my website.
I'm into a discovery callliftoneselfcom.
Until next time, pleaseremember to be kind and gentle
with yourself.
You matter.
Welcome to the Lift One Self podcast, where we break
mental health stigmas throughconversations.
I'm your host, nat Nat, and wedive into topics about trauma
and how it impacts the nervoussystem.
Yet we don't just leave youthere.
We share insights and tools ofself-care, meditation and growth
(00:21):
that help you be curious aboutyour own biology.
Your presence matters.
Please like and subscribe toour podcast.
Help our community grow.
Let's get into this.
Oh, and please remember to bekind to yourself.
Welcome to the Lift One Selfpodcast.
I am your host, nat Nat, andtoday I am delighted to be in
(00:43):
the presence of Henry Cameron,and let me tell you, once you
hear his story and you feel hispalpable energy, you will want
to subscribe to his podcast thatI was on recently.
So, henry Cameron, could youlet the listeners know a little
bit about yourself before wedive into the podcast?
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Yes, Well, thank you for mentioning my podcast.
It's the Lost Traveler podcastand it is all about universal
life skills education for ourtime.
We are all learning the samethings and applying them daily.
It's not a question of whetherwe're learning, it's how well
we're learning them and fromwhom.
And how proficient was theirtoolkit right?
(01:26):
So that's really been thethrust of my work for many, many
years universal life skills.
I'm a theater artist.
I have the Folklore TheaterCompany, which is now the new
Folklore Theater Company.
It's virtual, which is kind ofexciting.
It's new territory for theaterwork and I also have a
(01:49):
foundation called the LostTravelers Club, which is an
empowerment organization forwhat we call peregrines parents
who have outlived our children.
Re-imagining the grief journeyand empowering a sense of
purpose again, that's the firstthing to go when we've outlived
our kids.
And so how do we get back to asense of purpose and bring value
(02:12):
to not only our lives but thelives of others, in honor and in
name of our children, allowingthem to live on within us and
through us?
So, and I'm an internationallycertified grief and survival
counselor and therapist, and soI do that work as well online,
(02:32):
and that has been incrediblyhealing for me.
Not that outliving a child canever be healed from, but the
process of living can be healing, and so having achieved my
diploma and certificationinternationally has opened up a
(02:56):
channel of healing that I didnot expect to discover in my
lifetime.
So that's kind of exciting.
So my passions are my art,mental health work and
philanthropy, and all under thearch of universal life skills.
So that's a picture.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
And it's as I said, listeners, you are not going to
want to miss this conversation.
Listeners, you are not going towant to miss this conversation
because there's so much tounpack and I know some of them
are like Peregrine, what is thatLike?
That just lit me up.
Yet, before we get in that,would you be willing to do a
mindful moment with me so thatwe can ground ourselves and open
(03:39):
our hearts for thisconversation?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
And, as you always hear listeners, safety first.
If you're driving whilelistening to the podcast, please
do not close your eyes yetyou're able to follow the other
prompts.
So, henry Cameron, I'll ask youto get comfortable in your
seating and, if it's safe to doso, gently close your eyes and
you're going to begin breathingin and out through your nose and
(04:08):
you're going to bring yourawareness to watching your
breath go in and out throughyour nose.
You're not going to try andcontrol your breath.
You're just going to be awareof its rhythm, allowing it to
guide you into your body.
There may be some sensations orfeelings coming up.
That's okay.
(04:29):
Let them come up.
You're safe to feel.
You're safe to let go.
Surrender the need to control,release the need to resist and
just be, be with your breath,drop deeper into your body.
(04:54):
There's probably some thoughtsor to-do lists that have popped
up in your mind, and that's okay.
Gently bring your awarenessback to your breath, creating
space between the awareness andthe thoughts and dropping even
deeper into your body, allowingyourself to just be with the
(05:16):
breath, keeping your awarenesson the breath.
Again, other thoughts may havepopped up.
It's okay.
Bring your awareness to yourbreath, beginning again,
creating even more space betweenthe thoughts and the awareness
(05:41):
and dropping deeper into yourbody, allowing yourself to just
be, be with your breath.
Now, at your own time and atyour own pace, you're going to
gently open your eyes whilestill staying with your breath.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
How's your heart doing good nice?
Speaker 1 (06:12):
calm now.
Many may wonder why, henrycameron.
So could you let the listenersknow about your name and why
it's hyphenated?
Speaker 2 (06:24):
it's's a great story actually Several months after my
son, cameron, passed from braincancer when he was 13,.
