Grief Magic: Rituals, Stories & Gentle Conversations about Loss

This is a gentle exploration of the grief that come up when we look at patterns in our childhoods and families in more detail. I am sharing what is coming up for me since my mum passed, what helps and what I am orienting towards. I mentioned two books by Clare Alexander: https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/287509/claire-alexander and the ACA newsletter: https://adultchildren.org/email-subscriptions/...

This week I’m joined by Georgia Wall, a ceremonial teacher and artist based in New York City, who weaves grief, creativity and ceremony together with such care. We begin with a reading from her book, The Circle Room: a book in ceremony. I really loved her October letter! We talk about how grief threads through everything we love, what it means to turn 40, and what her five-year-old twins are teach...

I feel re-energized around my tarot practice and I know many people return to their decks this time of year, so I wanted to record a little episode on approaches that can help us deepen our relationships to our decks and read in a way that feels more meaningful without adding a whole lot of faff that no one needs. Here is the invite for the free winter solstice tarot workshop: https://wonderful-te...

Hi friends, I am popping in to make two announcements today. Firstly, I decided to make my Grief Glimmers course free this season! I made it with so much love and I care so deeply about changing the culture around grief. If you feel curious about tarot, writing and creativity as a way to hold us through loss, feel free to sign up here: https://griefmagic.com/freecourse/ Secondly, I am offering dis...

You know, just a casual question on a chill Friday. Of course, I don't have any clear answers, but I wanted to take you along on my mental exploration. What I am hoping is that we can manage to embrace imperfection in ourselves and others, that we utilize new technologies when they are genuinely helpful and improve access and inclusion and that we come to an embodied orientation towards beauty...

...I am not trying to be dramatic, but these things really have made such a big difference and I really wish I had embraced them earlier in my life, it would have made things so much easier. From creating your own daily rituals to jomo, good boundaries and even better pyjamas I am sharing eight ways in which I adapt my everyday life to suit my neurodivergent brain. If you'd like to receive my...

This episode is for you if you feel a bit disconnected from your creativity and you want some easy, low energy ideas that can help you reconnect with this part of you. You might have most of the things needed already at home and they're a great way to get ready for a softer season, mark the change of light and bring in some of the changing leafs. If you like, you are also still welcome to join us...

This is a little waffle episode - updates from my summer, tales of neurotic furniture moving, the slow timeline of creative dreams unfolding over years and what I am doing at the moment to stay connected to each moment and a sense of hope. You can send me questions over here: https://www.speakpipe.com/yarrowm and you can join our monday sessions over here: https://griefmagic.com/club Love, Yarrow

Just a short & sweet one to say Glimmer Sessions start tomorrow - these are quiet, low pressure Zoom hangouts on a Monday evening, 7-8pm UK time with lovely creative company! Find out more and sign up here: https://griefmagic.com/club/ and feel free to send me a question over here: https://www.speakpipe.com/yarrowm Blessings on your seasonal transition, Yarrow

This week I'm continuing the Google-questions format and turning to something that comes up so often: why some friendships don't survive grief and loss. Before I get into it, a reminder that Monday sessions are back, come as you are, no pressure, sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds: https://griefmagic.com/club/ I'm also now offering seasonal readings, a custom card pull...

This episode is a seasonal check in as we move from summer into autumn, my favourite stretch of the year. Before I get into it, a reminder that our Monday sessions start again on September 14th. Anyone who signs up before the 10th gets a one card tarot reading recorded just for them, a little blessing for the season ahead. Sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds, more info here: https:...

This week I'm continuing a new tradition on the podcast: picking a topic, then answering the questions the internet is actually googling about it. This time it's ritual and grief, and I found three questions that apparently hundreds of thousands of people are searching for answers to. First, what's the point of a ritual if I don't believe in anything? I talk about my own strange, u...

