Join me in this episode as I chat with my dear friend Melina Charis, as we share our personal stories of losing our mothers and the profound impact it has had on our lives. Together, we created Sacred Ground, a virtual community event featuring a guided tea ceremony and embodied movement practice, designed to provide a sacred space for reflection, healing, and connection.
Grief isn't a neatly organized series of steps; it is a deeply personal, non-linear experience. In our conversation, we challenge societal misconceptions about grief and explore its unpredictable nature. By sharing our own experiences, we highlight the importance of allowing emotions to flow naturally, embracing the full spectrum of feelings from joy to sadness. Through rituals like tea ceremonies, we can create intentional spaces to honor these emotions, providing a sanctuary for self-awareness and growth. Listen as we discuss how these sacred spaces can guide us toward a richer understanding of life and help us stay connected to our true selves.
In this heartfelt episode, we invite you to explore the depth of your own grief journey, recognizing it as a sacred part of life. Through personal anecdotes and insightful discussions, we emphasize the transformative power of being truly present with your emotions. Whether through Sacred Ground or other supportive environments, we encourage you to find the courage to embrace the sacred space of grief, honoring its role in your life and allowing it to guide you toward healing and new beginnings.
Sign Up for Sacred Grief: A Ceremony for Grief + Growth happening on November 17th. $33 to join.
Sign up for the next Sacred Ground
I would love to hear what arises for you as you listen, and anything specific you'd like to hear on the show. Shoot me a note via email (hello@ellieflow.com), or respond to the episode directly via the feature on your podcast app.
Music credit:
Embrace by Sappheiros | https://soundcloud.com/sappheirosmusic
Music promoted on https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ellie (00:03):
Welcome to Transformed by Grief.
My name is Ellie Thomas and Iam here to guide you on your
transformational grief journeyFrom feeling lost, raw and
brokenhearted, questioningeverything in you and around you
, to reconnecting to the truthof who you are and the beauty,
fulfillment and vibrancy of lifethat is still available in you
(00:27):
and through you.
On this podcast, we explore thedepths of what it means to say
yes to life again after you'vebeen broken open by pain and
grief.
We will explore what it meansto create a deep, loving and
reverent relationship toyourself, to grief and to life
in a way that allows you tobegin to rebuild from the inside
(00:49):
out and to create a powerfulfoundation for a joy-filled,
alive feeling and fulfillinglife you love.
Welcome back to Transformed byGrief.
I'm happy to bring you aninterview slash more like a
conversation, I guess, but aninterview conversation with one
of my best friends, melina.
(01:10):
Charis and Melina and I arecoming together.
We're bringing our beautiful,powerful work and containers
together to bring a newcommunity grief event to life,
and this event is called SacredGround and it's happening on
November 17th and you can signup now.
(01:33):
I'll leave the link in the shownotes for everything.
And so we wanted to have aconversation about bringing kind
of our journeys together.
Bringing kind of our journeystogether and I interview her
about what transformed by griefmeans to her right now.
She shares some of her storyand then we really get into
(01:53):
talking about the power and theimportance of different aspects
of finding presence and cominginto the body and exploring and
connecting with grief beyondwords, beyond mental and
intellectual exploration, and wetalk about the event a little
(02:16):
bit more at the end.
But I want to give you somedetails here.
Sacred Ground is a ceremony forgrief and growth and the
beginning portion of it will bea guided tea ceremony.
It's all virtual, so you'll bedoing this from your home.
Melina will be guiding us onzoom for the tea ceremony and
then I'll lead us in a longerinvitation of connecting to
(02:38):
what's present emotionally andwith our grief, and into a
embodied, intuitive movementpractice that will help you
process and feel and begin totap into greater nuggets of
wisdom or greater release reallywhatever is there for you and
then we'll close with spacewhere you can ask questions or
(03:00):
we'll have a circle to reallywitness each other and offer you
space to share what yourexperience was and receive
anything that you would like toreceive, and I just wrote a
really powerful newsletter acouple days ago about how
incredibly powerful andlife-changing the openings are
(03:22):
when we come together to let ourgrief be shared in community
and when we allow ourselves tobe seen and witnessed in our
grief fully.
This opens the doors to thetremendous medicine of being
actually truly seen and knownfor, potentially the first time
in our lives, I know the firsttime I was witnessed in my grief
(03:44):
by people that got it, bypeople that knew how to hold
space for it.
It totally transformed my lifeand my work really and gave me
access to this feeling that allof me can be present here and I
am loved and seen and respectedand held in my highest, and my
wounds can be here too.
(04:04):
There is no pity that's alivehere.
It's just a total process ofrevering and honoring everything
that we've walked through toget here and being held up in
the truth and potential of yourheart and the greater parts of
you, beyond just your pain orjust the world's understanding
(04:28):
of who you are.
So we would love to have youjoin us for Sacred Ground on
November 17th at 1 pm Eastern,10 am Pacific.
All you need to have with youis some tea or herbs.
It's all on the registrationpart A safe space to move, to be
(04:49):
.
Still, we're going to play somemusic, so you might want
headphones.
You're going to want comfyclothes.
This is going to be like a oneand a half hour retreat that you
get to kind of check into andmove into a space of softness,
move into a space of slowingdown, move into a space of
silence and really honor andallow whatever is there to come
(05:10):
up.
So we can't wait and we hope tosee you there.
Let me just read Melina's bio soyou have some background on her
before I share our conversation.
Melina Cheris is a mother,ceremonialist and guide for
those walking in the intenseinitiations and transitions of
life.
She is a giver, a void walker,a space holder, a bridge.
(05:34):
She is fiercely devoted to thewisdom of her body and the
initiatory path of grief, deathand sacred creation.
She has 10 plus years ofexperience with transformative
embodiment practices and she'shere to hold you deeply and
fully through your owninitiations, to guide you
through your dark nights of thesoul as you remember, and find
(05:56):
the light within.
You can visit her website atwwwmelianacheriscom and connect
with her on Instagram at MelinaCheris.
Here is our beautifulconversation on grief and being
(06:34):
transformed by grief.
Thank you.
Nobody knows this probably, butyou gifted me the name of this
podcast, so it feels veryappropriate to welcome you here,
thank you, thank you, such agift such a gift to be here.
Melina (06:59):
Yeah, I got.
Yeah, I got so excited when yousaid the name.
It feels so.
You and, as I said to you, Igifted you the name, but I
really thought you had alreadycome up with it.
My energy had, and you read itback to me exactly so so it's so
(07:26):
beautiful to be a part of theyeah, the new evolution of your
beautiful work and magic andsharing your voice thank you.
Ellie (07:40):
So melina and I have been friends for four and a half
years.
We've been very good friendsfor about progressively, for the
last four years and in thesepast four years both of our moms
have died and we've sat withthem in their last breaths, have
(08:08):
died and we've sat with them intheir last breaths and, as the
people that listen here know,mom died almost four years ago,
a little less three, yeah,almost it'll be four in February
, which is wild yeah and yourmom died this past June.
yep, um, and you also had a babyin the past year, and two years
(08:32):
ago mom was diagnosed withcancer, and that's when, well,
you had really accompanied me inall parts of my grief journey,
truly, but, and we deepened ourfriendship in that.
I think our friendship went to awhole nother level when you
(08:57):
experienced your mom's illnessfor the first time yeah and
we've been able to just turntoward each other over and over
and over again with more andmore depths for the past many
years.
And now we walk with thetremendous gift of sharing our
(09:24):
grief together and welcomingothers into spaces where the raw
aliveness of their grief livesand allowing that to like I'm
almost seeing like literally therawness of a beating heart,
(09:46):
like connect, that place wheregrief pulses right along with
our heart, and allowingourselves and others to to tend
that and to experience that andto be transformed by it.
So I think I'd like to startwith just what, when you sit
(10:12):
with the energy of, transformedby grief for you, what that
looks like and feels like rightnow.
Now, hmm, you.
Melina (10:29):
Yeah, I think it's so devastating to me that in our
(11:02):
we've largely lost the art ofbeing with our grief and a very
unfortunate part of that processis that a lot of people don't
know what to say.
A lot of people drop off, a lotof people say weird things.
People just don't know.
(11:22):
Don't know, they were nottaught or shown most people, how
to be with their own grief, howto be with someone who is
grieving, and that is anotherlayer of grief.
When you are in that, whateveryour grief is, but specifically
(11:45):
with the illness of a loved one,the death of a loved one,
there's another layer that thegriever has to be with, of other
people, not in our society as awhole, expecting grief to be
linear, you know, as time goeson, expecting you to just like
(12:06):
really actually glorifying,quickly going back to work,
quickly quote unquote beingmoving on Moving forward.
Yeah, like moving on, as if wecould ever do that Um.
(12:32):
So to really tend to our griefin a way, an ongoing way for the
rest of our lives, and to bewilling to tend to all of our
grief, um is an art.
It is a lost art and it is onethat for the aliveness, for the
to really feel the full spectrumof life, to really feel our
(12:53):
full joy, our full aliveness, wehave to be able to meet the
depths of our grief regularly.
You know, you and I have talkedabout this, but it's often
these cataclysmic events that Ijust wrote a piece on how I was.
(13:15):
As you mentioned, my mom wasdiagnosed with cancer two years
ago and it ripped me open in somany ways and a lot of people.
It was like stage two, you know, stage one, and nobody could
really understand in my life whyit ripped me open.
So, except you, like youunderstood, and that's why you
(13:38):
were a safe place for me,because everyone else, literally
almost everyone else in my lifewas like everyone else,
literally almost everyone elsein my life was like she's going
to be fine, it's cool, it's allgood, like you know, like why is
this affecting you so much?
And in that moment my lifecompletely changed, obviously
with her death as well, but thatwas really the moment of
(13:59):
receiving that text from herthat they found cancer, which in
my body and heart I alreadyknew the truth of and I think
somewhere I also knew the truthof her life was going to be
(14:35):
connected with my tears in thisway.
You have really walked thisbefore and shown me along with
other people, but really you'resuch a beautiful begin to me of
like just and, and everyone whoI really admire is able to just
feel their tears in this way andto like, when the tears come,
(14:56):
we don't apologize, we we letthem go.
(15:16):
And this was not always how Iwas.
I would push them away, I wouldapologize.
I was not this open, I wouldapologize.
I would.
I was not this open, I was notthis connected to my sadness, to
my grief, to my aliveness.
Ultimately, and I'm likeanytime I feel the tears this
way and I allow them to be here,I'm so grateful to to be moved
(15:50):
by life and be like really fullyin touch with what I'm saying.
I'm talking about the death ofmy mother, I'm talking about
(16:32):
this intense journey that I walkand as I, you know, just wrote
this piece for a long time.
I thought, oh, two years ago,when my mom was diagnosed, that
was my first experience of grief.
And no, I realized no, no, no,no.
We all walk with grief throughall of our lives Grief of
leaving childhood, grief of theparents we didn't get, grief of
dreams not followed orrelationships that needed to end
(16:53):
.
But you know just so much,there's grief, we all walk with
it.
And just because we pretendit's not there doesn't mean it
doesn't exist.
And so that moment was not myfirst experience of grief, but
it was the first moment I couldno longer look away from my
(17:17):
grief.
It was in my face and it's like, yeah, she was diagnosed, she
had surgery.
And it was like, yeah, she wasdiagnosed, she had surgery.
And it was like, okay, she'sokay.
And so much of me just wantedto go back, like, just take me
back before I.
You know, this was in my face,the fragility of life, cause
(17:38):
it's so hard, it's so painful,it's so much, it's like it's so
painful, it's so much, it's likeoh.
And then, in the early days ofraw grief, after just receiving
a diagnosis or just a death or abreakup or you know, whatever
it is that those early days ofraw grief are just so fucking
(17:59):
hard, so hard, and of courseit's like I don't want to go
back to that place.
Um, and then when she wasre-diagnosed last year, I was
like here it is again.
I'm a little bit familiar withit, but here it is.
(18:23):
And then, when she died, sixmonths later, again here it is.
So, to me, being transformed bygrief is just allowing yourself
to be transformed by grief, tobe changed to, to to acknowledge
(18:43):
your grief, to tend it, to bewith it, to feel it like as it
moves, to just to not apologize,to not stop the tears, to not
you know.
And grief isn't just aboutsadness, as we both know.
It's so much more than that.
(19:04):
It's so deep and rich and andit's it's so much, it's so much
it's like.
The more I learn about andembody and experience grief, the
more I'm like I don't reallyknow what it is.
It's so big, I can't.
I can't put it into words, andI think so many people are like
grief equals sadness, grief, andI thought that too.
(19:26):
I mean, right after my mom died, I was like why am I not laying
in the bed crying?
I mean, I also had athree-month-old baby, so that
was also a big part of thisprocess learning to be a mother
at the same time as losing mymother.
(19:50):
But grief wasn't at all what Ithought it was going to look
like.
And I remember, in thoseintense months of anticipatory
grief in the six months beforeshe died, before that, but it
really intense in the six monthsbefore she died, when we knew
her cancer was terminal and shehad about six months to live, it
was like it could be any momentthat you know, I'm pregnant,
I'm giving birth, is she goingto be here to meet my son?
(20:13):
I mean so many layers of it, um, but I remember just being like
what is it going to be?
Like what is it going to?
I don't know what I, what is itgoing to be?
And you were like like what isit going to?
I don't know what I, what is itgoing to be?
And you were like I don't know.
(20:35):
You were like I have no idea.
And it's like I was like I justwant somebody to tell me what
it's going to be like.
You know, and that's also what'sso hard about grief is that it
is it is such a individualexperience and it can feel so,
so lonely, and it is lonely andI think that's a part of it and
(20:58):
there's so it's so universal atthe same time.
I mean it's like we're allgoing, like I said, we're all
living with grief of many things, of the planet, of the
environment, of, you know,colonization, like so much, so
much grief, patriarchy, likethey're endless, and it just
(21:19):
does us all, it makes us sick,it does us all such a disservice
to stuff it and to not havethese rituals and ceremonies,
and I am not one of those people.
So I knew I needed supportgroups and spaces after my mom
(21:52):
died and I joined a few andquickly realized, oh, I need
something deeper than this.
Like I am a, you know,ceremonialist, I do, you know I
do tea ceremony.
I am like I work with my body,I like to move and dance and cry
(22:14):
and write and channel.
And you know I needed, I justneeded deeper spaces.
Like I love these spaces totalk about our grief are so
beautiful and important.
And I was like I need somethingdeeper than this.
Like I love these spaces totalk about our grief are so
beautiful and important.
And I was like I need somethingdeeper than this, like I need a
space to just feel.
And I think that's somethingthat's so beautiful about tea
(22:35):
ceremony, which is one of mypractices that I have been
practicing for almost four years, um, and serving others now for
a couple years a year and ahalf maybe.
And one thing people say whenthey come to tea ceremony with
me is wow, I just I just heardthis from somebody the other day
(23:00):
who came like who is in a deepgrief process and she was like
the other day who came like whois in a deep grief process and
she was like I've been talkingabout my grief non-stop.
I've been talking, talking,talking.
I just need a, I just needed aspace to feel and cry and that,
and I'm so glad for this spaceand I have needed spaces like
that as well.
I had, you know, I have a likeregular therapist and that's
(23:24):
beautiful.
And I talked to you and you areso great at also talking and
holding deep space and we kindof we weave in and out of that,
which is so incredible, like insome of our conversations, as
you supported me so beautifullythrough my grief journey, I mean
we weaved between talking tosobbing, to praying, to
(23:47):
meditating, to breathing, tosilence, to more talking.
You know, beautifully, justweaving all of these, because
you know that's the other thingis like talking is so beautiful
and important and we need crying, we need yelling, we need
laughing, we need music, we needdancing, we need you know, all
of these things too, and griefis going to tell you what it
(24:10):
means if you're open to listen.
So I really needed in my griefjust a lot of different spaces,
and I needed also just spaces tojust drop into my body and just
feel, and sometimes it wascrying, and sometimes it was joy
(24:32):
and peace, strangely, andsometimes it was stillness, and
sometimes it was just thatbeautiful sense of like I am
being held.
