Turning Pain Into Poetry: Sara Rian on Grieving and Healing After Loss to Suicide

When Sara Rian’s mother unexpectedly died in 2018, her world, and her words,  changed forever. 

***

This episode is available in video here.

***

What began as a private act of survival through poetry slowly became a bridge to others who were grieving too. Her poems, often found reaching grieving hearts through social media feeds, give voice to what so many can’t yet name: the ache, the confusion, the beauty, and the brutal honesty of grief.

In this conversation, Nina and Sara trace the ways grief reshapes not only the heart but also the body, relationships, and creative expression. Sara shares how poetry became both her mirror and her medicine, helping her navigate the duality of love and pain, the tension between vulnerability and protection, and the ongoing work of tending to loss as both a therapist and a human being who lost her mother to suicide.

Together, they explore what it means to live inside the messiness of grief — where healing isn’t about tidying the pain but learning to move with it. 

The episode both opens and closes with two of Sara’s poems, a quiet reminder that love doesn’t end where life does.

Key Takeaways

• Grief reshapes how we inhabit our bodies, our creativity, and our relationships.
• Writing can become a form of survival; a place to meet emotions without needing to fix them.
• The mother–child bond leaves an indelible mark on how we grieve and love.
• Grief isn’t only love, it’s also raw, contradictory, and profoundly human.
• Healing asks for tenderness toward the body as much as the heart.
• Artistic expression can transform isolation into shared understanding.

Follow Grief and Light wherever you tune in, and join us as we keep exploring the many ways love and loss coexist.

Guest: Sara Rian

• Grief Writer • Author • Therapist
• sararianbooks.com
• Get the Books
• @sara_rian_books

Hosted by: Nina Rodriguez

• Creator of Grief and Light, Grief Guide
• griefandlight.com
• @griefandlight
• Resting Grief Face on Substack

Grief Support Resources for the Road:

• Grief Tending Toolkit
• Access our online community

Chapters

• 0:00 Preview & Intro Song
• 0:41 Meet Sara Rian
• 2:00 "I Didn't Talk About You Today" Poem Reading and Story by Sara Rian
• 4:47 Becoming a Grief Poet After Losing Her Mother
• 10:10 Navigating Foster Care, Grief and Mental Health
• 23:44 BPD as a Form of Attachment Trauma
• 25:53 Grief, Trauma, and Rest
• 35:36 Grief, Motherhood, and Marriage
• 41:34 Balancing Public and Private Life
• 46:08 The Messiness of Grief
• 51:04 Words of Wisdom
• 52:53 Poem Reading by Sara Rian

Transcript

welcome to my grief. It is the swinging of that pendulum between like this sucks and I love you forever and this sucks and I love you forever. I just don't stick in one. I can't stay in one. Like one minute I'm like this is my forever devotion to you and with love comes grief and it's the price and the next day I'm like okay but did you have to die like that? Did you need to? Is that what we you know I'm I'm pissed. You just

As a griever, you may have opened social media and come across poems about loss that somehow give words to what you don't yet know you are feeling. And I'm almost certain that at least some, if not many of those poems

were written by today's incredible guest, Sarah Ryan. Yes, the Sarah Ryan, and I am so honored to have her here today. Sarah is a poet, she's a self-published author, mother, wife, licensed therapist, and griever in the metro Detroit area. She's been drawn to grief poetry ever since her mother died in 2018. And her work is as multifaceted as her personal life. I am thrilled for today's conversation and for you to get to know

a little bit more about the person behind the beautiful poetry that has helped so many of us. Sarah, welcome to Grief and Light.

Hello, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here today.

I'm so excited as well. This is absolutely an honor. Your poetry has touched so many of us and obviously me personally as well. And on that note, I would love to invite you to open up our conversation with this stunning poem that you wrote. I think it was yesterday or at least you published it yesterday on social media. it yesterday. You wrote it yesterday, even more impressive. So I'll invite you to share that one. It's called, I Didn't Talk About You Today.

Yes, wonderful. I didn't talk about you today, but I inhaled you with every breath. I saw your face behind every blink. A bird sang your name to me this morning and I hummed our song all afternoon. I watched the sun lower behind a field that was painted the color of your hair and I fell asleep holding a memory of your hand in my palm. I didn't talk about you today. Sometimes words just aren't enough.

How beautiful is that? And I love the part about the birds singing your name because, you know, so many of us associate just seeing birds or something in wildlife as a point of connection with our person or pet. And for me, birds are definitely, I joke around, I've become a bird watcher lately, just because I'm brief. like, it's just such a beautiful point of connection. I thank you for that. thank you. What was the inspiration? I'm curious for that particular poem.

You know, it was actually because I was reflecting on my grief, as I do so often, and I noticed I hadn't talked about my mom in a few days, almost to the point where I was like, my gosh, have I not told a story? Have I not talked about her out loud? And I know as grievers do, we wonder, my gosh, does this mean I'm forgetting them? Does this mean they're not integrated into my day? And as I sat with that thought, I was like, wait.

