Befriending the Unknown: Paula Sager on losing her father, Authentic Movement, and writing The Watch

What if grief holds its own wisdom, guiding us towards healing and understanding?

In this episode, host Nina Rodriguez speaks with Paula Sager, writer and teacher of embodied contemplative practices, about the wisdom found in grief and the power of presence in times of loss. 

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Click here to watch on YouTube

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Paula reflects on her father's illness, passing, and the ongoing connection that unfolded afterward. They discuss how mindfulness, movement, and authentic movement practices can support grief by fostering inner listening and honoring the body’s response to loss.

This conversation explores themes of love, letting go, and the mystical moments that can emerge during grief. 

Paula shares insights from her book, The Watch: Time to Witness the Beauty of It All, and invites listeners to embrace unanswered questions with curiosity and compassion. 

Tune in for a heartfelt discussion on finding beauty, connection, and meaning in the midst of sorrow.

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Takeaways:

• Grief can guide us toward wisdom and understanding.
• Being present in grief is essential for healing.
• Personal loss often leads to profound questions about life and time.
• Movement can help reconnect the mind and body during grief.
• The Discipline of Authentic Movement encourages inner listening and self-awareness.
• Grief is a physical experience that can manifest in the body.
• Creating space for emotions is crucial in the grieving process.
• Navigating grief requires patience and curiosity about our inner world. 
• Grief has its own wisdom that guides us.
• Listening to our bodies can help navigate grief.
• Practices of mindfulness are essential for life and grief.
• The process of writing can be a form of healing.
• Letting go is a complex and personal journey.
• Presence is the most important gift we can offer.
• Unanswered questions are a part of the grieving process.
• Mystical experiences can provide comfort during loss.
• Love remains a powerful force in the face of grief.
• Paying attention to small moments can lead to healing.

Connect with Paula Sager:

• Website & Book: paulasager.com
• The Watch on Bookshop
• Befriending the Unknown: A Simple Practice
• IG: @body.and.word

Connect with Nina Rodriguez:

• IG: @griefandlight
• griefandlight.com
• 1:1 Grief Support
• Subscribe to my newsletter

Disclaimer: griefandlight.com/safetyanddisclaimers

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Chapters

• 0:00 Preview & Intro song
• 0:39 Excerpt reading from "The Watch" by Paula Sager
• 3:01 Meet Paula Sager
• 6:55 The journey of letting go
• 8:48 The symbolism of time
• 12:05 Movement as a tool for grief
• 14:53 The Discipline of Authentic Movement and Inner Listening
• 18:02 Navigating grief through somatic experience
• 28:58 Navigating grief with inner wisdom
• 32:30 The influence of a father's teachings
• 37:56 The process of writing and grieving
• 43:18 Letting go: The hardest goodbye
• 48:41 Mystical moments and unanswered questions

Transcript

Is this something actually part of grief? That there's a kind of wisdom in grief? That there's something it knows that it's wanting to guide us toward? There's kind of a dialogue that can be happening between yourself and your body, yourself, and grief. And sometimes the best thing you can do is be the one who listens.

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.

Who would have chosen this journey? Life laughs at the question. No, the question was always, can you be present enough for this and this and now this? To be present enough, this was the only choice. At the end, it was a watery world we found ourselves in. There on Long Island Sound, the circle became manifest.

The water my father loved welcomed what remained from the burning, the last traces of his physical form. As slowly as I poured, the sea swallowed the ash. I couldn't slow how fast it all dissipated, disappeared, gone, just gone. Then the surface of water closed up again. There was nothing more to pour.

The outer circle turned as each kayak slowly headed back to shore. Our inner circle floated in the still quiet for a few minutes more, and then we too turned. I remember seeing my mother paddle forward, ahead of my brothers and me. She paddled alone, sitting tall, looking straight ahead to the shore. I saw her strength and sorrow, her spine strong enough to bear

Speaker 1 (02:06.946)
her broken heart. Here now, in the woods, still with the memory of my mother returning home alone, I watched the last drops of water from the jar I collected from when I poured the ashes in the sea. I watched these drops slide down the sloping side of the rock, disappearing into grass and weeds.

When I close my eyes, I feel sorrow and strength rising within. And I see my mother sitting tall, her spine a spiraling, shimmering column of light. High above her, distant beyond measure, is my father, a presence keeping pace with her as she continues on.