I'm, you know, when I washolding so much try tending to a
newborn, losing my mom, my, youknow, dealing with my marriage,
(24:53):
dealing with the familydynamics and every everyone
else's grief and everything thatshifts when someone you love
dies, and, um, I needed, I justneeded to be held by somebody
who had the capacity to holdthat and wasn't going to turn
away and wasn't afraid andwasn't going to think I was too
(25:15):
much or wasn't going to try togive me platitudes that so many
people, which I just heard froma family member who, again, I
know, means well, well, but Iheard so much and I still hear
well, at least your mom got tomeet him, at least your mom got
to meet your son, wow, and I'mlike.
I just said this.
(25:36):
I had a family gathering andone of my family members said
that to me and I said, yes, andit is still very devastating.
It was beautiful and she's nothere to see the rest of his life
.
She's not here.
She was here for 11 weeks ofhis life.
She deserved more than that, Ideserved more than that, he
deserved more than that.
So both of those things can betrue.
Ellie (26:00):
Yeah, yeah, when you allow the tears and and this is
a you to Melina, you and you tothe global, you, well, you just
so beautifully shared that withus.
I was just sitting with you asyou let the tears come right now
(26:21):
.
(26:44):
The tears come right now andthere is this moment where, when
we allow ourselves to go beyondthe words of grief and we feel
it in our bodies, whether it'scoming up as tears, as groans,
as yells, as physical movementor some kind of creative thing,
however it wants to come, it'slike the greatest.
What the words that are comingis equalizer of life.
Like everything that feelsdistant all of a sudden feels
close and everything that feelstopsy-turvy all of a sudden
(27:08):
comes even.
It's like this opening intoliving, into the current of life
, in that moment, so deeply andso connected, and in that
(27:29):
there's movement that happens inour being, there's healing that
happens in our being, there'scultivation, there's growth,
there's all of these things.
Not trying to approach grief,to get to those things, but
allowing grief to be our doorwayinto these things.
And so, sitting with you now,as you were letting the tears
(27:51):
come out, I just wanted to sayto the people listening that can
you feel that, can you feeljust this?
It's so, it's so interesting.
It's just like grief it's hardto put words to.
It's like this stillness that isnot flat yeah, yeah, it's not
(28:14):
empty, it's very full yeah, it'sso luscious, it's so um, almost
voluptuous in its form, likeoverflowing out, and it's deeply
painful, and also so much moreis there.
Melina (28:41):
Yeah.
Ellie (28:42):
And so I love that you just shared us with that, or
shared that with us in that way,and I love this idea of you
know you and I met in aspiritual based group.
We're not entry-level spiritualpeople.
(29:03):
We've been engaging in thedepths and explorations of
spiritual life for many years.
We've shared that, and so foryou arriving to grief maybe you
hadn't engaged with grief in theway that you began to when your
(29:25):
mom was diagnosed, but you werebeyond the entry level of that
exploration, and so I also loveto speak to that, because that
in and of itself can be extralonely a little bit.
Our society operating in a and Idon't mean to say that these
(29:45):
things are entry level because Ithink that so much has grown
from them.
But when there is a culture ofa lot of interconnection,
spiritual connection and innerevolutionary work that's already
been there, and then griefarises or meets our world, it
(30:05):
can feel like what do we turn toand where do we turn to now?
Yeah, and you and I have hadeach other to know what the
power of letting all of thatalive together feels like, like
I don't need to let go.
(30:27):
I might question everythingthat I've ever explored before I
might change, I might not wantto engage in these same things,
and yet I can let all of thesequestions, all of these doubts,
all of these recalibrations,these spinning of these
(30:47):
questions, all of these doubts,all of these recalibrations,
these spinning of my lens, thisturn of my lens, be here at the
same time as all of these otherthings.
And in order for all of that tobe present, I think that usually
there's like a process on theother side for somebody holding
space.
They've needed to go throughtheir own journey with that.
(31:08):
Maybe it wasn't through deathand grief, Maybe it was through
something else.
But yeah, yeah, there's,there's this well of, there's
this well underneath the um, thegrief work that we know in the
(31:32):
world, that's, it's ripe andready to hold people at whatever
level they're coming in at, orand I don't mean level in a
hierarchical way, it's likelevel they're coming in at, or
and I don't mean level in ahierarchical way it's like,
however, you're connecting, butyou are, it's ready process,
yeah, in your journey yeah, it'sready to hold people as you
(31:52):
float and let the water carryyou.
Yeah, and I love how beautifullyyour story speaks to that.
Melina (32:00):
Yeah, notice how, in the moving with the tears, a couple
things there's and youmentioned it too like there's
the speaking about the griefwhich is so important, the
(32:21):
process to write right, all ofthese things, and then there's
the bodily experience of grief,and I think we're in our culture
, we're getting more into ohyeah, the body is important,
(32:44):
like we're.
So you know in the mind about alot of things, and grief too,
and that's a beautiful startingplace.
Um, you know, talk therapy andtalking with friends and all of
that is so important and, and Ithink what people are starting
to wake up to more and desire isspaces to drop it, the deeper
layers that live in the body, um, and there's no, yeah, there's,
(33:10):
there's absolutely no rush forthat.
I mean, I think, with my owngrief, like you, yeah, it's not.
Like you know, for me, I think,which you will remember from my
grief process right afterlosing my mom, I was like I
couldn't cry a lot, which wasvery strange for me.
I mean, most of my life Iintellectualized my pain and I
(33:32):
was told by so many therapistsAfter it was like the third or
fourth therapist or coach orhealer I was working with who
was like you're talking aboutyour sadness but you're not
feeling it, which would annoy meso much.
I was like, no, I am, because Iunderstand it, like I love
understanding and analyzing, sothat's like my safe zone and I'm
(33:53):
I'm really like it.
Just I'm so, as I mentionedearlier, like I'm so grateful
that I am now so much more intouch with actually feeling
things, and that's not to sayI'm perfect at it whatsoever.
However, I know the importanceof to stay open to all of life,
to my vibrancy, to creations, toall of it in an organic way.
(34:16):
That's not let me just do mygratitude, you know, in an
organic way.
Let me just do my gratitude,you know, in an organic way.
It just requires thisrelationship with pain and
sorrow and grief.
That is open and it's not.
And it's not a forced rushthing, because for me, the other
side of this can be like whenshe first died, I was in shock,
(34:39):
even though I knew, becausethat's the other thing people
love to say to me.
I just had someone say thisWell, but it's easier because
you knew, you know, you knew youhad six months.
Ellie (34:52):
That's another thing I hear you know, I could talk
about that for a long time.
Melina (34:56):
That's another thing that people think and it's fine
and in some ways, sure, like,yes, I, it was beautiful that we
had this time, that I had timeto start processing, and it's it
is different than losingsomeone suddenly and it's still,
they're still dead, you know,and um, it's just so anyway, I
(35:16):
mean, I could go on about that,but oh, I lost my train of
thought.
What was I saying?
Ellie (35:24):
you were saying that.
Someone just said to you thatit would be easier, and I'm just
caught on the word easier.
I just want to invite anybody,if anyone ever said anything is
easier to you about your griefeasier doesn't really exist in
the vocabulary of loss and grief, or even pain I just want to
invite that in.
First you were speaking to that.
It was hard to connect withyour body.
Melina (35:45):
Yeah it was so now being in my spiritual journey and all
of this stuff, just really forme, it's been a journey of
returning to my sadness andallowing that, and allowing my
anger and allowing these quoteunquote negative emotions.
I hate that we call them that,because they're just emotions
(36:06):
and we're, we're all, and it'snot to like, like we're not
trying to heal our way out ofthem.
We're actually trying to meetthem more deeply, so that we're
not like, oh my God, this iscompletely overtaking me like or
breaking me or whatever.
And of course, those momentsare beautiful too, and a lot of
us have those, I've had those.
But it's like can we buildrelationships?
(36:28):
Tending the garden is comingback.
Can we build relationships?
Can we tend to these emotions?
Can we allow them to move?
You said something beautifulabout moving with it and, as you
, you know, you all felt andheard when I was moved.
There's a natural pause.
(36:48):
It's just like a, a pause and aand allowing myself to really
feel that wave, rather thanexplaining it or saying I'm so
sorry or rushing through it, andthat's hard in spaces where
that's not always the norm orthat's not always welcomed.
(37:10):
I have been in spaces like that, where it's really brave, and I
also wanted to say that ifyou're not there, that's okay.
Like there's no, like oh, I'mcrying.
So this like great, you knowit's, that's not.
(37:31):
You know, because I was inshock for a while and again,
even though I knew I'm puttingthis in air quotes even though I
knew she was going to die, Iwas still in shock because
nothing can prepare you, like,again, the mind cannot prepare
you for the embodied experienceof a loved one's death, just
(37:52):
nothing.
So what you knew, and when Iwas trying to be like, tell me
what it's gonna be, you're likeyou're just gonna have to go
through it.
And I was like okay, because,yeah, nothing can prepare you.
So I remember feeling like, whyam I not crying more?
You know, I'm in touch with myfeelings, what's happening is
something wrong.
(38:13):
And then just kind of realizinggrief cannot be rushed.
And the other side of this islike wanting to just rush to get
somewhere in my grief, wantingto rush and and for me you know
that when my mom died I was 11,12 weeks postpartum, which is a
(38:34):
strange time because most peopleare kind of coming out of the
bubble and wanting to start tosee, to see family and friends,
which I did, and I had reallyput my life on hold for a long
time for my to tend to my momand her last months I shut down
my business, which was doingreally well.
I shut it down completely andreally publicly and um tended to
(39:01):
her and tended, and then tendedto my son after he was born,
and so when she died, I wasreally feeling a strange desire
to return outwardly to seefriends and to.
I attended a concert, you know,and in my mind I was like what,
like this is weird, I don't know, you know, and in my mind I was
like why, like this is weird, Idon't know, I shouldn't be, I
(39:22):
should be like crying in the bedand what I thought grief should
look like.
But, you know, I just reallytrusted that, because that's
what that's where I wanted to go, and I and I did, and and then,
after about a month and a halfof that, my nervous system was
fried and my nervous system waslike, okay, we did that and
(39:51):
you're attending a new baby,you're, you're, you know, and
like I started to like justrealize, okay, I'm entering the
shock was wearing off.
That was, I think, giving mesome energy to do these things.
And I just heard really clearlyand my body was speaking to me.
My body, I mean I was exhausted, I mean I wasn't sleeping
because of my baby as well.
(40:12):
So there was that, but it was,my body was just exhausted and
it was like okay, time to rest,okay, time to rest.
And I listened and it's funnybecause so many people were like
, wow, it's incredible that youjust I just shut everything down
(40:33):
.
I had gone back, I had startedgoing back to my business a
little bit and I shut it downagain, which was really hard
because I felt I was like I justcame back and now I'm shutting
it down again.
But I mean, when my body speaks, I listen and I've learned,
I've learned over the years todo that even when it's really
uncomfortable, and yeah.
(40:56):
So I really slowed down againand I, I, I honored that for
like six weeks after her death.
I needed to just be back out inthe world and that was
beautiful and that it wasn't atall what I thought that grief
would look like.
And then I realized, okay, I'mpast some of the shock and I am
(41:16):
out of the death portal, which,as you know, is an intensely
psychedelic experience portalwhich, as you know, is an
intensely psychedelic experienceand just so intense, and so I
was like coming off of that andcoming off of the birth portal
that I had been in just weeksprior to that.
So I've been in a lot of portalsand my body was just craving
(41:39):
rest and to slow down, and I wasscared because I knew that
meant that the grief would wouldcome up, um, and it did and,
and I slowed everything down andI would.
I just remember driving aroundand crying and then, at the same
time, I was like, oh, I'm solike.
I was like my tears are back,like I felt as I really listened
(42:03):
and slowed down.
Of course, I was afraid, and Iwas, I knew, is what I needed to
do.
And that neck, when I was readythough you know I wasn't ready
to do that right after she died,I wasn't and, um, but when my
tears kind of came back, I wasgrateful because I was like,
(42:27):
okay, I'm, I can, I have morecapacity now that I've slowed,
I've taken a lot of things offmy plate so that I actually have
space and time as much as Icould, as a new mother, to just
be with some of this.
And you know, yeah, it's, it'sespecially as a new mother.
(42:50):
I mean I remember, like in the,it wasn't that I didn't cry at
all, but I was ready, I couldfeel my body was ready for rest
and more space so that I couldmeet the grief on a deeper layer
and I mean I know I willforever, for the rest of my life
.
You know I have no, luckily.
(43:12):
I know that grief is not linear, like I think we really think
in this culture like the moretime that passes, the more it's
quote unquote, easier there itis.
I have no illusions of that.
I think the grief shifts, ofcourse, as we shift and I think,
(43:34):
yeah, there's always new layers.
There's always there's justmore that we can access and
different and that comes up andand just I think the main thing
is to, just as much as we canstay, stay open to it.
Um, and I think you mentionedanother thing about people that
(44:01):
have met this and it's not thatthe people, the containers that
I wanted to be a part of thatcould really hold me.
It's not that anyone was quoteunquote over their grief or a
master at it.
Everyone is in relationship toit.
And the people that I reallytrusted and needed to hold me in
(44:22):
my grief, it didn't, it didn'tmatter if they had had the same
circumstances with me or not,you know, or lost the same
person or not, or experiencewhatever, like it wasn't that at
all.
It was, it was, oh, this, itwas a felt energetic sense of
(44:42):
this person honors their grief.
This person has met their grief.
This person makes space for andgoes deep with their grief,
doesn't push it away, you know,and that's felt.
I mean someone does not need toreally say anything to me, I
(45:04):
can feel it in their energy andthose are the spaces that I
really needed and, yeah, justlike the spaces I really needed
to were like that you are sobeautiful at.
And then the other people Ichose to hold me is like there's
no judgment at all, even when Ineeded to avoid my grief, even
(45:29):
when I needed to numb it, that'sfine, like that.
We, it's okay, you know, that'spart of it.
It's not.
Sometimes we can't, you know,sometimes it's like titration
and it's different for everyperson.
But for me, I had just beenthrough such intensity for six
months.
I had been through the ups anddowns, the anxiety of when, when
(45:52):
is she gonna die, her, watchingher suffer, bringing my son in.
I need so much like I'm gonnabe processing this year for the
rest of my life, so much um,that I could not.
I, just right after she died,was not the time and and
everyone I was with just trustedmy process so deeply and I did
(46:17):
have a beautiful mentor, jasmine, reflect to me.
And I did have a beautifulmentor, jasmine, reflect to me
lovingly.
You know, when I was hittingthat kind of breaking point in
my nervous, I just had a kind ofcomplete breakdown, like six
weeks after she died, where afew things were just converging
and my body was losing it.
I mean, I was, my nervoussystem was just so fried.
(46:38):
I did have her, in one of oursessions, lovingly reflect to me
why are you like?
I think she said can you sharewith me why you're wanting to go
back to work?
I was so triggered.
I was like because I love mywork and my clients need me back
(46:59):
.
And like love my work and myclients need me back.
And like you know which I doand it's true, and I was
resisting the void, I was likeso angry, I was so annoyed, I
was like I've been in the voidfor so fucking long.
I just want to be out.
You know I just want to be outand you know you lovingly
reflected to me too that I justneeded to try it.
(47:20):
That is really what I needed.
I needed to try to I do somesessions with my clients.
I needed to go attend eventsand it was great until it was
not great and it was like, okay,now is the time to.
I now have a little bit morespace from all this to to rest
(47:44):
and to allow more grief to comeup, as I will continue doing for
the rest of my life.
And so it's.
Yeah, it's that beautifulbalance of like not non judgment
of wherever you are is perfect,and sometimes we do need that
loving mirror of like.
Your body needs to rest alittle bit and it's.
(48:05):
You know, I kept, I reflectedon it and I was so triggered at
first by what she said.
I was like she doesn't knowanything and and then I realized
, yeah, she's right, she's right.
And I had so much resistance togoing back into the void, into
the just letting everything go.
I was like I, I've done that somuch resistance to going back
into the void, into the justletting everything go.
I was like I've done that somuch, I'm so tired of just
(48:26):
letting everything go.
But the void and the liminalspace is so fertile and so full
of importance and that's anotherthing in our culture, right
Like the winter, when nothing issprouting or this, you know,
where there's nothing that canbe seen on the surface, the void
(48:50):
, the darkness we're gettingback to.
Like nature has four seasonsand their cycles, and there's
times to rest and there's timesto to create and and and all of
this.
