Braving the Waves

Episode Notes This poem and episode are the last for season 2—we’ll be taking a bit of a break to revamp & rebuild for season 3! Some exciting changes & shifts are in store. Please stay tuned! Our final episode for season 2 takes a deep dive into the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 method, which is a grounding technique meant to support you through stress, anxiety, and panic, hopefully guiding you back to t...

Episode Notes This week's poem and episode explore a story—one of a young person navigating the grief of losing both their mother and their dog. But there is much more to this story, as there are always many layers of grief. This story brings us alongside someone re-writing what love’s residue is and how forgiveness isn’t linear. Here's an excerpt of the poem (the full written & visually forma...

Episode Notes This week's poem and episode use a Villanelle, which is a French form of poetry alternating two repeating lines. This episode is inspired by the famous poem, “Do not go gentle into that good night”, by Dylan Thomas. It allows us to think about moments when we’ve been afraid to venture outside, especially at night (literally and of ourselves). More specifically, the poem explores how...

Episode Notes This week's poem and episode walk alongside someone who has recently experienced sexual assault or violence. When they encounter a kind person in a coffee shop the morning after—who treats them very differently—they wrestle with the many emotions, feelings, and memories that arise. Here's an excerpt of the poem (the full written & visually formatted versions can now be found &amp...

Episode Notes This week's poem and episode use a Tanka, a Japanese form of poetry usually a single unbroken sentence with 31 syllables. The number of lines (when these poems are translated into English) is typically 3-5 to spotlight the twist or turn in the last third or so of the poem. With the beginning of a new school year and the approach of fall, I wanted to create an episode that can serve a...

Episode Notes This week’s poem and episode explore a student’s experience of feeling overwhelmed nearing back-to-school season. August is a complicated month—still summer, yet unofficially labelled the ‘get ready’ month, not unlike the end of December approaching New Year’s Resolutions. As a distraction, our narrator visits their town’s annual end-of-summer festival, where they learn that they can...

Episode Notes This week’s poem and episode explore the myriad of emotions, memories, thoughts, and feelings that surface and coexist on our birthdays. Though birthdays are often thought of and marketed as celebratory, this dismisses the many painful ways people encounter their birthday or the fact that not everyone’s experience includes cake, balloons, singing, friends, family, parties, and presen...

Episode Notes This week’s poem and episode bring us alongside someone who didn’t know how to help a struggling parent/guardian who offered abundant love, imagination, and play while they were alive. Eventually, the narrator realizes that these gifts—creativity, play, imagination, and love—from their parent/guardian are the very tools they can use to create and offer support, and even though they c...

Episode Notes This week’s poem and episode explore the moment we recognize that someone loves us, whether this is a family member, partner, friend, etc. So often we emphasize the feeling of ‘falling in love’ or loving someone else, without noting the feeling, honour, and privilege of being loved. As it relates to mental health, moments like these have power among deeply entangled struggles with bo...

Episode Notes This week’s poem and episode explore how to create a safe space in your mind—a place only for you. It also discusses how difficult this can be among so many other thoughts, distractions, and constant content consumption. The poem in the episode is a sestina, which includes a repetitive echo by using the same six end words in different combinations and orders. Our thoughts also create...

Episode Notes This week’s poem and episode discuss a long, brimming conversation between strangers on a long flight. Near the end of the exchange, someone speaks the phrase, “stay with us,” which, out of context, can be interpreted many ways. In most, it’s an offer of comfort and hospitality, such as, “stay with us when/if you visit, stay at our hotel, or stay the night when there’s is a storm tha...

Episode Notes This week’s poem and episode bring us alongside someone going for a walk after a harmful argument. As they process, they find themselves questioning the balance between necessary solitude and approaching apology with vulnerability and openness. There is something to be said for needing alone time and space after a disagreement, especially in reaching the conclusion that we’re the one...