Hello and welcome back to the Grief in Life podcast. My name is Nina Rodriguez and I am your host. And today I am honored to be joined by Paula Sager, a writer and teacher of embodied contemplative practices. And what you just heard was a beautiful excerpt from her newly published book, The Watch, Time to Witness the Beauty of It All, a deeply personal exploration of time, presence, and the enduring nature of relationships beyond death.

woven through the story of her father's illness, dying, and what follows. Rooted in her study of the discipline of authentic movement, Paula brings a profound understanding of witness consciousness, guiding others in the art of being present, both in their inner world and the unfolding experiences around them. Paula, I would love to give you a very warm welcome to the Grief and Light podcast. Welcome.

Thank you, Nina. It's really great to be here. yeah, I'm a fan. just love what you're doing. It feels so important right now. And I love the way you do this and the way that it feels like more space is being opened. And the way you hold space and what you're inviting is very moving to me. And this opening to the...

Speaker 1 (04:23.48)
quality of this kind of space is something I'm very interested in and wondering what will show up, what will emerge for us.

Thank you so much for your kind words. And likewise, feel like, you know, delving into the watch was a gaze into your inner world and also into a very authentic experience of losing somebody so near and dear. And these stories, I agree, need that space to be told in whatever form they come up, whether it's like this, like in our conversation in the podcast or holding private spaces in person or the books. And I just love every iteration of all of this. So thank you so much, first of all, for

for being you and for writing the watch. It was such a nice read and a very authentic exploration of those very hard moments in life of letting go of people we love and them letting go of this life we love they loved. So before we delve into all of that and get to know more of your story, mindfulness is something that you focus on quite a bit in your book. And I'd like to start with a moment of mindfulness by asking, how was your heart today?

Thank you. yeah. Well, let me take a moment to just be, be with your invitation. Yeah, my heart. My heart feels a little tender. Yeah, my heart feels a little tender. And I'm aware that this tenderness is, of course, it's familiar to me in relationship just to all the different emotions in relation to my own father or my own losses.

It's also tender in relation to what we were saying about this space that you open up and, you know, knowing you have your own experiences with grief and people listening too. So, that tenderness is that opening to and welcoming what's more than mine.

Speaker 2 (06:20.984)
Thank you and tender hearts are always welcome here. And that excerpt that we just read or that you just read so beautifully, starts with who would have chosen this journey? I love that part of the book because so many of us in the, you know, who have experienced a very deep personal loss or grief in some very personal way, wonder why, why me, why us, why is this happening, why my person?

especially if you were so close to that person like if you were with your father. And I love that you posed that question to the reader, like who would have chosen this? You also mentioned that your book emerged as a sort of posthumous conversation with your father. So it's a lot of the conversations you couldn't have or you didn't feel like you could have at that moment when he was going through his challenges. So tell the listeners, anybody watching on YouTube or anybody listening a little bit about who was your father.

and why you decided to write this book as exploration after his passing.

Well, I love your beginning with this word journey. cause I remember when I was working on the book, I kept looking for like another word besides journey. Cause I, just, it feels in my mind, thought, maybe it's just cliche, but you know, there really wasn't another word. It just kept feeling like, this is, this is what it is. It's not a moment in time. It's really many, many, many moments.

over a lifetime, the word needs to hold the intensity and the duration of what it is to carry those that we've lost and who we love. And then also in terms of why did I write this book, it would never have occurred to me in a million years to write the story of my father got sick and then he died and life afterwards.

Speaker 1 (08:21.29)
And why would somebody need to hear that in a book form? The sort of central driving force goes back to an experience that I had with my father about three months before he died. And my mother was going away and she asked, could I come and spend the week with him? And I sort of jumped at the opportunity. The week had begun with when I arrived, he pointed to my

watch that I was wearing and he said, I really like your watch. Let's go find me one like that. It turned out his watch had broken and he always loved wearing a watch. so he, yeah, and there never had been time for him to be able to get another watch. And as I say in the book, his time was no longer his time. And it was all caught up with medical appointments and just...

dependence on others. So off we went to the mall. We found a watch. I knew it wasn't quite what he wanted, but you know, we kind of decided it was good enough. So anyway, about halfway through the week, we're sitting outside in his backyard and we're looking out at Long Island Sound where he lived and I can feel him looking at my wrist. And I look over and he says, you know, I really like your watch.

And it just kind of came into my mind. It was like just a spontaneous, well, let's trade. And I remember so vividly that experience of like taking my watch off and helping him get his watch off and putting my watch on his wrist and putting his watch on my wrist. And it was completely unspoken. was no, we weren't talking. It was unspoken. And I really felt like I was in some kind of ritual.