And, yeah, I think we justreally desperately need to be
(49:15):
reminded that those are reallysacred spaces too.
That and grief is a lot likethat of really giving yourself
the space when you can, whenyou're ready to just be in the
darkness.
(49:35):
You know, as I mentioned, Ithink, in the beginning, it's
like there's so much wanting torush through, wanting to get
back, wanting to, and peoplewill honor you and they'll say,
oh, my gosh, you're so strong.
So, as you and I have talkedabout many times, it's brave to
be like I'm sad.
Ellie (49:58):
I'm still sad.
I'm still sad Not going away.
Melina (50:02):
Correct, it's not going away.
And, yes, my mom got to meet myson and it is still extremely
sad constantly that she doesn'tget to see anything else in the
physical.
And I mean, even now this iscoming through too.
Like I think I am talking aboutspirituality and connection,
(50:24):
right, I'm like before she diedI was like this is gonna be fine
, like I'll just connect withher spiritually and it'll be
great, and like I'm so glad I'ma spiritual person.
And, yes, and I was so shockedby I couldn't feel her at all
after she died.
I was just so fucking angry ather for leaving me, for some of
(50:50):
the choices that she made, um,and I could not feel her at all
and I was like terrified becauseI was like I was banking on
that, like like that, I'm goingto really feel her.
And again, in that case, I gavemyself space.
You know a lot of people likeother people in my life, because
(51:11):
I am around a lot of spiritualpeople were, who are connected
to her, were like are you, areyou, are you connected?
Like, oh, my God, I'm, you know, really just kind of this,
trying to connect, which I thinkis, again, totally fine If
that's what you are doingbeautiful.
Um, I was.
I just knew there was like thisknowing of I need to wait.
(51:31):
I don't want to try to forcesome kind of connection with her
and I did feel there were acouple moments in those early
weeks when I did still feel thatI was so angry I was like I
don't even want to be connectedto her.
Right now I'm angry and Ineeded to feel that and I needed
again in my this container withmy mentor, just to scream and
(51:56):
pound my fists.
My throat was raw, my fistswere sore from pounding pillows.
I mean, I had so much anger andI needed to move through that.
You know, I needed to let thatin and that was really scary too
.
Um, and I needed to just bewith everything that was there.
(52:20):
And slowly, over time, I havefelt more and more connected
with her and I'm still allowedto miss her in the physical.
I'm still allowed.
You know, there's anger.
That's still there.
Of course.
There's longing, there'ssadness.
There's longing, there'ssadness.
(52:45):
There's it's all.
It all can exist at once.
It, you know it just because Ifeel connected with her
spiritually.
It it also exists rightalongside the like.
Why isn't she here in thephysical?
Ellie (52:55):
yeah, there's a lot of pulling apart we can do of all
this, but the one thing that'snot true.
I'm never gonna say just onething, as everybody listening
knows, you included.
We had let many greatconversations around not
(53:25):
comparing what it's like youhaving really respected the way
and admired the way that I hadmoved with my grief, and both of
us but me, me needing to kindof say and I'm, you're going to
do it super differently than Idid, it's going to be different.
(53:47):
And not comparing circumstancesand also finding the beautiful
overlap of circumstances and howsimilarities are there.
We've had so many incredibleconversations around what I call
like finding your attuned paceand you doing all of that so
beautifully.
And attuned pace for me isallowing yourself to connect
(54:09):
with what you need where it isnow, follow that until it
changes and trusting that.
That is your way of honoringyour grief journey and you did
that so beautifully of like, no,I need to be out, I need to go,
do these things, I need to seepeople, I want people to meet a
baby and great.
Trust that and it will take youright to the next thing.
(54:32):
That's maybe that's five yearsof doing the exact same thing
and maybe it is in.
Okay, in two weeks I'm going torealize I'm right, I'm in a
different space already because,in its non-linearness, these
are arcs, constant arcs.
They might be baby arcs, theymight be lifelong arcs.
(54:53):
You know, every moment thatgrief invites us into something,
there is a whole storyline thatcomes along with it, a whole
experience of you know, likemany lifetimes that get to be
lived within it, and so I well.
First of all, I love how griefinvites us into deeper
relationship with ourself, butalso how it requires deeper
(55:18):
relationship with ourself inorder to continue to meet it
over and over.
And when we talked, I loved howyou started using layers.
I have used levels Levels isreally not the right word for
what I was talking about earlierbut the sense of layers, of
letting the grief work and thegrief experience penetrate us on
(55:38):
greater layers than just themind, because the mind, also in
our world, ends up being aprotector from feeling our grief
, because it's been deemedunsafe for so long, it's been
deemed vulnerable, weak,whatever.
There's thousands of otherthings that go along with that,
and so part of the reason that Ibelieve that you were able to
(56:00):
step into, in different placesat different times, this, the
exploration that you're on andin with grief now, is that you
already, through your process,had already been on a journey of
developing a deep relationshipto yourself.
And so as we talk about ajourney of developing a deep
(56:23):
relationship to yourself, and soas we talk about you know you
heard, your body spoke and youlistened.
Some people might not yet havethat relationship with
themselves, which is fine.
And in the grief process youwill probably be invited into
little nuggets of beginning tolisten to and connect to and
decide oh, do I want to honorthis or not?
Am I ready to honor this or not?
Do I need help in honoring thisor not?
(56:45):
Do I have capacity to honorthis or not?
And this brings me to kind ofthe sense of ceremonial space
and to slowing down and tobeginning to cultivate
relationship with our pain, orcontinue to nourish that
relationship with our pain overtime.
(57:05):
If we already have cultivated isreally in order to listen to
those parts of us, in order tooffer space to us, we really do
need to let our nervous systemsland.
We do need to feel safe andheld.
We do need to um spaciousness,because it isn't something.
Yes, some people get into youand I both have our own versions
(57:27):
of quick intuitive hits or bodyhits or something, but the very
deep messages and knowings thathave guided both of us have
come from um having just enoughspace to be able to hear that or
(57:48):
feel that.
It doesn't mean that it was,you know, six days of silence or
anything like that, but I wishyeah, it was just like one hour
of somebody holding space foryou to step into a little bit
slower of a cadence.
(58:08):
And because grief carries andit's like a symphony of cadences
really it's not just like onespecific People.
When I first lost, my momtalked a lot about, or I would
read a lot about this idea ofthe cadence of grief and in that
early grief I really felt like,yeah, it is.
There is this kind of downwardfeeling cadence that I'm being
(58:35):
asked to meet and over time Ihave realized that there's just
like the opening cello note tothe symphony of your life.
You know it ultimately takes onso many different rhythms and
this is part of the reason thatyou have a deep relationship
with music, that I love.
Music connected to grief worktoo, because the many notes and
(59:02):
the many rhythms and the manybeats of music bring that
cadence alive in our bodies in away that we can't always, you
know, through the mental world,connect with.
And so a little bit of holdingjust I mean I was gonna say a
lot of holding just uh, uh, Imean I was going to say a lot of
(59:23):
holding is fantastic too, butjust a little bit every week is
enough to kind of let yoursystem ease into listening to
what's there and feeling what'snext, and receiving what is here
in the moment that's needing tobe tended to, that's asking to
be tended to, that's asking tobe tended to, that's asking to
(59:43):
be trusted, so that, whateverthe next exploration of this,
you know, of this journey is,can have space to, to come up
and to move through you, whetherthat be another expression of
grief, whether it be a new idea,whether it be a conversation
that needs to be had with, youknow, a loved one, in order to
(01:00:05):
feel like you are living yourlife in the way that you need to
be living your life right now.
There's a million differentexpressions of that, and I love
one of my favorite conversations.
I mean, I don't have a favoriteconversation, I love all of our
conversations but Ispecifically remember this
moment where you had had maybeit was like in July, it was
(01:00:28):
right before it was right as youwere getting in touch with your
anger on a new level.
And you texted me about asession you'd had with Jasmine
and somebody else and that youhad sat for tea and somebody
else, and that you had sat fortea in like a 24 hour period and
I was like whoa it?
And then you said I felt thenew iteration of my business
(01:00:49):
starting to come through for thefirst time and I was like, yes,
because there was enough spaceto like, really, and you had had
this powerful release of anger.
It's like so much release thatgot to happen while you were so
held that then you just like gotto receive what was you know,
the droplets of the goldenliquid, of what would be next
(01:01:12):
Right, and it didn't all comelike okay, here, now go do it,
melina.
It was just like this, italmost like fairy dust sinking
into your cells of like, okay,there's something.
Yeah, and and I know you'veexperienced that in body work
related stuff too, and I have, Ihave two in this process, but I
(01:01:34):
, you know, as we offer sacredground and welcome people to
join us in this.
I think it's so powerful to talkabout how, ceremony and sacred
space, and what do we mean bysacred space?
For me you can answer thisdifferently if you want to For
me, there is this sense ofbringing like intention, um of,
(01:01:59):
and a heartfelt intention thatis, that truly sees everything
as equal, that sees everythingas welcome and that says, yeah,
I am here and I am willing to bewith what's here and I.
I see that there is life inthis, even though it feels like
(01:02:21):
death, or even though it is liferight now, that there are parts
of me that are needing to dieto meet it.
And in the complexity andcompleteness of that, that's
(01:02:44):
what I feel is connected to theword sacred.
And so, as we carve out thesesacred spaces, they nourish and
offer us so much in how we canbegin to, layer by layer, make
space for a differentrelationship with our pain,
where our body actually feelslike it's safe in this moment,
because I am not alone, I am notjudged, I am not going to be
overcome, I'm not floating inthe ocean by myself.
(01:03:08):
Somebody is on a surfboardholding onto my hand.
I am not going to drown here.
Okay, I can let even a fractionof my grief or my sadness or my
pain be present and like, feelit today.
I don't need to go beyond whatI'm ready for, but I can say yes
(01:03:30):
, I can say okay to justwhatever it is.
That's there, and the beautifulthing about this is your system
and your body and yourenergetic and emotional system.
In my experience with thesethings, never it's not like a
tidal waves comes over you.
If you're ready for just a baby, baby, still ocean, it's just
(01:03:53):
like you.
You are met with what you'reready for and what is the
perfect layer to be with.
Um, to continue like this is.
I've really been talking,wanting to write or talk about
how I really despise the termslike we need to move forward or
(01:04:14):
are how are you moving forwardor you need to move forward.
Like that was something thatcame up for me a lot in my early
grief and something that was Iknew that just by living, just
by being here, I was movingforward.
But this idea of moving forwardbeing so linear, whereas I feel
(01:04:34):
like moving forward is actuallyround, it's actually this like
rolling yeah, it's a spiral.
It's actually this like rollingyeah, it's a spiral.
It's like this rollingsensation that swell like, folds
into itself over and over andover again.
And so I don't know how I goton the topic of moving forward,
but basically, by just allowing,like, whatever's there to meet
(01:04:57):
you, that is all that's neededto continue the very, whether it
be fast or slow that day, thenatural momentum of your being
and moving forward, and thenmoving forward and like not
leaving grief behind.
But what is this walk with itthat I'm going to continue to
(01:05:18):
have, continue to deepen into,continue to deepen into,
continue to live and share?
I mean, as you were talkingabout connection with your mom,
I don't know that I've told youthis, but just in the past week,
twice one was in a dream and itwas actually at your house.
I dreamt that my mom and yourmom were at your blessing, or we
(01:05:44):
were at another version of yourblessing way, when Melina had
her blessing way we weren't sureif her mom was going to be
alive at the time and I traveledto California and we made a
bunch of food and we had, like,the most incredible day and.
I got to meet your mom, cuddleon the couch with your mom.
You and I got to like embraceand tremendous sobs afterwards.
(01:06:07):
It was something I'm sureneither of us will ever forget
and I had this kind of dream.
I've had a lot of dreamsrecently and I had this dream of
my mom when she was well like,being in your kitchen with your
like, being in your kitchen withyour mom, being in your kitchen
with your mom, and I wastalking to my mom about helping
me make some food.
(01:06:28):
And then, a couple of dayslater, my sister just texted me
I miss mom.
And I said, yeah, me too.
And I just happened to besitting in the same chair that
I'm sitting in now and for thefirst time, I was able to
(01:06:48):
imagine her knowing my houselike as if she were well,
walking around my house, as ifshe knew it like the back of her
hand, like she'd been here 5million times, and hollering up
the stairs to me while I was inmy office and imagining sitting
on the couch with her, which sheprobably sat on the couch with
(01:07:11):
me 5 million times.
So that's probably why, but thisis almost four years of never
having imagined her so far inthis space and one of the griefs
being, when we bought thishouse, she'll never walking out
of our old apartment a couplemonths after she died, she'll
(01:07:35):
never know.
Another home that I'll live inwas so beautiful.
Because, also, when you've seensomeone deteriorate physically
over time, it takes a long timeto unravel those images and to
(01:07:58):
um be receive the restoredimages of them and their
vibrancy again and theirradiance.
And so you know, as we moveforward, as you so beautifully
spoke about like it's, there'sthis continued deepened
relationship with grief that wewelcome in, when we welcome in
(01:08:18):
that spiral moving forward, notwhen we think of moving forward
as like well, that happened andnow I need to go this way.
Melina (01:08:26):
And something that's so beautiful about just witnessing
you on your grief journey that Iadmire is all those griefs you
mentioned, right, I mean thatone that you just mentioned,
yeah, like the griefs that Inever heard anyone.
I mean there's the grief of,like, losing this person is no
(01:08:52):
longer here physically, andthat's the one that a lot gets a
lot of attention.
And then there's so many othersthe changing family dynamics,
the exactly what you mentioned,like my mom is not going to be
here to see when I move, andthat grief and all the little
griefs like they're, they'rejust constantly knocking at the
(01:09:13):
door.
Yes, and we have a choice.
We can push them away and say,no, not right now, which is
valid Sometimes.
That's what we need to do.
We have I mean, I'm a mom, youknow I can't let it all in all
the time.
I remember in the days after mymom died, like after I put my
son to bed, I would just cry.
(01:09:34):
I would just be like, okay,now's my time to cry Like he's
in bed Cause I didn't have time,you know, I just couldn't
during the day.
So sometimes we do need to pushit but it, like you said so
beautifully, just taking even anhour.
It doesn't have to be six daysof silence, and for most of us
(01:09:55):
that's not attainable, but justhave a desirable.
Yeah, and that's why I loveceremony too, because ceremony I
think you would ask what sacredspace means, and I love what
you said about being heartfelt,intentional, and to me it's
(01:10:16):
really honoring our grief.
What keeps coming up is likehonoring our grief as sacred.
It's not something we need tomove on from, it's not something
we need to escape, it's notsomething we need to minimize or
heal from or it's like no, weneed to honor this.
This is part of being a humanbeing.
This is sacred ground Like thisis connecting us with life and
(01:10:41):
and with our hearts and with ourpurpose and with our, you know,
with our joy and our creativityand all of it.
And to me, ceremony anddropping into these deep spaces
is such a beautiful part of that.
I mean you mentioned I'vereceived beautiful visions.
I've received so much fromthose, these kinds of spaces,
(01:11:04):
and I need these spaces.
And you know, if you're someonewho's, I think, with grief, you
and I talk about it's likeno-transcript and just just be
(01:11:37):
there, that's it and and and notsay a word, like you're met and
held, and I totally understandthat it can feel scary and
that's also why I think theseloving containers are so needed,
because sometimes you just needsomeone to hold you and it,
when you are starting out, whenyou are like, where do I even
(01:11:59):
begin with this?
And like you and I fully trustthat we trust in everyone who
joins us that there's you're.
You're exactly where you needto be and you're going to
experience exactly what you needto experience, whether that's
complete stillness, whetherthat's just a sense of ease and
(01:12:20):
being held, whether that's tears, whether that's an idea it
could be so many of these thingsand there's absolutely zero
pressure to be feeling anythingor doing anything and there's
zero judgment.
I think that is, there's zeroexpectations, and I think that
those spaces are, are so neededto just be still to, to listen,
(01:12:44):
as you said, to feel the body,to feel what's here and on the
other side of the fear of oh mygosh, is what?
If there's this thing that'sgonna come and overtake me,
which I've totally felt, there'sjust so much peace and there's
so much, just more availablewhen you're willing to be held,
(01:13:07):
when you're willing to take achance on something that you
might be scared to, especiallywhen you know that there's no
expectation of anything you needto be feeling, and that's
ironically.
