Embracing what is with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

In this heartfelt conversation, award-winning poet and author, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, shares her journey of navigating grief after the sudden loss of her son, Finn, in 2021, followed by the loss of her father. Through poetry and reflection, she explores the themes of grief, surrender, love, the natural world, and the transformative power of writing. The episode delves into the nuances of grief, and the ways in which creativity can serve as a sacred anchoring practice as we learn to meet what is with curiosity, and how to carry our person's "love light" after loss.

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Rosemerry and Nina explore the intricate relationship between grief, praise, and the art of surrender. They delve into how moments of beauty and connection can arise even in the depths of sorrow, emphasizing the importance of honoring loved ones while navigating personal loss. Through poetry and personal anecdotes, they illustrate the duality of joy and grief, and the grace found in surrendering to life's challenges, as we're flooded with "the relentless truth of what is". The discussion culminates in a reflection on the complexity of emotions and the healing power of words.

Takeaways:

• Surrender is the surest medicine that exists.
• Grief thrusts you into living in the "and".
• Writing became a practice of meeting each moment with wonderment.
• The story of grief is nonlinear and ever-changing.
• Love continues to grow even after loss.
• Finding joy is a possibility, even in grief.
• Asking questions can open doors to new perspectives.
• We can witness our own grief from a third-person perspective.
• Praise can be a way of embracing life as it is.
• The Unfolding reflects the spectrum of grief and love. 
• Surrendering to life's challenges can lead to profound insights.
• Life and love happen through us.
• Our loved ones leave us their "love light" to carry.
• The heart can hold multiple emotions simultaneously.
• Grief can deepen our sensitivity and connection to life.
• Art and poetry can be powerful tools in life and grief.
• Creating new words can help articulate complex emotions.

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Connect with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer:

• @rosemerry.trommer
• wordwoman.com
• Evermore
• Purchase her Books
• Buy The Unfolding
• Sign up to receive a free daily poem

Connect with Nina Rodriguez:

• @griefandlight
• griefandlight.com
• 1:1 Grief Support

Disclaimer: griefandlight.com/safetyanddisclaimers

Chapters

• 0:00 Preview & Intro song
• 1:12 "The medicine of surrender" poem reading
• 2:45 Introduction, Meet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
• 7:56 "He has given you his love light to carry"
• 12:20 The sacred practice of showing up with wonder
• 16:54 "The Invitation" poem reading
• 19:55 Shifting towards "I get to"
• 23:22 Accessing joy after loss
• 25:52 From uncertainty to possibility
• 29:44 The Unfolding
• 38:54 Can you say yes to the world as it is?
• 40:49 Autonomic Life
• 44:15 The cost of awareness & being open to the gift
• 45:37 "Warning Label" poem reading & Interpretation
• 48:17 "Perspective" poem reading & Interpretation
• 52:36 Nurturing my daughter through grief
• 55:22 "The One Who Thrives" poem reading & discussion
• 57:39 Felicitreza
• 58:32 "For When People Ask" poem reading
• 1:00:14 Connect with Rosemerry

Transcript

griefandlight (00:00.244)
When he died that day, I was talking to my friend Wendy and she said to me as I was walking through the night in Georgia, love Dove, he has given you his love light to carry. The moment she said that, Nina, a firefly lit up right in front of my face. And I was so astonished by it, you know, that and even in that most desperate

broken moment that there was some small beauty, some little miracle that happened. That little firefly right when she said the word light, which helped cement it for me. And those are the words I wish I could give everyone who's grieving someone that they love that they, and even people we've struggled with by the way, you know, that whatever love they did bring to the world that they have given us their love light.

carry. 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. The Medicine of Surrender.

comes with no spoonful of sugar, no promises, no backup plans, no returns, no insurance. The medicine of surrender never tastes the way you expect, never tastes the same next time. Saldem has the hoped-for effect. And if there is some part of you that thinks it might not be affected, that thinks it might hold back,

That part is, most likely, the first part to be flooded with the relentless truth of what is. Siren.

griefandlight (02:00.162)
the surest medicine that exists. There are infinite side effects. Wonder. Freedom.

Raw-ness. It's like opening the dictionary to the word heaven or obliteration and knowing it's the same thing. It's like playing spin the bottle with life and you French kiss whatever you get. It's the only remedy that can help you be whole. The only real medicine there is.

griefandlight (02:45.998)
Thank you. Welcome everybody. That beautiful poem was an excerpt from the book, The Unfolding by today's Rosemary Watola Tromer, who is an award-winning poet and author, and she has been sharing one poem a day since 2006, a practice that deeply supported her after the loss of her teenage son, in 2021.

and her father shortly thereafter. Her latest collection of poems, The Unfolding, explores the themes of grief, love, and the natural world. Rosemary also co-hosts multiple creative workshops and serves as the first poet laureate for Evermore, helping others explore grief and wonder through poetry. Her written art has been featured in O Magazine, PBS NewsHour, American Life Poetry, Carnegie Hall,

and on river rocks that she leaves around town. You are in for a treat today. So settle in, notice what arises from this conversation. It is an absolute honor. Rosemary, welcome to the Grief in Light podcast. Thank you. Thank you, Nina. I am so glad to be here. And I just want to start by saying how much I love what you do, starting just with the name of your podcast, bringing in both grief and light together. I just...