He was my only child, I was asingle father, and so it was a
real shift in my existence, Iguess is a good way to put it.
And when I was living inMinneapolis, minnesota, I
(06:49):
couldn't go to the marketwithout somebody falling apart
in my arms because he wasbeloved in our community.
We both were and are, and Ifound myself in a position of
holding others through theirgrief journey early on without
being able to really hold myselfthrough mine, and so I needed
(07:13):
to get out of Dodge and feel mysmallness again.
You know, when you're fightingin hospitals for two years and
then out of hospitals and tryingto save your child, you're
something of a superhero andyou're trying to be, and on the
(07:34):
flip side of that, I felt likemy scale was off.
I needed to go find mysmallness again, and the closest
thing I could think of was theGrand Canyon.
And there are these longstretches of maybe 70 miles in
the open desert where, beforeyou even get to the canyon,
where there's no civilization atall, you have to fill up your
tank before you even go intothose zones and it was about
(07:57):
three in the morning and I wasdriving toward the canyon and it
was anky, black, except for theheadlights on the road and the
stars.
And there was one brighter starthat seemed to be lower in the
sky and I was hoping it was agas station or something on the
(08:17):
horizon.
And I made it there and it's alittle little enclave of three
buildings in the beam of ahundred foot tall lamppost.
There was a small motel, therewas a, an indigenous trading
post and a post office, nothingelse.
For miles and miles and miles.
But it had its own zip code andI looked up and it was Cameron
(08:38):
Arizona.
Kind of a twilight zone moment,right, whoa, okay, here I am in
the middle of nowhere in thedead of night and here I am in
Cameron Arizona.
So I caught 40 winks in themotel and I woke up and stepped
out.
It was a beautiful day andthere was a I think she was Zuni
(08:59):
, I'm pretty sure she was Zuniand she was an elder and she was
sitting on her blanket in frontof the trading post selling
jewelry that she had made.
I bought this ring from herthat's my Cameron Arizona ring
and I asked if I could sit withher and have a conversation, I
could tell she had a lot ofwisdom and she invited me to sit
(09:24):
and I said, said you know, myson passed away recently and I'm
struggling with my own identitynow because people will ask me
new people in my life, who youknow over the past months, of,
who I've met, oh, do you haveany children?
How do you answer withoutcrowbarring open your chest and
pouring your most sacredpersonal pain out onto a table
(09:46):
where the person you're tellingcouldn't possibly empathize
because they hadn't been throughit?
And I said I've looked at everylanguage that I can think of to
find a word like widow ororphan, to turn to.
That can.
Let it be enough of anexplanation.
(10:07):
You don't have to go into it.
And I couldn't find a thing,not in any languages.
I looked in indigenouslanguages around the world, I
looked in dead languages andancient you know Sanskrit and
everything else.
There's nothing.
And so I said is there anythingin your culture or language
that holds this?
(10:30):
She said well, in my cultureyour name would change, because
your name is the expression ofyour identity to the world, and
so I might refer to you as Henry, whose son is gone.
That would become your name.
I would introduce you.
That way, people who aretalking about you when you're
not in the room will use thatname Even if they think about
you.
They use your, they think aboutyou with your new identity,
(10:52):
henry whose son is gone.
That way, people are holdingyou in your grief even when
they're not around you.
I thought, oh, what a beautifulexpression.
Right, it didn't quite fit intothe global lexicon of
introductions.
I didn't want to go aroundintroducing myself as Henry
whose son is gone, so I decidedI just had this idea to
(11:13):
hyphenate his name with mine,the way people do when they
marry.
Sometimes they hyphenate theirnames to as an identity, a new
identity, to express to theworld that they are bonded
together.
They maintain theirindividuality and yet there's
this link between them.
To hyphenate his name with myname is also a mathematical
(11:35):
equation.
It's Henry minus Cameron in thephysical sense, and that was
enough for me at that time to beable to express who I am now
and who I was then, especiallyearly in my grief.
And so that's the story.
And so people around the worldcall me Henry, cameron, and it's
(11:59):
also a frequency.
You know our names when wespeak them, carry a frequency.
You know our names.
When we speak them carry afrequency, and after, especially
, a child passes, you rarelyhear their name spoken again,
even by family members, becausenobody wants to upset you, right
?
They think they're going to bea drag or take you into a dark
(12:22):
place.
And I missed hearing his nameand so I decided to add it to my
name so that I hear his namespoken.
