Unfolding Inside of Grief and Praise with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Air Date - 16 December 2024

OMTimes Radio is honored to welcome poet, teacher, and workshop facilitator Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer to the VOICE RISING SHOW. Rosemerry will join host Kara Johnstad for a heartfelt and profound conversation about her latest poetry collection, The Unfolding.

In The Unfolding, Rosemerry delves into the paradox of grief as a form of praise, capturing the sacred connection that blossoms from living wholeheartedly, even in the face of profound loss. Written after the deaths of her son and father, these poems embody both sorrow and celebration—heartbreaking yet uplifting, somber yet playful, even solemn and sexy.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s poetic voice offers surprising invitations to embrace the beauty of life, even in its most challenging moments.

This episode will explore how grief, love, and nature intertwine and how poetry can serve as a healing practice—returning us home to ourselves and the beauty around us. We’ll discuss the healing power of nature, the role of praise in her daily life, and how writing and connecting to our voice allows us to enter and honor the darkness of grief while keeping hope and light alive.

Join us for this intimate exploration of love, loss, and the transformative power of poetry, and discover how each of us can use our voice to heal, inspire, and shift harm to harmony in our world.

#RosemerryWahtolaTrommer #Poetry #VoiceRising  #KaraJohnstad #Music #Interviews #Voice

#TheUnfolding #PoetryForHealing #GriefAndPraise #HealingThroughPoetry #TransformingGrief #EmbodyingPraise #PoetryAndHealing #LoveAndLoss #HealingWithWords

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Voice Rising with Kara John's Dad. Enjoy weekly
conversations with leading luminaries, pioneering visionaries, singers, poets, musicians, and
sound healers as we explore the profound role our voice
plays on the path to self realization and global enlightenment.
The internationally acclaimed singer, composer, author, healer, recording artist, voice expert,

(00:25):
creator of Voice Your Essence, and founder of the School
of Voice, Kara John's Dad uses her extraordinary spiritual gifts
to empower others. Everything in this world vibrates, Everything has
a frequency. A pioneer in the field of voice work
and transformational songwriting, her breakthrough methods are helping thousands of

(00:46):
people worldwide fine tune their body, mind, spirit system and
unlock the energetic frequencies of limitless creativity, health and abundance.
Share your voice, ask your questions, join in the conversation,
receive life changing positive transformation, and rise together to create
a sound world. And here's your hust Kara John's Dad.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Hi, everybody, Welcome to Voice Rising today. I am truly
honored to be joined by poet, teacher and writing facilitator
Rosemary Watola Trummer. Rosemary's new poetry collection, The Unfolding, invites
us into a world where the beauty and wonder of
living wholeheartedly emerge, even amidst loss. Written after the heartbreaking

(01:38):
deaths of her son and father, this collection as a
tapestry of paradox, both somber and playful, broken hearted and uplifting.
In her work, Rosemary wades deep in the pain of
the world and fines and his rubble, surprising and honest
invitations to praise and celebrate life. Rosemary's poetry has been

(02:02):
featured on platforms like A Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour,
O magazine Carneie Hall. She's also the first poet Laureate
for ever More, a role in which she helps others
explore grief, wonder and love through poetry. And today we'll
explore her latest work and how through the active writing,

(02:26):
Rosemary uncovers the sacred connections that bind us all even
in the darkest times. Welcome Rosemary to Voice Rising.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
Hello, Carl, I'm so glad to be back with you.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
It's beautiful, isn't it. I was saying this before we
went on air, that I tend to have Rosemary close
to me. On the show around the holiday season, because
it's always the time that I'm reaching for one of
her books of poetry. And we're very lucky that you
brought out a new collection called The Unfolding. So, first

(03:02):
of all, congratulations, it's a gorgeous cover. Yeah, it looks like,
I don't know, like a really deep, beautiful pink that
we can just dive into.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
Yeah. Yeah, and the cover actually thrills me, Kara's it
is a deep pink, and it has these kind of
very difficult to interpret red marks on it that are fluid.
They could be flowers, or they're very female, they're very even,
maybe a little they look a little like blood even perhaps,

(03:38):
But I love that I don't know what they are.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yeah, which is which is a little bit the mystery
that you're always inviting us to explore. You open The
Unfolding with this deeply personal reflection on grief, love and loss.
You share with anybody who's holding that book in their
hands a bit more about the untimely death of your

(04:04):
son and your father also passed away. So how did
this collection of poetry, how is it shaped through that loss,
and how does that grief basically shape your writing today?