Let me actually reflect on the day. And it was all of these moments that she was actually there. And I was thinking about her and missing her. And even though I wasn't talking about her to others and I was just going amongst my day and I was working and doing my everyday tasks, she was there for all of them. And I wanted to write that for me and then I wanted to share it on my page because I think we...

can feel guilty sometimes when we don't talk about our loved ones. And they're just there, even if we're not telling stories about them or talking about them, they're still, I don't know, I feel like I'm speaking about them without words all the time, right? And thinking about them all the time. And yeah, so that just came to me as I was reflecting at the end of the day and decided to write that and I shared it immediately.

Thank you for all of it, for sharing it, for the inspiration and for the story behind it. So many of us feel like if we don't say our person's name, they're forgotten somehow. I love that this is such a reminder that we carry them with us in the little quiet ways that maybe are not so obvious to everybody else. And also out loud, right? You could do both. So thank you for that. And for those who may not know you other than through your poetry, please let us know a little bit about who Sarah Ryan is today.

and how this journey went from your initial desire to write and express yourself through writing to the poet that people know today.

Yeah, okay. Well, I have no writing background. I know many folks already know that where I get very self-conscious about writing as I'm like, I didn't study this. I'm a therapist. I went to school for that. But I started falling in love with short poems on Instagram, actually, like Insta poetry. I know people kind of talk down on it, but I really fell in love with it around 2018.

And I started dabbling and I started writing short poems myself. And I would just share them with my mom. They were not about grief often. Sometimes they were. My grandmother had just passed in 2016. I was very close with her. We were all grieving her so deeply. So I would write about her and share it with my mom or I'd write about feminism or something. I'd share them with my mom. I started this little Instagram page. I don't even remember what it was called at that time. I had changed my name a few years later, but

this page that everyone now knows. I created it. I used my middle name, Ryan's my middle name, and I wanted to just put poems here and put them out into the world without it being attached to my personal page and everything. And I would share and I had maybe 10 followers for several, for the many years probably that I had it. But by the time I was creating the page and when I still only had 10 followers,

My mom had passed that July. So I started writing probably in like the spring and in July my mom had died by suicide. It was unexpected in the sense of we just never thought suicide was actually going to take her. So she had struggled with mental illness and depression and trauma and alcoholism our entire lives. But we were shocked and

did not see it coming and we thought things were getting better and I was having a great year and I was telling people how 2018 was like the best year of my life until it absolutely became the opposite of that. So when I lost my mom in 2018 within, think it was about a day or two, I started writing short poems but it was to her or about her, it was about the grief and then here we are.

seven years later and I am still just writing about grief in very short minimalist ways. Some people don't consider it poetry. I don't really know what else to call it, so I call it that. Very rarely does it rhyme, but it feels a little bit more than just a quote, so I've just called it poetry. And I don't know if it even is that, but that's what we're calling it. And to this day, that is my...

favorite way to express my grief, to organize my grief, to conceptualize my grief, personify my grief at times, to externalize it. I just can't stop writing about it or her. So that's how we got here.

Yeah, and I'm sorry, obviously, for the loss of your mom and your grandmother and the ways in which it changes us. And I'm also seeing that it's a point of connection. It was before she passed and also continues to be today. So it's a way that you carry her love light forward. That's a phrase I credit to Rosemary Wotolatroma. That's not my phrase, but it's... I love that. Yeah. It's a beautiful way to do that. And may I ask what her name is? Susan. Susan.

that we honor Susan as well through this conversation. Some people may say poetry through Instagram is not a thing, but I believe it is. And it is one of the most relatable ways for people to be exposed to, to consume, to be connected with the words that give our experiences some type of framework. Because as a griever, I remember thinking, I have no idea what I'm feeling right now. I thought I knew what feelings were until this comes into my life.

It's everything, all the things all at once. And I have no idea how to begin untangling this to process it. And I remember poetry in particular was incredibly powerful. A lot of your poetry was and continues to be incredibly powerful. So thank you for what you're doing. I love, you you have a very humble spirit and also like you deserve all the credit. So duality.

Thank you. know I'm I I love when people are like I Your words I've read them on Instagram. It still just doesn't feel I'm like I don't know if I just dissociate or what happens when I'm like that doesn't feel Real because it just feels so I don't know I just forget how many people it can reach and it's connected me to so many people around the world But it's still I'm like I like am I

Should I be sharing this? Is this like really bad writing? And then people are like, oh, it really helped me. And I'm like, doesn't matter, I guess, because it helped you. I guess, I don't know. I kind of want to leave my ego out of it and just know that it helps someone grieving. So I appreciate you reading it and connecting with it.

Absolutely, and I appreciate you writing it. And talking about Susan, that I know that she navigated a lot with mental health and suicidal ideation throughout her life. And that also means that you grew up with a mother experiencing this. So if maybe you could take us back there and touch on what that experience was like, we are also in Mental Health Awareness Month. So this is a good way to expand on that conversation to the degree that you feel comfortable with.