That frequency, as I feel italive in me, is now expressed
through me and reflected back tome.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
So, yeah, and reflected back to me, yeah, and
you can feel the delight andthat you've allowed yourself to
feel joy again and still holdthe grief.
And you know, not push it away,not suppress it.
Engage with the all the end,and both and more, not just
picking one or the other.
(13:03):
And I think, with grief, thejourney of allowing yourself to
feel joy again is reallychallenging.
Was that your experience?
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, it took me 15 years to reconnect with a sense
of joy.
It's not that I'm not a happyperson, I'm inherently a happy
person.
Anybody who knows me can tellyou that.
That I'm not a happy person,I'm inherently a happy person.
Anybody who knows me can tellyou that.
But I did feel for 15 yearsthat my joy had left with
Cameron.
And it wasn't until last yearbecause it's this is the 16th
(13:38):
year, um that I had thisincredible feeling that well and
it came after a series of whatI call paralysis epiphanies I
experienced sleep paralysis andat first it was really scary
(13:59):
because I thought am I having astroke?
Am I dead?
Am I in a coma?
But then I realized it was mybody's way of protecting me from
waking triggers, and what thatdid was it brought me into
another dimension of realitywhere I had control in a way
that I didn't have control in mywaking, and a lot of wisdom
would come to me in my sleepparalysis state, where I could
(14:23):
bring it across the thresholdinto my waking state.
And that was sort of one of thethings that eventually led to a
book.
But it was using quantumphysics as a metaphor for the
grief journey, themultidimensionality of it, the
unpredictability of it, uh, theadventure of it, the wonder of
(14:46):
it, the curiosity, theinterconnectedness of everything
.
And that's really what broughtme back to an understanding that
death as if you're looking atit through a quantum physics
lens, also called quantummechanics, quantum theory um,
that death is an illusion, thatit's not actually a thing, that
(15:10):
it's something we've beenconditioned to believe is an
ending of something where we nowknow it's been tested and
proven that frequency energydoes not die.
It does not, it just changesform.
It can't be created either,right, it just keeps going.
(15:32):
Where did it come from?
We don't know.
We don't even know whereconsciousness is.
Right, no scientist on theplanet can tell you what
consciousness is.
We just know that we experienceit.
And so that that brought meback to when I broke out of that
paralysis moment.
That wait a minute.
Well, if death is an illusion,then what does that mean for my
(15:57):
joy?
What does that mean forCameron's existence?
He's still very much alive,right here.
I know precisely where he is.
This is why, when people sayI'm sorry for your loss, I'm
like loss.
He wasn't a set of keys or afavorite scarf.
I know precisely where he is atall times.
I didn't lose a thing, exceptin the physical sense, right,
(16:21):
but even that is to a degreeillusory when you start peeling
back the layers.
And so I reconnected with myjoy, because for 15 years I had
been under the assumption thathe had gone and that my joy, the
way I experienced joy, the waypeople experience joy, was
(16:44):
elusive to me.
I couldn't really secure that,but it came flooding back into
me with that realization thathe's very much alive, living in
and through me, and he neverwent anywhere.
It's me that went somewhereelse, right, the me of me
(17:06):
separation of self.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Uh, just, you know, to the psyche and grief.
And if we're not given thetools and a different, you know,
perception and construct of it,it does feel like a loss, it
feels like you were robbed ofsomething, it feels like you're
the life that you knew has ended, which you know, and that has
some facts of it.
Yet we're not taught about theenergy and being able to connect
(17:31):
on the other side of love, tofeel that frequency, to feel
that presence, that energy, thatexistence, because nervous
systems create other nervoussystems, so that electrical
frequency is.
That's why there's anattachment and a bond.
Yet just because it's no longerthere, that life force is still
there.
It didn't die with that nervoussystem.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
And that's grief, is a universal life skill.
Every human being on the planetis going to experience, is
going to meet grief, at whateverlevel, whether or not you have
children, whether or not youhave loved ones around you uh,
who pass they, you know, weexperience.
With any major life change, weexperience grief.
We grieve our youth, right, wegrieve, you know, moving to a
(18:20):
different location,geographically we move, the
beginnings and endings offriendships, you know, and all
of those cycles, um and and whenyou hear something often enough
, you're more apt to believe it.
That's what conditioning is,that's what programming is.
It's like you've been handedthis tape and you're expected to
(18:42):
play it on a loop throughoutyour life and pass it on to your
children.