Speaker 3 (04:24):
You know, and not just my writing, right, but everything.
And I think that's true probably for anyone who undergoes
a great grief, which is all of us. It changes us,
It changes who we are, It changes the way we
need the world. All the poems in the Unfolding who
have been written since August of twenty twenty one, when

(04:48):
my son died, my father died then in November. And
what's interesting to me about it is I wouldn't say
that it's a book about grief, although it is seeped
in grief for sure. All these poems have been written
out of this time of what it is to I

(05:09):
suppose lose the lose what we thought we knew about
who we were, about the world. You know, there's this
incredible unmasking on the thing of the self that happens.
You know, that we just lose brack of the things
that we thought were important, and suddenly the only thing

(05:30):
that feels important anymore, I think is love. Is our
relationship to the people who we love that we've lost,
to the people who we love who are still here.
And I love that clarity, and I think these poems
are born out of that kind of a clarity, so
that it's not only the sorrow, but also so much love,

(05:53):
so much gratefulness for love, for life itself, to have
a body that's that kind of fragility and that kind
of expemiality when it gets pointed out to us just
how gradule it is, there's this chance to be more

(06:16):
fully embracing who we are, what it is to be alive.
And so the poems come out of that. How do
we show up now? How do we show up in
the world with all of its grief and all of
its beauty and all of its heartache and all of
its bliss? How do we show up again and again
and again? So I say that the poems are written

(06:39):
in the key of grief. The melody is praise.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
The key of grief, and the melody is praise. And Yeah,
when I was reading it, there was an invitation there
to just say yes to all that is right, which
is exactly what you're saying, Like say yes to the
to the broken, and say yes to the intense beauty,

(07:06):
say yes to say yes to being able to be
many things at the same time, like to you know,
to have the heart be that big, which I think
is really beautiful because I say it often when I'm
coaching voice. You know, you don't have to be only sad.
You can be sad and joyful at the same time.
And that is what comes over or for me when

(07:30):
I you know, the thing that's so beautiful about books,
which is a little bit different about like all the
streaming platforms, but you also, I guess have this as
a as an e book or as a kindle. But
what's so beautiful about books is that you can hold
your book and be with it in the kitchen while
eating scrambled eggs. Or you can be with it the

(07:50):
book which is then all these beautiful poems next to
your bed, or you can walk with it and take
it to the forest. You know, it's so beautiful to
have it with us and be able to have those
words of what's it like if we would say yes
to there's some poem in the book. Just you're walking

(08:12):
down a street and basically, if I remember this correctly,
you know, you got your sunglasses in your hat, and
maybe you don't want to talk to anybody on that day,
but still you're in community and you're kind of enjoying
being in life. You know, you have to go buy
your groceries.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
Yeah, you know, and I think that anybody who's been
in grief knows what that's like to You have to
still engage with the world, right you don't You don't
completely hide out. Oh I did a lot of hiding out.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
You did a lot of hiding out.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
I did. I just it was hard to interact. It
was Yeah, I think you know that the poem you're
you're talking about is called the Naked Heart goes into Town.

Speaker 4 (08:58):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, And that was what it felt like,
especially in those you know, first months, almost the whole
first year, I just felt so naked, like in the
light of the poem.

Speaker 3 (09:11):
Says, all those other hearts are wearing so much skin.
And meanwhile, I remember, it felt like I just was
I had no buffer, I had no protection at all,
nor did I want any Let's be clear that I
didn't necessarily think this was a problem. In fact, if anything,

(09:35):
there was an incredible gift to that kind of openness,
that kind of spaciousness. And in fact, in fact, when
I would go see any kind of massage therapist or
my acupuncturist or anybody, you know, some energy workers, anybody
who offered me help, they would say, how if I

(09:58):
help you, and I would say, Oh, open open me.
That was my constant prayer, Just let me be open,
let me feel all of this. I didn't want to
shut down. I didn't want to protect myself. I wanted
to really experience everything that I was feeling, which was
so painful and also so beautiful at the same time.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yeah, would you read for us? Or it was Mary?
The poem called the prayers so that the listeners can
get a taste of your magic, the perfect.

Speaker 3 (10:34):
One for the conversation we were just having, which, okay,
maybe I'll just mention that this does talk about that
opened me prayer, which began for me maybe at least

(10:55):
ten years before this happened. It occurred to me this
prayer opened me, and the prayers. When I asked the
world to open me, I did not know the price.
When I wrote that two word prayer in the sand,

(11:16):
I did not know loss was the key devastation. The
hinge thrust was the dissolutions of the idea of a door.
When I asked the world to open me, I could
never have said yes to what came next. Perhaps I
imagine the waves knew only how to carry me. I

(11:40):
did not imagine they would also pull me under. When
I asked the world to open me, I had not
imagined drowning was the way to reach the shore. The
waves of sorrow dragged me down with their tides of
unthinkable loss the curve and emptied my pockets and stripped

(12:02):
me of my ideas. I was rolled and eroded and
washed up on the sand like driftwood softened. I sprawled
there and wept, astonished to still be alive. It is
not easy to continue to pray. This way opened me,

(12:26):
and yet it is the truest prayer I know. The
other truest prayer, though sometimes I long to reject its
truth is thank you.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
Hmm. Yeah, It's just it's this complete surrender to what is.