Thank you. Thank you for exactly what you're doing. Thank you for that. And thank you for the beautiful work you've been doing and continue to do. Speaking of this and that grief and light, say grief thrusts you into living in the end. This beautiful collection of poems that you just released this past October is touching. It's making it tangible. It's making that in between that liminality aspect of grief very tangible, very real and very honest. So thank you for

for your beautiful work. And I couldn't help but notice that your son was born September 11. My brother passed on September 11. There's an interesting connection there and like all of life's interesting nuance and miracles and things we don't quite understand there. I see a beginning there and a closing there all on the same date. So I just want to honor that. And I want to honor you and your beautiful son through what we're doing here today. Thank you. Thank you for that.

griefandlight (05:10.762)
That is a sweet coincidence, just that there it is, the birth and the death and how it all comes through. Yeah. Definitely. And I want to start with something your friend Wendy said, which is he gave you his love light to carry. He gave you his love light to carry. With that, share a little bit about who was Finn and how you carry his love light today. What a beautiful question. So Finn.

was my son born September 11th of 2004. And I think we could say that he came into the world, waited. It wasn't easy, I think, from the very beginning to be Finn. And he struggled with just being here. His whole first year he cried, screamed really. Clearly was uncomfortable being in a body and tried to find.

solutions. So I think just even the way he came in uneasy and also somehow so brilliant, Nina, almost as if the difficulty he had being in the world, he brought that much more shine just to be able to show up with that much darkness. And he was this kind of incredible light bringer, this amazing beacon of a boy.

who was so funny and smart and talented and like so alive in his body. He was a dancer, a tap dancer in hip hop and ballet. And, you know, he somehow just excelled at anything he tried. You he and I took fencing lessons and he won the fencing tournament like in his first, you know, year of fencing. It was just, he built computers and, made them beautiful also. And, you know, just this kind of...

He doesn't even sound real to me sometimes when I talk about all the things that he did and the ways that he was. And was also just had this kind of insatiability, this piece of him that was always wanting to be filled that was never filled. this kind of, his first word was shadow. Not mom, not dad, nothing single syllable even.

griefandlight (07:34.008)
You know, so I think that...

We can say that it wasn't a surprise that he died. That doesn't mean that,

We were aware that he'd been very upset and struggling for a long time, for years. We'd been working to keep him here.

When he died that day, I was talking to my friend Wendy and she said to me, as I was walking through the night in Georgia, love Dove, he has given you his love light to carry. The moment she said that, Nina, a firefly lit up right in front of my face. And I was so astonished by it, you know, and even in that most

desperate broken moment that there was some small beauty, some little miracle that happened. That little firefly right when she said the word light, which helped cement it for me. And those are the words I wish I could give everyone who's grieving someone that they love that they, and even people we've struggled with by the way, you know, that whatever love they did bring to the world that they have given us their love light.

griefandlight (08:54.2)
to carry and how do we carry that forward? Certainly in part, I do that through writing, you know, but in just such a way, in such a minute to minute way, I feel like the love that he had for the natural world, the kind of excitement he had just like, he loved standing there by the river and just throwing rocks and watching them splash. Like even as a, you know, a grown-

You know, when he was 16, he would have found no less delight in that than when he was two. You know, and he had just that ability to have this simple joy and be so excited about it. You know, I think that that's another way that I carry his love light is just by finding that joy, you know, remembering. And I talk to him constantly like, sweetheart, look at the leaves today.

That's beautiful. Thank you for sharing those memories and his energy with us. It comes through clearly. I can't help but notice the similarities, like once again, between, you know, and his personality, same with my brother. They were these gentle souls that at the same time maybe, or let me speak for my brother, he was this gentle soul, loved life, kindness. He said, you said something about how your son loved the simplicity of life. My brother used to say, likes little pleasures, LLPs.

And he meant he used to not be able to be indoors on a sunny day. The rock, he always carried a rock with him. And I'll insert a small joke that's not really funny. It's funny, but not funny. He used to carry this rock. And we always joked around like, what does that rock mean to you? We don't get it. He's like, it's for me to know. It's for me to know. And my mom said, you know, one of these things that.

retroactively sounds very different, but in the time it was just supposed to be funny and lighthearted. said, could you imagine if you're gone one day and like, we never found out what this rock meant to you. And we didn't know he was going to obviously leave us earlier than we expected. And we still don't know what this rock meant. So it's so interesting to hear and say that, you know, to hear your story about Finn, about how he liked throwing rocks in the lake. So it's just these, these.

griefandlight (11:13.166)
souls who really just know how to appreciate the simplicity and those little moments in life that sounds like. Nina, I love this story about your brother and about this wonderment that you get to live with still, What was that rock for? And to get to continue to live with that mystery that he continues to keep that secret. There's a real sweetness in that. That would be a really good launching point for a poem, by the way.

What secrets did you keep? And the wonder that we continued, the things that we wonder that we will never know, but the aliveness in the wondering, right? How even just that wondering continues to bring that loved one and their sweetness, their secrets, how it brings them back to us. I'll have to play with that idea and do some writing about that. Thank you for that inspiration.