Right, you've inherited it,you've had to accept the
inheritance.
But when nobody tells you isthat way, back in the closet,
under a pile of old coats andblankets, there's a box full of
empty tapes that you have accessto anytime.
(19:05):
And you know, permission is apowerful thing.
You're allowed to pop out thatold tape that was never yours to
begin with and put in a blankand record your own music, right
, and so this is the journey forme.
This is what, what brought meback to joy, what brought me
back to opening myself up and Ithink being open is is key um,
(19:32):
and and tapping into thischildlike wonder of it all.
There are so many things we'llnever have the answers to while
we're here in the physical state.
Release it, release that needto know everything.
Some things, it's okay to justlean back, take a breath and
(19:56):
relax into it.
You know, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think it's something that wehave a lexicon around, grief
that we keep perpetuating andlearning, and the word loss is
one of them, and so I avoid itand I try to talk about it.
(20:19):
I think it's time for a newlexicon, because that will open
people up to new concepts thatthey may not have met before.
And um, whole reason why Icreated the podcast I was gonna
say I appreciate the platformhere to be able to talk about it
openly, because I know that I'mnot unique in finding this um,
(20:42):
people finding in different ways, in different words, but I
think that there is there is a,a longing for a new way to
handle and break through the,the vortex of mourning.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
I call it so at the beginning you spoke about
peregrine.
So you created a title and ifyou could give I know the story,
yet the listeners may not know,so if you could give them the
story of how you got to thistitle and the reason why.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
It was another sleep, paralysis, epiphany A Peregrine
falcon flew down and landed infront of me and looked up and
said it's time.
And I broke out of my paralysisand I started researching the
word peregrine, peregrine, and,and I've seen peregrine falcons
my whole life.
(21:37):
I've lived all over the worldand it's native to every
continent except Antarctica,right.
So it's a universallyrecognizable symbol.
When you go back to the Latinroot of the word, peregrine, it
means lost traveler, it means astranger in a field, it means a
(21:59):
pilgrim on a sacred journey andit ticked all the boxes it's
genderless, it's wildlyuniversally recognizable as a
symbol in most cultures.
It represents courage,resilience, strength, and those
are all things that we, asperegrines, must tap into to
(22:24):
move forward in our lives.
It takes great courage andstrength and resilience to move
forward beyond that event that'shappened, even if it's expected
, which in our case we weren't100% sure but with that kind of
brain cancer that Cameron had,he lived twice as long as they
(22:47):
expected him to.
So there was, you know, thataspect of the conversation about
.
You know he may not survivethis, but it's in the, it's in
the journey, right and.
And so Peregrine fit, andimmediately I changed my logo
(23:08):
for the lost travelers club.
It's now a Peregrine.
I wrote a Peregrine manifestowhich is on the front page of
the website, and it's allpositive language.
It avoids using the term loss.
It avoids using the term lossno-transcript.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
let's bring it back and make that part of the new
lexicon I know many listenerswill feel a sense of probably
home, that feeling that they'reseen and that somebody finally
gets it.
Because I know when youexplained it to me also, when
people, people would ask you,you know, do you have children?
(24:08):
And you didn't know what to sayBecause it's like, do you even
have the capacity to understandthe grief that I'm going to?
Just you know, show you andshare with you?
Yet Peregrine gives that titlethat somebody could be curious
and let you know that they'reemotionally available or they
can just keep going and not haveto open up that part, which I
(24:32):
think is needed, because ifsomebody says I'm a widow,
somebody will say, or I'm anorphan, or they'll see whatever
capacity they have to open upthat space.
And I don't think it's.
You know, a lot of times Ithink.
Sometimes we think that peopleshould have the capacity to see
(24:52):
and feel our experience whenthat is harmful.
It's harmful to us to put thatexpectation on others.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
It really is.
It really is and to be able toidentify, to empower oneself, to
identify yourself as aperegrine.
If you're not in a mental stateor an emotional state where you
feel ready to talk about whathappened or to go deeper into it
with somebody, a stranger or afamily member or a friend, you
(25:25):
can lean on that, you can usePeregrine as an anchor to say
I'll only go deeper into it if Ichoose to.
I'm not in a position where Ihave to try and it's exhausting
trying to explain to somebodybecause they're bringing all of
their conditioning to what youknow.
Outliving a child sign what youknow.
(25:46):
Outliving a child signifies.
You know, you hear so manydifferent phrases over and over
again and that's how you knowthat it's a meme, right,
culturally.