Episode Notes This week’s poem and episode are a bit of a mantra/reminder to carry in your pocket, especially as things feel heavy. The month of June is celebratory in many ways, including Pride, Juneteenth, Indigenous History Month, and Men’s Mental Health Month, among many more. And we know it’s important for joy and advocacy to coexist, especially in our student communities. With this, comes ma...

Episode Notes This week’s poem and episode explore the feelings associated with reconnecting with a mentor, friend, coach, teacher, or anyone who offered guidance to you as a kid or teenager. The poem takes place after lost contact and many years have passed between these two people, which I think happens more often than we admit. This episode conveys what it means to reach out again (if appropria...

Episode Notes This week's poem and episode explore memory, especially those valuable to recall as we approach graduation (which I know many of us are at this time), well before the tasks, lists, and thoughts surrounding moving, university, or a first full-time job set in. Think of these tasks, lists, and thoughts as the vertebrae while the potent memories are the spine that allows you movement, fe...

Episode Notes This week's poem and episode discuss climate change anxiety, grief, outrage, sadness, frustration, and the myriad of emotions that come up when we’re worried about our planet. Most importantly, my hope for this episode is that it conveys the message that making space to feel nature’s pain is love, and love is the prerequisite for just about anything. Feeling this openly and outwardly...

Episode Notes This week's poem and episode dive into the common phrase “hindsight is twenty-twenty,” asking us to think about looking back with a bit more nuance. For example, seeing an experience more clearly in retrospect shouldn’t diminish how it was felt at the time, particularly how these feelings are remembered in the body and soul (when our mind tends to intellectualize memory). The poem is...

Episode Notes This week’s poem and episode discuss the painful feeling of longing to be like someone else, which can often be confused with both looking up to someone and idolizing them. Of course, these are very different things! It’s a wonderful thing to be inspired by someone’s vibe or style, but this can easily trickle into self-worth/esteem/confidence and comparison traps. Through a more stor...

Episode Notes This week, Mikaela reads a poem about coming home from college/university for the spring and summer (though it can absolutely apply to returning home after having been away a long time, too). The poem and episode look at the possible tension between the comforts/familiarity of a childhood home and the newfound freedom/independence we seek as young adults, perhaps realizing for the fi...

Episode Notes This week’s poem and episode explore parenthood, but in the voice of a toddler who has a new little sibling. Being a parent is a beautiful experience, but it is also exhausting (and equally so at different points while a child grows up). And, perhaps especially when children are very young, it may feel like your physical, mental, emotional, and spirtual work to care for them isn’t qu...

Episode Notes Our poem & episode this week are special birthday editions for Unsinkable’s 5th anniversary! We so hope you enjoy it. Please be sure to check out the resources, programs, partnerships, and action items shared in this episode. Thank you so much to our podcast guests from season 1 for lending their voices & words to this poem. You can re-listen to their episodes below! Here's a...

Episode Notes This week’s poem and episode explore fears around trying therapy for the first time, juxtaposed with the experience of telling someone you love them. We step into a stream of consciousness as someone journals their thoughts, navigating hesitancies around how therapy may or may not help them. It’s easy to feel like you have to fit into a box of what’s ‘normal’ or ‘acceptable’ to strug...

Episode Notes This week’s poem and episode unpack “revenge bedtime procrastination.” Perhaps most importantly, the poem and discussion challenge the colloquial understanding of this experience alongside its common coping mechanisms, questioning the environments that create such behaviour—beyond our intentions and self-regulation. The poem asks us to consider: is this a lack of self-control or am I...

Episode Notes This week’s poem and episode explore the relationship between mental health and money. Perhaps especially right now, many of us are feeling pinched by rising costs among much else. In particular, this episode unpacks the complicated common phrase and belief that “money isn’t everything.” Though it might not be, we need livable wages of it to survive. Within this dynamic (and for the...

Episode Notes This week’s poem and episode explore the idea that living is a sort of contronym—a word with two opposite meanings. It’s not a perfect contronym, but living your best life is considered both voluptuous and by nature, hidden, since “the best life” is free of the mucky and murky parts of being people. Much of what we attempt to hide—to appear to be living perfectly or fully—is deemed i...