My mom, she was very open that she had had trauma. She was raised in the foster care system and was never adopted, you know, especially like growing up, she was born in the sixties and it was much more flawed system. So she had been open about her story with us growing up. We had learned empathy. We had understood that this was her brain kind of being sick and or injured in a way. Like we were, we really understood trauma early on, not

Not too early, I mean, obviously. But as we grew up, we were understanding that this wasn't just her not wanting to be with us. This wasn't just her wanting to abandon us. We never viewed her as someone who was just trying to take an easy way out or was being mentally weak. We just empathized. We understood suicidality so early on that, you know, sometimes we would get upset after one of her suicide attempts or when she would be talking about

her suicidal thoughts and sometimes it was like, oh gosh, like don't, like aren't we enough, aren't we enough? And she, you know, she would say like it has nothing to, like if anything, my brain's convincing me that I'm a burden, that I'm hurting you by being here and I love you so much that I don't want to hurt you. And that's how her brain would twist it. And that's what, you know, trauma and depression and mood disorders and all of these things kind of convince you of. So we were empathizing and having compassion towards that so young all the way up until the very end.

But it was hard. I've talked to people and a lot of folks have lost their fathers to suicide or a lot of male figures in their lives to suicide. And I'm hearing more and more people coming forward that they've lost their moms. And they're like, there's, I feel so protective and defensive when I say this because people are like, my gosh, what kind of mom leaves their kids? What kind of mom leaves their kids behind? But you don't hear that same dialogue with dads as much. And I was like, yes.

I feel that. It's not just the stigma around suicide. It's the stigma around suicide with a mom, a mom wanting to, you know, I'm using quotations like to leave their kids when that's so not what it's about. No one's just trying to leave. They think they're hurting you by staying. So that was, it was hard to grapple with, but I think my siblings and I did a really great job empathizing and understanding it the best we could.

We kind of just assumed that we would take care of her forever or we were just hoping like one day, you a new treatment will help. At that time it was DBT because she had been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder as well, which to me is just an attachment disorder, an attachment trauma. So I had said, hey, let's, you know, maybe you can connect with a therapist who does DBT and she was doing that. We kind of just thought eventually she'll...

do something and it will heal this and maybe the demons will quiet and she'll make it to old age and you know, it didn't happen. And we just thought we kind of would do this forever and we were signed up for it. I always tell people we were ready to go. We were ready to, you know, just know that a couple times a year, our mom would have a moment and she might attempt suicide and we will recover and we will figure it out. And it was very awful when

You know, I was 28 to say like, okay, that's the end. That's the end of the road. There's no more caring for her. Because we really were ready to do it. We were ready to care for her until she just got old and died from old age.

I hear you and thank you for sharing that because for example, my brother passed from fentanyl poisoning and he struggled with addiction. So I'm going to share something personal and then ask you to chime in on your experience to see if it's something that came up for you as well. for example, when he passed and I was telling coworkers, colleagues, all these other people that are not immediate family about the news, one person said to me, and this is somebody that I thought would have responded differently, let's just say.

One person said to me, well, now you don't have to worry about him. You don't have to take care of him anymore. And that shocked me because in what you just shared, one thing that I always felt in my mind is that if my brother struggled with addiction forever, that's OK. I would take care of him. It would be my honor to take care of him. And I even had a conversation with my mom about when they pass. If I needed to take care of them, I would do XYZ. And I already had a plan in place.

And it wasn't even a question in my mind about how this was going to play out. It was just like, yes, he struggles with this. We're going to consider it a chronic thing, and we'll just deal with it, and it's fine. And it was A, OK with me. So I'm curious if that came up for you as well, or if you ever received some of those types of responses, and how that finality of it, that endpoint to somebody's life, changes how you feel about it all.

Well, thank you for sharing that. I'm I know people don't ill. know they don't have ill intent, but I'm sorry that it was even framed in that way, because I you would probably give anything to have the rest of your life to care for him as hard as it probably was. It's much harder not having him here, I'm sure. So absolutely. I appreciate you sharing that. And yes, we absolutely receive. I think some people really meant it like, hey, your mom.

She fought so hard and she made it longer than so many people who lived with the trauma that she did. Some people framed it in a way and then other people would say, is there a relief there or now you can do what you need to do if she's in heaven or you don't have to worry? And I'm like, I would give anything to worry. I would, I would give anything to worry because

The good times outweighed those times so much for me. And I'm sure you feel the same that it was like just her existing and breathing, even if it was every day was like that, I would have taken it, but every day wasn't like that. There was, I mean, months in between where she was okay. even if not, she was her, right? She was alive, she was breathing. And yeah, was...

I was ready for it, so when people said, don't have to worry, and I was like, this isn't about me. I mean, I'm glad she's not hurting, and I'm so glad she never has to feel pain again, but also the world should have been safer for her to do that. It should have been easier to live. It should have been easier to find safety here. That part, like, I should have had both. I should have been able to say I don't have to worry, and she's still alive.

I'm sitting here nodding yes, yes, yes, because absolutely that's so true, especially caring for somebody who struggled so much in their life. We would never want them to continue with the struggle and also it would be just fine to take care of them for the rest of our lives. It would be our honor. So thank you for saying that. And to what degree did your mom's life impact your career as a therapist or your decision to go into that field?