Oh, you know, no parents shouldbury their child.
No, parents should outlive achild.
It's unnatural.
You hear a lot and you have togo into the explanation.
It's perfectly natural fromwhere I said, because it
(26:07):
happened yeah, and that's those,yeah, those are so helpful yeah
, but you know, I I've heardthem my whole life especially
out of north america, right, Iremember people saying things
like I don't have a creativebone in my body.
That was something that peoplewould say all the time, or the
(26:29):
phrase nobody's perfect.
How often have we heard that?
Right, but when you again, whenyou start to peel back the
layers and and understand wherethat comes from, um, and I think
for peregrines, maybe, maybeespecially for peregrines, it's
(26:50):
rather like losing an eye.
Right, you can look at somebodyand you have to look really,
really close at somebody who haslost an eye and popped in a
glass one.
Right, you start to notice thatonly one eye is moving or
something looks a little odd ora little askew, and that's kind
of the experience is that youare looking at the world through
(27:15):
a different perspective thaneveryone else in the room.
Unless they've also lost an eye, then they kind of get it right
.
And so there's that aspect to itwhere we need to be talking to
one another.
We need to be finding communityin our grief so that we can.
You know, grief is a verysolitary experience.
(27:38):
It's very unique to the personexperiencing it, to the grief
walker.
But on the path there are manygrief walkers and you can't
compare one to the other, butyou can walk alongside one
another with a knowing rightWith that, looking at the world
(27:59):
through a different perspectivethan most of the other people
around you, and there's greatvalue in that.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yeah, and you know the work that I do is holding
safe space, that you know thatyou're safe to like, as you
explained I don't have thecapacity to explain my whole or
that you, when you want to feelit, you have a safe space to
feel those emotions and they'renot going to be shut down.
I think in North Americathere's a lot of conditioning of
(28:26):
not being able to witness pain.
We're taught to be so adverseto pain where pain is embedded
in life and we have such anaversion to it that it creates
even more suffering because wedon't know how to integrate it
and let it, you know, strengthenus.
So you know the safe spaceholding and allowing people to
(28:49):
feel that's where the crux ofthe healing is.
Yet it makes it that cansomebody witness and not pull
away, not complain like thisagain, cannot go on about oh,
are you not over this yet?
Because they are that a lot too, yeah, or your child wouldn't
want you to feel this way.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
It's like, how do you know what my child would want?
I'm feeling this way because Ineed to feel this way.
I meant to feel this way,otherwise I'd be feeling another
kind of way, right, by usingthe word peregrine, especially
to people who are just meetingyou.
Then they ask you what's aperegrine, and you get to talk
about that.
You don't have to open yourchest up, right, you can keep it
(29:30):
.
You know, keep that force fieldaround you, right?
I think that's so important andwhat you're talking about is in
our aversion to addressing painand holding space for pain.
Most of my clients in my griefand survival counseling are men
and I've become something of aspecialist in men's grief
(29:54):
because we still are strugglingculturally, globally, with the
role of men and how men are, theexpectations put upon men to
sublimate their pain, to notshow their pain to not be open
(30:15):
to the full experience of ourpain, and I'm sure there are
women as well, and everyone inbetween, who feels the same way.
But when we're talking from acultural perspective, there are
so many expectations still putupon men fathers in intact
(30:35):
families who have to hold theirwhole family through their own
grief, still be a provider whenthey are very few safe spaces to
lean into their own griefjourney, and so I'm hopeful that
the work that I'm doing withthe Lost Travelers Club, with my
(30:55):
work as a counselor andtherapist, and also with the
book I'm hoping that that opensup a broader cultural
understanding and conversationabout those expectations that we
put upon men and where men veryoften feel trapped in a vortex
(31:16):
that they can't break out of.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
We are recording.
I'm in Canada and you are inSpain and, as you said, you were
in Minneapolis.
I cannot say the word, mybrain's not going to let me say
it, but you were in the US.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Minneapolis.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Minneapolis, minneapolis, yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Borders Canada.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
You were in Minneapolis, and that's where
you know Cameron transitioned,yet you made the decision to
move to a whole differentcountry.
Yeah, what did that experience?
What did it look like for you?
Because I know some, as we say,grief is subjective.
They wouldn't want to leave thearea because they want to still
(32:05):
feel them in the environmentand feel like you know, it might
be the home, it might be thepark.
They still want to be therebecause that's where they feel
their presence.
You know so deeply.