Speaker 3 (12:56):
It you are?

Speaker 2 (12:57):
Yeah, I mean what I what is so fascinating is
that we know from our own life experience that grief
is different for everyone at every moment. You know, people,
some people they they pull back, some people need to
go towards people, some people need to go into silence,

(13:18):
some people fall into depression. And yet what's so fascinating is,
even though it's very different, it's so collectively connected, like
there's a universal connection. And and that is I think

(13:39):
I think that that is that is so beautiful is
that when you I mean, you said it so well
in Prayers Open Me. And the other thing you say
so well is this book is not about grief. It's
about praise and gratitude.

Speaker 3 (13:55):
M h.

Speaker 2 (13:56):
And and we forget that sometimes when we're we're going,
we're diving deep and drowning, and yet it's important that
we drowned because if we get told by other people, well,
you should be grateful, then we didn't catch it. You
know what I'm saying. It's so important that we're allowed

(14:19):
to drowned. It's like, I don't know because I've been
I've suffered loss before in my life and somebody comes
and tells me, yeah, but you know, you should be grateful,
which is true, but it kind of tries to put
try to put frosting on the cake before you figured
out what the cake was.

Speaker 3 (14:39):
M oh yeah. And that's just a great example, I
think car of all the things that people say that
don't work for us, right, I think this is one
of the difficult things about Greece is that when we
see someone who's hurting, we long to help them.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
Yeah, but.

Speaker 3 (14:58):
Instead of just being with them, and how whoever they are.
As you say, it's so different for each person, and
it's so different for each person from moment to moment,
you know, So instead of you know, I do know
that for me, the greatest gift has been when people
just sit with me in whatever wherever I am, without

(15:18):
trying to change it or fix it or offer platitude,
or just to be with someone who's in their grief
is really, I think the greatest gift we could give them,
as opposed to oh, you should be grateful, Well, are
you kidding? Like, if not right now, that's not you know,
maybe eventually gratefulness, but not now. And I think that

(15:40):
one of the biggest gifts that I gave myself, and
it happened early on, actually, was when I started to
interact with people and they would say things, sometimes always
well intentioned, right, but they would say and we all
know what people say, Oh it's they're better off now
or whatever they say that, yeah, yeah, oh you should

(16:02):
just be grateful, really, you know, So I did trust
that there was not a single person who was wishing
me ill. I really believed that everyone loved to be
cared about me and wanted to help. And so with

(16:22):
that trust. I was able to reinterpret and just translate
absolutely everything that anyone said into I love you. They
could say anything, they could say nothing, they could do
something or not do something, but everything I just rewrote
it in my mind as I love you, and that
got me through just translation.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
You love to play with words, and you kind of
organize this book in four sections, right with these words
that you created while playing in your sandboxer, at your
writing desk, or walking in the mountains. The first one
opens with a word called vera luja. Talk talk to

(17:06):
us about talk to us about the blending of different Yeah,
different words, word stems or word sources.

Speaker 3 (17:16):
All this is so much fun, in part because I
longed to have words that somehow spoke to touch the
breadth of experience. And I felt like phrase itself was
a little too me. It doesn't, oh seem to have

(17:39):
all the nuance that you were talking about earlier, and
so I thought, okay, UH make them up, sweetheart. And
there is a book that I was inspired by. Uh.
It's it's The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig.
And I love this book in which he creates blended

(18:03):
words like I did. For this book where you just
take roots from different it could be from different languages
and just put them together to achieve whatever your goal is,
to create this more nuanced idea of what it is
to be alive. And so the vera Lujah comes from

(18:24):
veritas truth in Latin plus all elujah. And to me,
this is the praise that rises up when we were
in this state of raw naked honesty and we can
align with the vast mystery of life as it is
instead of clinging to our story about how we think
life is supposed to be. But I wanted it this way.

(18:49):
So there is such beauty in just saying yes to
the world as it is. We put ourselves immediately into
alignment and we stop struggling with that whole layer of
but I wanted, but I wish And when that's gone,
that freedom then that and I don't even say the

(19:13):
vulnerability then, because we may not like the way things are,
but when we really bring ourselves into that communion, like
in that poem that we just shared, the prayers, Yes,
what's happening now is I'm drowning. And if I stop
trying to pretend I'm drowning and just let myself drown.

(19:34):
This is there's a beauty in it, even though it's
it's not fun, it's not lovely. I'm not saying that
anyone would choose it, but there is the purity of
experience and the beauty of being in alignment with what is.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
Yeah, yeah, Read for us from the unfolding this beautiful,
well beautiful again, edgy raw beautiful. Though I knew love before, Okay,

(20:13):
love and it's raw for I wrote.