And there's the before, there's the after, there's the practice that you had with your writing before any of this, before you could have imagined any of this would have happened and how that's shifted in, you know, since Fin's passing in 2021. Say whatever you'd like around that. And I also invite you to, you'd be a little redundant here, to read the invitation, which is a beautiful poem from your previous published collection. you start wherever you'd like, All right. So.

Maybe I'll start with reading that poem, The Invitation. well, no, I'll start with the practice. So I began writing daily poems when Finn was two. And it was at the time, it began as a practice about writing poems. I thought that that was what it was. It was to write poems. But very soon I understood that it was really a practice of showing up.

It's a very different thing. The poem is a byproduct for the real practice, which is just showing up to wonder what's here, what's here. And I'd say, too, Nina, kind of an evolving curiosity about what's true, what's here, what's true, and how do I meet this moment? How do I meet this moment? The blessing, then, of having that practice in place when Finn died was that I'd had years of

griefandlight (13:39.968)
showing up with wonder.

and openness so that when he did die in this most difficult period of time, I actually stopped writing for seven weeks after he died. But I didn't stop showing up. I still had that practice of wondering what's here, that curiosity about what am I feeling? What am I thinking? What's happening outside of me? And I feel like because of that practice, I was able to continue to stay open throughout.

And with lots of help, by the way, too. Like, feel like that was... But I wanted to stay open. Maybe we could say that. Like, I wanted to stay open and I had this kind of continual want, longing to kind of turn toward what was most difficult and meet it any way I could with lots of help. Let's be clear about that,

Then in those 49 days after Finn died that I wasn't writing, I was aware that the writing, was too soon. in a way, writing solidifies things. It changes how we meet that moment. It's like we put a frame on that moment and then it becomes the way we remember it. And I remember thinking that I wanted that experience to be.

as fluid as it was because it kept changing so quickly. Who I was, how I was meeting it, my understanding of who he was. I just wanted it to not get stuck, not become... That's not a verb, but I want it to be one. That makes perfect sense actually.

griefandlight (15:26.316)
When I did finally start writing again, as I thought it would, it just all of a sudden it was time. And then I start writing again every day. What shifted in me, I think, or at least a way that poetry helped me during that time was that it did then become a way to keep a record of just how much grief changed from moment to moment to moment. A spaciousness that's available sometimes or a shut down-ness and the way we can meet it with kind of almost an ecstasy. I wouldn't have known that before, right?

now I do. And the way we can meet it, it's so humbly and broken. so this huge spectrum of possible ways to show up for grief, the writing helped me see, look how it is today, and it's different today, and it's different today, or moment to moment to moment. As you and I know too, it's so different, not just for us moment to moment, but it's so different for everyone. And I think that the

writing became a record of that, of that full spectrum that was available.

So then this poem, The Invitation, I think is an example of that, of how we can tell ourselves a story and get stuck in that story sometimes. This is how it is. And this is a poem about how that story changed.

griefandlight (16:57.826)
the invitation.

griefandlight (17:01.919)
Two nights after he died. All night, I heard the same one line story on repeat.

I am the woman whose son took his life.

The words felt full of self-pity, filled me with hopelessness, doom. And then a voice came, a woman's voice just before dawn. And it gave me a new shade of truth.

I am the woman who learns how to love him now that he's gone.

It did not change the facts, but it changed everything about how I met the facts. Over a hundred days later, over three years later, I am still learning.

griefandlight (17:59.512)
what it means to love him. How love is an ocean, a wildfire, a crumb. How commitment to love changes me. It changes everyone, invites us to bring our best. Love is wine, is trampoline, is an infinite chorus in which I am sung. I am the woman who learns how to love him. Now,

that he is gone. May I always be learning how to love. Like a cave. Like a rough-legged hawk. Like a sun.

griefandlight (18:47.524)
thank you.

griefandlight (18:53.966)
just want to give it a moment to be felt. And if you're a brave mother and you're listening to this, then I'm sure that you can unfortunately resonate all too well with the words. And yet the invitation is exactly that. It invites you to a new perspective from.

It sounds like what I initially felt is from this happened to me and then this is how I get to and that subtle shift can make a world of difference. I would love for you to say whatever you'd like about that shift that happened for you and what that looks like for you now. Nina, you said it so beautifully. That is what happened. I hadn't thought of it that way before, but that's exactly the essence of it. This is what happened to me. That story, you know, had a lot of

Pity, blame, shame. You know, was it?

It didn't feel any good to wear it, right? I'm the woman who learns how to love him now that he's gone. Like I say in the poem, it didn't change the facts. He was still gone. But I could remember so well lying in that hotel bed.

not sleeping and having that, it just, like the relief that it flooded me with this.

griefandlight (20:21.014)
love. It flooded me with love. It flooded me with grace. It flooded me with, I'm going to say purpose, but I only mean purpose in that it offered a way forward that

that I wanted to go forward, that I could say yes to, that I could be on board with, that I wasn't resistant to. And that persisted. I'm so grateful that that happened two days after he died. But it doesn't matter when it happens. I think it just matters that it happens. And does it matter if it happens ongoingly or just in a moment?