You know tea ceremony, which ispart of our event is, is such a
beautiful, has been such abeautiful ally for me and my
grief journey.
Um, and what I hear from peopleover and over again is because
(01:13:32):
people come to ceremony and somecry the entire time, some sit
in silence, some are like, yeah,I was thinking about my lunch,
you know, like I was thinkingabout going to the farmer's
market, like it, there's noexpectation, you can, you can.
Or sometimes people will say mymind was so active I couldn't
really drop in.
Or some people will say my mindwas so active I couldn't really
drop in.
Or some people will say, oh, Idropped in the very last bowl.
(01:13:53):
Or you know, I don't know.
Like there's zero expectationsand I think we just crave, we're
craving spaces like that, whereyou're just, you can just come
exactly as you are, but you'reheld in a really strong
container.
You know you and I are strongcontainers and I know that that.
(01:14:14):
I mean, I don't even need tosay that.
I don't need to say it becauseit can be felt by everybody
listening to this.
And yeah, we don't this faces.
Ellie (01:14:21):
The spaces we hold are very multi-dimensional and well,
just welcoming to the fullbeing and experience.
Did you?
What?
Were you remembered what youwere going to say?
Yeah, but then I thought of anote, so bring me back to.
I want to talk about tea and myfirst experience with tea with
you, because I I think that thatmight help kind of this
(01:14:44):
exploration of tea, and I wouldlove for you to talk about that
more so.
What I was going to say earlierthat I had forgotten was we've
also talked a lot and I talkedto clients about this a lot of
the grief that nobody talksabout, about any step in life
you're taking and that personjust not being there for it, and
(01:15:05):
we talked about this with thehouses.
But it's really heartbreaking,it's really devastating to be
it's its own, you know, its own.
One of those instruments in thegrief symphony is this
devastation that, even thoughsomething can be so incredibly
(01:15:27):
beautiful and joyous and goodincredibly beautiful and joyous
and good that whomever is there,whomever you've lost, is not
going to be there with you in it.
And I have worked with thiswith people that have gone
through tremendous breakupswhere, just stepping into,
actually they feel moreauthentically connected and more
(01:15:48):
alive and more excited abouttheir life than they've ever
felt before.
But they miss that.
For even somebody that's stillalive, they miss that person so
much.
Or it's so sad to imaginehaving a whole, nother life
without them.
And I know you and I havetalked about just like it's so
crazy and hard to imagine anentire lifetime of our moms not
(01:16:11):
being here and an entirelifetime of like, yes, you are
still in the first year.
In the first year there's somany firsts, like everything is
a first, and on top of that youhave a baby and he's living all
of his firsts and you're livingall of your firsts as a mother.
And then it doesn't stop at thefirst year and a lot of times
(01:16:33):
the first year is given thiskind of time period of like, oh
yeah, all of the firsts.
And it's this, um, just youknow, just like moving into my
house, or like stepping intosomething beautiful, or you, you
know.
Or starting your business froma new place, like kind of
(01:16:55):
creating the next iteration fromyour business from a new place.
Or for me, when I have mychildren, or um, all of these
things that are so incrediblybeautiful that they won't be
here to be living with usbeautiful, that they won't be
here to be living with us.
It's incredibly heartbreakingevery time it doesn't get better
(01:17:17):
or easier.
And in order to walk with that,um, I think also another thing
that ceremony offers us and teaoffers us so beautifully is
presence, and this attunement topresence and this is presence
(01:17:38):
is really kind of at you know,again, going back to the
symphony, it's like the throughline of all grief stuff.
The more we can attuneourselves to presence and learn
um presence and invite ourselvesinto presence and welcome in
presence and I could say amillion things about using a
million different words for thatthe more we experience that
(01:18:02):
presence with our grief, themore we can say welcome into our
life, to the life that's coming, and know that we are gonna
meet everything with presence asit comes and in that, have
space to meet the layers as theyarise.
And part of you know these,these sacred spaces, is the
(01:18:31):
invitation to become likepresent, not only present with
your eyes and your mind, andlike this hyper focus.
I'm squinting and putting likenarrow, narrow vision focus with
my hands.
It's like this heart presenceand this body presence and this
like seated in your root andyour womb presence and feeling
body presence and this exceededin your root and your womb
(01:18:53):
presence and feeling your hipsand letting everything be alive
here now and just experiencingthat and so going.
Moving to tea the first timethat you shared tea with me and
served me tea, it was at myhouse.
(01:19:14):
You came to visit and we hadnever been together in person
and we were both really lookingforward to it.
Such a great time.
And I had heard you talk abouttea but I hadn't really
experienced, I didn't reallyknow what to expect, and it was
really beautiful and I want toreflect on this for the people
(01:19:34):
that have never done quoteunquote done tea before?
Yeah, done tea, yeah.
Or experienced Done tea is averb Experienced the ceremony
that's what I say?
Melina (01:19:45):
No, I say done tea.
Yeah, I know, it's so funny.
Ellie (01:19:48):
I know you and I say we did tea or whatever.
We did tea or whatever, butultimately what it and we've had
many conversations about thistoo, because you've really
shared this great explorationthat you've been on for many
years with me in the past yearor so.
But this kind of invitation tocome present, to bring our focus
(01:20:11):
here to this moment, to the tea, the tea representing and
bringing us into this moment,and then allowing ourselves to
receive the medicine of the tea,allowing ourselves to be in the
practice of receiving, as wealso, you know, sip our, you
know offer it to ourselvesthrough our hands, and to just
be in the experience of lettingsomething move into us and maybe
(01:20:34):
through us.
Sometimes, when I drink tea,it's almost like I can imagine
the heat moving into me and likegoing into all of my you know
channels and everything, andthen I sweat a little bit.
Or there's something moving outit's like a total through me
experience bit or there'ssomething moving out.
It's like a total through meexperience and in a way, that's
(01:20:56):
a metaphor.
You always say t is a metaphorfor everything it's like, but
it's also a metaphor forlearning how to allow grief to
move through like that and forit to hit and heat and touch all
of these places in us and thencome out in another form.
And so when you served me mostdays while you're here visiting,
(01:21:19):
like the first day, I remember,yeah, my mind was wondering
okay, what's this going to belike, what am I supposed to be
doing?
What am I, yeah, what are allthese things?
And then also receiving thesemessages, and then, over a
couple of days of of doing thiswith you, receiving more and
more messages, just feeling areally also deep connection to
(01:21:40):
gratitude that I think can behard to find in grief, really
hard grief moments without thatkind of sacred pause.
And every time I've sat withyou when you serve me, I think
it has been a little bit moreemotional and person like I've
definitely there's definitelybeen tears.
I've definitely receivedintuitive visions and messages,
(01:22:03):
really beautiful ones, that havestuck with me.
And when I sit by myself, nowthat I've learned and, you know,
have, thanks to you, my ownlittle set of things, I some
days, this incredibly beautifulconnection to my wholeness, to
(01:22:37):
the energies, are alive in meand around me, and this, it's
like the tea gently brought allof me and all of life online.
And now for the rest of the day, I get to move from that place
and so I'd love to for you, ifyou want to add whatever you
(01:22:58):
want to add about tea ceremony.
But I just wanted to sharesomebody that was is new to tea
and hasn't done a lot of thephilosophical explorations of it
or learns the technicalities ofit like you have.
I wanted to share a little bitabout what that experience has
been like for me.
Um, and yeah, it's somethingthat I feel like I can
(01:23:25):
incorporate and sit with in andwelcome into every part of my
life, and so if maybe on the daywe're doing sacred ground,
you're not feeling ultraconnected to your grief at the
beginning, or maybe even throughthe entire thing, the tea will
offer you whatever you need, youknow, whatever is there, and
(01:23:48):
the awesome thing about this notbeing a linear journey and
those no expectations, as youwere talking about, is like it's
all great, it's all welcome,whatever that is yeah, thank you
for sharing your experience andI'm so happy every time you
text me your tea that you didtea.
Melina (01:24:13):
You're, like I sat with this tea, like, yes, it's so
great, I love bringing peopleinto tea and also, yeah, it's so
beautiful.
I always kind of see tea I loveyou have that vision of it like
moving through your body.
I really see it like movingthrough people, yeah, and like
this, the fluidity of like it,just it touching the people it's
meant to, and that there's noexpectation around any of it.
(01:24:38):
But then I always just love it,kind of it's slow, organic,
unfurling and and to those whoare called to it.
And, yeah, tea is, I mean Icould say so much about it, but
really it is a beautiful spaceholder in and of itself.
(01:24:58):
It's a beautiful medicine, it'sa gentle medicine.
Um, the teas that I drink, um,both ceremonially and, you know,
casually but ceremonially arecalled living teas.
So I recommend for anyone who'sgoing to join us not required,
(01:25:20):
but these teas, the specifictypes of teas, hold a really
powerful energy, the plantsthemselves, energy, the plants
themselves.
And so we think of tea in theWest, as you know, chamomile,
and there's herbal tea andthere's all these other teas,
but the tea that I'm talkingabout is from the plant Camellia
(01:25:42):
sinensis.
They're tea trees.
The teas that I drinkceremonially all come from China
, certain regions of China,which is the birthplace of tea,
where they have these tea trees,and the living teas have to
meet many different criteria tobe called living tea, so they're
beyond organic.
(01:26:02):
The trees are wild.
The farmers have relationshipswith the trees, these trees are
hundreds of years old, they'retended to really lovingly, and
part of tea ceremony is theenergy of all of it is important
and the way the trees aretreated, the way the farmers,
(01:26:25):
the energy of the farmer, theenergy of the person shipping
the tea I mean all of it is partof the experience and the
teaware and you know there'slike endless stuff.
But really, to just get started, the one thing I would
recommend, if at all possible,is to purchase the living tea,
and so two of the places to dothat are Living Tea and Global
(01:26:48):
Tea Hut, which I'm sure you'lllink to um, because the energies
of those teas have been socarefully and lovingly harvested
and tended and that will reallyadd.
That's a big part.
There's many parts of teaceremony specifically, but
that's the most important partis the tea, right, that's the
(01:27:09):
most important part, where weall start, and so, if you're
completely new, recommend doingthat if possible.
If you're sensitive to caffeine,we've, you know, I've put in
our description a couple of teasthat have been aged for many,
many decades, so the caffeinelevels are very low.
I know you're sensitive tocaffeine, so we've been testing
some out, and so there's somethat and these are not.
(01:27:33):
The caffeine is still not goingto be the same as a plantation
tea or a regular tea bag, right,but these are like, again,
really, the caffeine levels are.
It tends to be just very cleanand not, you know, crazy levels
of energy, if that's somethingyou're sensitive to.
But, yeah, these specific teasall have such a different energy
(01:27:56):
to them and, um, if not, youknow, if you're not able to
purchase, also, totally fine,you're more than welcome to join
us, because the next aspect ofthis is just present, as you
mentioned, is just like I hearfrom so many people and it is so
hard to describe until you'veexperienced it like grief, right
, yeah, it's like um, but what Ihear from people constantly is
(01:28:18):
wow, I did not know how much Ineeded to just sit here and sip
this tea, like whether it's justhot water and lemon or hot
water and mint, like anything,um, to have that experience of
just being dropped in, to feelthe warm water running through
your body and just be present.
(01:28:40):
And for me, a tea ceremony is sosensory and sensual, right,
it's like the feeling of thebowl in my hands, the warm bowl,
the steam rising, the sound ofthe water hitting the bowl, the
leaves and if you're juststarting, um, if you don't have
any experience with tea ceremony, we're going to be doing leaves
in a bowl, which is thesimplest.
(01:29:01):
You don't.
All you need is a kettle of hotwater and a bowl and some
leaves.
So we've put in therecommendation some keys that
are a little bit larger leavesso that you can just place a few
in the bowl and then you justput some hot water in the bowl.
And what's so beautiful aboutleaves in the bowl?
The simplest method?
Um, it's just watching theleaves like, like, expand, and
(01:29:25):
it's it's such a beautifulconnection with the tea and the
leaves themselves.
Um, so that's what we're goingto be doing in our ceremony.
It's just super simple and,yeah, you don't need to know any
of the technical aspects of it.
It's really just about bringingpresence to your cup, your bowl
and seeing what's there, andthere's so much more that can be
(01:29:45):
explored from there, but thatis.
That's the basis of it.
Ellie (01:29:51):
Yeah, I was sitting with an oolong this morning that I've
grown to really like I've triedit a couple times now called
mercy, and I was observing theleaves in my bowl and how like
tight and dry they looked.
And then you know they'rerolled, yeah, with every cup.
just I felt like this blossominghappening and it was really
(01:30:14):
cool.
I know that you and I could sithere for 5,000 hours and
continue on and, yeah, maybejust do a moment to check in
with if there's anything elseyou want to say to conclude no,
(01:30:40):
I feel really complete.
Melina (01:30:42):
Um, do you want to share a little bit about sacred
ground, or yeah, okay?
Ellie (01:30:47):
so on November 17th, melina and I are having our
first sacred ground event, whichis a ceremony for grief and
growth, and the first 30 minutesof this time together will be a
tea ceremony.
It's all virtual so you canshow up.
It's a Sunday.
You can show up from your homein a cozy place and experience
(01:31:10):
this.
You know the tea leaves thepresence.
We'll have some time formeditation once we complete the
tea and some musicalexplorations with our bodies,
whether it be like somatic andintuitive guided movement, or
whether you're already ready towrite and express or some kind
of expression wants to come outand I'll guide that after the
(01:31:31):
meditation.
And then we'll have time tocircle and come together and for
gentle guidance and forconnection and witnessing around
anything that's moving for you,you want to share or anything
you have questions about or wantsupport around.
And I know we both know how richand important the communal
(01:31:55):
space, our friendship, is a tinymicrocosm of the experience, of
how powerful and necessary itis to be able to share our grief
over and over and over again insacred spaces, and I'm so like
we have cultivated this togetherand I'm so excited to welcome
(01:32:16):
people into the next evolutionof it on a more public level, of
being able to experience andreceive the witnessing.
I've just wrote my reflection.
Actually it was in the programthat you and I met in my first
time being fully witnessed incommunity in my grief, after
(01:32:37):
years of crying and having griefexpressions that people, either
you know, pitied me around orone of the leaders of another
group, like because peopleweren't really grief literate or
hadn't had these experiencesthemselves, or had had them but
weren't in connection with theirgrief.
(01:32:58):
The response was, I think Elliejust likes to cry and he was
like no, I mean like I don'thave anything.
Melina (01:33:08):
I don't have anything against crying.
Ellie (01:33:11):
Does it feel fun to sit here in front of 20 strangers at
a retreat and, like bawl myeyes out?
Not really, um, but I can't notdo it because I can't.
I'm unwilling to look away.
You know, and I admire that somuch about you, so to, I have
learned over the years and youin your own way, like basically
(01:33:34):
anything that could come fromyou in this experience will not
scare us, could not scare us,and I am excited to just offer a
space where you get toexperience and receive whatever
is there for you.
So welcome and please join usin sacred ground.
(01:33:58):
We can't wait yeah can't waitAnything you want to add.
Melina (01:34:05):
Yeah, thank you so much for listening to this.
Yeah, I love you so much, ellie, and it's an honor, absolute
honor, to walk alongside you inlife and grief and love and
friendship and community.
And I, ellie and I have.
We had planned an eventtogether.
(01:34:25):
We've been wanting to do anevent together for years and we
had planned one and had a dateand everything for last December
and then my mom went into thehospital and was diagnosed with
terminal cancer, so we, ofcourse, lovingly set it aside
and then it was not the time.
I was deep into the void reallyuntil now, until about this
(01:34:48):
month, when I have been feelingthe call to come out and I am so
honored to you know, ellie andI were like, all right, I think
it's time, and so I'm just sohonored to be offering this with
you and so excited that it'stime to offer it and I can't
wait to see where it goes.
(01:35:10):
And and, yeah, if you'refeeling called to join us, we
would love to have you at $33.
So really accessible.
And if you know, if that's noteven accessible, like, please
just let us know an email Helloat Ellie, flowcom or hello at
Lena chairscom, and let us knowwe want it to be accessible and
we'd love to have you and wecan't wait to meet you and honor
(01:35:33):
you and, yeah, just hold reallybeautiful space for you, um
love you.