Speaker 3 (20:15):
Here, though I knew love before. Not until my world
dissolved in an instant did I begin to understand the
communion of hearts. Not until I could not put one

(20:36):
minute in front of the next did I begin to
understand infinite devotion. Not until I lost my own flesh
did I begin to understand the muscle of spirit. I
will never love the loss, never, But I love the
life that rushes in after. I love the intimacy of

(21:01):
those who have lost, how we find each other and
offer our open embrace, our unwalled affection, our wildest wishes
for peace. Not until I was consumed by the great
wave of love did I know not to fear the
great wave of love. Only then did I learn the

(21:27):
beauty of seeding the self to something much greater. Only
then did I learn how love not only carries us,
it transforms who we are forever.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
I have to be careful now to drift away when
I have your voice in my ears? Is that part
of me that wants to go deeper and deeper than
I remind myself that we are alive on the air.
Until I lost my own flesh did I begin to
understand the muscle of spirit. There's so many beautiful and

(22:08):
strong images in this home. I had to think. You know,
sometimes I say that intimacy for me is to be
in time. It seems like when you meet somebody and
you're both in the same breath of time, there's an intimacy.
And it's when people are you know, when people are

(22:30):
meeting you and they're somehow running to the future or
stuck in the past, it's harder. But when you're both
in that that rawness, that fragile beauty, there's that intimacy,
intimacy that happens. There's another line that I will never
love the loss, never, but I love the life that
rushes in after.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
Right, yeah, what would you would? We know? Right? Yeah? Right?
It's like it's all of it at once. It's this
horror and this beauty and body so unable to engage
in it all at once. Right, I feel like it's
the perfect recipe for losing the stories we thought we knew.

(23:16):
And it becomes so extensive in that moment, right when
we're like, all of this, all of this, like it
breaks the vessel.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
Yeah, yeah, we saw this in North Carolina this year. Right,
they get smashed by these I mean and other places
to have wildfires and have storms and everything, but it
was very clear that they're smashed by these unexpected storms.
They never in their life thought they were in a

(23:46):
flood zone. And suddenly you see neighbors making coffee, reaching out, rebuilding,
you know, breath by breath, step by step, trying to
move rotten wood away and opening their campers to sleep
in the back. And it's just it's it's, uh, it's

(24:09):
pretty stunning what we can do when we do say
yes to being in the space of gratitude, praise and
being okay with what we look like. We look like
son is a heap of a mess when we go
through loss, you know, we're not where it's.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
Yes. And I think it's not easy to say yes
to In fact, I think that that was a lot
of times you would rather say no. I mean, I
think that there was a moment this poem touches on
it too, you know, Carl, when I was it was
the day after Ben died and I was outside on
the street that he and I had just been walking
on together. And I remember I was standing there in

(24:58):
the middle of the street and I remember feeling truly
feeling this great wave of love. Let's just say it
was like a tsunami. It was many stories, Paul, and
I felt it coming at me and I felt like
it was energetically. What I thought was, oh my god,
everyone is finding out about what has happened, and they're

(25:22):
all sending love. And I felt it in this and
it was like this energetic presence, this huge wave that
was coming toward me down the street, and I remember
turning toward it and everything in my body said no, no,
that is way too much. Yeah, And this great wave
of love did not care. It just came and crashed

(25:44):
over me anyway and then carried me. And that, you know,
That's what I was trying to get across in this
poem was the sense of I actually would have said no,
I tried to say no, and then the wave would
have nothing to do with it.

Speaker 5 (25:58):
Right.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
It was like love just like obliterating in my know
and opening me up and carrying me after that for
well to this day.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Yeah, yeah, we're going to take a shirt. Yeah no, no,
I was just going to say, I was actually going
to say, let's just tune in all of us, like
put our hands on our heart and feel this love
that abounds everywhere, and then just take a very very
short break, and then we'll be back with much more,

(26:33):
more readings, more love, more vulnerability, more everything more. Rosemary Watola, Trauma.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
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Speaker 1 (27:17):
With happy clients all over the world. Kara John's dad
knows that your voice is the missing link to more authenticity, abundance, creativity,
and health. An internationally acclaimed voice expert. Kara's breakthrough methods
have helped thousands of people successfully heal their voice wounds
and extinguish the story of self doubt and shyness forever.

(27:41):
Join in group trainings, attend online sessions, schedule one on
one time and invite Kara to work with your organization
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Johnstad dot com and receive a special guided meditation designed
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(28:02):
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Welcome back to Voice Rising. A huge thank you to
our listeners for support the show and if you're enjoying
today's conversation with Rosemary with Tola Trummer, we invite you
to share this episode with all your lovely friends and community,

(29:09):
and be sure to subscribe on your favorite streaming platform
to never miss an inspiring conversation. Because we are committed
to bringing you more incredible guests who are offering wisdom, creativity,
and healing and helping us shift harm to harmony. And yeah,
I guess I would say navigate this beautiful life with

(29:33):
good vibes, whatever that may mean, being being raw and
open and one with what is so. Welcome back Rosemary
to the show.

