When the shadow of loss darkened my life, it was the haunting lullabies of sorrow that brought unexpected renewal. This episode, which is the inaugural episode of a new Podcast series by John Moir and Patricia Jones, hosts our very own Kathy as their first guest. Join John and Kathy as they discuss how grief molds the clay of our being into works of profound beauty. Here, in the crucible of our most intimate losses, we find the courage to transmute pain into passages of healing. The episode culminates in a reflection on the metamorphosis grief sparks within us, that can guide us toward newfound missions and a redefined joyful life.
Contact:
www.asiliveandgrieve.com
info@asiliveandgrieve.com
Facebook: As I Live and Grieve
Instagram: @asiliveandgrieve
The Urban Grief Shamans - on your favorite podcast application!
Copyright 2020, by As I Live and Grieve
The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent.
When the shadow of loss darkened my life, it was the haunting lullabies of sorrow that brought unexpected renewal. This episode, which is the inaugural episode of a new Podcast series by John Moir and Patricia Jones, hosts our very own Kathy as their first guest. Join John and Kathy as they discuss how grief molds the clay of our being into works of profound beauty. Here, in the crucible of our most intimate losses, we find the courage to transmute pain into passages of healing. The episode culminates in a reflection on the metamorphosis grief sparks within us, that can guide us toward newfound missions and a redefined joyful life.
Contact:
www.asiliveandgrieve.com
info@asiliveandgrieve.com
Facebook: As I Live and Grieve
Instagram: @asiliveandgrieve
The Urban Grief Shamans - on your favorite podcast application!
Copyright 2020, by As I Live and Grieve
The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent.
Welcome to, as I Live in Grieve, a podcast that tells the truth about how hard this is. We're glad you joined us today. We know how hard it is to lose someone you love and how well-intentioned friends and family try so hard to comfort us. We created this podcast to provide you with comfort, knowledge and support. We are grief advocates, not professionals, not licensed therapists. We are you.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone. Welcome back to, as I Live in Grieve Special treat. Today. Instead of a live guest, what I'm going to do is play for you the very first episode of a brand new podcast. This podcast, urban Grief Shammons, was started by a couple that have been guests on our podcast before John Moyer and Patricia Jones. I kind of encourage them to start this podcast because I truly believe their perspective on grief is different. It is calming, it is soothing and it makes perfect sense to me, so I thought you also might enjoy a listen. Coincidentally, for their very first guest, they had me, so in a lot of ways we are closely related. I hope you enjoy and I hope you subscribe to their podcast, urban Grief Shammons.
Speaker 3:Thank you, His spirit here. You can feel it if you allow it. That is the heart of the teaching, the allowing. Welcome to the Urban Grief Shammons. Grief protests and stirs within us a profound defiance against living a life filled with numbness. It emboldens wildness like a thunderstorm, untamed and as we learn, grief is the prime emotion for the soul's vitality. Contrary to common belief, grief is teeming with life. It resists being gentle and yet moves us so passionately there can be no doubt this emotion springs forth from the wells of the soul. In our podcast, we will explore this defiance, embrace its wildness and find peace within its untamed vitality as we live in the hustle of everyday life. Join Patricia Jones, as a psychotherapist, and John Warner, our retired paramedic, as we explore the spiritual side of grief. Welcome to our first episode of the Urban Grief Shammons. For Patricia and myself, our journey to this point has been fun, creative, spirit driven and exciting, as we learn new skills of microphones, recording and our favorite delving deeper into our understanding of grief, spirits and meaning those walking on a path of spiritual growth. One of those enlightened souls is our first guest to help us explore the relationships of grieving and creativity.
Speaker 3:Kathy Gleason is the host and, along with her daughter, stephanie, created a very successful weekly podcast called as I Live and Grieve. I would urge you to subscribe to Kathy's podcast if you haven't already. It is quite amazing and very informative. I have Kathy to blame for the inspiration to start our own podcast. Kathy has become my mentor and a friend. Before we join her in conversation, I want to share this perspective with you.