Like we had, we were making a pack and I, I really truly had no idea. I felt like, what am I agreeing to? I, I don't know. And yeah, so, and then, cause then we just went on with like looking out of the clouds and you know, when is the tide coming in or is it going out? And, and so, you know, I didn't think that much about it except just that now I'm wearing his watch and he's wearing mine.

Speaker 1 (10:46.496)
And then, so.

The three months pass and he's at home when he died, which was so grateful I was able to be there. My three brothers were there and my mother was there when he died. And yeah, I remember there was a moment when I was in the room with his body and I just suddenly realized he's still wearing my watch. So, and it felt like kind of again,

a heightened moment where I'm taking my watch off of him and I'm putting it back on me. So then, and then about a week later, I was back home and, and then here's where it really became mysterious because I woke up one morning and I went to put my watch on and I looked down and the six was gone. And I was such a like shocking moment. What?

And then over the next few days, like another hand would fall off and then another number. And then one night, it kept going though. And then one night it stopped. In the morning I picked it up and it wasn't going. And that was another moment of, I remember feeling this kind of being dropped into something of deep unknown and

.

Speaker 1 (12:14.196)
This stopping was almost an embodiment of my father's life ending. All these questions were starting to emerge. Some of them I didn't even have words yet, but I could feel that time didn't stop. Time, I could feel time continues. Your life ended, but something continues and lots of questions about what happens to our relationship now. And then a kind of a question just because it's

The object through which this exchange has been happening with me and my father is a watch and the question of what do I need to learn about time? What does time have to do with my grief? And I can't think my way to answers. They were questions I had to live into. And there's a certain way in which we don't have a choice. It's maybe that thing about the journey. It's not something we choose. Our life just continues.

It somehow did become a way to further conversation with my father in a way that wasn't possible, that we couldn't get at the mystery of all of this when he was alive.

So you did it beautifully and yes, the watch is so symbolic and even in the cover, if you're watching on YouTube, the cover has the face of a watch with the numbers falling out and it's something you experience quite literally. love how you said that initial moment when you just handed over your watch to your father, but it also in that moment felt like you were agreeing to something deeper that maybe wasn't evident in that particular moment, but you just have that knowing. And if you're listening, you...

resonate with this, especially if you have somebody who has experienced an illness that has changed their ability to live life fully or a major life change. Like, you know, unfortunately your father experienced the cancer diagnosis and the treatments and the ways in which life changed him personally and everybody around him, family. I also love the concept of the watch is not just personal to you and it's not just about

Speaker 2 (14:24.064)
you know, interesting synchronicities of it, you know, the face, the numbers falling off, and then it ultimately stopping and being symbolic for your father's passing. But it's also this invitation to look at timelessness, at the concept of timelessness. You lean into the question so beautifully. And I always say that grief kind of thrust us into this weird in between where we're human and we're living our full human life. And we're also very attuned to that

unseen and unknown world. And it opens us up to that unseen and unknown world, whatever that looks like to each person. And so this book almost feels like living in that in-between during his diagnosis, when he passes and after, and how do we even do that when we don't have the words? It's through leaning into the less mind, more feeling, and through asking more questions. So talk to us about how you explored

the concept of timelessness, and you lean into the questions through movement. And what is authentic movement? Talk to us about your background, your personal connection with movement, and how that became your tool to explore this new lived reality.

I just see I'm just how you spoke that is so beautiful. The sense that I have come more and more to have is that grief wants to take us into our body. Grief wants to take us below the surface. Just the way you really beautifully named this, this, this kind of living between worlds. went to the grocery store, getting kids up to school. And meanwhile, there's a whole inner process going on within us. And.

I this is a bit of an aside, but I do feel it's also at the crux of why it can feel so challenging is that there really is very little support in our sort of highly institutionalized, very consumer driven culture for the inward turn, for taking time to close our eyes and feel just like what you asked me to do. What's here in your heart or,

Speaker 1 (16:39.144)
Or like what the question I would ask in this practice of authentic movement is, what's happening in my body? Is there an impulse that wants to move? Giving that little space and time to pay attention, that cultivating of our attention in a way that has a quality of inner listening, that has a kind of a...

openness and patience and curiosity. That's what I've learned through this practice of authentic movement in which my teacher Janet Adler is the one who really began to explore the relationship between the role of a mover and a witness. And that came out of all these questions she had in relationship to the part of us that has experience, that like

You know, where there's constantly experience happening within us, especially because we are physical beings through our senses, through our emotions, through our movement, our actions. And, and then there's the part of us that is aware of the experience. So one of the things I love is this kind of very elegant way of teasing those apart and saying, okay, let's have two roles. You be the mover and you be the witness. If the witness.

the space, the witness has their eyes open, holding the space, inviting the one who is the mover to not have to keep track of time, to close their eyes. The mover moves with their eyes closed. So really closing out the visual world and opening to the inner realm. And another thing I love about this practice is that there is choice too, a cultivating and

of a discernment practice around choice. We don't have to follow whatever arises. It could be any number of reasons why something just feels too much and I don't want to go there. That feels really important coming into a more intimate relationship with ourselves in terms of knowing ourselves and what feels right moment by moment.