Once we know something once, then we can't not know it, right? So to know in that moment that love was possible, that meeting him, that meeting myself, that meeting this situation with so much love was possible. I couldn't not know that. And this continues to give a path forward for me. How do I continue to shine his love light? How do I continue to love him? How does this relationship continue to grow? How do I still learn from him?

That's still true today.

Thank you for pointing out that nuance. And I always want to offer a word of caution that it's not like, this is the path that you should as a bereaved anything, mother, bereaved sibling, as a griever. There's no should and there's no clear path. And I love that you named it the invitation because it's exactly that. And for whatever it's worth, if somebody's listening and feels, especially in the early raw.

griefandlight (22:06.848)
stage of grief, that very acute phase and that shock and everything. There is comfort in staying there initially because it's the closeness of they were here, now they're not. I don't want to step away, not even an inch away from this place because I'm afraid I'm going to lose them. There's that concern that a lot of grievers express. And if and when a person is ready, there's also this additional perspective that how we move forward,

can be deeply impacted by the story we tell ourselves. So shifting from this happened to me to I get to, which is not easy and it doesn't happen overnight. For some people it takes years and I just want to make room for that as well. I think is a very powerful shift that can add to how we move forward and dare I say, let's a little bit of light in the process along the way.

lets that light in, right? And it's not that that light isn't not already there, right? That light is already there. It's just our capacity to be, there it is. I noticed this again and again in myself, right? It's not that the joy wasn't there. It was just that I couldn't, for whatever reason, I wasn't available to it. And on that point, how were you able to access it?

don't see that I could ever be happy again is something I hear, or how can I ever be happy again, or I just have to accept that my happiest days are now behind me. So I hear statements like that. How would you offer to somebody in deep grief a way to access that possibility of joy even? So I guess I have a couple of ideas. I do feel like for me, it...

I think, like I say, because of that practice I had in place, that there was a space already made for wanting to see that. And also, I think a practice that was already in place for paradox, for the and that you talk about.

griefandlight (24:26.508)
so that even on that first day with Wendy and I could see that firefly and be in amazement. And I think wonder, awe.

That is a doorway, right? That's a doorway.

If that door isn't even open at all, then one way I think to meet it, I know this myself through poetry, is to ask a question then. Is there a door? Is there a door to joy? Is there a door to wonder? How does that door open? So that even, there's no way to pretend you're in that place. You can't pretend it into being.

But I do think you can wonder it into being, think that we can turn toward it, even if it's just to understand that there's a possibility for it, even if we're not in that possibility. And in that way, we can be true to where we are. There is no wonder for me right now. So can we turn it into, it true that my happiest days are over? Is it true that I will never be happy again? Now just adding that little bit of uncertainty.

griefandlight (25:43.246)
creates the possibility that it happens. Now there's a possibility. I'm not saying it happened. I'm just saying we've created that aperture. Thank you for that. I just had an aha moment as you were saying that. we're now faced with the biggest uncertainty after loss. You could leverage that same uncertainty in your favor in the form of phrasing it as a question to open yourself up to possibility. So that same energy of uncertainty could be

used, leveraged, can become something that can actually help us at least face the door if we cannot open it in that moment. That was very powerful. Thank you for that. Well, thank you, Nina. And then the other thing that comes to mind too is to, I do this a lot in my own writing, where I write not only from the point of view that I'm in, like I'm the experiencer, right? I'm not happy.

But if we can write from a third person point of view, as if we're watching ourselves, she wasn't happy. She didn't think she would ever find happiness again. She thought that all her days of happiness were over. The moment we step out of the self and become a witness to the self, again,

We see beyond the wall of I will never be happy and we can see into the world where happiness actually does exist. She's just not in it. But we can from that witnessing place. So this is a little bit of a trick, right? I mean, you're still you. But there is a part of us that is capable of that vision to see the self in the third person and tell that story when that happens.

Just that little stepping out of the self, stepping out of our own story helps us to see, it's a story. I'm not trying to diminish it in any way, the story. Of course, it's essential, but there's also a story much larger than our story, and now we can see that. And there's also perhaps a story-less realm where things just are.

griefandlight (28:05.078)
I love that. It's expanding our capacity through distancing ourselves from the immediate situation as much as possible to allow room for possibility. That's beautiful. And definitely I could see how that could be a very sacred practice. And I also heard you say that you had this anchor, your daily practice of writing. Our anchors are exactly that in times of turmoil and change and uncertainty. And when everything gets messy and disjointed, it's that's, you know, the eye of the storm.

while we figure out our next step. So leaning into whatever that looks like to you. So in your case, was writing to somebody else that may be something else. So just leaning into that can be helpful as we move forward. You're so right. mean, for me, the practice was writing, but I think any practice that brings you into the present, any practice that has any amount of wonder or curiosity in it, any of the arts or like, was her name Shaw, your last guest?

The comedian. Like even bringing humor, right? Even bringing humor to touch it, know, in comedy. was... I mean, there's so many ways to do this right. Do know, each of us is going to have our own path, but any path that involves curiosity, wonder, and making, right? Creating, I think is going to...