Speaker 3:Think about the Renaissance in that cool period in the European history when art and culture blossomed. It came after the Middle Ages, which was pretty chaotic, with plagues, wars and social unrest. During the Renaissance, folks like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo created works that still excite us today. They basically turned the tough times and collective heartache of the era into amazing art. Jumping ahead a bit.
Speaker 3:In the early 1800s, during the Romantic era, poets like William Woodsworth and John Keats were all about exploring feelings of loss, longing and inner struggles in their poems. People really connected with their emotional depth and how they captured human experiences, showing that grief can be a powerful source of inspiration. Now, in the world of music, we've got the blues. This genre popped up in the early 1900s in the United States and it was rooted in the hardships and sorrows faced by African Americans. Artists like Robert Johnson and Betsy Smith poured their pain into their music, creating something that deeply touched them many souls. So that's the end of our history lesson for today, and let's join Kathy and myself in conversation. I'm just delighted to be here with you.
Speaker 2:Me too. I was looking forward to this ever since you invited me.
Speaker 3:I'm glad to hear this. You've been a mentor ever since Patricia and I were guests on your show as. I live in grief and you've been encouraging us to take a leap into podcasting.
Speaker 2:I just think you have a lot of not just experience but information as well from a different perspective. That I think really to me anyway it makes so much sense and kind of fills in some of those gaps from the theological background.
Speaker 2:I had as a child growing up in the Episcopal Church, All those questions I have wondering about. You know, gosh, what about spirits and everything like that? How does that all fit in? But many of the things that you and Patricia also said just kind of filled in those gaps for me and I think, well, it likely will for others as well. And there's there are a lot of podcasts out there that deal with grief and death and even theology and everything, but I have not seen any with your perspective of the shamanism. I have not seen that. So I think it will be a well received podcast.
Speaker 3:Thank you. So in this episode we want to talk about grief and creativity. You heard when I was growing up that our best works of art and literature take place during times of upheaval, so I was wondering if you could share the beginning of your story with us.
Speaker 2:Oh, the beginning of my story, I guess, would be that I was pretty much brought up in a Norman Rockwell type family. The big difference and this was in the 50s, when I was a very young child was that in my family both my parents worked. My mother happened to be the principal secretary at the elementary school right across the street from our house. So I grew up with both parents working and wound up. Since there were no daycare centers like that, most times I wound up across the street at school with my mother. Either attending an extra class, like kindergarten, was a half day, I went for a full day just because it was free, and then after school, as I grew up and everything, I would be in my mother's office and I would help her, and so that was kind of my background. But in our family my parents were also extremely protective, and one of the things they protected me from, of course, were any of the negative emotions or experiences that we might come across.
Speaker 2:I remember when each of my grandparents died this would be my mother's parents.
Speaker 2:They died within a month of each other and I have vague recollections of curiosities about what had happened and wanting to go to the funeral home.
Speaker 2:But my parents said, no, no, you stay home, a funeral home is not a place for children. So I did, and it wasn't until I was an adult that I even ventured near a funeral home and oddly enough, that was on Halloween, when I was on a UNICEF drive and we happened to take our little coin banks and go up to the door of a funeral home because the lights were on. That was the closest I got to a funeral home up to that point and as I look back at that now, I think that has to account somewhat for the fear and I mean literal fear I had of the word death as well as the concept. So that became a huge obstacle as I grew to try to cross that barrier. It was not easy and in truth I never really became comfortable even saying the word death until I was a grown, married woman and my mother died, even to the death of my father and infant son and then my mother. Finally, after that I finally started to become comfortable with that concept.
Speaker 3:It's quite common in our culture though, isn't it to not speak of grief or death, and nobody wants to die, and in our culture we certainly want to be beautiful and young forever, and even deep emotions. I grew up at a time when men didn't cry. I can remember my mother, while I was in my wedding, wanted to tell my stepdad I loved him and to thank him for being there for me.