Speaker 2 (19:00.398)
And it's my understanding that you had this practice developed prior to your father getting ill. So tell us about your background with Dan's, how you became acquainted with the late Janet Adler. And I understand it's worth mentioning that unfortunately she passed, but there was a sweet coincidence between her passing on February 20th of this year, correct?

No, actually she died in July of 23. Okay. But it's February 20th is her birthday.

That's what it was. I was like, I know there's something with February 20th. Thank you. So the book, The Watch was released on February 20th, which happens to be Janet's birthday. So talk to us about your personal relationship with movement dance, the discipline of authentic movement. And I made a note to mention the Alexander technique, a high level overview, of course.

I was a child who loved to move and I remember when I was very young, my parents recognized it in different ways and I really loved just the freedom of childhood dance when it's more creative and I was not someone who studied ballet. That would have been a whole different interesting path but it wasn't my path. And then when I was in college, I found my way back into dance and ended up being a dance major and doing some professional dancing after that.

And then I had a very serious knee injury that it took about nine months, almost a year before I could dance again. So that was one of those things that changed the direction that you thought you were going. It opened up some pathways in relationship to bodywork and learning about the whole still young field of somatic to support myself in being able to do the kind of movement things I wanted.

Speaker 1 (20:46.05)
do and it was interesting to realize that I had been so into the body experience of dance and movement, but then after the injury I realized I was not experiencing myself in my body. What I became trained in, the Alexander Technique, is a whole practice of learning to be in a more spacious

sense of being in your body. Rather than say in massage where there's a focus on muscles, in some ways there's a focus in the Alexander Technique on the bones and the architecture of our bodies. And then one thing I always loved is that everywhere that a bone meets another bone, there's what we call joints, but we could also think of joints as the space between bones.

So that became very interesting to me to begin to realize that I could actually move from a more spacious experience of my body and how the whole quality of the movement changed more ease. And so all of that inquiry, it just kind of led me into a different direction that eventually included contemplative practices.

And that eventually led to me finding Janet Adler.

Thank you for that. And I know that's a high level overview of a practice that one has to cultivate. But I bring it up because if you've listened to my podcast before, you know that I was so surprised to realize grief was physical in nature. You know, it's many things, but it's very physical and it's a very physical experience. And that catches people off guard whenever I have conversations with grievers, especially the newly bereaved. They are surprised. And I've heard people say, you know, I think

Speaker 2 (22:42.414)
This grief is now making me ill and I think now I have chronic illness and now I don't have the energy levels. I feel so disconnected from my life and this is such a common sentiment that surprises people, especially with a very personal loss. And I find through my exploration of A, my own grief and through learning from other experts, that so much of processing grief, of integrating grief is through movement and it's reconnecting our mind and body.

And like you said, when you had that knee injury, I believe you said, how that disconnected you, even though you're somebody who's well-versed in the practice of movement and somatics and understanding the mind-body-spirit connection. So, you know, I want to highlight this because one thing that I recommend to a lot of people is to slow down. We live in the context of a society that not only doesn't necessarily know how to slow down, but it's almost

punished. It's not welcomed. Everything's about efficiency and hustle and go, And so giving yourself that permission as a griever to slow down, to meet the moment as it is, to reconnect with your body, to process that concept of time and timelessness and living in that weird in-between. When you lose somebody, you're like, why is the sun rising tomorrow again? My world just stopped.

It's that disconnection, I'm getting chills saying this, but it's that disconnection that happens. So yeah, go ahead if you have any thoughts on all of these concepts. I just want to tell you, do.

I just wondered if maybe I would read a passage from the book that kind of captures what you're speaking of and sort of almost, even though I mean at that point when this is happening in the aftermath of my father's death, I've been doing the practice for a long, long time. What grief actually felt like caught me off guard? And this is a passage where it's just,

Speaker 1 (24:48.76)
about a month or so after my father died that I go to Janet Adler. She was living in British Columbia. That was a whole journey to get there. And this was a week long solo retreat that I had planned like a year, over a year earlier. the timing could not have been better. So I'll just read this passage of when I arrive in Vancouver. I'm flying to British Columbia to spend a week.

deepening my study of the discipline of authentic movement with Janet Adler. After the long journey west, I pick up a rental car at Vancouver Airport, stop to buy five days worth of groceries, and make my way to Stanley Park. I find a place to park that faces the harbor. Water and fog.