Speaker 3 (29:44):
Thank you, Kara, actually literally welcome back. Somehow my phone
got kicked off.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
But oh wow, nice perfect. Yeah, I guess it was
like what people used to do when there were ads
on TV. They used to run to the kitchen and
then get some popcorn or something. So your phone is
telling you like time for a little break. Yeah, you know,

(30:09):
I'm kind of curious. I know that you do sing.
You love to sing, and of course you love speaking
and sharing your gifts. You are a teacher of writing,
you do workshops, and then you are someone who's writing
a poem a day. So you know the sound of
a pen or I'm not sure. I'm assuming you're writing

(30:32):
with a pen. Maybe you're writing with a pencil. But
this sound it makes moving across paper, I'm assuming it's
an assumption that when grief walks in in such a
harsh way, that the first thing to go is a
singing voice. That we it's hard for us to sing,

(30:54):
and sometimes it might be hard for us even to speak.
But what is it that makes writing such a powerful
tool for so many people to try to get the
inexpressible into some kind of a flow or inky mass

(31:18):
on a paper, That this need to express what's inside
when we don't feel logical, or we don't feel always
that somebody might understand our incomplete sentences, or you know,
everything that can happen when we go through these difficult times.
What is this writing practice that you've been mastering all

(31:42):
these days? Like, how did it show up for you.

Speaker 3 (31:46):
Yeah. Well, one thing that's really interesting to me, Kara,
is that I have had, as you mentioned, a daily
writing practice since two thousand and six, every day, and
when Finn died, I didn't write for well, it was

(32:06):
exactly seven weeks forty ninety and I wasn't worried about that.
By the way, that well, when I write again, I
will Part of the reason that I'd stopped writing was
because I wanted to give myself over completely to the
experience of being alive with grace. Right. It wasn't. When

(32:32):
we write, we solidify things in a way, and I
didn't want anything to be solidified. I wanted to just
really experience that. This is one of my favorite things,
by the way, about writing is that it allows us
to be at the same time an experiencer and a witness.

(32:54):
When I'm writing a poem, I'm writing about the experience,
so I'm witnessing the experience also, then it becomes its own.
It gets so meta, but it becomes its own experience
then of what is experienced through the writing of it.
But so I think that I just want to point

(33:14):
out that I want to honor that there is a
time maybe for not writing at least that was true
for me. But then when I did start writing, I
was also so grateful for it, in part because one
thing that it did was it allowed me to see
how different it was every day. You know, it allowed

(33:36):
me to see just how not stuck it was. You know,
one of the and I do this little exercise every
time I teach a grief writing class. I invite everyone
to write this phrase today, grief is, and then fill
in the blank. There are so many ways to do
this right. You could fill it in with an madjective.
Today grief is lonely, Today grief is is comfortable. Today

(34:02):
grief you know, you can fill it in anyway. But
you could also fill it in with any word that
would invite a metaphor. Today grief is an earthworm, Today
grief is a chair. However, you fill this in, it
has something to teach you. You know, oh, really, how
is grief on earth worm? You know, well that Boem
is actually in this book Limburg is terrestris. But you

(34:25):
know how how how did and so it invites a
curiosity about what is here? What is here now? And
it and it also allowed me to see, oh my gosh,
it isn't the same as what was here yesterday, It
isn't the same as what was here five minutes ago.
And I think this is helpful because sometimes in grief
we can become very stuck and think it's not you know,

(34:47):
this is always going to be like this. Well it
may stay like that, but but one beautiful gift that
writing offered me was seeing, oh, it changes, and it changes,
and I and I change and I change. But this
was interesting. And then I think the other thing was,
just like I said that, just to stay curious, Yes here,

(35:10):
what's here? What's here? And I feel like that curiosity
is what allows it to have a full spectrum of experience,
you know, not just the grief, but also the joy,
not just the heartache, but also this kind of robbing beauty.
You know that that that that curiosity is what keeps

(35:30):
us open through accessing all this wide range of emotions.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
And you also have because it's so you know, like
you said, it's it's I don't want to say it's easy,
but you know it's you lost your son, and you
lost your father, and you have a wonderful husband, and
you have I believe, two wonderful daughters. Correct, and you
also then share in this book, like just you know again,

(36:03):
sitting in those moments of trying to you know, feel
into how to get how to experience beauty and joy
and laughter and pain and navigate all of that depth,
which I think is very important because it's you know,
we life goes on, right, I mean, life goes on
your your cohusband, and you still have to I think

(36:26):
there's one poem which made me smile. You're dusting the
piano and he's I can't remember what he's doing. I
remember you're dusting the piano. It's kind of like, you know,
like he's making the coffee and I'm whatever putting the
dishes in the dishwasher. And and it's that. I mean,
everybody who's lived in a marriage knows that it Sometimes

(36:48):
that's how it is. One person's hanging the wash with
the other, one's taking out the trash. And yet there's
a connection, there's a there's a breathing together through it
and life for what it is, which, yeah, which is
wonderful read. I want to get to as many poems
as we can. I'm just so greedy to hear your voice.

