July 18, 2026 • 31 mins
There is a fertilizer for your creativity so powerful, so transformative, that it will wholly change the way you experience your life and your art.
This vital nutrient can make you unstoppable and prolific.
The problem is, most of us are avoiding it. (Myself included).
We tiptoe around it, sidestep it and organize our lives hoping we never have to experience this thing that is ultimately a portal to our most creative selves.
On today’s episode I reveal what this fertilizer is, share my story of discovering it, and invite you to use your grief (yes, grief) as vital nutrients to your life and growth.
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, and welcome to you to write your Story pipecast.
Good job. Really pick up the pieces of your life,
put them back together with the words you write. All
the beauty and peace and the magic that you'll start
too fun when you write your story. You got the
words and said, don't you think it's time to let
(00:23):
them out and write them down and cover what it's
all about and write, Write your story. Write you write
your story. Hello friend, and welcome back to the Write
Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon. I'm your host, and
on today's episode, I want to talk about grief and
(00:43):
I want to specifically talk about grief as it relates
to creativity because I think there's a really strong link here.
I think you can't have one without the other, both
feet into each other. I think grief is such an
important part of creativity that nobody talks about. So I
want to unpack this today and this this is top
of mind for me recently because I've been going through
my own process of grief, really zooming out. I've been
(01:05):
going through a process of grief for the last six
or seven years, but even recently, very recently, I've been
going through a process of grief and sometimes I'm like, Ugh,
when is the grief going to be over? Can't we
move on to the next thing. I've had so much
grief in the last handful of years. I'm ready for joy,
I'm ready for pleasure, I'm ready for you know, creativity.
And I just had this epiphany this week through a
(01:27):
poem that I'm going to read to you, that grief
is the whole point. Grief is the fuel. Grief is
the fertilizer that feeds your creativity. We don't see it
this way, we don't think about it this way. In
our culture, we actively avoid grieving. We actively avoid anything
that we think will break our hearts. Think about how
(01:47):
in popular culture and in spiritual circles we talk about
setting boundaries, we talk about ways to avoid getting hurt,
we talk about it. And I'm not saying that any
of those teachings are unhelpful or unnecessary, but it's so
much of spiritual teaching, so much of popular or self
help teaching, so much of the content that we consume
(02:08):
in present day has to do with helping you live
a life where you avoid pain, where you get access
to wealth, power, pleasure, joy, and you avoid being in pain.
And one of the things that I'm being reminded of
again in my life is that you cannot avoid pain
and chase pleasure and find the contentment that you're looking for,
(02:31):
because those two things that seem like their opposites are
actually just two sides of the same coin. And the
more grief that we let into our life, the more
love we let into our life, The more grief we
let into our life, the more creativity, the more joy
we let in. The more grief we let in, the
more pleasure we let in. You can't, as Brene Brown says,
selectively numb your emotions. So you can't say like, I'm
(02:54):
closed to grief, but I'm open to joy. No, You're
either open or you're closed. And I do feel, like
I've said before here that sometimes life has to kind
of shake us to get our attention, or at least
this is true for me. I feel like I have
this aspect to me that is quite resilient emotionally. I
can handle a lot. I can cope with a lot,
(03:15):
I can accept a lot. I can move through a
lot and just kind of keep moving forward. I think
a lot of women, especially are this way and meant
to for different reasons and in different ways. But so
many of us are so capable of moving through extreme
loss without ever really letting ourselves touch into the grief
that oh, like, what would it feel like for just
a minute if you let yourself dip your toe in
(03:38):
the water of that grief? If what would it feel
like for just a minute to be open to feeling
just a little corner of that grief. Sometimes when I
really let myself go here, I think like, oh my god,
it's going to swallow me whole. If I really let
myself myself go there, I'm going to go into it
and never be able to come out, or I'm going to,
(04:00):
you know, just explode with rage and frustration and panic
and whatever. But what would it feel like for you
if you would just let yourself use some of the
grief that is in your life as fuel as fertilizer
for whatever is coming next, without needing to know what
it is. Here's the thing that I think most of
(04:21):
us do, which is think of grief as a kind
of trade off, Like we would be willing to feel
the grief as long as we achieve the thing that
we're trying to achieve, or we would be willing to
feel the grief as long as we get what we wanted,
or we would be willing to feel the grief is
some kind of trade off. Is that making sense for
something else? But we're unwilling to feel the grief without
(04:41):
knowing what's on the other side of it. We're unwilling
to feel the grief for the sake of feeling the grief.
And I think this is what I want to talk
about today, is how the grief is the whole point.
I recorded this reel on Instagram a couple of weeks ago,
talking about how the heartbreak is the whole point. The heartbreak,
the very thing that we try to avoid, is the
(05:01):
entire point of everything. And I was just I was
just genuinely in that moment, having this real epiphany inside
of myself that the heartbreak that I've been trying to
avoid in my life is the whole point, and letting
myself feel it is the whole point, and letting myself
feel it is the start of everything. If you think
of it like the imagery of a volcano exploding and
(05:25):
kind of destroying everything around it, and then it leaves
behind infinite possibility. Most of us are unwilling to make
that trade and myself included by the way. I'm not
leaving myself out of this. Most of us are unwilling
to let the destruction of the grief take place to
let something really truly go. This idea of letting something go.
(05:48):
You can sort of let something go, but to really
let it go, you're gonna have to feel the deep
grief that comes with losing it. And most of us
are okay to sort of let it go as long
as we get this other thing that we want. But
the idea of really letting it go, like really really
letting it go, is so terrifying because the fact of
(06:09):
the matter is we don't know what will be on
the other side of it. It is infinite possibility anything
could happen. When you clear a space, there's room for
something new to come. But we don't know what the
new thing will be. We don't know what it is
that we're trading for. So it's like walking through an
unmarked store. It's like choose door A, B or C.
We don't know what's on the other side. We would
prefer the known quantity of knowing when I walk through
(06:32):
door A, this is what's on the other side. When
I walk through door b this is what's on the
other side. Not knowing makes it extremely difficult to truly,
truly let go. And yet this is what I've been
moving through. It's what I've been walking through. And this
poem by David White that'll read to you in just
a minute has really helped me to accept, receive, open
(06:54):
to the grief that is trying to come through me.
I have been avoiding it. I've been tiptoeing around it.
I've been stepping aside, stepping it in every way that
I know how, and yet it just keeps on showing up.