One undifferentiated wall of gray, slow drops of rain are falling from the branches of a towering fir tree. Everything is falling slowly in my world as I feel raw, deep, lonely sorrow. I did not know grief could be so heavy, so wordless. It takes a long time to do something simple

like turn the key in the ignition. But once the engine starts, I know the next thing to do is drive.

love the way that you explore something that most people would take for granted because you've developed your sense of the observer. So much of the experience of grief is becoming that observer, almost seeing our life in third-person perspective and learning how to create space around that, learning how to embrace those joints, that space in between, those moments in between in a very physical sense, in an emotional sense, and in a spiritual sense can be to

Speaker 2 (26:48.682)
navigating grief. So we're talking to a griever, a newly bereaved person who may be experiencing those somatic symptoms of my shoulders hurt, my lower back hurt, my life feels so heavy, my body feels heavy. What would you say to that person in terms of movement?

a wonderful question. When we're in a place of suffering, whether just like the confusion of what do I do or how do I find my way in the middle of, you I've got a life to live. First of all, just that giving yourself permission to take a few moments. For me, it often would be, I'd

I just like close my eyes and like, what do I need to do? And I can't tell you how many times what I needed to do was just lie on the floor. I just needed to go with that, that sense of the weight. And then I could actually begin to feel what was true. yes, this feels so heavy. I feel so tired. And then to open up, okay, well, what can support me in this moment? The floor.

And like, can I just feel, feel the places where my body is resting on the floor, is touching, making contact with the floor and just feel how that floor is right there holding the back of our head. Or maybe we're on our side or maybe we need to reach for a pillow and put it between our knees or hold it to our chest. And if we can just listen for a moment.

and feel what is wanting to happen, what does my body want to do, which is really different than like what I think I should do or what somebody recommended, but what does my body want to do in this moment? And then what happens if I follow this? If I let my body do what it wants to do, then you're in experience. You are

Speaker 1 (28:58.126)
in your own experience. And you can just keep paying attention. Like, I'm not breathing, okay, I'm gonna just take a breath. Or I just need to really wrap myself, I need to just get small, I need blankets, I need to cover myself. And sometimes it can be helpful to set a timer and say, okay, I'm gonna give myself five minutes.

or I'm going to give myself 10 minutes and I don't have to keep track of time. The timer will let me know when that 10 minutes is over. But in that time, that's what the witness does in the practice. They're holding that sense of time. They'll ring the bell when it's time to end. Because sometimes that can feel overwhelming that, okay, I'm going to go in and I'm going to follow it. But what happens if I can't find my way out or how do I end?

I think that can be a useful support. so even when I say that word support, just that question, what can support me now? Knowing that you have an inner wisdom, you have something that's wanting to guide you. And sometimes I actually have come to wonder, is this something actually part of grief?

that there's a kind of wisdom in grief, that there's something that it knows that it's wanting to guide us toward, ask us to follow as we feel ready. There's kind of a dialogue that can be happening between yourself and your body, yourself, and grief. And sometimes the best thing you can do is be the one who listens to your body.

who listens to your grave.

Speaker 2 (30:55.906)
I love the way you just phrase that. Thank you so much. Grief absolutely has a wisdom of its own. It's been my experience and we need to become that witness. We need to be the one holding space for it to unfold. Absolutely. And that's something that takes practice like anything else, especially if grief is new. These practices that you mentioned are not just for grief, it's for life, but they come in very handy when somebody is experiencing grief. And I made a note of a quote here in your book that says, what else is here?

What is ready to be moved? And that is a question that you can, as a listener, pose to yourself if you're feeling something intense, if you're feeling those deep waves or quote unquote stuck. It takes that inquiry that what else is here? What is ready to be moved? And like Paula said, sometimes this may be so simple sometimes, but just leaning on a literal physical surface, a wall, a floor, your

or your chair, whatever feels comfortable and reassuring to you can be so powerful. We just need to be held. At the end of the day, our bodies need that physical comfort and we can provide that for ourselves through literal movement. I love that. And talk to us about your father a little bit. I took from your book that he was really a very beautiful person with a kind heart and he really kind of saw the bigger picture of life.

And so tell us what pop was like and sum up his teachings.

Yeah, this is another why. Once I was just compelled to begin the writing process, I realized, I get to share my father with other people. And he was somebody who, he just had a kind of a very...