Ellie (01:35:41):
I love you too.
It's gonna be so beautiful.
We both know I'm smiling so bigbecause I'm like.
We both know we have so manyfuture offerings coming and like
it will be.
This is so special because thefirst one- yeah, a year in the
literal year, yeah.
And I think, around the datewhen we were going to have it,
your mom was literally likealmost, almost died those few
(01:36:06):
days in the hospital.
It was ended up being a veryintense moment and yeah, I'm,
yeah, I'm in awe of thesejourneys.
I love you.
Thank you for listening totransformed by grief.
(01:36:41):
Please take a moment to rate,review and subscribe to the show
and to share it with a lovedone that needs this medicine
today.
If you are ready to deepen intoyour own transformed by grief
process, you can join thesanctuary membership or work
with me one-on-one at eliflowcom.
See you soon.
Welcome to Transformed by Grief.
My name is Ellie Thomas and Iam here to guide you on your
transformational grief journeyFrom feeling lost, raw and
brokenhearted, questioningeverything in you and around you
, to reconnecting to the truthof who you are and the beauty,
fulfillment and vibrancy of lifethat is still available in you
(00:27):
and through you.
On this podcast, we explore thedepths of what it means to say
yes to life again after you'vebeen broken open by pain and
grief.
We will explore what it meansto create a deep, loving and
reverent relationship toyourself, to grief and to life
in a way that allows you tobegin to rebuild from the inside
(00:49):
out and to create a powerfulfoundation for a joy-filled,
alive feeling and fulfillinglife you love.
Welcome back to Transformed byGrief.
I'm happy to bring you aninterview slash more like a
conversation, I guess, but aninterview conversation with one
of my best friends, melina.
(01:10):
Charis and Melina and I arecoming together.
We're bringing our beautiful,powerful work and containers
together to bring a newcommunity grief event to life,
and this event is called SacredGround and it's happening on
November 17th and you can signup now.
(01:33):
I'll leave the link in the shownotes for everything.
And so we wanted to have aconversation about bringing kind
of our journeys together.
Bringing kind of our journeystogether and I interview her
about what transformed by griefmeans to her right now.
She shares some of her storyand then we really get into
(01:53):
talking about the power and theimportance of different aspects
of finding presence and cominginto the body and exploring and
connecting with grief beyondwords, beyond mental and
intellectual exploration, and wetalk about the event a little
(02:16):
bit more at the end.
But I want to give you somedetails here.
Sacred Ground is a ceremony forgrief and growth and the
beginning portion of it will bea guided tea ceremony.
It's all virtual, so you'll bedoing this from your home.
Melina will be guiding us onzoom for the tea ceremony and
then I'll lead us in a longerinvitation of connecting to
(02:38):
what's present emotionally andwith our grief, and into a
embodied, intuitive movementpractice that will help you
process and feel and begin totap into greater nuggets of
wisdom or greater release reallywhatever is there for you and
then we'll close with spacewhere you can ask questions or
(03:00):
we'll have a circle to reallywitness each other and offer you
space to share what yourexperience was and receive
anything that you would like toreceive, and I just wrote a
really powerful newsletter acouple days ago about how
incredibly powerful andlife-changing the openings are
(03:22):
when we come together to let ourgrief be shared in community
and when we allow ourselves tobe seen and witnessed in our
grief fully.
This opens the doors to thetremendous medicine of being
actually truly seen and knownfor, potentially the first time
in our lives, I know the firsttime I was witnessed in my grief
(03:44):
by people that got it, bypeople that knew how to hold
space for it.
It totally transformed my lifeand my work really and gave me
access to this feeling that allof me can be present here and I
am loved and seen and respectedand held in my highest, and my
wounds can be here too.
(04:04):
There is no pity that's alivehere.
It's just a total process ofrevering and honoring everything
that we've walked through toget here and being held up in
the truth and potential of yourheart and the greater parts of
you, beyond just your pain orjust the world's understanding
(04:28):
of who you are.
So we would love to have youjoin us for Sacred Ground on
November 17th at 1 pm Eastern,10 am Pacific.
All you need to have with youis some tea or herbs.
It's all on the registrationpart A safe space to move, to be
(04:49):
.
Still, we're going to play somemusic, so you might want
headphones.
You're going to want comfyclothes.
This is going to be like a oneand a half hour retreat that you
get to kind of check into andmove into a space of softness,
move into a space of slowingdown, move into a space of
silence and really honor andallow whatever is there to come
(05:10):
up.
So we can't wait and we hope tosee you there.
Let me just read Melina's bio soyou have some background on her
before I share our conversation.
Melina Cheris is a mother,ceremonialist and guide for
those walking in the intenseinitiations and transitions of
life.
She is a giver, a void walker,a space holder, a bridge.
(05:34):
She is fiercely devoted to thewisdom of her body and the
initiatory path of grief, deathand sacred creation.
She has 10 plus years ofexperience with transformative
embodiment practices and she'shere to hold you deeply and
fully through your owninitiations, to guide you
through your dark nights of thesoul as you remember, and find
(05:56):
the light within.
You can visit her website atwwwmelianacheriscom and connect
with her on Instagram at MelinaCheris.
Here is our beautifulconversation on grief and being
(06:34):
transformed by grief.
Thank you.
Nobody knows this probably, butyou gifted me the name of this
podcast, so it feels veryappropriate to welcome you here,
thank you, thank you, such agift such a gift to be here.
Melina (06:59):
Yeah, I got.
Yeah, I got so excited when yousaid the name.
It feels so.
You and, as I said to you, Igifted you the name, but I
really thought you had alreadycome up with it.
My energy had, and you read itback to me exactly so so it's so
(07:26):
beautiful to be a part of theyeah, the new evolution of your
beautiful work and magic andsharing your voice thank you.
Ellie (07:40):
So melina and I have been friends for four and a half
years.
We've been very good friendsfor about progressively, for the
last four years and in thesepast four years both of our moms
have died and we've sat withthem in their last breaths, have
(08:08):
died and we've sat with them intheir last breaths and, as the
people that listen here know,mom died almost four years ago,
a little less three, yeah,almost it'll be four in February
, which is wild yeah and yourmom died this past June.
yep, um, and you also had a babyin the past year, and two years
(08:32):
ago mom was diagnosed withcancer, and that's when, well,
you had really accompanied me inall parts of my grief journey,
truly, but, and we deepened ourfriendship in that.
I think our friendship went to awhole nother level when you
(08:57):
experienced your mom's illnessfor the first time yeah and
we've been able to just turntoward each other over and over
and over again with more andmore depths for the past many
years.
And now we walk with thetremendous gift of sharing our
(09:24):
grief together and welcomingothers into spaces where the raw
aliveness of their grief livesand allowing that to like I'm
almost seeing like literally therawness of a beating heart,
(09:46):
like connect, that place wheregrief pulses right along with
our heart, and allowingourselves and others to to tend
that and to experience that andto be transformed by it.
So I think I'd like to startwith just what, when you sit
(10:12):
with the energy of, transformedby grief for you, what that
looks like and feels like rightnow.
Now, hmm, you.
Melina (10:29):
Yeah, I think it's so devastating to me that in our
(11:02):
we've largely lost the art ofbeing with our grief and a very
unfortunate part of that processis that a lot of people don't
know what to say.
A lot of people drop off, a lotof people say weird things.
People just don't know.
(11:22):
Don't know, they were nottaught or shown most people, how
to be with their own grief, howto be with someone who is
grieving, and that is anotherlayer of grief.
When you are in that, whateveryour grief is, but specifically
(11:45):
with the illness of a loved one,the death of a loved one,
there's another layer that thegriever has to be with, of other
people, not in our society as awhole, expecting grief to be
linear, you know, as time goeson, expecting you to just like
(12:06):
really actually glorifying,quickly going back to work,
quickly quote unquote beingmoving on Moving forward.
Yeah, like moving on, as if wecould ever do that Um.
(12:32):
So to really tend to our griefin a way, an ongoing way for the
rest of our lives, and to bewilling to tend to all of our
grief, um is an art.
It is a lost art and it is onethat for the aliveness, for the
to really feel the full spectrumof life, to really feel our
(12:53):
full joy, our full aliveness, wehave to be able to meet the
depths of our grief regularly.
You know, you and I have talkedabout this, but it's often
these cataclysmic events that Ijust wrote a piece on how I was.
(13:15):
As you mentioned, my mom wasdiagnosed with cancer two years
ago and it ripped me open in somany ways and a lot of people.
It was like stage two, you know, stage one, and nobody could
really understand in my life whyit ripped me open.
So, except you, like youunderstood, and that's why you
(13:38):
were a safe place for me,because everyone else, literally
almost everyone else in my lifewas like everyone else,
literally almost everyone elsein my life was like she's going
to be fine, it's cool, it's allgood, like you know, like why is
this affecting you so much?
And in that moment my lifecompletely changed, obviously
with her death as well, but thatwas really the moment of
(13:59):
receiving that text from herthat they found cancer, which in
my body and heart I alreadyknew the truth of and I think
somewhere I also knew the truthof her life was going to be
(14:35):
connected with my tears in thisway.
You have really walked thisbefore and shown me along with
other people, but really you'resuch a beautiful begin to me of
like just and, and everyone whoI really admire is able to just
feel their tears in this way andto like, when the tears come,
(14:56):
we don't apologize, we we letthem go.
(15:16):
And this was not always how Iwas.
I would push them away, I wouldapologize.
I was not this open, I wouldapologize.
I would.
I was not this open, I was notthis connected to my sadness, to
my grief, to my aliveness.
Ultimately, and I'm likeanytime I feel the tears this
way and I allow them to be here,I'm so grateful to to be moved
(15:50):
by life and be like really fullyin touch with what I'm saying.
I'm talking about the death ofmy mother, I'm talking about
(16:32):
this intense journey that I walkand as I, you know, just wrote
this piece for a long time.
I thought, oh, two years ago,when my mom was diagnosed, that
was my first experience of grief.
And no, I realized no, no, no,no.
We all walk with grief throughall of our lives Grief of
leaving childhood, grief of theparents we didn't get, grief of
dreams not followed orrelationships that needed to end
(16:53):
.
But you know just so much,there's grief, we all walk with
it.
And just because we pretendit's not there doesn't mean it
doesn't exist.
And so that moment was not myfirst experience of grief, but
it was the first moment I couldno longer look away from my
(17:17):
grief.
It was in my face and it's like, yeah, she was diagnosed, she
had surgery.
And it was like, yeah, she wasdiagnosed, she had surgery.
And it was like, okay, she'sokay.
And so much of me just wantedto go back, like, just take me
back before I.
You know, this was in my face,the fragility of life, cause
(17:38):
it's so hard, it's so painful,it's so much, it's like it's so
painful, it's so much, it's likeoh.
And then, in the early days ofraw grief, after just receiving
a diagnosis or just a death or abreakup or you know, whatever
it is that those early days ofraw grief are just so fucking
(17:59):
hard, so hard, and of courseit's like I don't want to go
back to that place.
Um, and then when she wasre-diagnosed last year, I was
like here it is again.
I'm a little bit familiar withit, but here it is.
(18:23):
And then, when she died, sixmonths later, again here it is.
So, to me, being transformed bygrief is just allowing yourself
to be transformed by grief, tobe changed to, to to acknowledge
(18:43):
your grief, to tend it, to bewith it, to feel it like as it
moves, to just to not apologize,to not stop the tears, to not
you know.
And grief isn't just aboutsadness, as we both know.
It's so much more than that.
(19:04):
It's so deep and rich and andit's it's so much, it's so much
it's like.
The more I learn about andembody and experience grief, the
more I'm like I don't reallyknow what it is.
It's so big, I can't.
I can't put it into words, andI think so many people are like
grief equals sadness, grief, andI thought that too.
(19:26):
I mean, right after my mom died, I was like why am I not laying
in the bed crying?
I mean, I also had athree-month-old baby, so that
was also a big part of thisprocess learning to be a mother
at the same time as losing mymother.
(19:50):
But grief wasn't at all what Ithought it was going to look
like.
And I remember, in thoseintense months of anticipatory
grief in the six months beforeshe died, before that, but it
really intense in the six monthsbefore she died, when we knew
her cancer was terminal and shehad about six months to live, it
was like it could be any momentthat you know, I'm pregnant,
I'm giving birth, is she goingto be here to meet my son?
(20:13):
I mean so many layers of it, um, but I remember just being like
what is it going to be?
Like what is it going to?
I don't know what I, what is itgoing to be?
And you were like like what isit going to?
I don't know what I, what is itgoing to be?
And you were like I don't know.
(20:35):
You were like I have no idea.
And it's like I was like I justwant somebody to tell me what
it's going to be like.
You know, and that's also what'sso hard about grief is that it
is it is such a individualexperience and it can feel so,
so lonely, and it is lonely andI think that's a part of it and
(20:58):
there's so it's so universal atthe same time.
I mean it's like we're allgoing, like I said, we're all
living with grief of many things, of the planet, of the
environment, of, you know,colonization, like so much, so
much grief, patriarchy, likethey're endless, and it just
(21:19):
does us all, it makes us sick,it does us all such a disservice
to stuff it and to not havethese rituals and ceremonies,
and I am not one of those people.
So I knew I needed supportgroups and spaces after my mom
(21:52):
died and I joined a few andquickly realized, oh, I need
something deeper than this.
Like I am a, you know,ceremonialist, I do, you know I
do tea ceremony.
I am like I work with my body,I like to move and dance and cry
(22:14):
and write and channel.
And you know I needed, I justneeded deeper spaces.
Like I love these spaces totalk about our grief are so
beautiful and important.
And I was like I need somethingdeeper than this.
Like I love these spaces totalk about our grief are so
beautiful and important.
And I was like I need somethingdeeper than this, like I need a
space to just feel.
And I think that's somethingthat's so beautiful about tea
(22:35):
ceremony, which is one of mypractices that I have been
practicing for almost four years, um, and serving others now for
a couple years a year and ahalf maybe.
And one thing people say whenthey come to tea ceremony with
me is wow, I just I just heardthis from somebody the other day
(23:00):
who came like who is in a deepgrief process and she was like
the other day who came like whois in a deep grief process and
she was like I've been talkingabout my grief non-stop.
I've been talking, talking,talking.
I just need a, I just needed aspace to feel and cry and that,
and I'm so glad for this spaceand I have needed spaces like
that as well.
I had, you know, I have a likeregular therapist and that's
(23:24):
beautiful.
And I talked to you and you areso great at also talking and
holding deep space and we kindof we weave in and out of that,
which is so incredible, like insome of our conversations, as
you supported me so beautifullythrough my grief journey, I mean
we weaved between talking tosobbing, to praying, to
(23:47):
meditating, to breathing, tosilence, to more talking.
You know, beautifully, justweaving all of these, because
you know that's the other thingis like talking is so beautiful
and important and we need crying, we need yelling, we need
laughing, we need music, we needdancing, we need you know, all
of these things too, and griefis going to tell you what it
(24:10):
means if you're open to listen.
So I really needed in my griefjust a lot of different spaces,
and I needed also just spaces tojust drop into my body and just
feel, and sometimes it wascrying, and sometimes it was joy
(24:32):
and peace, strangely, andsometimes it was stillness, and
sometimes it was just thatbeautiful sense of like I am
being held.
I'm, you know, when I washolding so much try tending to a
newborn, losing my mom, my, youknow, dealing with my marriage,
(24:53):
dealing with the familydynamics and every everyone
else's grief and everything thatshifts when someone you love
dies, and, um, I needed, I justneeded to be held by somebody
who had the capacity to holdthat and wasn't going to turn
away and wasn't afraid andwasn't going to think I was too
(25:15):
much or wasn't going to try togive me platitudes that so many
people, which I just heard froma family member who, again, I
know, means well, well, but Iheard so much and I still hear
well, at least your mom got tomeet him, at least your mom got
to meet your son, wow, and I'mlike.
I just said this.
(25:36):
I had a family gathering andone of my family members said
that to me and I said, yes, andit is still very devastating.
It was beautiful and she's nothere to see the rest of his life
.
She's not here.
She was here for 11 weeks ofhis life.
She deserved more than that, Ideserved more than that, he
deserved more than that.
So both of those things can betrue.
Ellie (26:00):
Yeah, yeah, when you allow the tears and and this is
a you to Melina, you and you tothe global, you, well, you just
so beautifully shared that withus.