My therapist was saying, you can't outrun these things. I
cannot outrun it. It will not let me. What a
(07:14):
grace it will not let me outrun it. And maybe
you feel something similar. Maybe you feel like there's a
heartbreak that keeps coming for you that no matter how
hard you try to outrun it, it won't let you.
And what a grace that it won't let you outrun it,
because the heartbreak is here to show you something, to
show you something that you couldn't even imagine. I can't
(07:35):
predict what it is to show you on the other
side of the heartbreak. It is something that we probably
don't have even language for, because it's part of It's
like stepping through a portal to a new world where
things exist that you haven't ever seen before, So how
would you have the language for it? From this world?
The courage, the bravery that it takes to really step
(07:56):
through that portal is not for the faint of heart,
and yet it is the essence of creativity. It is
the utter essence of creativity because everything that is created
starts from nothingness, starts in the womb, starts in the darkness.
Every single thing that exists on planet Earth starts in
(08:16):
the darkness. And so if you are in a place
in your life where you feel that you are in
the darkness, you are not alone. I am in this
place in my life right now where I feel that
I'm in the darkness. There are some things that are
known to me, some things that are sure and that
feel sure, and there are so many things that are not,
And just overwhelmingly I feel that I am in that
(08:39):
womb space. I'm in the darkness. I'm in the woods.
I don't know where I am. I'm lost, I don't
know what's coming next. I'll share just briefly I haven't
wanted to talk about this because I just don't want
to talk about it. It's painful to talk about and
(08:59):
be not trying to center my own story here. But
I do want to share this in case it helps
you to access your story, so as you know, if
you've been listening for a while, my husband and I
have had several miscarriages. We've really wanted to grow our family.
I genuinely, a couple of months ago, after the fourth miscarriage,
feel like I really let it go. I just decided
(09:22):
that I was going to enjoy my life as it was.
I've got two happy, healthy kids who are thriving. We
have a great life together. My husband and I have
a great relationship. We love each other, we love being together.
You know, there's some challenges. There have been financial challenges
over the past couple of years. We haven't been able
to do all the things that we've wanted to do.
But overwhelmingly, for the most part, we live this great life.
We have so many options available to us, so many opportunities.
(09:46):
My mother in law lives next door. We started this
little preschool in her house. Like so many beautiful things
going on in my life, and I just decided, Okay,
I'm letting this go. I really wanted to grow our family.
I really pictured us having four kids. That's not what's
happening for us. My body is saying no to that.
I recorded an episode called When the Body Says No,
because sometimes you want to actualize something, you want to
(10:07):
manifest something, and the body just says no. The body's
like Nope, not now or not ever, and we don't
always have an explanation for that or know why. But
in this case, I just decided I was going to
focus on myself. I was going to focus on having fun.
I was going to focus on being with my kids.
I was going to have this summer of joy and
play and being outside and being present with my children
(10:31):
and feeling good in my body again because I've been
sick with mold illness for a long time. I've been
through all these miscarriages. It's really really hard on the body.
So I've had all these losses, and I just was like,
you know what, I'm going to just give to myself.
I'm going to nurture myself. I'm going to really start
doing everything I can to feel healthy again. I was
(10:52):
feeling good about it. I was you know like sad
to let it go, but I was like, I'm going
to let it go. And as I made the decision
to do that, a few months later, I stopped tracking
my cycle. I stopped knowing what. If you've ever been
in a trying to conceive journey, you understand the gravity
of this. If not, it may not fully land for you.
You might it might not totally make sense. But the
(11:15):
way that trying to conceive occupies every ounce of your
attention is so hard to explain. So to let that go,
to delete the apps, to stop tracking, to stop taking
the ovulation test, to not know when you know where
I was in my cycle or when what was happening,
And to eliminate that ten day waiting period from after
(11:37):
you ovulate to when you can take a test again.
If you haven't done this yourself, you probably don't know
how truly like an eternity ten days can feel. Every
day is just like a painful waiting to see if
your life is about to change drastically or if you're
about to go back to more of the same. It's
a wild experience that I wouldn't wish on anybody. So
(11:58):
I let all of that go. I let go of
the tracking, I let go of the ovulation test, I
let go of the obsessing over it, I let go
of everything, and I really just moved on with my
life and what would this be like Almost four months later,
because it was end of May that I took a
positive pregnancy test, and to be honest, I wasn't really
(12:19):
sure where I was at in my cycle. The only
reason I took a pregnancy test, period is because I
was about to go do a detox treatment for the
mold stuff, like all of the mold sickness that I've
had that I really felt like I probably shouldn't do
if I was pregnant. So I take a pregnancy test.
I'm so convinced this test is going to be negative
because you know, we haven't been trying to get pregnant,
(12:40):
that I took the test in the morning with my
kids running around in the house and my husband was
in the other room. Normally, if I really thought that
the test was going to be positive, I probably would
have waited it until the kids were at school, until
everyone was out of the house, and I would have
just you know, done it in a quiet space. But instead,
like my kids are running in and out of the bathroom,
I'm peeing on the stick and enough the test immediately
(13:01):
turns positive. It's like such a bright line, and I
felt this wave of just excitement and joy flood in
my body. I was in shock and disbelief. I couldn't
believe it. I go out and I'm like, tell my husband.
I'm like, babe, you're not gonna believe this. And I
just hand him the test and he's just floored, like
(13:23):
we're both like, oh my gosh. It felt like the
conclusion of that story where you finally let something go
and then it comes to you. So I call the doctor. Actually,
on the first day that I took the test, didn't
even call the doctor because I was like, I don't
want to ruin it. I'm just so happy that this
is happening. I don't want to ruin it. I don't
want that I don't want to go get the blood work.
(13:44):
I know how this goes, Like, I don't want to
go do the hCG thing. I just kind of want
to like bask in the good feelings of knowing that
I am actually pregnant. But then on day two I
did call the doctor and they sure enough, which makes
total sense. We're like, we want you to come in
and do bit hCG every two days. So they track
your HGG in your blood, which is the hormone that
(14:05):
tells them that you're pregnant. That's the hormone that your
body produces and then later your percent PLUSCENTA produces that
sustains the pregnancy. So we started tracking the bit hCG.
I was going every two days. I was getting great results.
The numbers were doubling, happily, that's what they look for.
They look for those numbers to double every I think
it's twenty four to twenty four to forty eight hours.