That generative quality is, I think, what helps us to see beyond our story. Beautiful. That first poem that you read, The Invitation, was from your previous publication. What was needing to be born in the unfolding? Because there's a lot to unpack. I love the way that you wrote it. There's a flow to it. For the listeners, I highly suggest going in order because it is very intentionally created and there's a beautiful flow to it. But tell us what wanted to be born and

what the 11 powers of the universe have to do with your beautiful poetry. Thank you, Mina. Well, I'll say that it was a surprise, this book, in terms of what it ended up being. At first, I really thought it was going to be... When All the Honey came out, I knew I wasn't ready. I didn't have enough perspective at the time to have a book just about grief. And it has a broad spectrum of poems in it that are silly even.

griefandlight (30:30.798)
And also, know, devastating, you know, like a poem about two nights after Finn died. Then the next book I thought, okay, I've had more time. Maybe I do have enough perspective now, and certainly enough poems, you know, to write a book that's just about grief. And I sat down, honestly, that thought lasted probably less than five minutes once I actually sat down to create that book because I realized

that to be true to my own experience would be to say it isn't just relentlessly sad. There is so much here. The poems are all written since Finn and Dad died. So they're all written in the last three years, but they also have

griefandlight (31:20.49)
You know, a lot about the natural world. There's a lot about, you know, my husband and my daughter. And they're there because those are the poems I've been writing, you know, even though, as I say in the introduction, that they're all steeped in grief or maybe in the key of grief. If grief is the baseline, then the melody is made of praise and praise is made of falling in love with the world over and over and over.

So originally I thought, okay, how do I pull these poems together then? Like how do they stay? And I have been for many years kind of obsessed with Brian Swim's 11 powers of the universe. The 11 powers begin with seamlessness, then centration, allurement, homeostasis that goes through cataclysm and then trans...

mutation, transformation, interrelatedness, it ends in radiance. So there's these 11 powers and they are how everything in our universe was created. Of course, we are the universe. We are. So we have that in ourselves also. And all of these powers is what it is to be a human. It's how we create, it's how we've been created, it's how we meet the world. So I thought, okay, what would happen if I ordered the poems in this way?

I was thrilled with it because I think it allows for the story arc to unfold in a very nonlinear way, just like Reef, very nonlinear. There's no, it starts here and it could be so, and yet so many of these pieces are going to be present at some point, we're going to be feeling. So the editor didn't like my idea very much. He's like, you know, that's really kind of complicated.

No, I loved it. I felt it was very true and authentic to the experience of recent life. So I really actually appreciate it. I got to keep it, but it made it invisible. You don't know it's there until you get to the end of the book. And if you read the back of the book, the afterwards, then you're like, look at that. So then what ended up framing the book, he said, Rosemary, these are all praise poems, which...

griefandlight (33:43.358)
Nina, you know, sometimes you need someone else to see what's right in front of you. I didn't know it myself until he said it and then I thought, of course they are. Yes, that's exactly what these are. Praise poems, which is to say this ability to fall in love with the world. So I started thinking, well, okay, you know, how, what words do we have for praise? my goodness, friends, surprisingly few. And they're just embarrassing, really like laud, you know, commend.

I was like, I'm not creating a book of poems about laud and commend. So I created my own language, kind of like you created your own word, the Felicitresa. So I created my own words for praise. The first is veraluia, coming from Latin veritas, which means truth, hallelujah, and putting them together, the praise that comes when we say yes to the world the way it is.

not the way we wish it would be. Or sorrow, which is sorrow plus om, om is the Hindu syllable for ascent, like yes, or it's affirmation. like affirming the sorrow, where is the affirmation in that sorrow? What kind of praise is available to us only in our deepest moments of grief or even just our minor irritations? Or how is it that these moments that we think

I don't know if praise is possible here, but they actually generate their own.

praise that that's only possible then because we know this one thing, we're able to know this other. So there are four words like that in the book and it's all built then around praise even though they are all poems written since my son and father died. And it's verluia, sorum, semunion, and pangloria. What is semunion? So semunion, sum, is the Indo-European root for sing.

griefandlight (35:45.58)
And union is union. So the singing of together. So in my mind, this is the praise that rises when we realize that we are really truly connected to everything, even the things we would maybe rather not be connected to. And then pan-Gloria has kind of a dual. One is when we realize pan meaning all from Greek and then Gloria meaning glorial. So this idea that

that there is opportunity for praise absolutely everywhere, that everything has something in it that we could praise. But this idea then that even the places we would rather not find praise or we think, no, there's nothing possible there. Yes, even there, there's the opportunity for praise to fall in love with the world. It's beautiful and it definitely is. We're all of it in its fullness and in its honest and true form.