Probably 100%. I had a conversation a few weeks ago, or this was probably a couple months ago, and someone had asked, did you become a therapist because of this? And I'm like, I think we all kind of do. When people become therapists, I'm like, I wonder what their story is, what happened when they were younger and thought they were going to be a helper or whatever. But yes, I wanted to be a clinician that

didn't judge people because I saw my mother so judged, especially when people found out that she had an issue with alcohol. Now she wasn't an everyday alcohol consumer. It was just when she would drink, everything would get really loud for her and that's when her risk assessments would kind of like lower and she was higher. Like it was just how alcohol does, right? It was a depressant. So

People were just very judgmental, including her clinicians. She had many counselors. She had tried different programs and people were very judgy and clicky. And, you know, I would see her crying or I would hear, you know, mom, like, you why don't you want to go back to therapy? And, you know, they just, they weren't very kind. I'm going to try to find someone who maybe doesn't see me so poorly. And I just want to feel safe in my sessions. And I was like, you know what? I think I said pretty young. I think I was 12. I said, like, I'm going to, I'm going to do this. I'm going to help.

people like you. And eventually, years later, I think by the time I was 16, I actually knew I wanted to do sex therapy and I wanted to help predominantly women in sexual wellness. So it turned a little bit. But with that, I also specialized in working with intimate partner violence survivors, sexual trauma survivors. So I was still working with survivors, all things that my mom had also been a trauma survivor of.

So I was very passionate about helping survivors of abuse because she had been a survivor of abuse. And so she shaped so much of my career in the way I could empathize and the way I could sit with so many people and not judge them for staying or judge them for just things they were doing. She was that. She was always just like, anytime you feel that judgment come on, I want you to remember there's a reason.

There's a reason someone's picking up a drink. There's a reason someone's picking up a drug. There's a reason that someone's staying in abusive household. So she was so much a part of everything I do now.

I can see that and I'm not a therapist, but many of us go into certain types of work that is more related to like the depths of what you or your loved one went through. And I love that because I'm sure the people that you have helped have received that empathy and that compassion and that understanding that maybe a different type of person or therapist may not quite get or grasp. So I guess in a way that is something that continues to live on and help other people through your work.

And I'm so sorry she went through all of that. sounds like she had a very difficult life, especially with the foster care system. There's grief that I believe is not talked about enough in terms of what going through a foster care system does to a person. I don't know if you want to chime in on that, but it's something that could be really life-altering for an individual.

Absolutely, I mean just, and again I'm speaking kind of, this is so anecdotal because it's, you we're talking about my mom, we're talking about a different time and I have seen so many people go through the foster care system and be reunified with their families or adopted by beautiful families and loved. I don't have anything against adoption or fostering but there was a time when it was probably not monitored, it was probably not as safe.

I don't think it was as child-centered probably at some point. So my mom had been through several different foster homes and I think she had said she was abused in every single one in some form. So she had had so many attachment wounds and attachment trauma and struggled with anxious attachment her whole life because of that. And she had always said, you know, I just wanted to belong and I don't understand why my parents didn't want me. No one adopted her, right? Like she was with her siblings, but they were never...

Adopted they did get to stay together, but no one you know they just aged out so just seeing an adult woman still just want a Mom and a dad or want someone to want them. I'm like it's just it's like heartbreaking. It was so sad. It was just You know that was so sad especially because she was such a good mom and we never felt a moment of being unloved or unwanted I just wish she had exactly what she gave us and that was

That's kind of what came out of it. She struggled to survive, but in that she knew she was going to be a good mom and that she was never going to make us question our worth or if we're loved and me and my three siblings, I think can agree, like she really was the most loving human and she was made to be a mom. She committed to that. She knew that when she was young, she wanted to be a mom and she wanted to do it right and she might not.

I believed that she did it all the right ways, but she just, she was a great mom.

Thank you for sharing that. And it's also that we look at people with a certain struggle, in this case with suicidality or depression or BPD or considering everything she went through and our minds tend to want to paint people with a very broad stroke. This is who they are and that's it. But people usually who suffer deeply care deeply and they know how to love, they know how to be there for others. And it sounds like she was also a very wonderful person, obviously.

I love that you got to connect with her through the writing, like she would read your writing and it was a bond that you had. And I'm curious, you said something earlier that stuck out to me and I would love for you to elaborate on that. I think it was, and correct me if I'm wrong, about BPD being a form of attachment trauma. If you could expand on that, I'm so curious.

So I know with personality disorders, you'll hear this in even the therapy world. People are pretty judgy even as clinicians. with personality disorders are so tough. And I don't specialize in personality disorders. I don't know how difficult that may be. But people with personality disorders, and especially BPD with the borderline personality, they're often labeled as difficult people and manipulative and a nightmare to work with. And you hear all these labels.

I'm like, gosh, I wish you could have met my mom because she was so loving. Hers was almost a different way where instead of it, know, sometimes you can split. The splitting would almost more so happen with herself where if something kind of happened with another, she had an interpersonal conflict, she really took it out on herself and would kind of like knock herself off the pedestal and would think like, I'm the worst, I'm the worst. And she would go very self-deprecating. But I think

person or the borderline personality disorder is very much like attachment wounds. I think these stem from from traumas and attachment. I don't think it's just like you're born and you have personality, borderline personality disorder. I think if she had been raised in loving homes and there was secure relationships and people had shown her like safety and I don't believe that would have actually presented itself. I think it's that that stressor that was added in and when those

traumas happened and there was no secure attachment. think that presented in her, think it was the perfect storm. And I think that a lot with BPD. I'm not a specialist in that, but I just have a different level of compassion where I think it stems from attachment.

