This space was created for you by someone who gets it – your grief, your foundation-shattering reality, and the question of what the heck do we do with the shattered pieces of life and loss around us.
It’s also for the listener who wants to better understand their grieving person, and perhaps wants to learn how to help.
Now in its fourth season, the Grief and Light™ podcast features both solo episodes and interviews with first-hand experiencers, authors, and professionals, who shine a light on the spectrum of experiences, feelings, secondary losses, and takeaways.
As a bereaved sister, I share my personal story of the sudden loss of my younger brother, only sibling, one day after we celebrated his 32nd birthday. I also delve into how that loss, trauma, and grief catapulted me into a truth-seeking journey, which ultimately led me to answer "the calling" of creating this space I now call Grief and Light.
Since launching the first episode on March 30, 2023, the Grief and Light podcast and social platforms have evolved into a powerful resource for grief-informed support, including one-on-one grief guidance, monthly grief circles, community, and much more.
With each episode, you can expect open and authentic conversations sharing our truth, and explorations of how to transmute the grief experience into meaning, and even joy.
My hope is to make you feel less alone, and to be a beacon of light and source of information for anyone embarking on this journey.
"We're all just walking each other HOME." - Ram Dass
Nurtured by nature: Letting nature carry the magnitude of our grief
•Nina Rodriguez•Season 1•Episode 14
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"I never understood why when someone dies the bereaved post quotes with photos of nature — waves, sunsets, clouds, rain … and then my brother died. My only sibling.
And I found myself living somewhere between the earth and the sky, crying into the sunset, because I finally understood that nature is the only force capable of holding the magnitude of my grief. " - Nina Rodriguez
In the early years, I found that only nature had the capacity to hold the magnitude of my grief. So I leaned into it.
In this episode, I share a reflection about the power of grief to nurture and transmute our pain, and how moving forward requires us to surrender, slow down, and take tiny steps as we regain our footing around the shattered pieces of loss.
Grief and Light is an award-winning, independent podcast exploring the honest, messy, and deeply human experience of loss. We're on a mission to foster a more grief-informed, hopeful world, one conversation at a time.
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Nature helps us breathe a little easier in early grief
Obon Festival at Morikami
Grief needs an outlet
Who can hold the vastness of my grief?
Cardinals
Nature's power to ground us amidst chaos
What now?
The way forward is through
Tiny steps forward
You have to find the constant
Allow nature to help you carry your grief
SPEAKER_00
You just lost your loved one. Now what? Welcome to the Grief in Life podcast, where we explore this new reality through grief-colored lenses. Openly, authentically, I'm your host, Nina Rodriguez. Let's get started.
I never understood why, when someone dies, the bereaved post quotes with photos of nature, waves, sunsets, clouds, rain. And then my brother died, my only sibling. And I found myself living somewhere between the earth and the sky, crying into the sunset, because I finally understood that nature is the only force capable of holding the magnitude of my grief. The clouds remind me that everything changes and nothing lasts forever. The waves taught me there's a sacred rhythm to life and death. The rain taught me that it's okay to release rivers of tears and to remember that the sun will shine again tomorrow. The breeze reminded me to inhale deeply and feel the elements of the unseen that connect us in this world and the next. The mountains taught me to ground myself in the sacredness of the human experience and the sunset. My sacred sunset that taught me that even the day needs to rest as it prepares to begin again and again.
And those words kept swirling in my mind of grief and nature and the power of nature in the context of grief. A lot of times we're looking for that relief in grief to see how we can get rid of the pain and to see how we can bypass so much of this process that is so painful and feels like it's never going to end. And I remember, especially myself in the early grief, where the only thing that helped me and my parents and my grandparents and my family process the unthinkable, the absence, the deafening silence, the huge void that felt like a thick, oppressive presence. And all the questions that we had along the way, the only thing that helped us breathe a little easier was to be in nature, whatever that looked like. In the early grief, we were living in South Florida. We still are. And in the early grief, I remember going to Morigami. Morigami is the Japanese garden where we're from. It came in very handy when we needed space to breathe. And I think originally it we were looking for our soul tribe. We were looking for people who understood what we were going through in a moment when everything felt disjointed and chaotic. I remember
at the time, my brother passed in September, so then October of that year, they were having the Obon Festival. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly. It's OBON. To my understanding, it's part of a Japanese tradition where the proverbial veil thins for a day, and you can symbolically quote unquote visit with your ancestors and those who have passed for a day. And what that looks like in practice is a beautiful ceremony where they do the line lantern releases into the lake. And then you get to write a message to your loved one in these lanterns. You get to commune with other people, also going through similar experiences, remembering their own ancestors. And you get to do this in a gorgeous setting. Walking through the Japanese garden, partaking in these events was comforting
in a time where everything felt very chaotic. Grief needs something to do. You have all this love, all these unsaid words that need to be expressed, that want to be delivered to your loved one where you no longer know where they're at, what just happened. In our case, my brother passed very suddenly. So we never got to talk about any of these things. It's it was not a slow passing where maybe you got to discuss these nuances and all these fears and concerns and have these conversations. It was just night and day, here today, gone the next moment. And
what do we do with everything that we're left to process along the way? Who can hold the vastness of this? Is it another person? Is there a therapist? Is it a group? Ourselves, our faith. What is it? That answer is going to be very personal. But in our case, it was healing to allow nature to help us carry the magnitude of the grief that we were feeling. And the Japanese garden was one outlet, but so was taking a walk on our neighborhood and slowing down to pay attention to the trees, the birds, especially the birds. I don't know why, but it became such a big thing to pay attention to birds and butterflies and dragonflies. And they just seemed we could go a whole life not noticing them. And then after grief and after loss, suddenly they almost feel like these messengers who could pierce the veil for us and deliver messages to our loved ones. At least that's the way that I saw it. Actually, I'll even add the story the first year. So right after my brother passed, my mom actually decided to create her own version of the Morikami in the backyard. Obviously, her DIY version of it, because it also coincided with COVID and the lockdown happened. So we couldn't go to the Japanese garden. So my mom decided to create her own version of that in the backyard.