(14:27):
I think it is. They like for the numbers to
double every time you go in. They want to see
the number is twice as big. So you go in
and maybe the first time your number is only fifty,
but then a second time, as long as it's one
hundred or more, then it looks like your pregnancy is
tracking along great. So I went in and my first
beta hCG reading was in the three hundreds, which is
unheard of. By the way, Like when I went back
(14:48):
and looked at when where I was in my cycle,
Really I was only supposed to be like three weeks pregnant,
three and a half weeks pregnant, something like that, which
is just not that far along in case you're not
a person who is trying to conceive or who understands
how any of this works. The way that they measure
a pregnancy is based on the weeks from the first
(15:09):
day of your last period. So basically, by the time
you discover you're pregnant, most of the time you're four
weeks or more pregnant, because you wouldn't be expecting your periods,
so you wouldn't, you know, be taking a test. So
most of the time when women find out they're pregnant,
they're four weeks pregnant, or maybe even five weeks or
sometimes six weeks pregnant by the time that they find out,
because they realized they've missed a period, and so then
(15:29):
they take a test. So by the time I found
out I was pregnant, I was three weeks and a
couple of days pregnant, and I was going in every
other day for my beta ahcg's and they were all
trending so well, and I kept getting these messages from
the nurses saying like, everything looks so good, We're so
excited for you. My mom was coming to town, and
I knew that by the time she got to town,
I was probably not going to be feeling that great.
(15:51):
So I told the kids, Okay, well, we're going to
tell Nana when she gets here. We're gonna, you know,
buy fun shirts that say like big brother and all
that stuff. My kids where, Oh, my kids were just
like over the moon excited. Someday maybe if I have
the courage, I'll share the video of them. They were, just,
like I said, running around when I was taking the test.
(16:12):
And both of them have been around as we've been
in this train to conceive journey, so they're not they
know exactly what the test is for. And so right
in the moment when we were taking the test, I
set up my camera and watched them register that the
test had turned positive. So I had this really sweet
video of them realizing that there's a baby and mommy's tummy.
(16:32):
They were so excited. They were thrilled. They've been begging
for us to have another baby, and it was just
that day and the days after, the weeks after were
just such a blissful time, interrupted by moments of anxiety
and fear about loss and all of that, but like
such a sweet, beautiful time that felt like finally, finally,
(16:55):
we're going to get this gift that we've waited so
long for. And so when one day I went in
for a bit of HGG reading and it came back
and the numbers were declining, I was truly so shocked
and devastated. And the declining HGG numbers indicate non viable pregnancy.
(17:16):
And so the message from the doctor was, you can
expect that you'll be miscarrying this pregnancy at some point
in the near future. And so we knew what was coming,
and yet still the miscarriage, this fifth miscarriage, really shook me.
I mean, it really took me down. And to be honest,
(17:37):
this is a story that I haven't even shared with
a handful of my close friends. Other are few people
that I've shared the story with. Some of that is
just by nature of convenience and geography, and life has
been busy and there just hasn't been an opportunity, and
some of it is just feeling like ugh, like I
don't want to talk about this again. I'm so sick
of hearing myself tell this same story. I'm so tired
(17:58):
of the almost getting what I want and then not
getting what I want. It feels like so guttural to me,
and I'm just I'm like, it pushed me into the
grief that I have been able to up until this
point avoid. And that was the comment that I made
in a previous episode and then kind of reiterated in
this episode about how sometimes it's like, if you're so
(18:22):
resilient that you can move through heartbreak without really feeling it,
sometimes life has to push you a little bit further.
I don't think it's a cruelty of life or God
or universe. I think it is a grace. I really do.
I'm seeing it more and more that way. The older
I get that heartbreak is the whole point, and if
you're avoiding heartbreak, life is going to go. Okay, I'll
(18:42):
just give you another little push into heartbreak. Okay, here's
another invitation, here's another opening, here's another portal, and you
get to decide if you want to step through this
portal to the other side. And there's never going to
be a force, it's never going to be a requirement,
but it will eventually, I think, become so painful to
stand on the wrong side of the door that it's
more painful to stand there than it is to step
(19:04):
through to the other side. It's more painful to avoid
the loss than it is to actually accept it. And
I do think I've reached that threshold in this journey
for me. I have gotten to the point where the
grief is too big and I can't avoid it anymore.
The grief is too big and I can't just casually
move through it anymore. The grief is too big, and
it's just like ough, no, ugh, I could just like
(19:27):
sob I'm so sad. And the other element of this
is that this pregnancy for me and the loss, all
of them have been hard on my body. And I've
also been going through this mold exposure stuff and we've
remedd at the house, and I've been in a detox protocol.
All of that has been so hard on my body
(19:49):
that I feel like this most recent experience just physically
brought me to a place where I don't think I
can do it again. I just genuinely don't think I
can keep trying. And not even just not trying, I
feel like I have to close the door on this
part of my life, this desire, this vision, this whatever
(20:09):
it is of another baby, of growing our family. I
have to, like, legitimately, I think, close the door on
this and that feeling, that sensation that has come over
me has required me to really grieve. It's required me
to not just go Okay, I'm gonna let go of this,
I'm gonna move on with my life and have fun
and be happy, which I will do those things, but
(20:30):
also like I have to release, let go, say goodbye
to the only reason I tell this story. I'm not
trying to center my story here. I tell the story
as a way to hopefully create an opening for you
to see this thread in your story, for you hopefully
to be able to see maybe there's a part in
(20:51):
your story where the same heartbreak has been chasing you
down again and again and again, and you've been trying
to avoid the heartbreak, and maybe the heartbreak is saying
this is an't inmate. How long are you going to
avoid the invitation to come deeper into your life? How
long are you going to avoid the invitation to really
feel what this experience has brought you here to feel.
(21:12):
We're so focused on getting what we came here to get,
and we're so unwilling to feel what we came here
to feel. And maybe there's a wisdom in all that's
unfolded in your life, all that's happening in your life.
Maybe this all brought you to a place so that
you can really feel what it brought you here to feel.
(21:33):
And I think that probably what it brought you here
to feel is grief. Probably what it brought you here
to feel is heartbreak. And I know it sounds so counterintuitive,
and it sounds almost even a little bit like masochistic.
There's a whole self help thread that I can even
appreciate and I can validate and get on board with
that says, you know, not everything has to be so
(21:54):
difficult all the time. What if it could be easy?
What if it could be fun? What if it could
be light? What if it could be playful? And yes, yes, yes, yes,
and yes. And yet what I don't think it means
is what if it could be easy? I don't think
that means what if life is going to give you
every single thing that you think you want. I think
it means, like, what if you could surrender? What if
you could relax? What if you didn't have to fight
(22:16):
your whole way down? What if you could just let
yourself sob like, I just want to sob like. What
if you could just let yourself express, let yourself feel
exactly what it is that you came here to feel.