Your ability to observe from the macro perspective to the micro perspective is so beautiful and it's why you're an award-winning poet, and so talented. As I was reading all of them, I almost felt like I know exactly what your home looks like in a non-creepy way. I can envision your walks in nature. I can envision your hikes with your friends. I can envision you and your mom cooking and...

you know, I could almost see you in the kitchen gazing into nothingness, having that moment with your son where all the ghosts pop up, meaning, you know, like all the memories of him are surrounding you. And it's like, I'm there, I'm there with you. And I see the bird's eye view, the eagle's eye view, maybe even the, you know, I'm visualizing like when from an astronaut out of space, looking back on Earth, you know, like the just this really big picture angle of what life is all about.

and then coming right back in and looking at a bumblebee and what the bumblebee is doing with the flower and the pollen. You know what mean? So it's just this macro-micro dance and everything in between. So rich and real, there are parts that are of the everyday world.

griefandlight (37:55.486)
And then there's parts that are so profound and I had to just kind of sit with that thought. You lace, you weave so many thoughts together, so many concepts, so many lived experiences, and it's just such a treat, it's such a journey. And one theme that kept coming up is just that art of surrender, which is the poem that you read at the beginning, and how you found this space of surrender, this practice of surrender in all aspects of your grief, early, middle, later.

gaining perspective. So I would love for you to read a warning label, which is one of the ones that really stood out to me. Well, first, that's probably one of my favorite descriptions anyone's ever given me of reading the poems, like zooming out into outer space and then coming right into the kitchen. thank you for that. I didn't know that's I was aspiring to, but that is exactly what I was aspiring to. So thank you for that.

And I think, you know, in terms of surrender, I mean, who wants it, right? I don't think any of us do, at least in the beginning. Like, I think that for quite a few years, maybe over at least 10, maybe more before Finn died, I, for sure more, I had been working with a spiritual teacher, Joy Sharp.

There were several teachings that are easy for me to just say. They're easy to say and much harder to live into. But one thing she would say often is, if it could be any other way, it would be.

This has helped me enormously. It isn't that other way. It is this way. And then another thing she often says, can you say yes to the world as it is? Wow. That invitation again and again and again, can you say yes to the world as it is? Or this one that no one wants to know that everything, everything and everyone we love can and will be taken from us.

griefandlight (40:10.488)
Who wants to know any of these truths? Nobody wants to know these things, and yet they are so deeply true.

So I'm so grateful that I had, when the stakes were much lower, a lot of practice, meeting some of these truths, so that when the stakes were higher, it's not that it made it easy or probably easier. I don't think there was anything easy about it. I do think, though, that it gave me a framework.

for surrender. And my own experience too, Nina, was that surrender was even just a little bit too much agency. Like I even feel like when we say I surrender, like there's some part of us that's on board with that surrendering, like there's a pattern of surrendering. And I remember that right after Finn died, I felt like I had no agency. There was zero agent. Like I couldn't anything at all.

So to say that I was surrendering was even like too much agency. Like there wasn't a part of me that was like, I surrender. It was more like I was obliterated and any part of me that could have said I was, I surrender, she was gone too. Like I was so obliterated.

griefandlight (41:31.168)
And there's a grace in that obliteration. When that happened and I was aware that that was happening, I became aware that life itself was living through me, that I was a conduit for life moving through and that I...

I didn't have to do anything. I couldn't and I didn't have to. That I could just be on board for life to move through. And then more of that happened and beyond life to move through, we could even say for love itself to move through. And I noticed in certain situations that were so difficult, I couldn't fathom how I was going to live through them. That if I did nothing, that love moved through me and did everything for me. I had that.

just most glorious experience of being lived. I called it autonomic life, you know, like the way that the lungs do what the lungs do and the heart does what the heart does without any, it asks nothing of us, it just happens. That's what I felt like, like love came in and loved through me.

Like I said earlier, now that I know that's possible, there's no way to not know that's possible. Like I have all kinds of agency now. I can do things again, you know, spend three years. Right. But I still know what that is to be lived by life. And what a gift, what grace, what astonishing grace that is. That was a big answer. But no, love it. just want your words. There's so much there that I want them to

be felt because it's so true. Life was happening through you and it was at the same time uplifting you and it's just life. When we look at it, there is so little we actually have the type of agency that we think or that we wish upon. So I acknowledge and I hear you when you say that the surrender, it almost sounds like it's something I chose when how much agency do we have in all of this, right?

griefandlight (43:35.89)
And there are some parts that you get to see an honor and if surrendering is a pool, then just jumping in it or gently floating on it and allowing yourself to see things for what they are. And that is not an easy thing to do. The more we lean into it, the more we can see the sacredness of life for what it is. That's ironically a beautiful place to be and letting go of what we think is and being with what is.

Astonishingly beautiful, Nina. And I remember a moment, you know, being so alive with it, right? I was so alive with that grace. I don't know what else to call it. And I remember, you know, as I talking out loud saying to Finn,

You know, I'm so grateful for this but I'd give it all back if if I could right if I could have you back Although they also was like but I but I wouldn't because I wouldn't want him back in the kind of misery he was in so You know, and also by the way, we actually don't get to bargain with life this way. Yeah, you know there was this kind of

magical thinking in that as if it could ever happen that way. Of course it couldn't. So maybe there was some part of me that was feeling guilt around, know, or just like, I don't know about guilt, but just aware of the cost, the cost of that kind of beauty, the cost of that kind of awareness of how carried we are by love, the cost of it was so great.

griefandlight (45:13.258)
You know, who could ask for this, Nina? And yet, the gift of it is so enormous, so receiving the gift of it, you know, being open to the gift of it, and knowing the price was so horrible that... And the gift is so astonishing.

Thank you. right. Well, the tears are a good lead into warning label. It's all welcome here. Thank you for your honesty. Warning label. In the small print that doesn't appear on my wrist when you shake my hand, it says, not advised for those with low tolerance to weeping. It says, for those allergic to intimacy, low dosage recommended.