(37:10):
I'm just so thirsty. Greedy's a wrong word. Thirsty I'm
going I'm gonna say thirsty read for us, the medicine
of surrender. That's that's the medicine of surrender. It sounds
like a good medicine to have, better than aspirin.

Speaker 3 (37:29):
Yeah right, Yeah. The this phrase, the medicine of surrender,
I got it from Mirabi Star, who has a beautiful
community for grief called fully Lament. So I just want
to honor that. This was her phrase she gave out

(37:49):
as an idea, the medicine of surrender, And then right
from that, the medicine of surrender comes with no spoonful
of sugar, no promises, no backup friends, no returns, no insurance.
The medicine of surrender never tastes the way you expect,

(38:13):
never taste the same next time, seldom has the hoped
for effect. And if there is some part of you
that thinks it might not be affected, that thinks it
might hold back, that part is most likely the first
part to be flooded with the relentless truth of what

(38:34):
is oh surrender, the surant medicine that exists. There are
infinite side effects, wonder, freedom, rawness. It's like opening the
dictionary to the word heaven or obliteration and knowing it's

(39:00):
the same thing. It's like playing spin the bottle with
life and you french kiss whatever you get. It's the
only remedy that can help you behold, the only real
medicine there is.

Speaker 2 (39:22):
H It reminded me there's a there's a meditation called
the Yes meditation where you commit to twenty four hours
of just saying yes. And it's a little bit like that.

Speaker 3 (39:36):
You know.

Speaker 2 (39:37):
It's like do you want to go to the movies?

Speaker 3 (39:38):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (39:39):
You want to have some Chinese food?

Speaker 3 (39:40):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (39:40):
And you're praying that the person across from you is
not going to think of something crazy like do you
want to jump off the cliff or you know, do
you wanna Yeah, do you wanna do you want to
french kiss the donkey or whatever? You know, it's like, uh,
not really, well, you committed to yes. It's a yes meditation.
But there's something very beautiful when we when we just

(40:02):
if somebody wants to eat Chinese you're like yeah, or
you know, do you want to eat and not talk
about like well, actually, I, you know, don't eat that,
and I don't eat sir fred Rice, and I don't
do that, and I yeah, I only eat that until
six pm, and I just to say yeah, yeah, the
essence of surrender.

Speaker 3 (40:19):
And then I used to joke about this that I
would have a day that I would only say yes.
He was like, Mom, why do you have to say no?
I didn't have days where I only say yes, but
I will not tell you and me's right completely forgotten.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
Yeah, yeah, just say yes exactly, well, mom, Mom? Can
I take the car? Yes, mom, exactly if he knew it, right, Hey, Mom,
can you give me your credit card?

Speaker 4 (40:58):
Yes? Yes, I will say, though that.

Speaker 3 (41:05):
That after he died, I couldn't. It was so clear
to me that yes was a little too exuberant, maybe
a lot too imguberant for what I was feeling. What
I was very aware of was that I said okay, yeah.
And I became aware of it because I literally was
saying okay to every single thing I was doing. I'd

(41:28):
say okay, you know, I open the door, okay, walk outside, okay.
And in this way, I loved the word. I felt
like okay saved me because it wasn't yes, but it
wasn't no. And I feel like the medicine of surrender
was a little bit more like okay. I didn't want it,

(41:53):
but I didn't reject it either.

Speaker 5 (41:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
Yeah, yeah, medicine some I can't remember. I researched this
one that the origin of the word medicine is to
to keep ourselves healthy. It's not it's not these little
tablets that we take. It's like exactly that the lifestyle
that we need to stay in harmony or to stay

(42:18):
in balance. Right, So it would be kind of cool though,
to have like little surrender tablets in your pocket, you know,
little cough drops like called surrender or something. You should
market this, you know, you like Rosemary's surrender drops. You
know it was Rosemary Surrender lemon drops, you know, for

(42:38):
your every day you know, whenever you're in that moment
and you're thinking like, oh, I don't know, I feel
like he's like, oh, Papa, drop and surrender.

Speaker 1 (42:49):
It's okay.