Speaker 3:I love him I was starting to get emotional and I remember my mom looking at me just shaking her head in the no gesture to cry. So we get a lot of our priming, I think, when we're young.
Speaker 2:We do, and you know, following in the footsteps of my parents with my own two daughters as a single mom, I remember having to attend a funeral and Stephanie said Can I come along? And I said no, no, you don't need to go, you stay home. She even remarked in one of our podcast episodes that it wasn't until she was almost 20 that she was going to go to calling hours at a funeral home and she had no idea what to expect. She was terrified to go because she didn't know what she would see or how she should act or anything. And then I realized that I had done the same thing my parents had, by protecting her.
Speaker 2:Stephanie learned and when my husband Tom died, she of course, the entire time he was ill, had been talking to her two boys, and both boys were at calling hours. They were at the funeral home. And even the youngest, who at the time was in sixth grade, he did a presentation that was their annual project before graduating elementary school. He did his annual project on Agent Orange and how it impacted Tom's death and stood up there, tears streaming down his face, words stuck in his throat, but he stood up there in front of parents and teachers, faculty administration and talked it out and I was just. I was awestruck.
Speaker 3:You must have been very proud, are? You said you never understood what grief was about.
Speaker 2:I didn't. I don't think I even spoke the word. For years and years I had no need of it because it didn't happen, or at least I didn't attribute it as happening. And again, a late adult discovery is that I don't believe that I ever grieved the death of my father or my infant son. I didn't know, that's what I was feeling, and at that time you just sucked it up and moved it, you know, and three days later back to work and just a normal day. They were just gone Period.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so do you remember when it was that you felt that you hit that point in your life where your grief became bottomless while consuming?
Speaker 2:I do. Actually, it wasn't until after my husband, tom, died and we had known for eight months that the cancer that he had was not curable and I watched him decline and by that time I had been working in hospice a little bit, so I was aware of some of the signs when a person is actively dying the modeling of the skin and the legs and everything, and how it will kind of creep up the body, and I was seeing all those signs in Tom. And then I went in, of course, the day that I knew he was going to die that day, because he had that gurgling breathing, that kind of death rattle they call it, and I was ready for it. But it didn't impact me, it wasn't really, for I want to say a couple weeks after we had the celebration of his life and I was at home and realized that not only had I not had a shower in days and not changed my clothes, but I also had not left the house, that even to let the dogs out I would open the door, hook their chain on them and let them out. I hadn't even gone out on the deck of my house.
Speaker 2:And it hit me then and I thought if I don't do something, I'm going to live the rest of my life like this and I don't want to live like this forever. And at that point I did what I always turned to, and that was music and books. And I put music on. It's probably a little somber, but at the time it was what I needed and it released some emotions. And I sobbed and sobbed for hours and then I grabbed a book that a friend of mine had sent me and started reading it. It was poetry. It wasn't applicable to grief at all, but I just got lost in the words. And then that afternoon I got up and I took a shower and put on clean clothes, went to the grocery store and really, just from that point on, started making changes.
Speaker 3:Does it ever come back and bite you?
Speaker 2:Sometimes, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, usually on the anniversary of his death. I don't remember the anniversary of my mother's death. I know approximately, but I don't know the day or the year. At this point I do for my son but not for my father. But for some reason Tom's day of death is easier to remember than his birthday and I don't know why that is. But on those days sometimes it will come back, sometimes at a parade, because he was retired US Army and belonged to the Vietnam vets of America. They usually march in parades, so sometimes when I see them I'll start to get very teary eyed and very emotional because I know that Tom was just so loyal to them. But yeah, there are times it's never as bad, though that was the worst, that was the bottom for me.