And actually that makes a lot of sense. When you explain it like that, it makes perfect sense. yeah, somebody that goes through something that difficult throughout their life, that kind of makes sense that these things would show up, absolutely. And how do you define the relationship between grief and trauma? Because to my understanding, grief can include trauma, but not all grief involves trauma. So maybe you could expand on that.

And then what does healing look like? Or how would you define it?

such a good question because I sometimes I'm like, I might need to clarify that often times the grief that I talk about is like traumatic loss. It's traumatic grief. And I think you can pick up on that in a lot of my poetry. It's very much like you can tell the timing is not right or it's a lot of why and

Because there's trauma. There's this whole unexpected or this is unfair or I have lost all control and all power. I thought the world was safe and it's not and it took this person. And that to me is just like screaming trauma, like capital T. But I know there's also grief poetry that I've written that's probably just like it's grief. It doesn't only mean traumatic loss. It's grief. It's the pain of missing someone, but maybe they did not die. We did not lose them in a traumatic way.

That's not my story, but I know that that happens. I think they're so closely tied because there's even folks that they've lost someone who is much older, say a grandparent, and their grandparent was 90 and they died in their sleep. That can still be like traumatic for someone who was ready to see them the next day or hadn't emotionally prepared or just doesn't do well with death, right? It doesn't have dialogue around death. So I just think

There's probably like a much smaller percentage of grief that's not traumatic and a much larger. Maybe I'm just in that so often. It just feels like they're so closely tied that many losses can be traumatic or even the secondary losses that come with grief can be traumatic or the way people respond to your loss or your grief can be traumatic. So it just feels like with loss, there's a lot of risk for Trump.

And healing, you know, same thing. I think so much of the grief that I'm around and the type of loss that I'm around in the poetry world, not always in my sessions, but in the poetry world and connecting with so many folks, they've lost someone. It's been traumatic. It was the wrong age. It was the wrong way. It was unexpected. It was expected, but dragged on and was suffering and it was terrible. So I think healing has to include

body. It's somatic. I think it needs to be holistic and include every layer of someone because I do think their nervous systems are very much tied into their grieving because just again that the trauma piece is there. I think there's a lot of nervous system stuff at play. So I think that's why I love poetry and watching people do art and watching people do yoga, sound baths and acupuncture.

and EMDR and doing all of these things outside of just like reading a textbook or just a little bit of talk therapy because I think we need healing at every layer and especially including the body because of the trauma.

Thank you for saying that, absolutely. And how somebody passes can really impact how we grieve and the out of order nature of a loss somebody gone too soon, even though it of feels like all of our loved ones are gone too soon, never enough time now. But losing your mom when you were in your 20s, losing my brother when he was 32, and all of these things, feels very out of order. And the suddenness of it also that...

Never.

I always wondered if one would be quote unquote like easier than the other and over the past two years I'm like no there's no easy way to lose somebody this is just all awful and also how somebody dies impacts our grief tremendously. So I could imagine how the suddenness and that she died by suicide and the secondary losses that you touched on how that also impacts your grief.

And as far as it being somatic, absolutely, and physical, I think that's what introduced me to even wanting to talk about grief. I was not expecting the physical shock and the physical pain that came along with the loss. I said, can you die from this? And that's when I learned about like Takotsugo cardiomyopathy and broken heart syndrome, all these things. It's absolutely physical. So thank you for naming that.

shot.

Yes, absolutely. I mean, it is. It's the way the body wants to shut down, especially in early grief. mean, like I wasn't eating. At one point, I feel like I cried so much. Like I was so dehydrated because I was just crying and it was like every single part. I mean, it makes you question your, if you're spiritual, it makes you, you you can't think straight and you have brain frog, brain frog, see, right now.

Yeah, fog. Yeah, right? This is it. I'm like, it's sometimes I still, I'm like, I feel like it forever changed me that even when I'm like reading, I feel like I don't have the same reading comprehension. This is years later. And I know motherhood adds to that. And there's things that are just forever changing, like our brain chemistry and our capacity. But there's things that will happen when I would first get on a plane. I'm having these responses and I'm like, well, I've never been on like a plane crash. Like, well, it because I was on a plane when I found out my mom died.

And I'm like, this is trauma. Like your body, as we know, right, body keeps score. I'm like, yeah, your body like knows this is happening before you even picked up on it. Right. And I don't know. It's just, it's so real. I'm like, my body knows way more than I think my brain catches onto. It feels it and it has felt it for years. It still does. And that's why I'm like, we need places to put this or release or reprocess this because it is like, it's like,

in my bones, it's in my cells, it's like in my skin, right?

Literally, yeah. And I say literally, when my brother passed, my mom has vitiligo. so that's a skin condition where your body stops producing melanin. And with the stress of her son's passing, she just completely lost her pigmentation. And I said, wow, like we lost him. And then she lost literally parts of herself. She just looked completely different. And over time, it has repigmented. But literally, when you said, it's in my skin,

I've seen the effects of grief on the skin. It's wild. It's good to have expression and it's also so very physical. So what are some ways that you have found to be helpful in your grief other than writing?