I was just sitting with you asyou let the tears come right now
(26:21):
.
(26:44):
The tears come right now andthere is this moment where, when
we allow ourselves to go beyondthe words of grief and we feel
it in our bodies, whether it'scoming up as tears, as groans,
as yells, as physical movementor some kind of creative thing,
however it wants to come, it'slike the greatest.
What the words that are comingis equalizer of life.
Like everything that feelsdistant all of a sudden feels
close and everything that feelstopsy-turvy all of a sudden
(27:08):
comes even.
It's like this opening intoliving, into the current of life
, in that moment, so deeply andso connected, and in that
(27:29):
there's movement that happens inour being, there's healing that
happens in our being, there'scultivation, there's growth,
there's all of these things.
Not trying to approach grief,to get to those things, but
allowing grief to be our doorwayinto these things.
And so, sitting with you now,as you were letting the tears
(27:51):
come out, I just wanted to sayto the people listening that can
you feel that, can you feeljust this?
It's so, it's so interesting.
It's just like grief it's hardto put words to.
It's like this stillness that isnot flat yeah, yeah, it's not
(28:14):
empty, it's very full yeah, it'sso luscious, it's so um, almost
voluptuous in its form, likeoverflowing out, and it's deeply
painful, and also so much moreis there.
Melina (28:41):
Yeah.
Ellie (28:42):
And so I love that you just shared us with that, or
shared that with us in that way,and I love this idea of you
know you and I met in aspiritual based group.
We're not entry-level spiritualpeople.
(29:03):
We've been engaging in thedepths and explorations of
spiritual life for many years.
We've shared that, and so foryou arriving to grief maybe you
hadn't engaged with grief in theway that you began to when your
(29:25):
mom was diagnosed, but you werebeyond the entry level of that
exploration, and so I also loveto speak to that, because that
in and of itself can be extralonely a little bit.
Our society operating in a and Idon't mean to say that these
(29:45):
things are entry level because Ithink that so much has grown
from them.
But when there is a culture ofa lot of interconnection,
spiritual connection and innerevolutionary work that's already
been there, and then griefarises or meets our world, it
(30:05):
can feel like what do we turn toand where do we turn to now?
Yeah, and you and I have hadeach other to know what the
power of letting all of thatalive together feels like, like
I don't need to let go.
(30:27):
I might question everythingthat I've ever explored before I
might change, I might not wantto engage in these same things,
and yet I can let all of thesequestions, all of these doubts,
all of these recalibrations,these spinning of these
(30:47):
questions, all of these doubts,all of these recalibrations,
these spinning of my lens, thisturn of my lens, be here at the
same time as all of these otherthings.
And in order for all of that tobe present, I think that usually
there's like a process on theother side for somebody holding
space.
They've needed to go throughtheir own journey with that.
(31:08):
Maybe it wasn't through deathand grief, Maybe it was through
something else.
But yeah, yeah, there's,there's this well of, there's
this well underneath the um, thegrief work that we know in the
(31:32):
world, that's, it's ripe andready to hold people at whatever
level they're coming in at, orand I don't mean level in a
hierarchical way, it's likelevel they're coming in at, or
and I don't mean level in ahierarchical way it's like,
however, you're connecting, butyou are, it's ready process,
yeah, in your journey yeah, it'sready to hold people as you
(31:52):
float and let the water carryyou.
Yeah, and I love how beautifullyyour story speaks to that.
Melina (32:00):
Yeah, notice how, in the moving with the tears, a couple
things there's and youmentioned it too like there's
the speaking about the griefwhich is so important, the
(32:21):
process to write right, all ofthese things, and then there's
the bodily experience of grief,and I think we're in our culture
, we're getting more into ohyeah, the body is important,
(32:44):
like we're.
So you know in the mind about alot of things, and grief too,
and that's a beautiful startingplace.
Um, you know, talk therapy andtalking with friends and all of
that is so important and, and Ithink what people are starting
to wake up to more and desire isspaces to drop it, the deeper
layers that live in the body, um, and there's no, yeah, there's,
(33:10):
there's absolutely no rush forthat.
I mean, I think, with my owngrief, like you, yeah, it's not.
Like you know, for me, I think,which you will remember from my
grief process right afterlosing my mom, I was like I
couldn't cry a lot, which wasvery strange for me.
I mean, most of my life Iintellectualized my pain and I
(33:32):
was told by so many therapistsAfter it was like the third or
fourth therapist or coach orhealer I was working with who
was like you're talking aboutyour sadness but you're not
feeling it, which would annoy meso much.
I was like, no, I am, because Iunderstand it, like I love
understanding and analyzing, sothat's like my safe zone and I'm
(33:53):
I'm really like it.
Just I'm so, as I mentionedearlier, like I'm so grateful
that I am now so much more intouch with actually feeling
things, and that's not to sayI'm perfect at it whatsoever.
However, I know the importanceof to stay open to all of life,
to my vibrancy, to creations, toall of it in an organic way.
(34:16):
That's not let me just do mygratitude, you know, in an
organic way.
Let me just do my gratitude,you know, in an organic way.
It just requires thisrelationship with pain and
sorrow and grief.
That is open and it's not.
And it's not a forced rushthing, because for me, the other
side of this can be like whenshe first died, I was in shock,
(34:39):
even though I knew, becausethat's the other thing people
love to say to me.
I just had someone say thisWell, but it's easier because
you knew, you know, you knew youhad six months.
Ellie (34:52):
That's another thing I hear you know, I could talk
about that for a long time.
Melina (34:56):
That's another thing that people think and it's fine
and in some ways, sure, like,yes, I, it was beautiful that we
had this time, that I had timeto start processing, and it's it
is different than losingsomeone suddenly and it's still,
they're still dead, you know,and um, it's just so anyway, I
(35:16):
mean, I could go on about that,but oh, I lost my train of
thought.
What was I saying?
Ellie (35:24):
you were saying that.
Someone just said to you thatit would be easier, and I'm just
caught on the word easier.
I just want to invite anybody,if anyone ever said anything is
easier to you about your griefeasier doesn't really exist in
the vocabulary of loss and grief, or even pain I just want to
invite that in.
First you were speaking to that.
It was hard to connect withyour body.
Melina (35:45):
Yeah it was so now being in my spiritual journey and all
of this stuff, just really forme, it's been a journey of
returning to my sadness andallowing that, and allowing my
anger and allowing these quoteunquote negative emotions.
I hate that we call them that,because they're just emotions
(36:06):
and we're, we're all, and it'snot to like, like we're not
trying to heal our way out ofthem.
We're actually trying to meetthem more deeply, so that we're
not like, oh my God, this iscompletely overtaking me like or
breaking me or whatever.
And of course, those momentsare beautiful too, and a lot of
us have those, I've had those.
But it's like can we buildrelationships?
(36:28):
Tending the garden is comingback.
Can we build relationships?
Can we tend to these emotions?
Can we allow them to move?
You said something beautifulabout moving with it and, as you
, you know, you all felt andheard when I was moved.
There's a natural pause.
(36:48):
It's just like a, a pause and aand allowing myself to really
feel that wave, rather thanexplaining it or saying I'm so
sorry or rushing through it, andthat's hard in spaces where
that's not always the norm orthat's not always welcomed.
(37:10):
I have been in spaces like that, where it's really brave, and I
also wanted to say that ifyou're not there, that's okay.
Like there's no, like oh, I'mcrying.
So this like great, you knowit's, that's not.
(37:31):
You know, because I was inshock for a while and again,
even though I knew I'm puttingthis in air quotes even though I
knew she was going to die, Iwas still in shock because
nothing can prepare you, like,again, the mind cannot prepare
you for the embodied experienceof a loved one's death, just
(37:52):
nothing.
So what you knew, and when Iwas trying to be like, tell me
what it's gonna be, you're likeyou're just gonna have to go
through it.
And I was like okay, because,yeah, nothing can prepare you.
So I remember feeling like, whyam I not crying more?
You know, I'm in touch with myfeelings, what's happening is
something wrong.
(38:13):
And then just kind of realizinggrief cannot be rushed.
And the other side of this islike wanting to just rush to get
somewhere in my grief, wantingto rush and and for me you know
that when my mom died I was 11,12 weeks postpartum, which is a
(38:34):
strange time because most peopleare kind of coming out of the
bubble and wanting to start tosee, to see family and friends,
which I did, and I had reallyput my life on hold for a long
time for my to tend to my momand her last months I shut down
my business, which was doingreally well.
I shut it down completely andreally publicly and um tended to
(39:01):
her and tended, and then tendedto my son after he was born,
and so when she died, I wasreally feeling a strange desire
to return outwardly to seefriends and to.
I attended a concert, you know,and in my mind I was like what,
like this is weird, I don't know, you know, and in my mind I was
like why, like this is weird, Idon't know, I shouldn't be, I
(39:22):
should be like crying in the bedand what I thought grief should
look like.
But, you know, I just reallytrusted that, because that's
what that's where I wanted to go, and I and I did, and and then,
after about a month and a halfof that, my nervous system was
fried and my nervous system waslike, okay, we did that and
(39:51):
you're attending a new baby,you're, you're, you know, and
like I started to like justrealize, okay, I'm entering the
shock was wearing off.
That was, I think, giving mesome energy to do these things.
And I just heard really clearlyand my body was speaking to me.
My body, I mean I was exhausted, I mean I wasn't sleeping
because of my baby as well.
(40:12):
So there was that, but it was,my body was just exhausted and
it was like okay, time to rest,okay, time to rest.
And I listened and it's funnybecause so many people were like
, wow, it's incredible that youjust I just shut everything down
(40:33):
.
I had gone back, I had startedgoing back to my business a
little bit and I shut it downagain, which was really hard
because I felt I was like I justcame back and now I'm shutting
it down again.
But I mean, when my body speaks, I listen and I've learned,
I've learned over the years todo that even when it's really
uncomfortable, and yeah.
(40:56):
So I really slowed down againand I, I, I honored that for
like six weeks after her death.
I needed to just be back out inthe world and that was
beautiful and that it wasn't atall what I thought that grief
would look like.
And then I realized, okay, I'mpast some of the shock and I am
(41:16):
out of the death portal, which,as you know, is an intensely
psychedelic experience portalwhich, as you know, is an
intensely psychedelic experienceand just so intense, and so I
was like coming off of that andcoming off of the birth portal
that I had been in just weeksprior to that.
So I've been in a lot of portalsand my body was just craving
(41:39):
rest and to slow down, and I wasscared because I knew that
meant that the grief would wouldcome up, um, and it did and,
and I slowed everything down andI would.
I just remember driving aroundand crying and then, at the same
time, I was like, oh, I'm solike.
I was like my tears are back,like I felt as I really listened
(42:03):
and slowed down.
Of course, I was afraid, and Iwas, I knew, is what I needed to
do.
And that neck, when I was readythough you know I wasn't ready
to do that right after she died,I wasn't and, um, but when my
tears kind of came back, I wasgrateful because I was like,
(42:27):
okay, I'm, I can, I have morecapacity now that I've slowed,
I've taken a lot of things offmy plate so that I actually have
space and time as much as Icould, as a new mother, to just
be with some of this.
And you know, yeah, it's, it'sespecially as a new mother.
(42:50):
I mean I remember, like in the,it wasn't that I didn't cry at
all, but I was ready, I couldfeel my body was ready for rest
and more space so that I couldmeet the grief on a deeper layer
and I mean I know I willforever, for the rest of my life
.
You know I have no, luckily.
(43:12):
I know that grief is not linear, like I think we really think
in this culture like the moretime that passes, the more it's
quote unquote, easier there itis.
I have no illusions of that.
I think the grief shifts, ofcourse, as we shift and I think,
(43:34):
yeah, there's always new layers.
There's always there's justmore that we can access and
different and that comes up andand just I think the main thing
is to, just as much as we canstay, stay open to it.
Um, and I think you mentionedanother thing about people that
(44:01):
have met this and it's not thatthe people, the containers that
I wanted to be a part of thatcould really hold me.
It's not that anyone was quoteunquote over their grief or a
master at it.
Everyone is in relationship toit.
And the people that I reallytrusted and needed to hold me in
(44:22):
my grief, it didn't, it didn'tmatter if they had had the same
circumstances with me or not,you know, or lost the same
person or not, or experiencewhatever, like it wasn't that at
all.
It was, it was, oh, this, itwas a felt energetic sense of
(44:42):
this person honors their grief.
This person has met their grief.
This person makes space for andgoes deep with their grief,
doesn't push it away, you know,and that's felt.
I mean someone does not need toreally say anything to me, I
(45:04):
can feel it in their energy andthose are the spaces that I
really needed and, yeah, justlike the spaces I really needed
to were like that you are sobeautiful at.
And then the other people Ichose to hold me is like there's
no judgment at all, even when Ineeded to avoid my grief, even
(45:29):
when I needed to numb it, that'sfine, like that.
We, it's okay, you know, that'spart of it.
It's not.
Sometimes we can't, you know,sometimes it's like titration
and it's different for everyperson.
But for me, I had just beenthrough such intensity for six
months.
I had been through the ups anddowns, the anxiety of when, when
(45:52):
is she gonna die, her, watchingher suffer, bringing my son in.
I need so much like I'm gonnabe processing this year for the
rest of my life, so much um,that I could not.
I, just right after she died,was not the time and and
everyone I was with just trustedmy process so deeply and I did
(46:17):
have a beautiful mentor, jasmine, reflect to me.
And I did have a beautifulmentor, jasmine, reflect to me
lovingly.
You know, when I was hittingthat kind of breaking point in
my nervous, I just had a kind ofcomplete breakdown, like six
weeks after she died, where afew things were just converging
and my body was losing it.
I mean, I was, my nervoussystem was just so fried.
(46:38):
I did have her, in one of oursessions, lovingly reflect to me
why are you like?
I think she said can you sharewith me why you're wanting to go
back to work?
I was so triggered.
I was like because I love mywork and my clients need me back
(46:59):
.
And like love my work and myclients need me back.
And like you know which I doand it's true, and I was
resisting the void, I was likeso angry, I was so annoyed, I
was like I've been in the voidfor so fucking long.
I just want to be out.
You know I just want to be outand you know you lovingly
reflected to me too that I justneeded to try it.
(47:20):
That is really what I needed.
I needed to try to I do somesessions with my clients.
I needed to go attend eventsand it was great until it was
not great and it was like, okay,now is the time to.
I now have a little bit morespace from all this to to rest
(47:44):
and to allow more grief to comeup, as I will continue doing for
the rest of my life.
And so it's.
Yeah, it's that beautifulbalance of like not non judgment
of wherever you are is perfect,and sometimes we do need that
loving mirror of like.
Your body needs to rest alittle bit and it's.
(48:05):
You know, I kept, I reflectedon it and I was so triggered at
first by what she said.
I was like she doesn't knowanything and and then I realized
, yeah, she's right, she's right.
And I had so much resistance togoing back into the void, into
the just letting everything go.
I was like I, I've done that somuch resistance to going back
into the void, into the justletting everything go.
I was like I've done that somuch, I'm so tired of just
(48:26):
letting everything go.
But the void and the liminalspace is so fertile and so full
of importance and that's anotherthing in our culture, right
Like the winter, when nothing issprouting or this, you know,
where there's nothing that canbe seen on the surface, the void
(48:50):
, the darkness we're gettingback to.
Like nature has four seasonsand their cycles, and there's
times to rest and there's timesto to create and and and all of
this.
And, yeah, I think we justreally desperately need to be
(49:15):
reminded that those are reallysacred spaces too.
That and grief is a lot likethat of really giving yourself
the space when you can, whenyou're ready to just be in the
darkness.
(49:35):
You know, as I mentioned, Ithink, in the beginning, it's
like there's so much wanting torush through, wanting to get
back, wanting to, and peoplewill honor you and they'll say,
oh, my gosh, you're so strong.
So, as you and I have talkedabout many times, it's brave to
be like I'm sad.
Ellie (49:58):
I'm still sad.
I'm still sad Not going away.
Melina (50:02):
Correct, it's not going away.
And, yes, my mom got to meet myson and it is still extremely
sad constantly that she doesn'tget to see anything else in the
physical.
And I mean, even now this iscoming through too.