It says, close contact is associated with a high risk of being included as a subject in poems. blah, blah, blah. Everything comes with a warning label these days. So many potential risks when we connect, like irrational happiness, like loss, like Greece, like a deepening love.

that will never go away.

griefandlight (46:40.224)
I love that one. That is, you know, I feel like grief has made me this very sensitive person. A lot of people say that after grief, you want to be in the rawness of it. You want to be in the honesty. You know, it sheds all these layers of superficiality and resonate with what's really authentic. And that could be a lot for somebody who perhaps hasn't experienced a loss or hasn't experienced the depths of life, a warning label.

But I kind of like it here. I like it here. Thank you for that. Yeah. Thank you for asking me to read it. I was joking with an audience last night that part of me wishes we did come with warning labels. But part of me is just so grateful we don't. And the way that people open, the more we know them, the more we come to say, this is who you are. this is who you are. Which is, of course, how that intimacy is.

created. And how we get to learn from other people. Imagine if there was everybody had a warning label and then we say, no, not that one. Yeah, not even one. We would be deprived of the richness of what we perhaps was different from us or what we don't have and could learn through them. I love that we miss. Yeah. What would we miss? Yes. I I love this. This is an exercise on

asking the deeper questions and leaning in further with curiosity. So I might take this on as a practice. speaking of which, gaining perspective, this is one of my favorite ones. Okay, this poem is Perspective.

And the mountain rose and eroded completely. And the great sea flooded all. And the great sea left. And the great sea flooded and left again. And the land was forced up and then pulled from both sides until the center broke and slid down to create a great rift. And the volcano spewed lava and ash covered all. And the glaciers scrubbed and the rocks avalanched and the earth slumped. And today I sit in the valley.

griefandlight (48:53.206)
and stare at the mountain with a dusting of white on its wide shoulders, light gathering in its clefts, and I think, my God, isn't it peaceful?

griefandlight (49:09.356)
I just love, love, that one. I felt like I was there staring at the same scenery and being like, my gosh, you're absolutely right. This piece was created by so much chaos, whether it was such a people, just by it almost felt violent when I was reading it. was like, my gosh, destruction and lava and this and earthquakes and all the ships, all the ships to create this moment of peace. So it's all depends on where you're looking at it. Thank you for that. Wow.

Yeah, I'm so glad you chose that. And the day that I wrote it, by the way, I was in the Chauvinot Valley, which is in the middle of Western Colorado, and looking at, I think it was Mount Princeton. And my mother was in the ICU, and I was leaving that day from the workshop to get to be with her. So I was in this state of

deep upheaval myself about my mom, is she okay? know, it had this back and forth. She's fine, she's not, she's fine, she's not. Finally I was like, my God, I've got to be there. So I'm in this great upheaval and meanwhile I'm sitting in this beautiful, peaceful place. So I was so aware of it inside of me. And I think that's the example too, you know, like we were talking about earlier of how do you notice what's outside of you and what's inside of you and what, how the...

how the two of them are having a conversation. And in this case, letting it be the kind of the flip, like it seemed peaceful on the outside and tumultuous on the inside. And I was able to find that intersection by imagining back in time to when it was so tumultuous, so upended. now so peaceful. Thank you. And it's interesting how, and I hope your mom is OK now. She's She's fine. a year later. And thank you for how she's fine. Good.

And yet it was because perhaps you were in that energetic state that you were able to see that. I think that's beautiful because I live in Florida. There's no mountains here, but I used to live in Oregon. And that was one of my favorite things, just the stillness, the peace that I felt in the mountains and in the forest. But knowing that they were created from such chaos, I really appreciate that. And even when I have a moment of stillness and peace,

griefandlight (51:33.452)
I can appreciate it so much more because I know chaos and certainty and feeling like you're standing on water rapids. The contrast is so important to be able to appreciate what is when it is in its current form. So if you have peace, if you have a moment of solitude, if you have a moment of joy, it just becomes that much more valuable. And like you said earlier, what it costs, right? We like to have this magical thinking that maybe we...

we have some kind of option or we had some kind of option and that's just not the case. Like they are no longer with us. So what do we do with this time we have now? What perspective do we give it? How do we give it meaning? What meaningful question. Yeah. Thank you. I want to give you the opportunity to read the one that or the ones that you feel like sharing because I know I have a list, but unfortunately you don't have all this time. want to be respectful of your time.

Well, thank you. Maybe this one for my daughter. I guess I want to say that I'm very aware that I still have a child and that it's so important to...

continue to honor her and her path. And I think I became aware instantly, truly that same day that Finn died, I remembered I couldn't eat and I was, you know, distressed and my daughter said, Mom, you need to eat. And I thought, okay, like you figure out how to eat food. There is no way you let this girl worry about you.

Like she needs to be able to have her own path through this without thinking that she needs to take care of you. So it was an immediate invitation into self-care, self-compassion, self-fucking-self.

griefandlight (53:34.114)
self-care so that

I guess I was in that moment then aware not only of how I needed to care for myself, but how important it was for me to care for her. And part of how that looked was making sure that as I was giving all of this attention to my own grief for him, that I didn't stop nurturing her in her blossoming. And I guess I'm saying the same thing six times in different ways.