Speaker 3:Kathy, I can only begin to imagine that the pain, possibly fear and isolation that you're facing at this time. It reminds me of what Francis Weller, the author of the Wild Edge of Sorrow that I know you've read his book, describes as a rough initiation. This isn't a journey we willingly embark upon. It's more like we're trying to just hold on tightly to what we cherish most. In our grieving we do change. It's as if we lose part of our identity and find ourselves pulling away from others, and from my shamanic perspective, grieving is deep. But spiritual work is challenging, raw, and it can feel incredibly lonely, but the ache in our hearts. There's also a profound connection to our soul, and it marks the start of a transformative journey, one that might even lead us to our first steps in creative expression. I was wondering does this resonate with you?
Speaker 2:I think it is especially looking back. At the time. I don't think I was aware of that concept, but looking back I remember talking to my daughter on the phone and saying I'm tired, I'm exhausted. I feel like I'm redefining myself. I'm no longer the person I was before, and during the eight months when I was taking care of Tom I didn't really realize how much of my life and how much of me I had given up gladly to help him, but I was just gone. I had nothing, no activities, none of the friendships or relationships except for work and that was in the hospice industry.
Speaker 2:but I said I'm redefining myself. I didn't look at it as being creative. For some reason, to me grief was an end. It was an end. That was like the stopping point Everybody off the bus. This is the end of the road. I don't know why, but as I started to work through some things and started to read more and get out more and do more things, I realized it certainly isn't the end and my grief for me almost became a catalyst yeah, so, yeah. So in that way and you know I've always been kind of creative I am today. I am somebody I have never been before. I used to be an introvert. I'm not necessarily an introvert. Sometimes it takes a little bit of a nudge to get me going, but it just.
Speaker 2:you know, there's so much that I feel has to be done and I want to be a part of doing it and finding creative ways to do it. And you know, I think I'm trying to stay more open to the signs along the road and, you know, say oh yeah, all right, I'll go that way and see what happens.
Speaker 3:Hmm, kathy, I think you'll find this interesting. Coming from a shamanic viewpoint. The initial stages of intense grief for us are is like a dismemberment. This is a time when everything feels scattered and disorientated and giving is a grieving deeply, I should say can change you profoundly. In shamanic dismemberment, charities, it's like being broken down completely, right to your core, to your very essence, and grief is very much like this, as we both can agree on. This process can be experienced in different ways. Sometimes it's enveloped in a sense of love and care, but at another time they tell you it can be quite scary, just like grief, when we just don't know where the bottom is. The second part of this journey is crucial, and this is when the spirit start to remember you, to bring you back together. But the remembering feels different. You emerge as a new person and you find that by the end of this journey, their capacity or your capacity for compassion and love towards others has grown significantly.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, you know we yeah, I mean I. You know, I admit I'm an entirely different person, but the part that's kind of difficult for me really sometimes is to, when I stop and think about it, I have to say that right now I'm probably the happiest I've ever been in my life. You know, and it I never thought I would be able to say that.
Speaker 3:So do you think you're closer to whatever your purpose was for you coming into this, this world?
Speaker 2:I think so. I don't think I'm there yet, but I think so. You know, it'd be nice if I had a roadmap. So no for sure, but but we don't. You know, it's left to interpretation. So I don't know yet. But I don't, I don't think I'm done by any means.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're mean with your podcast and you worked in palliative care. Oh, it is just such a strong connection to the topic. And. I'm wondering if that was kind of part of what you're supposed to be doing in this lifetime.
Speaker 2:I think the connection is there somewhere.