Like I think I am talking aboutspirituality and connection,
(50:24):
right, I'm like before she diedI was like this is gonna be fine
, like I'll just connect withher spiritually and it'll be
great, and like I'm so glad I'ma spiritual person.
And, yes, and I was so shockedby I couldn't feel her at all
after she died.
I was just so fucking angry ather for leaving me, for some of
(50:50):
the choices that she made, um,and I could not feel her at all
and I was like terrified becauseI was like I was banking on
that, like like that, I'm goingto really feel her.
And again, in that case, I gavemyself space.
You know a lot of people likeother people in my life, because
(51:11):
I am around a lot of spiritualpeople were, who are connected
to her, were like are you, areyou, are you connected?
Like, oh, my God, I'm, you know, really just kind of this,
trying to connect, which I thinkis, again, totally fine If
that's what you are doingbeautiful.
Um, I was.
I just knew there was like thisknowing of I need to wait.
(51:31):
I don't want to try to forcesome kind of connection with her
and I did feel there were acouple moments in those early
weeks when I did still feel thatI was so angry I was like I
don't even want to be connectedto her.
Right now I'm angry and Ineeded to feel that and I needed
again in my this container withmy mentor, just to scream and
(51:56):
pound my fists.
My throat was raw, my fistswere sore from pounding pillows.
I mean, I had so much anger andI needed to move through that.
You know, I needed to let thatin and that was really scary too
.
Um, and I needed to just bewith everything that was there.
(52:20):
And slowly, over time, I havefelt more and more connected
with her and I'm still allowedto miss her in the physical.
I'm still allowed.
You know, there's anger.
That's still there.
Of course.
There's longing, there'ssadness.
There's longing, there'ssadness.
(52:45):
There's it's all.
It all can exist at once.
It, you know it just because Ifeel connected with her
spiritually.
It it also exists rightalongside the like.
Why isn't she here in thephysical?
Ellie (52:55):
yeah, there's a lot of pulling apart we can do of all
this, but the one thing that'snot true.
I'm never gonna say just onething, as everybody listening
knows, you included.
We had let many greatconversations around not
(53:25):
comparing what it's like youhaving really respected the way
and admired the way that I hadmoved with my grief, and both of
us but me, me needing to kindof say and I'm, you're going to
do it super differently than Idid, it's going to be different.
(53:47):
And not comparing circumstancesand also finding the beautiful
overlap of circumstances and howsimilarities are there.
We've had so many incredibleconversations around what I call
like finding your attuned paceand you doing all of that so
beautifully.
And attuned pace for me isallowing yourself to connect
(54:09):
with what you need where it isnow, follow that until it
changes and trusting that.
That is your way of honoringyour grief journey and you did
that so beautifully of like, no,I need to be out, I need to go,
do these things, I need to seepeople, I want people to meet a
baby and great.
Trust that and it will take youright to the next thing.
(54:32):
That's maybe that's five yearsof doing the exact same thing
and maybe it is in.
Okay, in two weeks I'm going torealize I'm right, I'm in a
different space already because,in its non-linearness, these
are arcs, constant arcs.
They might be baby arcs, theymight be lifelong arcs.
(54:53):
You know, every moment thatgrief invites us into something,
there is a whole storyline thatcomes along with it, a whole
experience of you know, likemany lifetimes that get to be
lived within it, and so I well.
First of all, I love how griefinvites us into deeper
relationship with ourself, butalso how it requires deeper
(55:18):
relationship with ourself inorder to continue to meet it
over and over.
And when we talked, I loved howyou started using layers.
I have used levels Levels isreally not the right word for
what I was talking about earlierbut the sense of layers, of
letting the grief work and thegrief experience penetrate us on
(55:38):
greater layers than just themind, because the mind, also in
our world, ends up being aprotector from feeling our grief
, because it's been deemedunsafe for so long, it's been
deemed vulnerable, weak,whatever.
There's thousands of otherthings that go along with that,
and so part of the reason that Ibelieve that you were able to
(56:00):
step into, in different placesat different times, this, the
exploration that you're on andin with grief now, is that you
already, through your process,had already been on a journey of
developing a deep relationshipto yourself.
And so as we talk about ajourney of developing a deep
(56:23):
relationship to yourself, and soas we talk about you know you
heard, your body spoke and youlistened.
Some people might not yet havethat relationship with
themselves, which is fine.
And in the grief process youwill probably be invited into
little nuggets of beginning tolisten to and connect to and
decide oh, do I want to honorthis or not?
Am I ready to honor this or not?
Do I need help in honoring thisor not?
(56:45):
Do I have capacity to honorthis or not?
And this brings me to kind ofthe sense of ceremonial space
and to slowing down and tobeginning to cultivate
relationship with our pain, orcontinue to nourish that
relationship with our pain overtime.
(57:05):
If we already have cultivated isreally in order to listen to
those parts of us, in order tooffer space to us, we really do
need to let our nervous systemsland.
We do need to feel safe andheld.
We do need to um spaciousness,because it isn't something.
Yes, some people get into youand I both have our own versions
(57:27):
of quick intuitive hits or bodyhits or something, but the very
deep messages and knowings thathave guided both of us have
come from um having just enoughspace to be able to hear that or
(57:48):
feel that.
It doesn't mean that it was,you know, six days of silence or
anything like that, but I wishyeah, it was just like one hour
of somebody holding space foryou to step into a little bit
slower of a cadence.
(58:08):
And because grief carries andit's like a symphony of cadences
really it's not just like onespecific People.
When I first lost, my momtalked a lot about, or I would
read a lot about this idea ofthe cadence of grief and in that
early grief I really felt like,yeah, it is.
There is this kind of downwardfeeling cadence that I'm being
(58:35):
asked to meet and over time Ihave realized that there's just
like the opening cello note tothe symphony of your life.
You know it ultimately takes onso many different rhythms and
this is part of the reason thatyou have a deep relationship
with music, that I love.
Music connected to grief worktoo, because the many notes and
(59:02):
the many rhythms and the manybeats of music bring that
cadence alive in our bodies in away that we can't always, you
know, through the mental world,connect with.
And so a little bit of holdingjust I mean I was gonna say a
lot of holding just uh, uh, Imean I was going to say a lot of
(59:23):
holding is fantastic too, butjust a little bit every week is
enough to kind of let yoursystem ease into listening to
what's there and feeling what'snext, and receiving what is here
in the moment that's needing tobe tended to, that's asking to
be tended to, that's asking tobe tended to, that's asking to
(59:43):
be trusted, so that, whateverthe next exploration of this,
you know, of this journey is,can have space to, to come up
and to move through you, whetherthat be another expression of
grief, whether it be a new idea,whether it be a conversation
that needs to be had with, youknow, a loved one, in order to
(01:00:05):
feel like you are living yourlife in the way that you need to
be living your life right now.
There's a million differentexpressions of that, and I love
one of my favorite conversations.
I mean, I don't have a favoriteconversation, I love all of our
conversations but Ispecifically remember this
moment where you had had maybeit was like in July, it was
(01:00:28):
right before it was right as youwere getting in touch with your
anger on a new level.
And you texted me about asession you'd had with Jasmine
and somebody else and that youhad sat for tea and somebody
else, and that you had sat fortea in like a 24 hour period and
I was like whoa it?
And then you said I felt thenew iteration of my business
(01:00:49):
starting to come through for thefirst time and I was like, yes,
because there was enough spaceto like, really, and you had had
this powerful release of anger.
It's like so much release thatgot to happen while you were so
held that then you just like gotto receive what was you know,
the droplets of the goldenliquid, of what would be next
(01:01:12):
Right, and it didn't all comelike okay, here, now go do it,
melina.
It was just like this, italmost like fairy dust sinking
into your cells of like, okay,there's something.
Yeah, and and I know you'veexperienced that in body work
related stuff too, and I have, Ihave two in this process, but I
(01:01:34):
, you know, as we offer sacredground and welcome people to
join us in this.
I think it's so powerful to talkabout how, ceremony and sacred
space, and what do we mean bysacred space?
For me you can answer thisdifferently if you want to For
me, there is this sense ofbringing like intention, um of,
(01:01:59):
and a heartfelt intention thatis, that truly sees everything
as equal, that sees everythingas welcome and that says, yeah,
I am here and I am willing to bewith what's here and I.
I see that there is life inthis, even though it feels like
(01:02:21):
death, or even though it is liferight now, that there are parts
of me that are needing to dieto meet it.
And in the complexity andcompleteness of that, that's
(01:02:44):
what I feel is connected to theword sacred.
And so, as we carve out thesesacred spaces, they nourish and
offer us so much in how we canbegin to, layer by layer, make
space for a differentrelationship with our pain,
where our body actually feelslike it's safe in this moment,
because I am not alone, I am notjudged, I am not going to be
overcome, I'm not floating inthe ocean by myself.
(01:03:08):
Somebody is on a surfboardholding onto my hand.
I am not going to drown here.
Okay, I can let even a fractionof my grief or my sadness or my
pain be present and like, feelit today.
I don't need to go beyond whatI'm ready for, but I can say yes
(01:03:30):
, I can say okay to justwhatever it is.
That's there, and the beautifulthing about this is your system
and your body and yourenergetic and emotional system.
In my experience with thesethings, never it's not like a
tidal waves comes over you.
If you're ready for just a baby, baby, still ocean, it's just
(01:03:53):
like you.
You are met with what you'reready for and what is the
perfect layer to be with.
Um, to continue like this is.
I've really been talking,wanting to write or talk about
how I really despise the termslike we need to move forward or
(01:04:14):
are how are you moving forwardor you need to move forward.
Like that was something thatcame up for me a lot in my early
grief and something that was Iknew that just by living, just
by being here, I was movingforward.
But this idea of moving forwardbeing so linear, whereas I feel
(01:04:34):
like moving forward is actuallyround, it's actually this like
rolling yeah, it's a spiral.
It's actually this like rollingyeah, it's a spiral.
It's like this rollingsensation that swell like, folds
into itself over and over andover again.
And so I don't know how I goton the topic of moving forward,
but basically, by just allowing,like, whatever's there to meet
(01:04:57):
you, that is all that's neededto continue the very, whether it
be fast or slow that day, thenatural momentum of your being
and moving forward, and thenmoving forward and like not
leaving grief behind.
But what is this walk with itthat I'm going to continue to
(01:05:18):
have, continue to deepen into,continue to deepen into,
continue to live and share?
I mean, as you were talkingabout connection with your mom,
I don't know that I've told youthis, but just in the past week,
twice one was in a dream and itwas actually at your house.
I dreamt that my mom and yourmom were at your blessing, or we
(01:05:44):
were at another version of yourblessing way, when Melina had
her blessing way we weren't sureif her mom was going to be
alive at the time and I traveledto California and we made a
bunch of food and we had, like,the most incredible day and.
I got to meet your mom, cuddleon the couch with your mom.
You and I got to like embraceand tremendous sobs afterwards.
(01:06:07):
It was something I'm sureneither of us will ever forget
and I had this kind of dream.
I've had a lot of dreamsrecently and I had this dream of
my mom when she was well like,being in your kitchen with your
like, being in your kitchen withyour mom, being in your kitchen
with your mom, and I wastalking to my mom about helping
me make some food.
(01:06:28):
And then, a couple of dayslater, my sister just texted me
I miss mom.
And I said, yeah, me too.
And I just happened to besitting in the same chair that
I'm sitting in now and for thefirst time, I was able to
(01:06:48):
imagine her knowing my houselike as if she were well,
walking around my house, as ifshe knew it like the back of her
hand, like she'd been here 5million times, and hollering up
the stairs to me while I was inmy office and imagining sitting
on the couch with her, which sheprobably sat on the couch with
(01:07:11):
me 5 million times.
So that's probably why, but thisis almost four years of never
having imagined her so far inthis space and one of the griefs
being, when we bought thishouse, she'll never walking out
of our old apartment a couplemonths after she died, she'll
(01:07:35):
never know.
Another home that I'll live inwas so beautiful.
Because, also, when you've seensomeone deteriorate physically
over time, it takes a long timeto unravel those images and to
(01:07:58):
um be receive the restoredimages of them and their
vibrancy again and theirradiance.
And so you know, as we moveforward, as you so beautifully
spoke about like it's, there'sthis continued deepened
relationship with grief that wewelcome in, when we welcome in
(01:08:18):
that spiral moving forward, notwhen we think of moving forward
as like well, that happened andnow I need to go this way.
Melina (01:08:26):
And something that's so beautiful about just witnessing
you on your grief journey that Iadmire is all those griefs you
mentioned, right, I mean thatone that you just mentioned,
yeah, like the griefs that Inever heard anyone.
I mean there's the grief of,like, losing this person is no
(01:08:52):
longer here physically, andthat's the one that a lot gets a
lot of attention.
And then there's so many othersthe changing family dynamics,
the exactly what you mentioned,like my mom is not going to be
here to see when I move, andthat grief and all the little
griefs like they're, they'rejust constantly knocking at the
(01:09:13):
door.
Yes, and we have a choice.
We can push them away and say,no, not right now, which is
valid Sometimes.
That's what we need to do.
We have I mean, I'm a mom, youknow I can't let it all in all
the time.
I remember in the days after mymom died, like after I put my
son to bed, I would just cry.
(01:09:34):
I would just be like, okay,now's my time to cry Like he's
in bed Cause I didn't have time,you know, I just couldn't
during the day.
So sometimes we do need to pushit but it, like you said so
beautifully, just taking even anhour.
It doesn't have to be six daysof silence, and for most of us
(01:09:55):
that's not attainable, but justhave a desirable.
Yeah, and that's why I loveceremony too, because ceremony I
think you would ask what sacredspace means, and I love what
you said about being heartfelt,intentional, and to me it's
(01:10:16):
really honoring our grief.
What keeps coming up is likehonoring our grief as sacred.
It's not something we need tomove on from, it's not something
we need to escape, it's notsomething we need to minimize or
heal from or it's like no, weneed to honor this.
This is part of being a humanbeing.
This is sacred ground Like thisis connecting us with life and
(01:10:41):
and with our hearts and with ourpurpose and with our, you know,
with our joy and our creativityand all of it.
And to me, ceremony anddropping into these deep spaces
is such a beautiful part of that.
I mean you mentioned I'vereceived beautiful visions.
I've received so much fromthose, these kinds of spaces,
(01:11:04):
and I need these spaces.
And you know, if you're someonewho's, I think, with grief, you
and I talk about it's likeno-transcript and just just be
(01:11:37):
there, that's it and and and notsay a word, like you're met and
held, and I totally understandthat it can feel scary and
that's also why I think theseloving containers are so needed,
because sometimes you just needsomeone to hold you and it,
when you are starting out, whenyou are like, where do I even
(01:11:59):
begin with this?
And like you and I fully trustthat we trust in everyone who
joins us that there's you're.
You're exactly where you needto be and you're going to
experience exactly what you needto experience, whether that's
complete stillness, whetherthat's just a sense of ease and
(01:12:20):
being held, whether that's tears, whether that's an idea it
could be so many of these thingsand there's absolutely zero
pressure to be feeling anythingor doing anything and there's
zero judgment.
I think that is, there's zeroexpectations, and I think that
those spaces are, are so neededto just be still to, to listen,
(01:12:44):
as you said, to feel the body,to feel what's here and on the
other side of the fear of oh mygosh, is what?
If there's this thing that'sgonna come and overtake me,
which I've totally felt, there'sjust so much peace and there's
so much, just more availablewhen you're willing to be held,
(01:13:07):
when you're willing to take achance on something that you
might be scared to, especiallywhen you know that there's no
expectation of anything you needto be feeling, and that's
ironically.
You know tea ceremony, which ispart of our event is, is such a
beautiful, has been such abeautiful ally for me and my
grief journey.
Um, and what I hear from peopleover and over again is because
(01:13:32):
people come to ceremony and somecry the entire time, some sit
in silence, some are like, yeah,I was thinking about my lunch,
you know, like I was thinkingabout going to the farmer's
market, like it, there's noexpectation, you can, you can.
Or sometimes people will say mymind was so active I couldn't
really drop in.
Or some people will say my mindwas so active I couldn't really
drop in.
Or some people will say, oh, Idropped in the very last bowl.
(01:13:53):
Or you know, I don't know.
Like there's zero expectationsand I think we just crave, we're
craving spaces like that, whereyou're just, you can just come
exactly as you are, but you'reheld in a really strong
container.