Yes, therapy was really wonderful for me once I was ready. So even as a therapist, I held off going for a few weeks. Even though I was not anti-therapy, this was like the one thing that I was like, my gosh, I can't do it. Like I can't say it out loud. I can't tell people. I can't say the word she died. So it took me many, many weeks before I was like, okay, you need to go to someone.

who understands grief and understands trauma. And that was so helpful to have that. I was very lucky that everyone around me, my loved ones, my best friends and family and people really knew our relationship and knew how devastating this was. And they were really great and were checking in and.

letting me tell stories of my mom. And I think it was just kind of like all hands on deck because I wasn't married and I didn't have any kids. I wasn't partnered. So I was just living alone and was like, no one's going to love me like her. Like she's, she's my person. We talk every day. don't have anyone that's my constant. It was her. So I was like, I feel like I'm untethered and I'm just floating. And I struggled with my own suicidal thoughts and thought, you know, I just want to go be with her. And people really stepped up.

checked in and stayed with me and supported me. then obviously writing was my other saving grace that did things for me that I don't know. It's hard to explain, but it it helped me so much to just write and to read poetry. When I went for walks and things, I tend to be more of a sedentary person, but I know movement would have helped me a lot more if I did more of it. I had been boxing a lot, like taking boxing classes, but I was so fatigued from the grief. I actually could not do it for a long time.

could not do physical activities. It was more like relational support and with expression through writing probably more than movement, but I know movement's absolutely wonderful and probably helped me like later on once I could gain energy and could actually like feed myself and get the nutrients I needed.

Yes, and in all fairness, especially like those early days, weeks, months, we barely have the energy to like drink a glass of water. We forget most things. Everything's upside down. The days blend together. So it's not to say like go boxing right after you lost your mom or your sibling or your child. No, it's more like remember that this is also a physical experience and whenever you feel capable or able to please tend to the body as well. It's more like that gentle reminder that it's all

tied together in grief and loss.

Yeah, even resting I think was helpful at a time. As someone who was a go-getter and I never stopped that to even do the opposite and say like, hey, pause on movement and actually like rest was probably very important. like, you know, instead of telling myself to go move, it was like, hey, you're just spending a lot of energy just trying to like breathe right now. Rest as much as you can. You're not working with a lot of fuel here.

Definitely. And you touched on motherhood because when you lost your mom, you said you were not partnered, you didn't have children, but that has since changed. So I'm curious, how did meeting your partner, having children, how does grief play into all of that? Grief in motherhood, grief in marriage.

Yeah. So my husband and I, we got together, it was probably like four or four months or so after my mom had passed. He and I actually went to school together and we dated when we were like 11 for like two weeks because we were 11. And when our separate ways, we graduated the same school together, everything separate ways. And so it wasn't until, you know, I was 28 and he was 28, like we reconnected and it was

Pretty sudden, we knew pretty quickly it was going to be a great relationship, but he was also starting to date someone who had just lost their mom to suicide. I was grieving pretty hard, so he was there and supported me through the nightmares and all the firsts. He was there for my first Christmas without my mom and my first Mother's Day and through all of it. I didn't want to be married. I didn't actually want children until he and I got together. So it was weird to be.

pregnant without my mom and then it was weird to be pregnant again without my mom. So I have two daughters, one will be four in January and the other will be three in January. So they're one year and one week apart. And my mom had always wanted me to have kids. She was hoping so badly I would have kids and have girls. She was like, just, I want to see a daughter that looks like you, you know, like she just was obsessed and I'd be like, stop mom, I'm not having kids, right? I'm child free, not for me. So it...

broke my heart that she didn't get to see me pregnant either time and she doesn't get to meet my girls, but we keep her in our household a lot. We have her photos everywhere, right in front of me even right now are my grandma and my mom's urns. The girls know that that's them. I don't think they quite understand and that's okay, but we have my mom everywhere. And we call her Ladybug Grandma, so we talk about her often. One of their favorite books is the book I

wrote, My Mama Has a Mama Too, so that's written with my daughter's name in it and about my mom. That was before my little one was born. So she's everywhere, but that is one of the most heartbreaking things was doing this and still to this day like doing this without her. Sometimes it just doesn't feel real. We had grandparent day at our daycare and to watch.

The grandparents, including my dad, their grandpa and my in-laws playing, and my mom to not be there, who was the one obsessed with children and wanted this more than anything. It just doesn't make a lot of sense still. And there's just so many times where I just want my mom. I just want my mom. There is no love like that love between a parent and a child, just like there's no love like the kind between siblings. And my little sister has also since gotten married and had two boys that my mom

did not get to meet and then she also was pregnant with her third and ended up having a stillbirth and that was her daughter. So my sister's only daughter, they lost and she never got to meet her breathing. But that was such a hit to us too because we were like, wait, wait, not only are we doing birth, now my sister's doing birth and losing her child without my mom here. It just feels so cruel sometimes but

I try to practice gratitude. I'm so glad that I have the privilege of being a mom and I have two healthy babies and they mean the world to me and I just also would like my mom here for it and yeah. Motherhood and losing a mom are so entwined for me as I'm sure it is for many.

