Still Crying: Befriending Grief & Havin' Fun

Year of the Dog, Death Doulas, and Vampire Diaries with Nat

• Nat • Season 2 • Episode 1

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Welcome back from the one-year hiatus of Still Crying! This episode we go over a few musing from the last year including Nat's raising-a-puppy journey, death meditations from an End of Life Practitioner course, the comfort show of Vampire Diaries, and more.

So I'm here to fill you in on maybe my life the last year, what's been going on, and also the really cool exciting plans for season two of Still Crying. Yeah, so welcome back. Great clouds above my head rain pouring down. Searching for the silver lining and finding dandelions that spring up from the ground'Cause this beauty and the madness, joy that breaks the sadness and even though I don't know why it happens, sometimes a hard time to make us who we are, can't tell you why, yeah, but I'm still crying. I'm now recording this in my home, um, shout out to... I'm now recording this in my home, so if you hear sirens or dogs barking, that's all part of real life. Um, shout out to the tar center for helping me get this equipment, and yeah, long time no talk, everyone, fellow listeners, fellow cryers. Oh, yeah, we'll wait for that siren to go by. Every time I've thought about recording season two for the last year, if you haven't noticed, um, welcome back. We've been on a hiatus for an entire year, or maybe even longer than a year. It just didn't feel right, and I didn't know why. I mean, I think it felt weird to talk about my own life and try to connect with people when there was, so there is so much going on in the world that is, um, completely devastating, and it felt not like a good priority. So I'm here to fill you in on maybe my life the last year, what's been going on, and also the really cool exciting plans for season two of still crying. Yeah, so welcome back. I think that, um, so much has happened, um, and I think every time I think about recording this, I just like let out a huge sigh, and I don't know what comes after that. Definitely some confusion around what to say, also just trusting the process of everything, um, that kind of can feel like a lot when you're maybe trying to push something forward alone. So, um, more notes on that in the future, I would say, how do you reflect on a whole year? I don't know. Time is weird. I'm at a completely different place. I think everything has changed. I feel like a different person, but also so close to my true self, I guess. We'll just jump in. First of all, I'm still crying, and I'm still learning and focused on like death and life and showing up authentically and loving myself. And yeah, just kind of making sense of things and feeling my feelings. I will say that I think this was the year of the dog. For everyone that doesn't know, I got a dog last November, a puppy, so like two months old, and just like raising her alone. And I knew when I decided that I wanted to get a puppy, there was going to be a lot of parts that were going to be really challenging. I already knew that from the beginning, but I wanted to say yes because I felt like I knew in my heart that the challenging parts would stretch me out and make me grow and become this new person and be like uncomfortable changing, but closer to who I wanted to be. I kind of had that vision. And obviously I needed to get a dog for my cat because when I lost my old dog to my ex, my cat Rudy was like depressed. Her tail was thin and she was like wanting me to play with her when I was working and I'm like, Hey, I can't do that right now. You need a buddy because you love dogs. And then when I moved into this apartment, one of my neighbors had a dog that she became friends with and they since moved, but this dog was like a buff strong dog and like also the most gentle, sweet angel in the world. And he would come to the window every day and they would like chat and play and then I would let him in my apartment and they would run around and that was so sweet. Yeah, so now my dog, Zorba, she is a year old already. So yeah, that's where I've been. And she plays with Rudy. They like wrestle. They run around the house. They play like puppy tag. I like saying puppy in front of everything. It's like, you ready for your puppy snack? Are you ready for your puppy nap? And I think man, I've had to definitely overcome my trauma with animal health and like losing my old cat, Daisy to this like really traumatic cancer where she was like being before hermed and bleeding out and just all these things that happened. And this year of having the puppy, it's like, oh, she's not gonna die. You're gonna take care of her. But also she might. Well, we'll talk about more death things in this episode for sure. But you know, just really, really being present. I feel like getting the dog has made me more present and also more aware of the parts of my life where I'm like spinning out and not really realizing that I'm spinning out. So that has been a gift. It also has shown some light on like the areas of my life that are no longer important. That can kind of fall away. And then the things that are really important. And that's pretty beautiful. I think what else this year? I definitely took a class for end of life practitioner, this summer, which was three months and just learning about death care. I don't know if that's like a surprise to anyone. I thought I wanted to do that since my grandma passed away like two and a half years ago. However, then I did find some like big paper planning dreams that I did way before that and like some old journal stuff way before that that mentioned me wanting to go down this path. And so that's kind of wild to read or think about. I didn't even realize that I was like being drawn to that for quite a while. The course was amazing. I feel like there was