You know you and I are strongcontainers and I know that that.
(01:14:14):
I mean, I don't even need tosay that.
I don't need to say it becauseit can be felt by everybody
listening to this.
And yeah, we don't this faces.
Ellie (01:14:21):
The spaces we hold are very multi-dimensional and well,
just welcoming to the fullbeing and experience.
Did you?
What?
Were you remembered what youwere going to say?
Yeah, but then I thought of anote, so bring me back to.
I want to talk about tea and myfirst experience with tea with
you, because I I think that thatmight help kind of this
(01:14:44):
exploration of tea, and I wouldlove for you to talk about that
more so.
What I was going to say earlierthat I had forgotten was we've
also talked a lot and I talkedto clients about this a lot of
the grief that nobody talksabout, about any step in life
you're taking and that personjust not being there for it, and
(01:15:05):
we talked about this with thehouses.
But it's really heartbreaking,it's really devastating to be
it's its own, you know, its own.
One of those instruments in thegrief symphony is this
devastation that, even thoughsomething can be so incredibly
(01:15:27):
beautiful and joyous and goodincredibly beautiful and joyous
and good that whomever is there,whomever you've lost, is not
going to be there with you in it.
And I have worked with thiswith people that have gone
through tremendous breakupswhere, just stepping into,
actually they feel moreauthentically connected and more
(01:15:48):
alive and more excited abouttheir life than they've ever
felt before.
But they miss that.
For even somebody that's stillalive, they miss that person so
much.
Or it's so sad to imaginehaving a whole, nother life
without them.
And I know you and I havetalked about just like it's so
crazy and hard to imagine anentire lifetime of our moms not
(01:16:11):
being here and an entirelifetime of like, yes, you are
still in the first year.
In the first year there's somany firsts, like everything is
a first, and on top of that youhave a baby and he's living all
of his firsts and you're livingall of your firsts as a mother.
And then it doesn't stop at thefirst year and a lot of times
(01:16:33):
the first year is given thiskind of time period of like, oh
yeah, all of the firsts.
And it's this, um, just youknow, just like moving into my
house, or like stepping intosomething beautiful, or you, you
know.
Or starting your business froma new place, like kind of
(01:16:55):
creating the next iteration fromyour business from a new place.
Or for me, when I have mychildren, or um, all of these
things that are so incrediblybeautiful that they won't be
here to be living with usbeautiful, that they won't be
here to be living with us.
It's incredibly heartbreakingevery time it doesn't get better
(01:17:17):
or easier.
And in order to walk with that,um, I think also another thing
that ceremony offers us and teaoffers us so beautifully is
presence, and this attunement topresence and this is presence
(01:17:38):
is really kind of at you know,again, going back to the
symphony, it's like the throughline of all grief stuff.
The more we can attuneourselves to presence and learn
um presence and invite ourselvesinto presence and welcome in
presence and I could say amillion things about using a
million different words for thatthe more we experience that
(01:18:02):
presence with our grief, themore we can say welcome into our
life, to the life that's coming, and know that we are gonna
meet everything with presence asit comes and in that, have
space to meet the layers as theyarise.
And part of you know these,these sacred spaces, is the
(01:18:31):
invitation to become likepresent, not only present with
your eyes and your mind, andlike this hyper focus.
I'm squinting and putting likenarrow, narrow vision focus with
my hands.
It's like this heart presenceand this body presence and this
like seated in your root andyour womb presence and feeling
body presence and this exceededin your root and your womb
(01:18:53):
presence and feeling your hipsand letting everything be alive
here now and just experiencingthat and so going.
Moving to tea the first timethat you shared tea with me and
served me tea, it was at myhouse.
(01:19:14):
You came to visit and we hadnever been together in person
and we were both really lookingforward to it.
Such a great time.
And I had heard you talk abouttea but I hadn't really
experienced, I didn't reallyknow what to expect, and it was
really beautiful and I want toreflect on this for the people
(01:19:34):
that have never done quoteunquote done tea before?
Yeah, done tea, yeah.
Or experienced Done tea is averb Experienced the ceremony
that's what I say?
Melina (01:19:45):
No, I say done tea.
Yeah, I know, it's so funny.
Ellie (01:19:48):
I know you and I say we did tea or whatever.
We did tea or whatever, butultimately what it and we've had
many conversations about thistoo, because you've really
shared this great explorationthat you've been on for many
years with me in the past yearor so.
But this kind of invitation tocome present, to bring our focus
(01:20:11):
here to this moment, to the tea, the tea representing and
bringing us into this moment,and then allowing ourselves to
receive the medicine of the tea,allowing ourselves to be in the
practice of receiving, as wealso, you know, sip our, you
know offer it to ourselvesthrough our hands, and to just
be in the experience of lettingsomething move into us and maybe
(01:20:34):
through us.
Sometimes, when I drink tea,it's almost like I can imagine
the heat moving into me and likegoing into all of my you know
channels and everything, andthen I sweat a little bit.
Or there's something moving outit's like a total through me
experience bit or there'ssomething moving out.
It's like a total through meexperience and in a way, that's
(01:20:56):
a metaphor.
You always say t is a metaphorfor everything it's like, but
it's also a metaphor forlearning how to allow grief to
move through like that and forit to hit and heat and touch all
of these places in us and thencome out in another form.
And so when you served me mostdays while you're here visiting,
(01:21:19):
like the first day, I remember,yeah, my mind was wondering
okay, what's this going to belike, what am I supposed to be
doing?
What am I, yeah, what are allthese things?
And then also receiving thesemessages, and then, over a
couple of days of of doing thiswith you, receiving more and
more messages, just feeling areally also deep connection to
(01:21:40):
gratitude that I think can behard to find in grief, really
hard grief moments without thatkind of sacred pause.
And every time I've sat withyou when you serve me, I think
it has been a little bit moreemotional and person like I've
definitely there's definitelybeen tears.
I've definitely receivedintuitive visions and messages,
(01:22:03):
really beautiful ones, that havestuck with me.
And when I sit by myself, nowthat I've learned and, you know,
have, thanks to you, my ownlittle set of things, I some
days, this incredibly beautifulconnection to my wholeness, to
(01:22:37):
the energies, are alive in meand around me, and this, it's
like the tea gently brought allof me and all of life online.
And now for the rest of the day, I get to move from that place
and so I'd love to for you, ifyou want to add whatever you
(01:22:58):
want to add about tea ceremony.
But I just wanted to sharesomebody that was is new to tea
and hasn't done a lot of thephilosophical explorations of it
or learns the technicalities ofit like you have.
I wanted to share a little bitabout what that experience has
been like for me.
Um, and yeah, it's somethingthat I feel like I can
(01:23:25):
incorporate and sit with in andwelcome into every part of my
life, and so if maybe on the daywe're doing sacred ground,
you're not feeling ultraconnected to your grief at the
beginning, or maybe even throughthe entire thing, the tea will
offer you whatever you need, youknow, whatever is there, and
(01:23:48):
the awesome thing about this notbeing a linear journey and
those no expectations, as youwere talking about, is like it's
all great, it's all welcome,whatever that is yeah, thank you
for sharing your experience andI'm so happy every time you
text me your tea that you didtea.
Melina (01:24:13):
You're, like I sat with this tea, like, yes, it's so
great, I love bringing peopleinto tea and also, yeah, it's so
beautiful.
I always kind of see tea I loveyou have that vision of it like
moving through your body.
I really see it like movingthrough people, yeah, and like
this, the fluidity of like it,just it touching the people it's
meant to, and that there's noexpectation around any of it.
(01:24:38):
But then I always just love it,kind of it's slow, organic,
unfurling and and to those whoare called to it.
And, yeah, tea is, I mean Icould say so much about it, but
really it is a beautiful spaceholder in and of itself.
(01:24:58):
It's a beautiful medicine, it'sa gentle medicine.
Um, the teas that I drink, um,both ceremonially and, you know,
casually but ceremonially arecalled living teas.
So I recommend for anyone who'sgoing to join us not required,
(01:25:20):
but these teas, the specifictypes of teas, hold a really
powerful energy, the plantsthemselves, energy, the plants
themselves.
And so we think of tea in theWest, as you know, chamomile,
and there's herbal tea andthere's all these other teas,
but the tea that I'm talkingabout is from the plant Camellia
(01:25:42):
sinensis.
They're tea trees.
The teas that I drinkceremonially all come from China
, certain regions of China,which is the birthplace of tea,
where they have these tea trees,and the living teas have to
meet many different criteria tobe called living tea, so they're
beyond organic.
(01:26:02):
The trees are wild.
The farmers have relationshipswith the trees, these trees are
hundreds of years old, they'retended to really lovingly, and
part of tea ceremony is theenergy of all of it is important
and the way the trees aretreated, the way the farmers,
(01:26:25):
the energy of the farmer, theenergy of the person shipping
the tea I mean all of it is partof the experience and the
teaware and you know there'slike endless stuff.
But really, to just get started, the one thing I would
recommend, if at all possible,is to purchase the living tea,
and so two of the places to dothat are Living Tea and Global
(01:26:48):
Tea Hut, which I'm sure you'lllink to um, because the energies
of those teas have been socarefully and lovingly harvested
and tended and that will reallyadd.
That's a big part.
There's many parts of teaceremony specifically, but
that's the most important partis the tea, right, that's the
(01:27:09):
most important part, where weall start, and so, if you're
completely new, recommend doingthat if possible.
If you're sensitive to caffeine,we've, you know, I've put in
our description a couple of teasthat have been aged for many,
many decades, so the caffeinelevels are very low.
I know you're sensitive tocaffeine, so we've been testing
some out, and so there's somethat and these are not.
(01:27:33):
The caffeine is still not goingto be the same as a plantation
tea or a regular tea bag, right,but these are like, again,
really, the caffeine levels are.
It tends to be just very cleanand not, you know, crazy levels
of energy, if that's somethingyou're sensitive to.
But, yeah, these specific teasall have such a different energy
(01:27:56):
to them and, um, if not, youknow, if you're not able to
purchase, also, totally fine,you're more than welcome to join
us, because the next aspect ofthis is just present, as you
mentioned, is just like I hearfrom so many people and it is so
hard to describe until you'veexperienced it like grief, right
, yeah, it's like um, but what Ihear from people constantly is
(01:28:18):
wow, I did not know how much Ineeded to just sit here and sip
this tea, like whether it's justhot water and lemon or hot
water and mint, like anything,um, to have that experience of
just being dropped in, to feelthe warm water running through
your body and just be present.
(01:28:40):
And for me, a tea ceremony is sosensory and sensual, right,
it's like the feeling of thebowl in my hands, the warm bowl,
the steam rising, the sound ofthe water hitting the bowl, the
leaves and if you're juststarting, um, if you don't have
any experience with tea ceremony, we're going to be doing leaves
in a bowl, which is thesimplest.
(01:29:01):
You don't.
All you need is a kettle of hotwater and a bowl and some
leaves.
So we've put in therecommendation some keys that
are a little bit larger leavesso that you can just place a few
in the bowl and then you justput some hot water in the bowl.
And what's so beautiful aboutleaves in the bowl?
The simplest method?
Um, it's just watching theleaves like, like, expand, and
(01:29:25):
it's it's such a beautifulconnection with the tea and the
leaves themselves.
Um, so that's what we're goingto be doing in our ceremony.
It's just super simple and,yeah, you don't need to know any
of the technical aspects of it.
It's really just about bringingpresence to your cup, your bowl
and seeing what's there, andthere's so much more that can be
(01:29:45):
explored from there, but thatis.
That's the basis of it.
Ellie (01:29:51):
Yeah, I was sitting with an oolong this morning that I've
grown to really like I've triedit a couple times now called
mercy, and I was observing theleaves in my bowl and how like
tight and dry they looked.
And then you know they'rerolled, yeah, with every cup.
just I felt like this blossominghappening and it was really
(01:30:14):
cool.
I know that you and I could sithere for 5,000 hours and
continue on and, yeah, maybejust do a moment to check in
with if there's anything elseyou want to say to conclude no,
(01:30:40):
I feel really complete.
Melina (01:30:42):
Um, do you want to share a little bit about sacred
ground, or yeah, okay?
Ellie (01:30:47):
so on November 17th, melina and I are having our
first sacred ground event, whichis a ceremony for grief and
growth, and the first 30 minutesof this time together will be a
tea ceremony.
It's all virtual so you canshow up.
It's a Sunday.
You can show up from your homein a cozy place and experience
(01:31:10):
this.
You know the tea leaves thepresence.
We'll have some time formeditation once we complete the
tea and some musicalexplorations with our bodies,
whether it be like somatic andintuitive guided movement, or
whether you're already ready towrite and express or some kind
of expression wants to come outand I'll guide that after the
(01:31:31):
meditation.
And then we'll have time tocircle and come together and for
gentle guidance and forconnection and witnessing around
anything that's moving for you,you want to share or anything
you have questions about or wantsupport around.
And I know we both know how richand important the communal
(01:31:55):
space, our friendship, is a tinymicrocosm of the experience, of
how powerful and necessary itis to be able to share our grief
over and over and over again insacred spaces, and I'm so like
we have cultivated this togetherand I'm so excited to welcome
(01:32:16):
people into the next evolutionof it on a more public level, of
being able to experience andreceive the witnessing.
I've just wrote my reflection.
Actually it was in the programthat you and I met in my first
time being fully witnessed incommunity in my grief, after
(01:32:37):
years of crying and having griefexpressions that people, either
you know, pitied me around orone of the leaders of another
group, like because peopleweren't really grief literate or
hadn't had these experiencesthemselves, or had had them but
weren't in connection with theirgrief.
(01:32:58):
The response was, I think Elliejust likes to cry and he was
like no, I mean like I don'thave anything.
Melina (01:33:08):
I don't have anything against crying.
Ellie (01:33:11):
Does it feel fun to sit here in front of 20 strangers at
a retreat and, like bawl myeyes out?
Not really, um, but I can't notdo it because I can't.
I'm unwilling to look away.
You know, and I admire that somuch about you, so to, I have
learned over the years and youin your own way, like basically
(01:33:34):
anything that could come fromyou in this experience will not
scare us, could not scare us,and I am excited to just offer a
space where you get toexperience and receive whatever
is there for you.
So welcome and please join usin sacred ground.
(01:33:58):
We can't wait yeah can't waitAnything you want to add.
Melina (01:34:05):
Yeah, thank you so much for listening to this.
Yeah, I love you so much, ellie, and it's an honor, absolute
honor, to walk alongside you inlife and grief and love and
friendship and community.
And I, ellie and I have.
We had planned an eventtogether.
(01:34:25):
We've been wanting to do anevent together for years and we
had planned one and had a dateand everything for last December
and then my mom went into thehospital and was diagnosed with
terminal cancer, so we, ofcourse, lovingly set it aside
and then it was not the time.
I was deep into the void reallyuntil now, until about this
(01:34:48):
month, when I have been feelingthe call to come out and I am so
honored to you know, ellie andI were like, all right, I think
it's time, and so I'm just sohonored to be offering this with
you and so excited that it'stime to offer it and I can't
wait to see where it goes.
(01:35:10):
And and, yeah, if you'refeeling called to join us, we
would love to have you at $33.
So really accessible.
And if you know, if that's noteven accessible, like, please
just let us know an email Helloat Ellie, flowcom or hello at
Lena chairscom, and let us knowwe want it to be accessible and
we'd love to have you and wecan't wait to meet you and honor
(01:35:33):
you and, yeah, just hold reallybeautiful space for you, um
love you.
Ellie (01:35:41):
I love you too.
It's gonna be so beautiful.
We both know I'm smiling so bigbecause I'm like.
We both know we have so manyfuture offerings coming and like
it will be.
This is so special because thefirst one- yeah, a year in the
literal year, yeah.
And I think, around the datewhen we were going to have it,
your mom was literally likealmost, almost died those few
(01:36:06):
days in the hospital.
It was ended up being a veryintense moment and yeah, I'm,
yeah, I'm in awe of thesejourneys.
I love you.
Thank you for listening totransformed by grief.
(01:36:41):
Please take a moment to rate,review and subscribe to the show
and to share it with a lovedone that needs this medicine
today.
If you are ready to deepen intoyour own transformed by grief
process, you can join thesanctuary membership or work
with me one-on-one at eliflowcom.
See you soon.
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