And even though this is counterintuitive, even though it sounds
kind of masochistic, even though it runs so counter to
(22:40):
what we're taught in popular culture, there is something to this,
I believe. And as I was already kind of rolling
this around in my head and in my heart, I
stumbled across this David White poem. I love David White.
If you're new here, you may not have heard me
read any of his poetry. But David White is an
Irish poet who who is such a brilliant, brilliant man
(23:02):
and just an amazing soul. He's a very prolific poet.
He's written so many things. And I read his poetry
a lot because I really connect with the imagery. I
connect with the way that he says things. And this
poem is called the Well of Grief. It's in a
book of a collection of his poetry called Essentials, And
so this is on page forty seven of the Essentials collection.
(23:26):
I'll read you his poem, and then I want to
read his explanation of the poem too. So I'll just
read the poem and I'll let that sit for a minute,
and then I'll read you his explanation, because it really
gets at what I'm talking about here and really helps
us to unpack the images in the poem. So this
is called the well of grief. So this is called
(23:54):
the well of grief, the well of grief. Those who
will not slip beneath the still surface on the well
of grief, turning down through its black water to the
place where we cannot breathe, we'll never know the source
from which we drink the secret water, cold and clear,
nor find in the darkness, glimmering the small round coins
(24:18):
thrown by those who wished for something else. I read
this poem and my whole body just lit up, and
there were tears, because I felt it in my bones
that the grief is the whole point. The very thing
that we're avoiding is the whole point. Those who will
not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief,
(24:40):
turning down through its black water to the place we
cannot breathe, we'll never know the source from which we
drink the secret water, cold, and clear, nor find in
the darkness glimmering the small round coins thrown by those
who wished for something else. Oh, that contrast of the
wishing for something else, the imagery of a wishing well.
(25:02):
You throw your coins into the wishing well, hoping that
you can stay outside of the well and throw your
coin down there and get the thing that you wished for.
And yet the thing that you wished for is at
the bottom of the freaking well. Is at the bottom
of the well. Oh. I want to read you his
explanation of this poem, because I think it really illuminates
(25:23):
what I'm talking about. He says, the well of grief.
As a very serious young poet with a destination in mine,
I decided to write a long and in depth narrative
poem on grief. There was an immediate physical sense of
dropping down. Doesn't grief feel like that? Dropping down? He says,
dropping down through the body, dropping down through the gravitational
pull of each line on the page, as if leaning
(25:45):
down even further to drink from a deeper source. Within
six lines, I caught a glimmer on the bottom of
that well, and despite my first attempts to ignore it
and to get back to my long epic. I knew
the poem was over. Gosh, this just really gets me.
All around the world, in all cultures we throw coins
into wells to make a wish. This was the first
(26:08):
time that I understood so physically that the wish is
defensive and propitious. The wish is defensive and propitious even
in the very act of making the wish. What he's
saying is, the very act of making the wish is
our own defiance against going into the well, going down
(26:30):
into the grief. We make wishes as a way to
avoid our own grief, our own self. The essence of
the wish is that we will be absolved from having
to descend into the source ourselves. The essence of the
wish is that we will be absolved from having to
descend into the source ourselves. The coins take all kinds
(26:53):
of forms. Some of us have thrown marriages, friendships, hope, streams,
and most of all are necessary and robust, vulnerable down
there in the hope that the greater and more gold
in the sacrifice, the more it will absolve us from
having to go down to that source. And a true
physical and foundational understanding of the grief. We carry within
us the will of grief. I couldn't help but think
(27:15):
about how popular modern manifestation ideology, which you know, there
is an essence of manifestation that feels true and rings
true to me, And then there is the way that
it's taught in our culture that to me is like
the people at the top of the well throwing coins
into the wishing well. It's like I wish for a
(27:36):
million dollars, I wish for a fancy car. I wish
for another baby. I wish for a relationship that's very satisfying.
I wish for whatever it is a business, a thriving business.
I wish for health. I wish for a restored relationship
with my parent. Whatever it is that you're wishing for
is the act of wishing for. It is a way
(27:58):
of sort of holding your arm against the grief that
has come here to show you, that has come here
to teach you, against the sensation of being alive. And
I think that there's a difference between wishing for something
as a way to not have to feel versus wishing.
(28:19):
It's not even really wishing, it's like a creative inspiration.
Is the way that I've talked about it following that thread,
following that spark of curiosity, whose purpose is to lead
you to the very end of yourself, so that you
can die metaphorically and be reborn metaphorically into someone wholly new,
(28:42):
into a world that's wholly new to you, with infinite possibilities,
even more infinite possibilities available to you. But not so
that you can get the thing you thought you wanted.
The thing you thought you wanted was never the point.
The point was taking you to the end of yourself,
taking you into the well, into that deeper sore. This
was the first time that I understood so physically that
(29:03):
the wish is defensive and propitious. The essence of the
wish is that we will be absolved from having to
descend into the source ourselves. In what way have you
been wishing for something, fantasizing about something, praying for something,
begging for something as a way to avoid going deeper
(29:26):
into the essence of your life and your person as is?
In what ways have you been using manifestation or creativity
even as a way to avoid your life rather than
as a way to welcome more of your life? In
this topic is not for the faint a part. This
(29:48):
topic is not elementary stuff. This is really, really this
is not an easy part of being a human being
and not easy to accept. Understand that grief is not
only part of life, but grief is the essence. It
is the very essence. When you go down into your grief,
This is what the imagery says to me in this poem.
(30:10):
When you go down into your grief, you go down
into the very essence of life. Those who will not
slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief
will never know the source from which we drink the
secret water, cold and clear. Nor will they find, in
the darkness, glimmering the small round coins thrown by those
who wished for something else. The only way to find
(30:32):
what it is you're truly looking for is to go
down into the grief. I am trying to do that
without completely huh. I don't know. I was going to say,
without completely losing myself, but maybe losing ourselves as the
point too. I am, in whatever capacity I am able
and available, trying to see my grief as the source
(30:56):
of all good things, and trying to let it happen
and let myself be what this experience brought me here
to feel It is not easy. I can't say I'm
just enjoying it, but that poem really brought me a
lot of hope. It brought me a lot of faith
(31:16):
in the process, and it just reminded me that this
is where the true gift lies. Like the shimmery coin
is at the bottom of the well of grief. Swim
all the way down. Let yourself be pulled all the
way down. I hope this finds you where you are
and meets you exactly where you need it. And I'll
(31:37):
see you back here next week on the Writer Story podcast.