Speaker 1 (32:55.274)
authentic way of being and a very authentic way of relating to people. one of the things as I began to write was sort of realizing, wow, all these practices I've done for all these years, there's some way he just sort of naturally, he had that or it wasn't anything that he ever was moved to inquire about or to study because somehow it was

Harry just in his nature and even his sense of relationship to time always seems so much more spacious. how does he do everything he does? And he just has this ease around time. When I say that, when I feel this gesture, I feel there's something about him that is very expansive and in welcoming to the people he worked with, to family, to people that he was meeting for the first time, just like a real

interest and openness. It's like we're all in this together. One passage that comes to mind, I think, captures a flavor. So he loved to kayak, which was part of the reason that for his memorial, we, the whole family did a ritual of his ashes, that part I read out on Long Island Sound. But so this is a day that he and I are off on a kayak ride. When I'm finally able to visit my parents again,

My father is 20 pounds heavier and looking healthy again. He's in a stretch without chemo or radiation and seems full of life. Glad to be outside after a long winter and cold spring, he invites me to join him on a kayak ride. We clean off the boats, drag them to the shore and head off under a warm sun. In a nearby marsh cove, we drift.

staring up at a tree filled with egrets and gazing at the tall grasses along the shore. I lean back and let the kayak support me. I relax into a watery sense of time, moving languidly forward, backward in circles. The air feels thick with green foliage, with the soft rays of sun, with life and growth. Time floating, time dissolving.

Speaker 1 (35:13.902)
time absorbing into light. An egret lets out a call, launches from the tree, glides through the air over our heads, then circles back to a higher branch. I rouse from my reverie and we slowly make our way through the cove back toward Long Island Sound. My father looks strong as he paddles beneath the clear blue sky. A steady roll of waves flows under our kayaks.

rocking us gently from side to side. It's odd to feel waves on such a calm day, especially since there are no boats anywhere in sight. I call out, where are the waves coming from? He calls back, these are the waves of yesterday's wind. We keep paddling, his words echoing, the waves of yesterday's wind? Like it was a matter of fact.

It may well be, but to me, it sounds like poetry with a little science and philosophy thrown in. Had he just made it up? It didn't matter. It was in my mind now, along with the breeze and the quiet cries of gulls and the rhythm of my arms drawing figure eights with the paddle. I imagined the wind of a day ago somewhere far out on the sea, setting these waves in motion. And I wonder, just what is traveling through water?

across distance and time. Yesterday's wind and more. For my father, nature is alive with meaningful purpose. We are not here for exercise, though that's part of it. We are here to revel in the day.

That's beautiful. Thank you. We are here to rebel in the day. That's what presence feels like. You know, when you read that, it's just being really present to the moment, to everything that is. And your father, I remember a lot of parts throughout the book that he is a natural poet. He has that gift of noticing life for what it really is and the value of each moment. And I thought that was such a beautiful example. I also love that you bonded over kayaking as well.

Speaker 2 (37:28.418)
which I shared with you that it's also something that I bonded with my brother over. had some really fun memories that way. There's some very special moments that involve the kayaking scene throughout the book and some are sweet and some are bittersweet. So I'll leave the mystery for the readers to explore that aspect of it. But writing a book and reading is a form of witnessing. So what was it like for you to hold space for both yourself, your grief as a writer and then being the one

written about as well because you're in the book as well so everything's from your perspective. What was that experience like?

In some way, there was some energy that came from that exchange of the watches that I was aware I need to stay close to this. I need to stay close to that energy. At a certain point, I became aware that it had transferred into the book, into the whole process of writing the book and the way that...

It really became a powerful way to enter memories. There's a number of places in the book where I use my contemplative practices, sometimes my movement, and sometimes more of a kind of meditative, reflective practice in relationship to things like photographs or the watch itself. And that's also a gift of contemplative practices and mindfulness is that we can bring our attention

in a way to anything that opens up a kind of inquiry and inner process within us. There's a chronology that moves along the narrative. There's a lot of places of dropping down through an experience, kind of going that way of going under the surface of the narrative. Again, I love how we're talking about this, like that's something that wants to be more known. And it's so interesting how

Speaker 1 (39:24.844)
The language for that can come in a way that's quite different from our analytical ways of talking or figuring something out or trying to understand something. And maybe that's a little where, like what you mentioned, the poetry comes from. And that was a part I really loved about the book and just the fact that it kept me feeling close to my father. I remember feeling some

a kind of surfacing of grief when the book was done. You know, the end of feeling this vibrant connection with him, I sometimes just had this feeling of him kind of hovering near, mostly with just a lot of encouragement and just this sort of subtle affirmation about, yeah, keep going, keep going. Which was important because I did have times where I wondered, is this okay that I am sharing such a personal story?