And that first year, I remember there were these gorgeous, bright red cardinals that frequented our backyard. And they literally felt like magic, like it was a messenger from beyond saying hello, because we had been in that house for years and never noticed any cardinals. And suddenly there were so many of them. And it was such a welcome surprise, not only because they're beautiful, but because they felt like a connection to wherever my brother was after his passing. And I remember my mom spent quite a bit of time in the backyard, just taking in the breeze and trying to enjoy whatever bit of outdoor space she could. And there was this tree next to where she used to sit. And two cardinals decided to set up their home in this tree. It was so surprising, but they nested and they created their little home. We got them food and they stayed for weeks and they even had babies.
And it was so magical. It was such a magical experience. There's something so grounding about seeing the flow of life, about seeing nature when your life is so chaotic. In loss, in grief, and in trauma, there's such a desperate need to find solid ground in a space that is actively shifting faster than we can catch our breath. And often what we thought we knew no longer serves us. And the person that we would have contacted for answers or for company were to just talk things out is gone into the other realm. It's the person that we lost. So now we're left facing ourselves at a time when we're not ready to do so. We were busy doing life before all of this happened. And we had other plans. But then the ground shifted underneath
our feet. And we're left with the question of what now? That's the question that we sought to answer then. And that's the question that we seek to answer now, one that continues to define at least my personal daily existence. What now? That question has shifted every part of my life from my relationships with my family to my husband to this puppy that I now have, to what I do for a living, to creating this account and the birth of this podcast. And this question of what now has become a sort of blank canvas for me to explore answers or attempt to find answers that I don't not sure that we even really find the answers, but it has been the driving force for everything I've done ever since.
And what I've learned after my brother's passing is that the only way to get through this really crazy life-altering time, and that's putting it lightly, is to walk through it. That was my truth, that is still my truth. And I've found that the only way forward is through. Each journey is unique. That means that nobody can take the steps for us. We have to walk our own path. I used to think, have I been chosen to experience this? And I don't even know if chosen is the right word. That feels a little odd to say, but were we chosen for this particular path? Does that sound right? Does that resonate? The way that I found, especially in the early grief, to gain a solid footing was to focus on the next step, the next
moment, the next breath, and the now. It's like walking a tight rope across the Grand Canyon on a windy day with the sun beaming in your face, making it difficult to see, and wind shaking your solid footing. And the solution, if you've ever seen a tight rope walker, is to focus on whatever feels solid at the time, which is that next piece of solid rope. You have to find footing in the tension of the rope, and you have to take tiny steps forward, balancing yourself as best as possible. You have to slow down. You cannot run across a tight rope. You have to slow down to the most tiny, solid, secure steps that you can under very difficult, strenuous, unusual conditions.
You have to find what is constant. And what's constant, especially in the context of grief, is that when there is chaos, I have found nature is the constant. Nature is constantly changing, but it's also all around us, and it's the one force that can sustain the magnitude of what we're experiencing. And what I mean by that is the wisdom of the stars, the ageless and timeless knowledge of all that has existed before we were even a thought in our parents' imagination and that will continue to exist long after we're gone. To survive grief, especially in the early grief, it's helpful to shorten our gaze on what the future may hold, shortening our psychological timeline, if you will. Gazing too far into the future or even tomorrow can leave us feeling powerless. And so much of navigating through grief is about reclaiming our sovereignty. When we suffer a loss, especially sudden losses, but any loss, we start questioning what we believed in. Does it even hold any more water? Everything has been shattered. All these rules and guidelines for doing life that we thought we understood no longer hold value. So how do we learn to trust ourselves in this context? How do we learn to trust that we can get through this? As the example I was saying earlier, as tightrope walkers, how can we trust ourselves to get through to the other side? And that answer, again, is going to be very personal because grief is so nuanced and each person walks their own typerope differently. And the conditions are different for each person. But what I offer to you is shortening the timeline psychologically, visually, and emotionally, just taking care of your immediate conditions and only focusing on the tiniest step forward. And when I say tiny, I mean tiny. Like, did you drink water that day? Did you get enough sleep? Can you make a little bit more room to create quiet space before you go to sleep? Can you step outside and take a deep breath? I mean tiny, because tiny step after tiny step is how we build the confidence and the trust in ourselves to walk the full tightrope to the other side. That other side is going to look different for everybody. And it may or may not have a particular ending, but the way forward is through. And I want to leave you with this when grief rocks your world to its core, seek stillness in nature. Its wisdom is a reminder of what remains constant amidst chaotic
change. Seek out nature, allow it to carry part of the heaviness for you, allow it to be the room that you need to breathe and to be able to solidify that next tiny step that's going to help you move forward. 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 grief and light, 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.
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