Thanks for listening.
Hi, and welcome to you to write your Story pipecast.
Good job. Really pick up the pieces of your life,
put them back together with the words you write. All
the beauty and peace and the magic that you'll start
too fun when you write your story. You got the
words and said, don't you think it's time to let
(00:23):
them out and write them down and cover what it's
all about and write, Write your story. Write you write
your story. Hello friend, and welcome back to the Write
Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon. I'm your host, and
on today's episode, I want to talk about grief and
(00:43):
I want to specifically talk about grief as it relates
to creativity because I think there's a really strong link here.
I think you can't have one without the other, both
feet into each other. I think grief is such an
important part of creativity that nobody talks about. So I
want to unpack this today and this this is top
of mind for me recently because I've been going through
my own process of grief, really zooming out. I've been
(01:05):
going through a process of grief for the last six
or seven years, but even recently, very recently, I've been
going through a process of grief and sometimes I'm like, Ugh,
when is the grief going to be over? Can't we
move on to the next thing. I've had so much
grief in the last handful of years. I'm ready for joy,
I'm ready for pleasure, I'm ready for you know, creativity.
And I just had this epiphany this week through a
(01:27):
poem that I'm going to read to you, that grief
is the whole point. Grief is the fuel. Grief is
the fertilizer that feeds your creativity. We don't see it
this way, we don't think about it this way. In
our culture, we actively avoid grieving. We actively avoid anything
that we think will break our hearts. Think about how
(01:47):
in popular culture and in spiritual circles we talk about
setting boundaries, we talk about ways to avoid getting hurt,
we talk about it. And I'm not saying that any
of those teachings are unhelpful or unnecessary, but it's so
much of spiritual teaching, so much of popular or self
help teaching, so much of the content that we consume
(02:08):
in present day has to do with helping you live
a life where you avoid pain, where you get access
to wealth, power, pleasure, joy, and you avoid being in pain.
And one of the things that I'm being reminded of
again in my life is that you cannot avoid pain
and chase pleasure and find the contentment that you're looking for,
(02:31):
because those two things that seem like their opposites are
actually just two sides of the same coin. And the
more grief that we let into our life, the more
love we let into our life, The more grief we
let into our life, the more creativity, the more joy
we let in. The more grief we let in, the
more pleasure we let in. You can't, as Brene Brown says,
selectively numb your emotions. So you can't say like, I'm
(02:54):
closed to grief, but I'm open to joy. No, You're
either open or you're closed. And I do feel, like
I've said before here that sometimes life has to kind
of shake us to get our attention, or at least
this is true for me. I feel like I have
this aspect to me that is quite resilient emotionally. I
can handle a lot. I can cope with a lot,
(03:15):
I can accept a lot. I can move through a
lot and just kind of keep moving forward. I think
a lot of women, especially are this way and meant
to for different reasons and in different ways. But so
many of us are so capable of moving through extreme
loss without ever really letting ourselves touch into the grief
that oh, like, what would it feel like for just
a minute if you let yourself dip your toe in
(03:38):
the water of that grief? If what would it feel
like for just a minute to be open to feeling
just a little corner of that grief. Sometimes when I
really let myself go here, I think like, oh my god,
it's going to swallow me whole. If I really let
myself myself go there, I'm going to go into it
and never be able to come out, or I'm going to,
(04:00):
you know, just explode with rage and frustration and panic
and whatever. But what would it feel like for you
if you would just let yourself use some of the
grief that is in your life as fuel as fertilizer
for whatever is coming next, without needing to know what
it is. Here's the thing that I think most of
(04:21):
us do, which is think of grief as a kind
of trade off, Like we would be willing to feel
the grief as long as we achieve the thing that
we're trying to achieve, or we would be willing to
feel the grief as long as we get what we wanted,
or we would be willing to feel the grief is
some kind of trade off. Is that making sense for
something else? But we're unwilling to feel the grief without
(04:41):
knowing what's on the other side of it. We're unwilling
to feel the grief for the sake of feeling the grief.
And I think this is what I want to talk
about today, is how the grief is the whole point.
I recorded this reel on Instagram a couple of weeks ago,
talking about how the heartbreak is the whole point. The heartbreak,
the very thing that we try to avoid, is the
(05:01):
entire point of everything. And I was just I was
just genuinely in that moment, having this real epiphany inside
of myself that the heartbreak that I've been trying to
avoid in my life is the whole point, and letting
myself feel it is the whole point, and letting myself
feel it is the start of everything. If you think
of it like the imagery of a volcano exploding and
(05:25):
kind of destroying everything around it, and then it leaves
behind infinite possibility. Most of us are unwilling to make
that trade and myself included by the way. I'm not
leaving myself out of this. Most of us are unwilling
to let the destruction of the grief take place to
let something really truly go. This idea of letting something go.
(05:48):
You can sort of let something go, but to really
let it go, you're gonna have to feel the deep
grief that comes with losing it. And most of us
are okay to sort of let it go as long
as we get this other thing that we want. But
the idea of really letting it go, like really really
letting it go, is so terrifying because the fact of
(06:09):
the matter is we don't know what will be on
the other side of it. It is infinite possibility anything
could happen. When you clear a space, there's room for
something new to come. But we don't know what the
new thing will be. We don't know what it is
that we're trading for. So it's like walking through an
unmarked store. It's like choose door A, B or C.
We don't know what's on the other side. We would
prefer the known quantity of knowing when I walk through
(06:32):
door A, this is what's on the other side. When
I walk through door b this is what's on the
other side. Not knowing makes it extremely difficult to truly,
truly let go. And yet this is what I've been
moving through. It's what I've been walking through. And this
poem by David White that'll read to you in just
a minute has really helped me to accept, receive, open
(06:54):
to the grief that is trying to come through me.
I have been avoiding it. I've been tiptoeing around it.
I've been stepping aside, stepping it in every way that
I know how, and yet it just keeps on showing up.
My therapist was saying, you can't outrun these things. I
cannot outrun it. It will not let me. What a
(07:14):
grace it will not let me outrun it. And maybe
you feel something similar. Maybe you feel like there's a
heartbreak that keeps coming for you that no matter how
hard you try to outrun it, it won't let you.