Yet you made the decision tomove, not just somewhere outside
in the US, you moved to atotally different continent,
across the ocean.
(32:26):
So what invoked that?
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Well, I've been traveling my whole life.
My father was a culturaldiplomat for the US government
back in the 60s and 70s, beforethere was even a McDonald's
outside the US.
There was a time, and that waswhat his agency was to do was to
bring American culture overseas.
It was basically allappropriated culture wrapped up
(32:51):
in a red, white and blue ribbonand said hey, we made it better.
Now you can buy it back from us.
So, anyway, it was aninteresting way to look at the
world.
But I was very, very um, formany, many years when I came
back to live in the unitedstates, I never felt american.
I never felt that that was myhomeland, even though I was born
(33:12):
there.
Um, I felt kind of like a fishout of water, I guess.
And cameron was born inminneapolis, he was born into
and left from the same house.
So for 14 years, 13 years, he,he, um, that was home right and
(33:36):
was only home for me because hewas there.
And and, of course, mycommunity.
We had a large and lovingcommunity.
That was the hardest to leavebehind was a sense of community.
But I felt like I felt acompulsion that I had to move, I
had to surround myself with adifferent environment.
(33:59):
Since he was a little boy,cameron and I had talked about
moving to MassachusettsGloucester, massachusetts, about
40 miles north of Boston, whereI had been right after high
school.
I had been studying art inBoston and one of my instructors
said you have to go up toGloucester and see the light
there, because it's juststunning.
(34:19):
And I took the commuter rail upthere and it hit me in the
solar plexus.
I feel destiny calling here,and so Cameron and I had always
planned on moving to GloucesterMassachusetts when he was done
with high school, but hegraduated early, at age 13, and
(34:40):
I moved there.
For both of us that was thefirst impulse.
Again, it was hard to leave mycommunity.
I haven't been back toMinneapolis since.
I'm not one to go back anywhere.
My pull is forward and I was inLawster for about 10 years.
(35:02):
That's where I started theFolklore Theater Company to
preserve and protect the storiesthat are dying, with the people
that carry them.
How do we know who we are if wedon't know where we come from?
Not that we have to live there,but to know more about
ourselves through our stories.
We're a storytelling speciesand Cameron loved stories and
(35:25):
folklore and fairy tales fromall over the world, and so I had
after 10 years, I had anopportunity to join another
company that was looking tocreate an international touring
theater company that was rootedin those liminal spaces, the
(35:46):
spaces between the spaces.
So, as an experimental theater,we were looking for to play in
the space between the humanphysical experience and the
human call it, spiritualexperience.
Right, where's the middleground between the two?
They equally define us ashumans, and so where do we, you
(36:06):
know, move across that threshold, and so that's what the theater
was, and I was like, yes, thisis right up my alley, I love
this.
We were going to be, uh,establishing our base company
for touring in the uk, and so wewere exploring areas in the uk.
I lived there for a couple ofyears and we were waiting on
some funding before I was goingto get my residency in the uk
(36:31):
and this is pre-brexit and so Ihad some downtime, and so I
decided to travel a little bit.
I had never been to the southof france.
I thought I'll go, you know,rent an old, rustic farmhouse in
wine country.
I mean, it's the romantic in meand so my service dog, flat
(36:52):
Stanley they call themassistance dogs that mitigate
disabilities.
We went and rented this500-year-old farmhouse Beautiful
, beautiful place, and it waswinter, it was early January,
and so there were no touristsaround.
That's my favorite kind oftravel and we were there for a
(37:13):
couple of weeks and then Ithought, okay, where, where?
Next?
And oh, we're close to theborder of spain.
I've never been to spain orportugal.
My aunt, my mother's sister,lives in a tiny village here in
the Southwest of Spain, near theborder of Portugal, and so I
called her up and said hey, howwould you like a couple of house
guests for, you know a few days?
And so she said, yeah, come ondown.
(37:36):
So I took the train to Madridand took a you know, rented a
car and came down here Beautifularea, very remote and after, I
think, the first day she, shemet her neighbor outside and
told him I was here visiting.
He said you know, if he wantsto stay longer than a few days,
I just remodeled my mother'shouse in a village 15 minutes
(37:58):
from here and I'd be willing torent it to him for cheap, right?
So I thought, well, yeah, thatsounds good and we're so close
to portugal that, you know, Icould use this as my home base
and travel around a bit.
So I did and we signed a leasemonth to month and I, uh, after
the first month I was like, yeah, I'm gonna stay another month
(38:19):
because I'm really loving it.