a lot of high level knowledge really open up to what skills you can offer and how you want to show up for people and assist them with this end of life process that you know has so much reverence and we don't talk about really a lot. We don't even want to talk about it with the people we love and trust, which is wild to me. So if you see me, let's talk about it. I want to. I want to and yeah, I don't want to feel scared of that. I once surprised at some of the things that came up for me during the course with we had like these death meditations around really being comfortable with your past and your present and knowing like your future is not guaranteed. Some of those I was surprisingly feeling very calm and grounded about and then some of them one in particular was like, hey, if you don't know how much time you have guaranteed left because you don't with being alive and dying. Like what can you come to terms with inside yourself that like you have to be you have to be okay with and one of those things for me I actually struggled with love I guess I've had this like initial feeling of being really scared that I would die before feeling in love and I think it took some time this summer for me to kind of deconstruct that and realize that love isn't another person although it can chop in that way but kind of re falling in love with love as a concept of when I go outside and the sun's rising and I hear all the birds chirping and I get that like glimmer of of like peace I think that's love you know or when my puppy is being chaotic and then and then gets tired and comes over and like snuggles with me and puts her little chin on my chest and like has a deep sigh and is relaxed and goes to sleep and like I think that moment is love talking to kind strangers oh my god I'm gonna cry now um talking to kind strangers is love and I also think this whole year I have been able to like nurture more long term friendships and also connect with so many new people that to me that feels like love too because I'm just constantly in awe of all these people and their compassion and their kindness and how they like show up for others um and how they show up to the world and that's also love so I think I was telling myself this narrative of things can look one way when really um I don't know what's the show like Mary jay blige no that's not right um the song is like love is all around why don't you take it all have to like link that song there's a really good cover by the bad bad hats that I listen to all the time um but yeah love is all around so the death meditations from the end of like practitioner course those are really meaningful to me and then the other thing that stood out was really the amount of self care I don't really know if that's the right word I would use but like truly truly truly showing up for yourself because you're not going to be able to be in spaces to show up for others and I know that's like such a cliche concept but really living that and that's like your non-negotiables of like what do you need to feel so like connected to yourself that you have the space to have this compassion for others more long term or like in the day to day um and just being really in touch with that that was surprising I didn't know we would um you know practice that so much in the course um yeah and I can link it I think there's like a million courses you can take um I also believe that you don't need to take a course to know how to like show compassion and you know active listening and like be there for people um but those parts were in it and that did help so it's kind of it's kind of what you want I feel like going through my Saturn return and turning 30 at the start of this year I was like oh yeah well now everything will fall into place and blah blah blah but it's more like you're just starting out on the next chapter you know um or the next book in the series yeah I think that sounds right it's like you know there's like three books in the series that's the series of your life um and every 30 years you like end that book and start a new book and so it's not like everything's fine and perfect now but it is like you're different now so that kind of surprised me let's see what else I was raky too certified um I know everyone has like different ideas of raky I think the best thing that stands out to me is like the connection to self and also that like self determination I guess I don't know if that's really the right word here but um empowerment of others to heal themselves and I think that's kind of like a common theme among everything I've learned with the death work and raky but also just like being in conversations with others about heavy things or or light things um just yeah like not giving people advice because really they have all the answers inside themselves and like asking the right questions so that they know how to get to the right answers that they're coming up with um that's so meaningful I love it um I'm still reading poems every day looking at these tarot cards and learning more about that which um I did get the tarot original 1909 deck that has the original artwork from like the Wade writer deck um from Pamela Coleman Smith so if you don't know what that is but you love tarot check it out the guidebook is like so phenomenal plus the person that wrote it says they love the vampire diaries and if you love the vampire diaries hit me up because I would love to do podcasts about it no I just want to talk about it I watched well I watched the entire series I think it's eight seasons or something more it's probably more to the well 12 seasons I don't know I watched the whole series throughout the last year um it took me like a full year to finish it but man I cried a lot during the vampire diaries and I just maybe I'm like taking it too seriously but all of the characters deal with these really huge themes