Speaker 2:I don't know Again, I don't know. One of the areas of the entire palliative care, hospice and everything like that that really will make me get on my soapbox, so to speak, is the idea of people who are diagnosed with a terminal illness and reach that point where they just want to end their own life. There's all the legalities, of course, to say, oh, you can't do that and you can't help anybody do that. But part of me just wants to shout out you know, if it's, if you have a terminal diagnosis, what difference does it matter when? So I kind of struggle with that in my own mind back and forth and back and forth, that there are some issues not just that one, but there are other healthcare related issues that the legalities get in the way. The people telling you what you have to do, what's right and what's wrong, doesn't seem fair. I would like somehow for there to be, for people to have more freedom to choose their path, not necessarily be able to kill themselves legally, but at least have more autonomy, I guess, in those choices. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well.
Speaker 3:I wonder often. You know, when you walk down the street or you bump into somebody you don't know, but you have this convert the hearts come together and you have these wonderful old and vulnerable conversations with you have never met before. But when you leave that conversation you just feel wonderful and somehow you feel that something opened up in us and for days we'll be thinking of these people. So let's move to creativity and your creation. May did you come up with as I live in grave. I mean, it's very catchy, oh well the entire podcast was almost divine intervention.
Speaker 2:Whatever divinity you like, I have mine, I have mine. But I had been at a comfort care home, a hospice home in our area, and they had asked me to lead a bereavement group, which I did, and we had three meetings and then COVID hit full force and that was the end of the bereavement group. So as COVID started to wax and wane a bit, they came back and they said Kathy, would you start that group again? And I said you know, one of the mantras, if you will, for me of volunteering anywhere is when it gets to the point that I'm giving more than I'm getting. I need to reevaluate. And I said I'm doing a lot of preparation and everything, and one or two people would show up. That's just. The purpose is to make death easier to talk about, and a bereavement group's not doing it for me. It just wasn't. I didn't feel valued, I didn't feel rewarded and I wanted to feel something. It wasn't helping me either. And I said I don't know.
Speaker 2:We were sitting around the dining room table at the home. My daughter, stephanie, was there and we're going well. What can we do? What can we do? Can we do a virtual bereavement group and reach more people. Back and forth, back and forth. And all of a sudden the word came out of my mouth podcast. I hadn't been thinking about podcasts. I had never listened to a podcast. I only knew they existed and basically what they were. That was it. As soon as I said it, my daughter, stephanie, goes. Mom, that's a great idea, I'll help you with that. So she sat down at the table and we started planning.
Speaker 2:Six weeks later, we had recorded five episodes and we launched our podcast. In that six weeks we did all our research, we learned what we needed to do, we did our cover art, we got accepted on all the podcast apps and everything and we launched the podcast. And as far as the name, we kept going back and forth and of course, I always liked the good grief thing that just you know, an author relies on words and I couldn't get away from that one. But there was already a podcast called Good Grief, so that wasn't going to work.
Speaker 2:We're back and forth and back and forth and trying to think of acronyms, couldn't come up with anything I liked and I got frustrated one day and the phrase as I live and breathe came into my mind and I thought oh wait, let's just swap out the word breathe for grief, Live and grieve, and it just seemed to fit and that's how we got the name. And I know I'm going to grieve the rest of my life and I was probably grieving long before I even knew I was grieving. I don't know how anybody could make it through COVID, through the pandemic, and not be grieving. Each and every single person lost something or some things or some people.
Speaker 2:Yes we all lost. Even today, our lifestyles are completely different. So many more people work from home now than ever did. If they want to run to the store, they can do it in the middle of the day. Just rearrange their own schedule because they work from home.
Speaker 3:Did you ever keep track of the number of people that You've impacted by your, your Podcast?
Speaker 2:oh heavens, no, I probably. You know. I'm hoping there are many, many that I don't even know about.
Speaker 3:Because you're approaching. Is it 200 episodes?
Speaker 2:Very sub yeah, we've got about a hundred and fifty four hundred fifty five now. Okay yeah, yeah, three years of weekly episodes. I think we missed one week in there. Yeah and then, of course, one week that I did my own thing, and the initial one when Stephanie and I just kind of introduced ourselves. But yeah, it's 150, something now.
Speaker 3:Do you add up all your downloads?