I've talked about being neurodivergent for years, but there was always something that felt a little scarier about naming my autism specifically. I want to be brave about it now, so today I'm finally talking about my adult autism diagnosis. Obviously I'm not a medical professional and I can only speak from my own experience, but I know there are so many of you listening who are maybe au...

I've been listening to a podcast called Recoverable, and I love how they find the most Googled questions on a topic and just answer them. It felt like such a generous, democratic way of making something, and a lovely way to normalise the questions we're often too embarrassed to ask out loud. So I decided to try it here too. I looked up the questions people are most often googling about gri...

My previous episodes about friendships were well loved, so I wanted to talk about another aspect - the grief of loosing folks we used to be close to, for whatever reason. For the end of romantic relationships we have, if all goes well, rituals that support closure and clarity, but we don't always make the same effort for friendships that end. I've been looking at my life decade by decade,...

This is a gentle, slightly waffly episode on the last two years - the early stages of grief and shock, how I marked the anniversary this week, how I am shaping new family traditions and how I see the future. I hope it gives you a space to reflect on your own grief <3 You are welcome to sign up for my newsletter here: https://griefmagic.com/free/ Thanks for listening! Love, Yarrow

In this episode I'm joined by Bron Watson, a nurse, marketer, and entrepreneur living in New South Wales, Australia. After building a busy mentoring business, a breast cancer diagnosis in her late thirties forced her to stop and reassess everything. A second diagnosis, this time with multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer, led her to create the Serenity Project, a space where science and...

This episode is a follow-up to one of the most popular episodes I've ever made, on queer friendship and romance. So many of you got in touch after that one, so I wanted to go deeper and talk more practically about how we can bring more intimacy and romance into all our relationships. I start by thinking about where our expectations of relationships come from, because I think that's where i...

Content note: this episode discusses pet loss, including the death of my dog Orlando and some details about how he died. There are also brief mentions of losing my mum and a friend. Please take care of yourself and choose another episode if today isn't the right day for this one. This week I'm answering a listener question about grief and pet loss, and I'm sharing the full story of Orl...

In this episode I'm in conversation with dia of everyday writes, a queer Black embodiment practitioner, creative collaborator, and community tender of English, Sudanese, Syrian and Scottish heritage. This is actually our second conversation on the podcast, and returning to this space two years on felt like its own kind of ritual. We talk about what it means to live inside the fullness of our e...

In this episode, I reflect on books, learning, attention spans and the complicated grief that can live inside our educational journeys. After falling down a StudyTube rabbit hole on YouTube, I found myself thinking deeply about desire, class, ambition and the longing many of us carry around reading and intellectual life. I talk about why “studious” aesthetics can feel so comforting right now, espe...

A short and sweet episode this week: I'm inviting you to join me for free Monday sessions throughout July. These sessions have been running for a year now, and to mark that I'm opening them up to everyone at no cost for the whole month. They run every Monday evening, 7 to 8pm UK time, and they are honestly one of the highlights of my week. The structure is really simple. We open with a gro...

In this episode, I explore the Hanged Man tarot card as a companion for summer and for liminal seasons in general. Even if you do not usually work with tarot, I hope this conversation offers something gentle and spacious around perspective, rest, uncertainty, and slowing down. I talk about: the symbolism and history of the Hanged Man summer as a threshold season sacred unproductivity changing pers...

In this first “Read With Me” episode, I’m sharing reflections on I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, a haunting, deeply philosophical dystopian novel that unexpectedly became one of the most meaningful books I’ve read recently. I read this during the winter solstice season on the Isle of Lewis, and despite rarely reading dystopian fiction, I found myself profoundly moved by the novel...

In this episode, I’m speaking with Lasara Firefox Allen, writer, educator, menopause coach, and author of the beautiful book  Genderqueer Menopause . This conversation meant so much to me personally. Lasara’s work has genuinely helped me feel more hopeful, affirmed, and curious about aging, changing hormones, and living in a body that does not always fit dominant cultural narratives around gender...