And it was in the middle of thesecond month that COVID hit and
I could not leave the country.
Americans were barred fromtraveling to Europe at that time
.
Airports were closed down, youcouldn't leave your house or you
would be fined like 600 bucks.
(38:39):
So I thought, okay, I'll juststay put.
In most of Europe, especiallyin this region you are, if you
are, uh, from a differentcountry, non-european country,
they have an arrangement whereyou can stay for up to three
months without a visa it's likea tourist pass and then if you
(39:02):
want to stay longer, you have toleave the country.
You can come back, usually foranother three months, but then
that's the country.
You can come back usually foranother three months, but then
that's the max.
You could stay very, you know,during a year.
So by then, and once they liftedthe, the state of emergency,
and people were able to go outagain with masks, I talked to my
colleagues and said you, youknow, rent is cheap here in
(39:28):
Spain.
The cost of living where I amis so inexpensive, why don't we
consider using Spain as our homebase, versus the UK or the US,
where property is much moreexpensive?
And for a touring company,housing was the big ticket item.
Right that you?
You have to house your, yourcompany, you have to build you
(39:48):
know complex for building setsand costumes and music
rehearsals and all that stuff.
So I looked into it and andthey decided that it was a good
idea for me to seek residencyhere instead of the UK.
And so I did.
(40:08):
And they have a kind ofresidency in Spain called
Arraigo Social, which means asocial route residency.
And if you could stay in thecountry undocumented for three
years without any kerfuffleswith the police, and keep your
nose clean, don't travel toomuch, just stay close to home.
(40:30):
They give you your residencybecause you've planted yourself
as you've rooted yourself in acommunity.
Everybody knows who you are,you participate in events and
festivals and people invite youto dinner and you invite them
and it's you kind of create yourspace.
It's a beautiful thing and rare, and so I decided to go that
route and so I stayed for overthree years and applied for my
(40:54):
residency, got it within twoweeks.
I mean, it was so fast.
And here I am and I love it.
My house is 800 years old.
It's gorgeous.
Look at my ceilings.
See that.
It's such.
It's such an amazing place andthe people are kind and gentle
and interested and curious.
(41:14):
The culture, the food here isamazing.
I haven't seen an airplane inthe sky in now almost five years
that I've lived here.
That's the life I want at myage and this stage of my life.
Everything I do is virtual,it's online.
So we have fiber optic cable,we have Wi-Fi, everything you
(41:41):
need and all the food is localand I know all the farmers and I
see the animals romping in thefields and it's perfect.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Everything it hits everything, of being fulfilled
in wellness and wholeness andbeing with you.
Know the ground Right now, aswe're recording this there was a
flash flood.
You know, six hours from you,in Valencia.
Is that how you pronounce it?
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
How is it for you as a human being, you know being so
close and to such a bigdisaster?
You know, and nervous systemsfeel energy.
How are you holding the spacefor yourself with this?
Speaker 2 (42:26):
the space for yourself with this.
It's not unfamiliar.
Last year and the year before,we had torrential rains here in
my region and we had flooding.
The cars were floating away.
It was not to the degree thatit is there right now, because
it's not.
I mean, we have mountains here.
My village is in the foothillsof a small mountain range, but
(42:53):
I'm remembering the tension ofthat time when we had torrential
rains.
And this is a rural community,so people understand the cycles
of nature, they are so connectedwe're in the heart of nature
here and and they understand thecycles and that sometimes
destruction has to come for newgrowth to come.
(43:16):
And I think it's the way I'mholding.
It is metaphorically, um, thatwhat?
What do we have to learn fromthis?
And what do we have to learnfrom this and what do we have to
teach from this experience?
Right, we can look at somethingand call it a tragedy, or we
can look at it and say I was oneof the lucky ones who triumphed
(43:41):
.
I walked through this fire andI came out of it.
I breathed air.
Today, there are millions ofpeople around the world who did
not have that privilege, and soreally holding that moment,
holding that every moment istransitional, right?
There's nothing static here,and so to surrender you used
(44:06):
that word earlier.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
So, to surrender you used that word earlier,
surrendering to the transitionalquality of a moment, I think,
is where I sit with most thingsright now in the world.
I hear you, I hear you.
So I know many of the listenersare like OK, where do I get in
contact with Henry Cameron?
So can you let the listenersknow about the podcast, about
the book, about the services,the therapy, all that you have
to offer?