And I'm sorry for your sister's loss and for your family's loss because it's like you said, sometimes it feels so incredibly cruel, like really this way. And we've touched on the topic of stillbirth in other episodes, but it's that dichotomy of both the life and the death happened inside of the person and adding insult to injury on top of that you have to give birth to is very layered. And also I can see how on Grandparents Day at the school, how loud her absence probably was for you and how

It's like, yes, you're happy that everybody's sharing and this is such a beautiful and special moment. And what the heck, where's my mom? Like she should be here.

Yes, just like, where is she? And it is, it's just like there's a bond between parent and child and I connect with so many lost parents. And I'm speaking from the other side. A lot of times, mean, a lot of people don't know who I've lost from my poetry. A lot of people think I've lost a child. They can't tell if I've lost my husband. And I'm like, oh yeah, it's my mom. And I also write a lot for my niece, who we lost in 2023. But I'm speaking from the other side.

I can say there is no love like that between a caregiver or a parent figure or a mom or a dad and their child. So I will never speak like I understand what it's like to lose a child, but I can say that child adored you because I know I adored my mom and I think I was bonded from the moment I was in her stomach. I think I was bonded and attached immediately. So I imagine.

the other way around and now being a mom, I'm like, this is what she meant. This is what loving a child feels like. It is so deep and so real. So yeah, it was an order in the sense that my mom was supposed to go before me. And I do believe we should never have to watch our children leave us first ever. And I also think some people should have stayed here a little longer or wish she wouldn't have died in the way she died. And it was such a sad death. It all is just hard.

Like you said, there's no easy way to lose a person.

Very, thank you for that. And how do you walk the line between keeping some of your life and your feelings vulnerable, public, and accessible to most people, and how you manage whatever remains private? Or do you even have anything that you keep private to yourself in terms of your work and your writing?

That's such a new thing that I've been doing where I'm actually trying to merge a little bit. It wasn't until recent that I would actually like Share that I'm a therapist or post pictures of myself I was actually trying to kind of be this like a like behind the door kind of you hit on it was I was yeah, I was just like anonymous but like I you can have Sarah Ryan, but

I'm so separate over here and I use my middle name, right, and this was like my pen name or whatever and I'm just now like, okay, wait a second, you don't live a double life, like you are one person, you you're all of these things and trying to integrate that a little bit more. I don't share photos of my children or my husband on my public.

just because that has gotten bigger than I have ever expected it to be, even though it's not like huge. I was still expecting my like 10 followers, so I'm not adjusting to this day of whatever number it's at right now. So I've been posting myself on there. I'm sharing that I'm a mom. I share that I'm a wife. You know, I share that I have clients. I've shared that I'm a sex therapist. I'm like including all these things. But I still keep a little bit more of the...

I don't know, that's scary. I do that even just with my clients as a therapist. I keep many things private, right? I keep things private. We're kind of taught to do that. I know that's changing and so many therapists are becoming much more transparent and I love it. I love authenticity. So I don't know if that'll change down the road, but I try to kind of keep me and my therapy practice and all this stuff kind of on one side and my poetry worlds over here and maybe that line in between thinning, but.

They still feel a little bit separate to me just because I don't ever want people to think I'm a grief specialist or that I'm an expert on grief. That's not my specialty. I understand it as a griever, but I don't hold any certificates or anything in it. So I think a part of that's also protecting my private practice and being like, this is my...

You know, this is my sex therapy, relationship therapy stuff, and over here is my poetry. I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm not an expert versus the other side. I have to be more of the expert, you know?

Yes, and for what it's worth, your authenticity comes through so tangibly in your work. And I personally think it's why we connect with your work so much. It's because it feels very real and very relatable, very authentic. And even though we may not know what your kids look like or your husband or the daily in and out or your private practice or any of those things on this page, there is an essence of you that comes through very clearly and very

beautifully through your work. So whatever meshing of those two worlds you're doing, it's coming through. Speaking of that, I would like for people to know where they can find your work, where they can find your books, because yes, there's a lot on social media and also they can get copies of your books. So tell them where they can connect there.

Yes, so I am on Instagram. It's Sarah Ryan Books, so Sarah underscore Ryan underscore Books. I have a website which is www.sarahryanbooks.com. I'm on Facebook under Sarah Ryan Books. And then my poetry books and my children's book can be found on Amazon. I self-publish through them. Or you can order copies directly from me if you are not an Amazon user or if you'd like signed copies or a personalized message.

I also sell prints, those are only available for me. So all my collages, if you've seen any of my art and my poem collages, I'm trying to print a lot of those and have those available. So yeah, you can email or I have links in all of my bios so you can fill out an order form, things like that. And hopefully I'm hoping to have a new book out eventually. I'm hoping to have it out before the end of the year, but I don't have any.

big details to release right now, hopefully soon. So yes, it's all me running everything. So anything you hear, any messages or anything, it's all me. I don't have any team. So if there's a delay, it's probably because I'm, I don't know, I'm in session or I'm like cleaning up a mess and I can't wait to connect with everybody.

And of course, that'll be in the show notes. And I do want to include this as part of the conversation that is beautiful as your poetry is and as beautiful and relatable as it is. You also want to honor that grief can be ugly and trauma is ugly and there's a messiness to it all. So how do you balance the two, beauty of like grief is love and this romanticizing that we tend to do with grief and also the reality that it just really sucks sometimes and it's ugly and messy.