I get it. And that's one thing I really noticed and appreciated. You see her, I felt like you were really seeing your daughter and your husband and your mom. you so you were in your own grief and you were trying to unfold and figure your own reality and lean into your curiosity. You also saw them so profoundly. So I do want to acknowledge that you did that beautifully for those

loved ones around you. Thank you, Nina. Thank you. Yeah, even the other day, meaning this summer, I was aware that I was taking flowers to the cemetery. I grow flowers in the garden, a lot of them, and I would take flowers to Finn's grave. And early on this summer, was like, why would you take flowers only to your dead child? And I started putting flowers in Vivian's room every time I would set or even be done.

times that I would send them to take them to Finn. just noticing where that, because it makes so much sense, right, that our attention is gone to this place that's getting, that hurts, right? That what hurts the most gets the most attention in a lot of ways. so I was glad for that. This is for Vivian, the one who thrives. And I wrote it on the year anniversary of Finn's death.

griefandlight (55:30.818)
She has learned to bloom like the tuberose, opening in the light, but becoming more potent in the dark. Sweet scent of honey. Tenacious scent of jasmine, the hard one, scent of hope. Scent of the one who has learned to thrive when thriving doesn't feel possible. Scent of resilience.

Scent of I can. Scent of the one who finds grace on the inside. Scent of elusive beauty. Scent of the one who meets the soils made of sorrow. Who brings to the world a gift as astonishing as a night blooming flower. A gift as honest as the moon.

beautiful, beautiful. As a bereaved sister, Vivian, I send you my love and I know this is not easy, your words are a balm to the soul of so many and to this experience. I always felt like living in the in and, in the in between, I always felt like I was living in between spirit and earth. And how do you even put words to that experience? These are the words to this experience. So thank you for this gift.

It is a beautiful, beautiful read. is powerful. It is heartfelt. I cried. I laughed. I felt all the emotions. So if somebody is going through deep grief or just grief in general, or wants to get curious about what this experience is and can be, this is an invitation to read the unfolding and all the other beautiful works. So thank you very much, Rosemary. Thank you for being you. I want to give you the opportunity to

Add anything that you feel would make this conversation complete for today. feel like no conversation's ever truly complete, but just for today. Say whatever's in your heart and whatever's pending for you to share. Well, I wanted to share a last poem, Nina, that was inspired by wanting a word that you created. So I've been delighted listening to your podcast.

griefandlight (57:51.826)
Thank you. Especially when I found in your second episode where you created this word. And for people who haven't heard your word yet, do you want to say it and explain a little bit of what it is? Sure. So it's felicitresa. It's a Spanish compound word of felicidad, which is joy. Let me say that again. My dog is like walking around right now. So it's a compound word in Spanish, felicidad and tristeza. And it's

Felicitresa. So it's joy grief, essentially, but without the hyphen. So it's a blend of the two. And this is the word that I longed for when I wrote this poem. The poem is called For When People Ask.

But and it's really, you I think you, anyone listening to this podcast, I'm sure had this experience of people come up to you with just the best of intentions, you know, and they say, how are you? What are you supposed to say? For when people ask, I want a word that means OK and not OK. More than that, a word that means devastated and

stunned with joy. I want the word that says, I feel it all, all at once. The heart is not like a songbird singing only one note at a time. More like a Tuvan throat singer, able to sing both a drone and simultaneously, two or three harmonics high above it. A sound the Tuvans say that gives the impression of wind swirling among rocks. The heart.

understands swirl. How the churning of opposite feelings weaves through us like an insistent breeze, leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves, blesses us with paradox, so we might walk more openly into this world so rife with devastation, this world so ripe with joy.

griefandlight (01:00:07.928)
Felicitresa. Thank you so much for that. That was beautiful. you. No, thank you, Rosemary. And where can people find your book? Where can they find more information and anything else that maybe is coming up for you this year? OK. Well, you can find the daily poems. I do a crazy thing. I write them and put them into the world every day. You can find them on my blog, which is 100fallingveils.com. You can also listen to them every day curated on an app.

on your phone called Ritual and the program is called The Poetic Path. It's only available on your telephone. There's a small fee for that. The blog is free. And I also offer writing prompts then every day with that. My website is wordwoman.com and on there you can find anything that I'm doing, including in December, I'm doing a program again for Evermore in which we'll be, and Evermore is an incredible group.

bereavement organization, please visit evermore.org and find out more. They have so many resources for people and they also offer these classes that I'm teaching in which you can explore your own grief through writing. if money is in any way an issue, no one's turned away. So you can just ask for an angel ticket and get that.

Well, I guess I just want to say thank you. Thank you so much, Nina, for everything you do. I'm so grateful for this podcast and the way you bring your whole self to it and open up this world of grief and light, just like you say. Thank you. Thank you as well. will link all of that information in the show notes. It has been a treat. This is just the tip of the iceberg, a little sample of the unfolding. So I highly recommend that you get it.

And again, Rosemary, thank you for being you. Thank you for your time and thank you for putting your gifts out into the world that will resonate with so many of us. really, really appreciate you. Thank you, Nina.

griefandlight (01:02:31.286)
or 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.