of like death and loss but it's not always death loss it's like grief from all this changing and yeah I just think the themes are like so universal and and so human even though it's a show about vampire yeah so I I loved that show that was my comfort show I think it still is um yeah it just had a lot of big themes in it kind of helped me like process some of my own emotions yeah going to a lot of therapy and I did want to read a little quote from this book called Walking Each Other Home by Raum Dawes and Mirabai Bush the tagline and his conversations on loving and dying which now that I think about death all the time it's kind of like wow how you I don't know who said this quote but how you live is how you die I think that's true because like it's your personality but your soul and then kind of how you live your life determines your death a little I think there's a lot of nuances um I think it's been really hard to sit with the Palestine and the genocide but also all the genocides that are happening throughout the world and and death in that sense it's a lot like more privilege to sit here in my book in apartment and talk about death and dying in life and all this bullshit from from where I'm sitting versus like the deep depths of like truly being in a spot where people are getting killed and like everything is destroyed in such a horrendous way and how do you justify that kind of trying to like understand how the world is so cruel which we know we know like all the systems and people people are doing this where do you go with that um so I'll read you this quote I loved from Walking Each Other Home by Raum Dawes and Mirabai Bush which oh by the way is just a book that I'm yeah I'm Mirabai wrote when Raum Dawes was like actively dying and so it was kind of like all their conversations and like his wisdoms anyways it's just nice I'll read this um Raum Dawes says the main preparation for dying is giving up any sense of separateness when you feel separate it's very painful he continues even love when it is conditional can create fear every time we form an attachment to another human being it is of course inevitable sooner or later that both people are going to die so in a loving relationship loss is built in which makes it precious and frightening at the same moment we know that everything is changing all the time and it's uncertain that can intensify the attachment many of us have felt the fear of loving too much the fear in the pain of loving when you know there will be loss but as we identify more with the soul and remember that we all share the reality of the soul fear dissipates and trust grows because the soul is not afraid of death there is no separation the soul never die and I thought that was really nice since it touches on like a lot of fear around death but also I think in the last year especially last winter I felt like the most lonely I've ever felt in separateness from everyone and how that feels um and how to step back into like trust and not not fear I guess is trust the opposite of not being fearful I don't know I think that also kind of ties into like how we're not free until everyone's free the the sense of like how everyone and everything's connected and how how do we recognize that and be able to talk about it because everything's so universal but we're in the US especially like don't talk about death and don't and and everything that comes with that um maybe it's not death of a person but death of your future that you had planned or you know your expectations we have like a lot of cool things coming up for season two I'm so excited to share them with you all listeners and then I think beyond like the content of the podcast there's also going to be some really cool things happening locally that I want to share with you um and then maybe even virtually I'm feeling really excited um I'm actually recording this on the first day of Scorpio season or maybe that was yesterday but Scorpio season has started I'm not a Scorpio but I do um like to feel excited every time it's a new uh so it like zodiac season because I think it just brings new energy and I need that we all do as as a fix sign for myself I guess I want to end with like my relationship with grief and uh maybe breath too since I have felt like just the need to exhale and sigh super loud every time I'm thinking about the podcast for the last year which I said earlier but it's like I'm holding my breath and I think that's how it feels when I don't want to befriend my grief or like accept and witness reality whether that's my day to day or beyond my relationship with grief right now I feel like is a little ambiguous and I almost have like stepped away from some of that while trying to figure out a few other things and I think yeah that will probably be a lot of reflections coming up for you all I think tarot has helped me get in touch with my like inner world and rakey therapy and reading poems and hanging out with my animals I don't know but my my relationship with grief grief everything else falls away I would say that it's hard for me to sit in it I know I only want to sit in it for half the time and then there's intermission I get up and I leave I'm not staying for the second act so I'm just kind of paying attention to what that means I'm definitely a person that can like read half a book and then never finish it and I'm totally at peace I think that's like an example of why I don't want to sit in the full emotion or like I don't want to be there too long I don't know what that means yes more exciting things to come thanks for listening this is kind of our transition to season two episode one and there's a surprise for episode two so come back soon as pera sillan says I love you all and you are all princesses so don't forget that I only mean that in a fun cute way so yeah we'll see you next time and never stop crying bye