Speaker 3 (42:49):
I think you're right. They would have to be lemon
drops so that they would be both bitter and sweet
at the same time, that they wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
Be that they could even be who knows, nettle drop.
I'm somebody who eats I eat dandelion greens and even
the yellow part of the dandelion flower in pancakes. And
it's really pretty and it's very beautiful. You can try
it in the springtime. Try it.

Speaker 3 (43:20):
Who knows, Yeah, sounds amazing.

Speaker 2 (43:24):
It's really sweet. Dandelion pancakes. You can eat danilins. And
when you see the little yellow, feathery blossoms which I
used to make, you know, we used to weave them
into these beautiful crowns. And then we sometimes say do
you like butter? And then we'd take a dandelion then
rub it underneath the chin, and then suddenly the bottom
of the chin is yellow, and you're like, yeah, you

(43:47):
like butter, Yeah, you like butter. So now I make
pancakes with them, and they look. I'll send you a picture.
They look beautiful for everyone out there. If you don't
know anything else to do with your Sunday morning and
it's springtime and the dandelions are going crazy in your lawn,
leave them. Let them be dandelions, and if some of

(44:08):
them surrender, then pick them up and just the blossoms.
Make that not the stems, and stems have a very
bitter juice. Just the blossoms or the leaves you can
eat too, right anyway, One last poem, One last poem.
You have so many good poems. I mean, maybe I
get one last one in here, although we could do
one that's fun I'm doing for some reason. I did

(44:31):
for the one who is Gone, which is very beautiful.
You can choose either that one or this one that
I talked about, which I can't remember the name, but
the one where you take the finish word and hang
out at home half drunk. So you can decide, yeah, okay,
well maybe we should do or you can do both.

Speaker 3 (44:51):
Just because we haven't.

Speaker 2 (44:53):
We haven't done I know, right.

Speaker 3 (44:55):
The book is full of I would say, both poems
that are you know, difficult and loving and also just
something that are just playing billy. And I would put
call study candy in that. And it's also it's a
word that's a compound word from Finland, Cala study candy,
which isn't a real finish word, although it does exist.

(45:18):
It is in their dictionary, but you know, it is
kind of like a created word. Yeah, means loosely something
like the feeling when you're going to go get drunk
home alone and your underwear and you have no intention
of going out.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
That's right, and you hope nobody's going to ring the doorbell.

Speaker 3 (45:37):
And if they do, you probably won't answer. That's right.
This is call study, call study canney. Let's say a
woman worked in the garden all day, pulling up old
kale and bolted charred, and harvesting potatoes and garlic and onions.
And let's say her whole evening plan is to stay

(45:57):
home and shower and not get dressed, and sip on
a glass of wine or whiskey until she is sweetly lightheaded. Well,
wouldn't it be lovely if there were a word to
describe her aspirations, A word she could write in her
calendar to be sure no other loud plans swooped in.
A word she could say if her friends called and

(46:20):
asked what was happening tonight? And if no one should call,
she could say it to herself for the joy of
saying it. Calls that again, And she toasts the air,
clinking her glass against all that isn't there, and the
wind on her skin no brisk, and the wine, oh, hetty,

(46:43):
so dry.

Speaker 2 (46:47):
All I want to do is crack open a bottle
now and strip down exactly. Oh, we get so many
good pictures in your head just thinking of all well,
you know, there's so many great pictures also in Finland
of you know, the wintertime and it's freezing cold, and
then there they are in the sauna and they run

(47:09):
out of the sauna buck naked into their you know,
icy water lake and then come back and have some
warm wine. And yeah, life is that simple, And I
think that, Yeah, there's just so beautiful the book unfolding,
which again, everybody out there, it's you know, it doesn't

(47:32):
matter what time of year it is, but it is
it is like right before Christmas. I can just say,
even if it was after Christmas and someone's gonna have
Valentine's Day or someone's gonna have a birthday, Right, Rosemary,
your new book is so stunning because it's it's like
all shades of pink, all shades of heart, all shades

(47:52):
of I wanted to say all shades of gray, but
we can't say that, So all shades of pink. Yeah,
it's and it's these metaphors. You do say somewhere like
the power of a metaphor, share with us how we
can weave more metaphors into our life so that we

(48:13):
can get different perspectives on things, Like you were saying
that like grief is today, like a chair or blue,
or my love for you is like a tomato or yeah,
how yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:27):
So I do have a little a couple of ideas
for how to bring these metaphors in and make them
a little more curious and real. And one of them
is you could take a phrase like that today grief is,
but you could just take any other word like today,
joy is, today's marriage is, today whatever it is that
you feel like exploring, and then open up that blank.
Now you know what you're going to be making your

(48:49):
comparison to right grief for marriage or love or any
abstract word innocence, justice, and then friendship. Then you look
around you and truly anything, or truly anything, window, floor,
door knob, the pond, ice cube, anything at all. I