I really had to keep listening within myself and again a discernment practice of what of all of everything that happened is part of what the watch was wanting to become.

I love that evolution and that personal journey of having to decide how do we tell the story from which perspective and how much, how many details, right? And what is true ultimately, because I would imagine when you're writing, obviously it's from your perspective and you try to do justice to the vastness of whatever it is that you're focusing on, but at the end of the day, their voice is not.

there to confirm or to say, yes, I agree or yes, I would love it or yes, I remember it this way. As a writer, what did you tap into? How did you decide, yes, the I'm going to present it, this is what's going to stay in the bucket to make it complete for the watch.

Speaker 1 (41:15.854)
Yeah. I love you saying, this true? That, that feels like a guiding question. And I think if, if we ask it from a place of open and intentional listening, we'll know from a kind of felt sense of, of that's not why I did, or maybe, maybe there's something missing. Maybe I need to just be with this a little more or, oh no, that

That's not right to include, that just doesn't feel. Yeah, there's a certain way that this is another gift of listening within. I think in our body sensibility, what develops as we cultivate our body awareness is a clearer access to our intuition. And learning to trust our intuition, I feel, is...

It's just so important, not just for our own lives. We see this playing out in the world right now where there's a lot of misinformation, a lot of lies. So to be able to really listen within and ask, is this true, is one of the most important questions that we can be asking right now. And knowing we have some choices around recognizing if something is true or not.

And that answer needs some breadth, needs some space for the answer to come. know, sometimes we just know something to be true in our knowing place. But other times when it's less obvious or when it involves other people who are not here to speak for themselves or a more abstract situation, we need to allow that space for the answer to come. And that's part of where the contemplative practices, I would imagine, come in.

That's right. That space is really important and that being able to cultivate the not knowing in a way that the space gives time for something to unfold further.

Speaker 2 (43:18.988)
Yes. And I do want to touch on this part that really stood out to me. Your father, throughout his treatment and chemotherapy and all that implies in terms of the toll it takes on the body and the family and his energy. At one point, it became evident that there was no going back, that this is just going to be a decline. Unfortunately, knowing this, it goes from hope to a sort of, don't know if acceptance is the word or

that letting go that is so difficult for people whose loved one received a terminal illness diagnosis and they just had to start practicing letting go because it was what was in the horizon. There's this sentence, a conversation really, where your father says, this is hard. And then you say, at first we think he means dealing with the cancer is hard, but then we realized he means dying is hard. How do you let go of a life

that you've loved living. And that was so powerful that brought tears to my eyes when I read it because he just seemed to love life. He loved you. He loved his family. He loved his life. How do you let go of that? And I'm not necessarily posing the question for you to answer because your answer is a book, but speak to somebody who is in this version of their life. So their loved one is diagnosed with cancer. They just realized there's nothing else they could do and now we have to start.

letting go. What would you say to that person?

Well, I remember when the doctors had said, well, there's not much more we can do. And my mother, especially, who just did so much as a caregiver and she was not ready, but my father had the conversation with her that he was done. Like he was done with fighting in or trying to find something else. so that moment was such a clear place.

Speaker 1 (45:20.146)
And his capacity to be able to say that, to express that was really important. And then it becomes a whole family process in terms of each person kind of having to come to what you're describing as that process of letting go. Even though my father had expressed his readiness, that was part of what was so poignant about that moment where he said, is hard. So even though he's ready,

that I think it's that will to live. That will to live is so strong. It's so mysterious how much is not conscious we can't control and how much there is some kind of a softening, a relinquishing. And that was really something to witness in him that the more he was doing that as hard as it was, the more his essence

was emerging and the more and more hope and effort and all of that fell away, what was present was love. It was just extraordinary to witness and be part of that. And I think that's what maybe we're called for in terms of ways we can support each other when the end time is coming. We can be present there for process exactly as it's unfolding and just

just being present and supporting and still loving, I think is what we have to offer.