And what a grace that it won't let you outrun it,
because the heartbreak is here to show you something, to
show you something that you couldn't even imagine. I can't
(07:35):
predict what it is to show you on the other
side of the heartbreak. It is something that we probably
don't have even language for, because it's part of It's
like stepping through a portal to a new world where
things exist that you haven't ever seen before, So how
would you have the language for it? From this world?
The courage, the bravery that it takes to really step
(07:56):
through that portal is not for the faint of heart,
and yet it is the essence of creativity. It is
the utter essence of creativity because everything that is created
starts from nothingness, starts in the womb, starts in the darkness.
Every single thing that exists on planet Earth starts in
(08:16):
the darkness. And so if you are in a place
in your life where you feel that you are in
the darkness, you are not alone. I am in this
place in my life right now where I feel that
I'm in the darkness. There are some things that are
known to me, some things that are sure and that
feel sure, and there are so many things that are not,
And just overwhelmingly I feel that I am in that
(08:39):
womb space. I'm in the darkness. I'm in the woods.
I don't know where I am. I'm lost, I don't
know what's coming next. I'll share just briefly I haven't
wanted to talk about this because I just don't want
to talk about it. It's painful to talk about and
(08:59):
be not trying to center my own story here. But
I do want to share this in case it helps
you to access your story, so as you know, if
you've been listening for a while, my husband and I
have had several miscarriages. We've really wanted to grow our family.
I genuinely, a couple of months ago, after the fourth miscarriage,
feel like I really let it go. I just decided
(09:22):
that I was going to enjoy my life as it was.
I've got two happy, healthy kids who are thriving. We
have a great life together. My husband and I have
a great relationship. We love each other, we love being together.
You know, there's some challenges. There have been financial challenges
over the past couple of years. We haven't been able
to do all the things that we've wanted to do.
But overwhelmingly, for the most part, we live this great life.
We have so many options available to us, so many opportunities.
(09:46):
My mother in law lives next door. We started this
little preschool in her house. Like so many beautiful things
going on in my life, and I just decided, Okay,
I'm letting this go. I really wanted to grow our family.
I really pictured us having four kids. That's not what's
happening for us. My body is saying no to that.
I recorded an episode called When the Body Says No,
because sometimes you want to actualize something, you want to
(10:07):
manifest something, and the body just says no. The body's
like Nope, not now or not ever, and we don't
always have an explanation for that or know why. But
in this case, I just decided I was going to
focus on myself. I was going to focus on having fun.
I was going to focus on being with my kids.
I was going to have this summer of joy and
play and being outside and being present with my children
(10:31):
and feeling good in my body again because I've been
sick with mold illness for a long time. I've been
through all these miscarriages. It's really really hard on the body.
So I've had all these losses, and I just was like,
you know what, I'm going to just give to myself.
I'm going to nurture myself. I'm going to really start
doing everything I can to feel healthy again. I was
(10:52):
feeling good about it. I was you know like sad
to let it go, but I was like, I'm going
to let it go. And as I made the decision
to do that, a few months later, I stopped tracking
my cycle. I stopped knowing what. If you've ever been
in a trying to conceive journey, you understand the gravity
of this. If not, it may not fully land for you.
You might it might not totally make sense. But the
(11:15):
way that trying to conceive occupies every ounce of your
attention is so hard to explain. So to let that go,
to delete the apps, to stop tracking, to stop taking
the ovulation test, to not know when you know where
I was in my cycle or when what was happening,
And to eliminate that ten day waiting period from after
(11:37):
you ovulate to when you can take a test again.
If you haven't done this yourself, you probably don't know
how truly like an eternity ten days can feel. Every
day is just like a painful waiting to see if
your life is about to change drastically or if you're
about to go back to more of the same. It's
a wild experience that I wouldn't wish on anybody. So
(11:58):
I let all of that go. I let go of
the tracking, I let go of the ovulation test, I
let go of the obsessing over it, I let go
of everything, and I really just moved on with my
life and what would this be like Almost four months later,
because it was end of May that I took a
positive pregnancy test, and to be honest, I wasn't really
(12:19):
sure where I was at in my cycle. The only
reason I took a pregnancy test, period is because I
was about to go do a detox treatment for the
mold stuff, like all of the mold sickness that I've
had that I really felt like I probably shouldn't do
if I was pregnant. So I take a pregnancy test.
I'm so convinced this test is going to be negative
because you know, we haven't been trying to get pregnant,
(12:40):
that I took the test in the morning with my
kids running around in the house and my husband was
in the other room. Normally, if I really thought that
the test was going to be positive, I probably would
have waited it until the kids were at school, until
everyone was out of the house, and I would have
just you know, done it in a quiet space. But instead,
like my kids are running in and out of the bathroom,
I'm peeing on the stick and enough the test immediately
(13:01):
turns positive. It's like such a bright line, and I
felt this wave of just excitement and joy flood in
my body. I was in shock and disbelief. I couldn't
believe it. I go out and I'm like, tell my husband.
I'm like, babe, you're not gonna believe this. And I
just hand him the test and he's just floored, like
(13:23):
we're both like, oh my gosh. It felt like the
conclusion of that story where you finally let something go
and then it comes to you. So I call the doctor. Actually,
on the first day that I took the test, didn't
even call the doctor because I was like, I don't
want to ruin it. I'm just so happy that this
is happening. I don't want to ruin it. I don't
want that I don't want to go get the blood work.
(13:44):
I know how this goes, Like, I don't want to
go do the hCG thing. I just kind of want
to like bask in the good feelings of knowing that
I am actually pregnant. But then on day two I
did call the doctor and they sure enough, which makes
total sense. We're like, we want you to come in
and do bit hCG every two days. So they track
your HGG in your blood, which is the hormone that
(14:05):
tells them that you're pregnant. That's the hormone that your
body produces and then later your percent PLUSCENTA produces that
sustains the pregnancy. So we started tracking the bit hCG.
I was going every two days. I was getting great results.
The numbers were doubling, happily, that's what they look for.
They look for those numbers to double every I think
it's twenty four to twenty four to forty eight hours.