(49:10):
make a list of its properties, you know, I tell myself, right,
like eight things about its properties. Then I make a
list of its uses or its purposes or what does
it do? And then I ask it, what do you
have to teach me? It doesn't always answer, and certainly
it's more intuitive, right, It's not like ice cubes aren't
really talking to me, but I into it. What would

(49:31):
the ice cube have to say? What would the door
knob have to say, and in this way, the whole
world opens up. And every time this happens, it's exciting.
And there are so many ways that this has such
practical application for us. First of all, if you think
I couldn't possibly do this, yes you can, because if
you speak language, all languages metaphor every single language. All

(49:55):
languages are all metaphor. So that's the start of it.
But also to notice the things that come out of
our mouths. For instance, you know, I remember so clearly
saying to my teacher, and this was before my son died,
that I was trying to become a vase that could
hold it all. I could hold all of the feelings.
I could hold the sorrow and the joy and the
frustration and then bliss and all of it. And she

(50:17):
said to me, are you sure you need to hold it?
This was beautiful. Right in this moment, this idea that
I was a vase, I realized it had become a
containing idea that was not serving me because it wasn't
easy to hold it. I was being stretched stretched, It
was too much, this idea of being a sieve. Right

(50:38):
to just let it all come through, And suddenly there
was nothing I couldn't meet because it would come, it
would meet me and come through. Yeah, and this this
this so just notice how changing the metaphor doesn't change
the world, but it changes how we meet the world,
which changes everything.

Speaker 2 (50:58):
Yeah, that's true. I was just thinking, I was, I was.
I was on a tangent on my mind thinking of
the vase, and then you brought up sieve, which was beautiful,
and I was trying to think of the safe vase,
like we think that it has to be in the vase,
you know. I was trying to think of the base
like in an ocean, or the base like upside down, hollow, hollow,

(51:20):
hollow bamboo. I was, I was going on. I was
staying with the vase. I was so stuck with the vase,
and I was trying to see, you know, but it's true.
It's like, you know, yeah, what if yeah, the you know,
the marriage is whatever. It could be the vase, it
could be the sieve, it could be the window, it
could be what happens for me always when I write

(51:44):
like this is that what's so beautiful is empathy comes
in and we we feel such appreciation for suddenly the
quality of different people or things like even the ladder
suddenly we see it in a not just a utilitarian way,

(52:05):
but you know, we suddenly see like, wow, it holds me.
It it creates a safety when I'm climbing up into
the attic, or like just little things. You Suddenly your
world becomes richer because we all know that our rooms
are filled and our life is filled with thousands of
little things that we forget to pay attention to. And

(52:27):
suddenly there we are standing with the fork or you
know whatever, and we're like, okay, whatever, my whatever, my
heart is, you know, is like this fork. And then
we're like how is it? Like, oh, it lists up
people and it whatever. You know, it's fascinating. Yeah, So

(52:48):
do you have any Are you already working on your
next book or are you just happy to relax that this
one is out and people are calling you and celebrating
you and doing all that good stuff.

Speaker 3 (53:02):
Oh you know, I just started talking about a new
book with my editor. It's just week, so that's exciting.
I would say that right now, there's no form. There's
all kinds of little seeds that have been planted. But
for me, car the greatest joy is just writing daily poems.
And a book is isn't the point I mean having

(53:25):
a book and I love I actually really love this
book and how it turned out, and the structure with
all the praise, and there's a hidden structure inside it too,
around the powers of the universe, as Brian Swim delineates them.
I think, a very exciting like secret inside that book.
But the truth is that it's it's it's the showing

(53:48):
up and creating the poems in a daily way. The
poems themselves, I feel like, are byproducts of the real practice,
which is just showing up with wonder, what's here, what's here?
Letting myself be deeped in mystery and not figuring it out,
saying yes, the stories and things, Yeah, the next thing,

(54:08):
what's the next true thing? What's the next thing?

Speaker 2 (54:11):
Nibbling on your little surrender drops, Yeah, exactly. So that's
where I want to thank you so much for being
here with us today, and yeah, your your wisdom and
all your poetry and guiding us all to stay inspired
to start our own writing practice. And you know it's

(54:35):
it's one thing to be surrounded by beautiful poetry books,
but it's another thing really to start that own practice
of figuring out our authentic voice and and for all
the listeners out there, please share this episode with your friends.
And the next show we're going to have on a
sound healer rose Lana Remenoff remen Niko and so it's

(55:01):
such a name, it's a beautiful name, and she's going
to talk about actually how we can activate our DNA
through through sound and through music and through light. And
so thank you, thank you Rosemary for being with me.
I send you much love. Yeah ay bye, and blessings
for this holiday season right.

Speaker 3 (55:24):
Less for the day.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
Yass bast time starts mems, we have

Speaker 3 (56:06):
Yeah Bell