Send them where they can get intouch with you.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Just go to my name, henry Cameron Allen, dot org,
and it's no hyphen in thewebsite, because you can't put a
hyphen in a website.
So it's Henry Cameron Allen,all one word dot org, and it's
no hyphen in the website,because you can't put a hyphen
in a website.
So it's Henry Cameron Allen,all one word dot, org.
And there you have access toeverything that I'm doing, from
my arts to my philanthropy, tomy mental health work and the
(45:02):
podcast.
Everything is there.
That just makes it easy forpeople to find me.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
And you know, at any time, if there was any kind of
opening or you felt that therewas a calling, that's your
limbic system, you know,signaling to you that Henry
Cameron possibly has somethingfor you in your journey.
So reach out to him.
Don't ignore the little tugs,the little ahas, the little you
know, hair standing up, evenmaybe the tears that may have
fallen in this conversation.
(45:38):
Reach out to him because he hasthe lived experience to hold
space, to show you what ispossible and what you possibly
could access.
Is there anything that is onyour heart that you would like
to leave with the listeners, toempower them?
Speaker 2 (45:55):
I think I want to bring it back to that message of
the moment, the powerfulrecognition that a moment is not
a static place.
I heard a metaphor recently I'ma king of metaphors, I love
metaphor that life is like acigar and the enjoyment of a
(46:18):
cigar is the drag on the smokeand the smell and the wafting,
the beauty of the movement ofthe smoke and all of that.
The ember of the cigar, whichis called the cherry of the
cigar, which I love.
It's kind of a dual metaphorbecause it's like the cherry on
top of the sundae.
The cherry of the cigarrepresents the moment and it's
(46:44):
the space between what has beenand what is yet to be and
everything behind that ember.
That cherry is ash.
Let it be ash.
It's a reminder of what wasthat.
You experienced it, that youdragged on that smoke and you
(47:05):
enjoyed what you could enjoy ofit.
Sometimes you feel a littlenauseous and you have to put the
cigar down for a minute, letthe ember go out, but you can
always reignite it, right.
And that space around thecherry, around the ember, is
unpredictable.
It's not a regular structure.
Structure, right, it'sirregular and there's so much
(47:29):
cigar left to enjoy.
But you've got to be the one topick it up, reignite that ember
and enjoy the cigar.
And so I love that for ametaphor for not only the grief
(47:51):
journey right, the ash is ash,there's no going back.
You can't turn it back intowhole cigar.
It's past, it's a reminder ofwhat's past.
It's not that it's notimportant, but it's a reflection
.
It's an exercise in reflection,but there's still a lot of
fresh tobacco yet to smoke.
And tobacco is medicine, andand if you treat your life as
transitional, as uneven,unpredictable, I think we might
(48:17):
enjoy it a little more thecuriosity, the wonder, the joy
that's in the smoking of it.
Speaker 1 (48:25):
So Thank you for that .
Thank you for that visual.
I think visuals really impactpeople and then they get to.
They're like oh, that's whatyou're talking about.
They need that visual to reallyreinforce what that space is
and, you know, reallyunderstanding that time is a
tool.
It's not a toy, and we don'tknow how long we'll have the
(48:46):
tool for.
So use it to your best ability.
And, yeah, I want to thank youfor doing the alchemy in your
life.
You've taken the impurities andyou've turned them into gold.
Yet you haven't kept that goldto yourself.
You're sharing it with othersin a very profound way.
So I want to thank you forsharing yourself and giving us
(49:08):
the most valuable thing you havein life, which is your time.
So thank you for honoring uswith that valuable gift and
being here with myself that Iget to engage and be in delight
with you and also share thatwith the listeners.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
Thank you.
Thanks for holding space andcreating this beautiful platform
to share.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
Please remember to be kind to yourself.
Hey, you made it all the wayhere.
I appreciate you and your time.
If you found value in thisconversation, please share it
out.
If there was somebody thatpopped into your mind, take
action and share it out withthem.
It possibly may not be themthat will benefit.
(49:51):
It's that they know somebodythat will benefit from listening
to this conversation.
So please take action and shareout the podcast.
You can find us on social mediaon Facebook, instagram and
TikTok under Lift One Self.
On Facebook, instagram andTikTok under Lift One Self.
And if you want to inquireabout the work that I do and the
(50:13):
services that I provide topeople, come over on my website.
I'm into a discovery callliftoneselfcom.
Until next time, pleaseremember to be kind and gentle
with yourself.
You matter.
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