Like the dance between the two, right? I am very pro like grief is ugly. I lately, I have been writing these romanticized versions, like even just in the last few weeks, I don't know what it is if I'm just super into the, it feels like I'm writing love poems to my mom and these like memorial pieces to her, before these last few weeks and maybe even recent. Grief is just brutal and it's not this like really pretty.

thing and we're connected by our souls and I don't just sit there and write about heaven. I'm like, this is brutal. This is like the most intense thing I've ever gone through. It's super traumatic. I'm having nightmares. Nothing is fair. Death is not always a beautiful transitioning. It also is just intense and feels like things are stolen from us. And I just swing back and forth between that all day. And that's why I, my,

books are often split up between like one half is here is this like brutal side of grief and I don't understand what's going on and I'm so traumatized and then it'll shift. Here's this beautiful side and grief is love and you know you're you know I'll never let anyone take you from me and people are probably like I'm so sick of this every book she has is like the same thing and I'm like well welcome to my grief it is the swinging of that pendulum between like this sucks

and I love you forever and this sucks and I love you forever. I just don't stick in one. I can't stay in one. Like one minute I'm like, this is my forever devotion to you and with love comes grief and it's the price and the next day I'm like, okay, but did you have to die like that? Did you need to? Is that what we, you know, I'm pissed. And that's my language, but yes.

thank you for your honesty. that's exactly, I mean, that's more accurate than trying to say like grief is only love, right? With let's say like nowhere to go. It's the usual phrase people say. But sometimes grief is not just that, it's layered. And if I may, I would love to read one of your poems here. It says, I should be grateful to be the last person you spoke to, my voice being the last you heard. Instead, I feel so angry with myself.

Why couldn't I muster up a spell, a prayer, a miracle? Why couldn't my last words have saved you? And I love that one because I was the last person to spoke to my brother. And so it's like, why couldn't I have known in that moment what was about to happen, like literally two hours later or less, we don't know the exact timeframe. So thank you for that honesty. They capture so much of the essence of the experience for many of us.

And I appreciate that you lean into the question. Sometimes so much of grief is not having answers and living with the questions of if I would have done this, would it have changed anything? And yet we will never know. So it's, I guess, arriving at a place of peace or at least equanimity with the questions that we're left with.

Yes, like I'm like, I'm going to die with these questions. And that's that. And I still will feel so much regret and guilt and shame. you know, also being the last person to speak to my mom, some folks are like, what a blessing. You you got to hear her voice last. And I'm like, it also feels like I should have been the one that could have saved her then. I'm a therapist. I didn't say the right thing. I used to work on suicide prevention program and I used to do hotlines and I'm like, my gosh, I

How could I not have come up with something? Like, how did I not know that this was about to go down? You know, all those feelings of responsibility, and I think that's why these traumatic losses are, I think they are so traumatic and so complex because they have so much guilt and shame and like regret and questions attached to them. You know, versus someone who dies of maybe old age, it's hard. I'm like, my grandma was old, she died. It was terrible, but I never sat there asking like why, and like I should have.

done something. I was like, is, this was how it was supposed to be. And it's awful. And I'm still have, I'm still crying and it's terrible, but I didn't ask myself those same questions. So yeah, so much of my poetry is that too, the guilt and the regret and the questions. And I have no answers to them and I don't, I don't think I ever will, but I'm asking them a lot still, right?

And that's fair. I think it's good to lean into the questions. It's actually helpful. So as we close out the episode here, I would love to ask you, what would Sarah Ryan today say to Sarah after your mom's passing?

Oh wow, what a good question. I would say just hang on a little longer. Oh, am gonna cry right now? Like as much as the best place to be right now seems like to be back in your mom's arms if you wait a little bit. You will have things that it will never replace your mom, but they will make her so proud and they will give you purpose again and you will help so many people.

And if you, hopefully, you'll get to see her again, just maybe not right now, and just hold on a little longer, is probably what I would say.

That's beautiful. Thank you. And I would like to invite you to close out the episode with a second poem that I find very beautiful that I think a lot of grievers will relate to, as well as any final thoughts that maybe you would like to include to consider the conversation complete. And if not, then the poem will be more than enough, I'm sure.

Wonderful. Yes, I just closing out, I just want to say thank you so much. And I hope anyone listening, hope no matter who you've lost or how you've lost them, I hope you feel seen and heard and know you are not alone. And I hope you think of your person and speak of your person as freely as you'd like. And I hope in spaces like these and in your therapy or on Instagram, I just I hope you feel your person, whether that be a human or a pet, I hope you feel them.

everywhere without shame and without barriers. with that, I will read this poem. I just wrote this last month. So this will probably be in my next collection as well. If nothing comes after this life, I hope you show the world what it looks like to live and die with love and grief in your arms and their name proudly on your lips. If something comes after, I hope you find them there and watch the grief melt right back into love.

knowing you will never have to miss them again.

Thank you, Sarah. It has been an absolute honor. Thank you for this conversation, for your work and for being you. That's it for today's episode. Be sure to subscribe to the Grief and Light podcast. I'd also love to connect with you and hear your thoughts and your stories. Feel free to share them with me via my Instagram page at griefandlight, or you can also visit griefandlight.com for more information and updates. Thank you so much for being here, for being you.

and always remember, you are not alone.