Speaker 2:I Don't, you know, I look at him every so often. I kind of get shocked. We have one particular guest who has a huge following and he's been back on our podcast numerous times. I just I adore him, gary Rowe. He's a very prolific author, christian author. His words are wonderful, so soothing, and every time he comes on, of course he sends in his newsletter, he sends out that he was on our podcast and he puts the link in there.
Speaker 2:And of course, you know that week alone will have thousands downloads on a normal week. Now I mean, we started out we were tickled pink when we reached 50 downloads in a week and now we're, you know, well well into the hundreds. You know 300 or more, depending on the episode, the topic and everything like that. But other than just kind of glancing at it, I don't focus on it that the statistic that tickles me most probably is that we have listeners in 95 countries around the world and, and on the platform we use, they have a world map and they'll show you where all those listens are and it's kind of neat. There's countries I've never heard of. Actually, I think there's about 150 countries in the world. So we've still got room to grow.
Speaker 2:And I had a friend that was going on a tour to well I Think he was going up to the Arctic and I said well, you know, try to find a cell tower somewhere and listen to the podcast so that I can have a download it. North or South Pole, but other than that I don't focus on the statistics. I am delighted when someone e-mails me, reaches out to me. They sometimes will refer someone to be a guest or they'll just tell me their own story. I love that, but yeah it's.
Speaker 3:For me, it's just the number of people that you're attaching and one of our mandates. With patrician, I first started the social sorrows, to promote our workshops and grief circles. We want to increase grief literacy, yeah, and through that people will heal differently, like there's nothing wrong with people. And I think you mentioned that in your broadcast, your story, that that grief is just a natural human emotion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I just think it's if you can somehow Figure out for yourself because everybody's different how to use your grief To make some changes, even if it's the slightest change in your routine, one day where maybe you get up and go outside for a walk or Drive to the park and just sit there on a rock or on a picnic bench and Just sit outside for a little while and do nothing, even if that's what it is. Just do something a little different and and eventually I think you'll get more accustomed to doing things differently, to bring yourself through the grief and Make some progress so you won't feel quite so desolate and burdened with it.
Speaker 3:Well, that might be a good place in our conversation for today, okay, with with a Kathy Gleason and the wisdom that she has developed over the two and a half years of podcasting and speaking to all these. Yeah wonderful people that you come across.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it. I would. If it wouldn't be the same without the guests. It really wouldn't.
Speaker 3:All right, you have a nice day.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much. I'll bless you. Bye, bye.
Speaker 3:Grief is a heavy burden to bear and can often feel isolating and overwhelming. That's where grief circles come in, offering a supportive and understanding community tools. Who are grieving? You can't be both the griever and the container of your grief. This is the purpose of grief circles to be the holder and the witness to your pain. Your soul wants you to speak of your grief, to express your pain, your loss, and to share your history and stories of that which has been taken. The urban grief showman's podcast is an offshoot of soulful sorrows, a grief tending website. Here under the service menu you will find our monthly circles. Please take the time to take a look and book into one or more of these monthly circles. Thank you for joining us into the world of shamanism and its connection to grief healing and spiritual growth. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to subscribe to the urban grief show so you never miss an episode and if you have any questions or would like to explore this topic further, please reach out to us Comments and support in the world to us.
Speaker 3:Until next time, may you find grace and insight into your own spiritual journey.
Speaker 2:I do hope you enjoyed that initial episode of the urban grief shaman's podcast and I hope you consider subscribing to their podcast. So for today that was something a little different, but it was still me. I Can't wait till next time I will have another live guest and I hope you will join me for next time as we all continue to live in grief. Thank you so much for listening with us today.
Speaker 1:Do you have a topic that you'd like us to cover or do you have a question from one of our episodes? Please email us at info, at as I live in grief, calm, and let us know. We hope you will find a moment to leave a review, send an email and share with others. Join us next time as we continue to live in grief together.