(14:27):
I think it is. They like for the numbers to
double every time you go in. They want to see
the number is twice as big. So you go in
and maybe the first time your number is only fifty,
but then a second time, as long as it's one
hundred or more, then it looks like your pregnancy is
tracking along great. So I went in and my first
beta hCG reading was in the three hundreds, which is
unheard of. By the way, Like when I went back
(14:48):
and looked at when where I was in my cycle,
Really I was only supposed to be like three weeks pregnant,
three and a half weeks pregnant, something like that, which
is just not that far along in case you're not
a person who is trying to conceive or who understands
how any of this works. The way that they measure
a pregnancy is based on the weeks from the first
(15:09):
day of your last period. So basically, by the time
you discover you're pregnant, most of the time you're four
weeks or more pregnant, because you wouldn't be expecting your periods,
so you wouldn't, you know, be taking a test. So
most of the time when women find out they're pregnant,
they're four weeks pregnant, or maybe even five weeks or
sometimes six weeks pregnant by the time that they find out,
because they realized they've missed a period, and so then
(15:29):
they take a test. So by the time I found
out I was pregnant, I was three weeks and a
couple of days pregnant, and I was going in every
other day for my beta ahcg's and they were all
trending so well, and I kept getting these messages from
the nurses saying like, everything looks so good, We're so
excited for you. My mom was coming to town, and
I knew that by the time she got to town,
I was probably not going to be feeling that great.
(15:51):
So I told the kids, Okay, well, we're going to
tell Nana when she gets here. We're gonna, you know,
buy fun shirts that say like big brother and all
that stuff. My kids where, Oh, my kids were just
like over the moon excited. Someday maybe if I have
the courage, I'll share the video of them. They were, just,
like I said, running around when I was taking the test.
(16:12):
And both of them have been around as we've been
in this train to conceive journey, so they're not they
know exactly what the test is for. And so right
in the moment when we were taking the test, I
set up my camera and watched them register that the
test had turned positive. So I had this really sweet
video of them realizing that there's a baby and mommy's tummy.
(16:32):
They were so excited. They were thrilled. They've been begging
for us to have another baby, and it was just
that day and the days after, the weeks after were
just such a blissful time, interrupted by moments of anxiety
and fear about loss and all of that, but like
such a sweet, beautiful time that felt like finally, finally,
(16:55):
we're going to get this gift that we've waited so
long for. And so when one day I went in
for a bit of HGG reading and it came back
and the numbers were declining, I was truly so shocked
and devastated. And the declining HGG numbers indicate non viable pregnancy.
(17:16):
And so the message from the doctor was, you can
expect that you'll be miscarrying this pregnancy at some point
in the near future. And so we knew what was coming,
and yet still the miscarriage, this fifth miscarriage, really shook me.
I mean, it really took me down. And to be honest,
(17:37):
this is a story that I haven't even shared with
a handful of my close friends. Other are few people
that I've shared the story with. Some of that is
just by nature of convenience and geography, and life has
been busy and there just hasn't been an opportunity, and
some of it is just feeling like ugh, like I
don't want to talk about this again. I'm so sick
of hearing myself tell this same story. I'm so tired
(17:58):
of the almost getting what I want and then not
getting what I want. It feels like so guttural to me,
and I'm just I'm like, it pushed me into the
grief that I have been able to up until this
point avoid. And that was the comment that I made
in a previous episode and then kind of reiterated in
this episode about how sometimes it's like, if you're so
(18:22):
resilient that you can move through heartbreak without really feeling it,
sometimes life has to push you a little bit further.
I don't think it's a cruelty of life or God
or universe. I think it is a grace. I really do.
I'm seeing it more and more that way. The older
I get that heartbreak is the whole point, and if
you're avoiding heartbreak, life is going to go. Okay, I'll
(18:42):
just give you another little push into heartbreak. Okay, here's
another invitation, here's another opening, here's another portal, and you
get to decide if you want to step through this
portal to the other side. And there's never going to
be a force, it's never going to be a requirement,
but it will eventually, I think, become so painful to
stand on the wrong side of the door that it's
more painful to stand there than it is to step
(19:04):
through to the other side. It's more painful to avoid
the loss than it is to actually accept it. And
I do think I've reached that threshold in this journey
for me. I have gotten to the point where the
grief is too big and I can't avoid it anymore.
The grief is too big and I can't just casually
move through it anymore. The grief is too big, and
it's just like ough, no, ugh, I could just like
(19:27):
sob I'm so sad. And the other element of this
is that this pregnancy for me and the loss, all
of them have been hard on my body. And I've
also been going through this mold exposure stuff and we've
remedd at the house, and I've been in a detox protocol.
All of that has been so hard on my body
(19:49):
that I feel like this most recent experience just physically
brought me to a place where I don't think I
can do it again. I just genuinely don't think I
can keep trying. And not even just not trying, I
feel like I have to close the door on this
part of my life, this desire, this vision, this whatever
(20:09):
it is of another baby, of growing our family. I
have to, like, legitimately, I think, close the door on
this and that feeling, that sensation that has come over
me has required me to really grieve. It's required me
to not just go Okay, I'm gonna let go of this,
I'm gonna move on with my life and have fun
and be happy, which I will do those things, but
(20:30):
also like I have to release, let go, say goodbye
to the only reason I tell this story. I'm not
trying to center my story here. I tell the story
as a way to hopefully create an opening for you
to see this thread in your story, for you hopefully
to be able to see maybe there's a part in
(20:51):
your story where the same heartbreak has been chasing you
down again and again and again, and you've been trying
to avoid the heartbreak, and maybe the heartbreak is saying
this is an't inmate. How long are you going to
avoid the invitation to come deeper into your life? How
long are you going to avoid the invitation to really
feel what this experience has brought you here to feel.
(21:12):
We're so focused on getting what we came here to get,
and we're so unwilling to feel what we came here
to feel. And maybe there's a wisdom in all that's
unfolded in your life, all that's happening in your life.
Maybe this all brought you to a place so that
you can really feel what it brought you here to feel.
(21:33):
And I think that probably what it brought you here
to feel is grief. Probably what it brought you here
to feel is heartbreak. And I know it sounds so counterintuitive,
and it sounds almost even a little bit like masochistic.
There's a whole self help thread that I can even
appreciate and I can validate and get on board with
that says, you know, not everything has to be so
(21:54):
difficult all the time. What if it could be easy?
What if it could be fun? What if it could
be light? What if it could be playful? And yes, yes, yes, yes,
and yes. And yet what I don't think it means
is what if it could be easy? I don't think
that means what if life is going to give you
every single thing that you think you want. I think
it means, like, what if you could surrender? What if
you could relax? What if you didn't have to fight
(22:16):
your whole way down? What if you could just let
yourself sob like, I just want to sob like. What
if you could just let yourself express, let yourself feel
exactly what it is that you came here to feel.