Love is the answer and that unconditional presence that sometimes doesn't come naturally in a world that's rushing us to do the next thing on our to-do list. But it's the most important thing at the end of the day is to be present with what is as it is. Thank you for that perspective. The Watch is a wonderful book for all the reasons we just discussed. But also, I talked to

Speaker 2 (47:23.406)
plenty of grievers and one theme that's very hard to process is how do you live with unanswered questions? How do I live my life when there's so much agony with not knowing, either not knowing what's going to happen, not knowing why something happened, not knowing why it happened the way in which it did? And this is a beautiful sort of answer to living with unanswered questions. And how do we find hope and peace and maybe some

answers through time perspective, checking in movement and all the things we discussed. That's just one aspect. It's also just a beautiful story and there's so much love in this story and it was a pleasure to get to know you, your family and your father. His story stays in my heart because he sounded like a wonderful, wonderful person. So with that, I would like to invite you to share where people can find your book and any other offerings that feel important to share in this conversation.

Yeah. Yes. The book is published by Wild House Publishing and can be ordered from their site or also on my site, paulisseger.com. It's just been three weeks that it's been out. And so I'm at the beginning of going around to bookstores and having conversations with people, being able to share and hear other people's experiences.

in relationship, especially to some of these more mysterious aspects of what it means to be human beings with each other. The way sometimes things that we really can't explain happen. And we have these feelings of our loglin's presence or the bird that comes and lands. And I think I remember you saying something about cardinals.

It reminded me of that story at the end of the book. It's sort of a mystical experience that the entire family experienced as Dereif was passing.

Speaker 1 (49:16.076)
Yeah, and this was a place that I really wrestled with, is this mine to share? Like obviously for me, the watch felt like it was mine to share because it landed in my hands. This was something that kind of landed in the lap of my whole family, which actually feels like a kind of an interesting place that the book ends.

It's that moving from the individual experience to the collective experience or to what we might share as experiencing with each person having their own experience. But anyway, after we came back from the kayaks, scattering my father's ashes, we began to all go on with the day. And one of my brothers and some of the cousins were down on the beach pulling up the kayaks to

I'm upstairs and I look out the window and I see there's this very large swan coming from the exact place where we had scattered my father's ashes. And just on like this beeline toward the shore, my daughter, Molly and I were upstairs and we went running down the stairs and down to the beach and my brother, everybody else, everyone was running from all directions.

or

Speaker 1 (50:36.142)
Like it was like something very odd. This one just kept coming and it walked right up onto the beach and it stood there. And my whole family, most of us were just there in this long kind of arc in line. And it just looked at each one of us all the way down. then it just was still. it was, this was the mystical moment, that kind of a moment where

Thanks.

Speaker 1 (51:06.036)
everything's still and silent and there's a quality of light. And then it turned around and it started back to the water. And right before it began paddling, its back feathers waved like this. And we thought, he's saying goodbye. I don't know. That's what I thought. And then, but instead, no, it was like kerplop. There were just like a little deposit, which then everyone was laughing.

off the swan went and and back, you know, disappeared back. So what I wanted to read, this is right near the end of the book.

As the years go by, I occasionally ask members of my family what they remember of this uncanny visitation. Inevitably, the details vary, but the memories usually include such qualities of the numinous as light, stillness, silence, timelessness, and the swan's more than swan presence. None of us imagined this majestic bird was literally Bob.

And yet this extraordinary moment was filled with his presence. This memory lives within me as an affirmation. All earthly beings are participating in something real, vastly larger, and more intertwined than any of us can fathom. The unit of experience with my family and the swan tells me that we are each immeasurably more than our personal story.

We are woven.

Speaker 2 (52:47.95)
That was a very powerful experience and a beautiful way to lean into the mysticism of life that feels so real. And Griebers have experienced this. When you lose somebody, there are things that happen that we can't explain, but they make us pause. And that alone is enough. We don't need the proof. We just know that if it made us pause and it felt like a point of connection, so it is. And I thought that was very beautiful. I thank you for including it in the book. It was very

She'll find a perfect way to end it. I will link everything in the show notes. Is there something that you'd like to share to consider the conversation complete before we end here?

If I could just read one more thing, because I wanted to create space for the reader to have their own experiences, I have a little verse at the end of each chapter that's an invitation for anybody that wants, but this is the last one. Here I am. Here you are. Here we are. The same, different, still changing within the timelessness of life.

evolving.

Thank you so much, Paula. There's a final question. What would Paula today say to Paula after your father's passing?

Speaker 1 (54:06.477)
Oh, it's so funny. The subtitle comes to mind at which, comes from a phrase my father used to say, that's the beauty of it. has to do with your podcast being called Grief and Light, that within what feels so dark, there can be so much light. can open us to a much greater sense of who we are and why we're here. And just the simple ways that

we can be present in us for just some of the little details. That's it, that's all we need to do. The thing that wants to evolve within us, that's how it gets to do it as we just pay attention to some of the little things that happen.

Thank you so much, Paula. It has been an absolute honor. Thank you.

Thank you, Nina.