And even though this is counterintuitive, even though it sounds
kind of masochistic, even though it runs so counter to
(22:40):
what we're taught in popular culture, there is something to this,
I believe. And as I was already kind of rolling
this around in my head and in my heart, I
stumbled across this David White poem. I love David White.
If you're new here, you may not have heard me
read any of his poetry. But David White is an
Irish poet who who is such a brilliant, brilliant man
(23:02):
and just an amazing soul. He's a very prolific poet.
He's written so many things. And I read his poetry
a lot because I really connect with the imagery. I
connect with the way that he says things. And this
poem is called the Well of Grief. It's in a
book of a collection of his poetry called Essentials, And
so this is on page forty seven of the Essentials collection.
(23:26):
I'll read you his poem, and then I want to
read his explanation of the poem too. So I'll just
read the poem and I'll let that sit for a minute,
and then I'll read you his explanation, because it really
gets at what I'm talking about here and really helps
us to unpack the images in the poem. So this
is called the well of grief. So this is called
(23:54):
the well of grief, the well of grief. Those who
will not slip beneath the still surface on the well
of grief, turning down through its black water to the
place where we cannot breathe, we'll never know the source
from which we drink the secret water, cold and clear,
nor find in the darkness, glimmering the small round coins
(24:18):
thrown by those who wished for something else. I read
this poem and my whole body just lit up, and
there were tears, because I felt it in my bones
that the grief is the whole point. The very thing
that we're avoiding is the whole point. Those who will
not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief,
(24:40):
turning down through its black water to the place we
cannot breathe, we'll never know the source from which we
drink the secret water, cold, and clear, nor find in
the darkness glimmering the small round coins thrown by those
who wished for something else. Oh, that contrast of the
wishing for something else, the imagery of a wishing well.
(25:02):
You throw your coins into the wishing well, hoping that
you can stay outside of the well and throw your
coin down there and get the thing that you wished for.
And yet the thing that you wished for is at
the bottom of the freaking well. Is at the bottom
of the well. Oh. I want to read you his
explanation of this poem, because I think it really illuminates
(25:23):
what I'm talking about. He says, the well of grief.
As a very serious young poet with a destination in mine,
I decided to write a long and in depth narrative
poem on grief. There was an immediate physical sense of
dropping down. Doesn't grief feel like that? Dropping down? He says,
dropping down through the body, dropping down through the gravitational
pull of each line on the page, as if leaning
(25:45):
down even further to drink from a deeper source. Within
six lines, I caught a glimmer on the bottom of
that well, and despite my first attempts to ignore it
and to get back to my long epic. I knew
the poem was over. Gosh, this just really gets me.
All around the world, in all cultures we throw coins
into wells to make a wish. This was the first
(26:08):
time that I understood so physically that the wish is
defensive and propitious. The wish is defensive and propitious even
in the very act of making the wish. What he's
saying is, the very act of making the wish is
our own defiance against going into the well, going down
(26:30):
into the grief. We make wishes as a way to
avoid our own grief, our own self. The essence of
the wish is that we will be absolved from having
to descend into the source ourselves. The essence of the
wish is that we will be absolved from having to
descend into the source ourselves. The coins take all kinds
(26:53):
of forms. Some of us have thrown marriages, friendships, hope, streams,
and most of all are necessary and robust, vulnerable down
there in the hope that the greater and more gold
in the sacrifice, the more it will absolve us from
having to go down to that source. And a true
physical and foundational understanding of the grief. We carry within
us the will of grief. I couldn't help but think
(27:15):
about how popular modern manifestation ideology, which you know, there
is an essence of manifestation that feels true and rings
true to me, And then there is the way that
it's taught in our culture that to me is like
the people at the top of the well throwing coins
into the wishing well. It's like I wish for a
(27:36):
million dollars, I wish for a fancy car. I wish
for another baby. I wish for a relationship that's very satisfying.
I wish for whatever it is a business, a thriving business.
I wish for health. I wish for a restored relationship
with my parent. Whatever it is that you're wishing for
is the act of wishing for. It is a way
(27:58):
of sort of holding your arm against the grief that
has come here to show you, that has come here
to teach you, against the sensation of being alive. And
I think that there's a difference between wishing for something
as a way to not have to feel versus wishing.
(28:19):
It's not even really wishing, it's like a creative inspiration.
Is the way that I've talked about it following that thread,
following that spark of curiosity, whose purpose is to lead
you to the very end of yourself, so that you
can die metaphorically and be reborn metaphorically into someone wholly new,
(28:42):
into a world that's wholly new to you, with infinite possibilities,
even more infinite possibilities available to you. But not so
that you can get the thing you thought you wanted.
The thing you thought you wanted was never the point.
The point was taking you to the end of yourself,
taking you into the well, into that deeper sore. This
was the first time that I understood so physically that
(29:03):
the wish is defensive and propitious. The essence of the
wish is that we will be absolved from having to
descend into the source ourselves. In what way have you
been wishing for something, fantasizing about something, praying for something,
begging for something as a way to avoid going deeper
(29:26):
into the essence of your life and your person as is?
In what ways have you been using manifestation or creativity
even as a way to avoid your life rather than
as a way to welcome more of your life? In
this topic is not for the faint a part. This
(29:48):
topic is not elementary stuff. This is really, really this
is not an easy part of being a human being
and not easy to accept. Understand that grief is not
only part of life, but grief is the essence. It
is the very essence. When you go down into your grief,
This is what the imagery says to me in this poem.
(30:10):
When you go down into your grief, you go down
into the very essence of life. Those who will not
slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief
will never know the source from which we drink the
secret water, cold and clear. Nor will they find, in
the darkness, glimmering the small round coins thrown by those
who wished for something else. The only way to find
(30:32):
what it is you're truly looking for is to go
down into the grief. I am trying to do that
without completely huh. I don't know. I was going to say,
without completely losing myself, but maybe losing ourselves as the
point too. I am, in whatever capacity I am able
and available, trying to see my grief as the source
(30:56):
of all good things, and trying to let it happen
and let myself be what this experience brought me here
to feel It is not easy. I can't say I'm
just enjoying it, but that poem really brought me a
lot of hope. It brought me a lot of faith
(31:16):
in the process, and it just reminded me that this
is where the true gift lies. Like the shimmery coin
is at the bottom of the well of grief. Swim
all the way down. Let yourself be pulled all the
way down. I hope this finds you where you are
and meets you exactly where you need it. And I'll
(31:37):
see you back here next week on the Writer Story podcast.
Thanks for listening.
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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