Grief House - Portals

In this episode Sascha and I talk with Poet (And Grief House board member and collaborator) Krystle May Statle r about her brother BJ and her life with and without him since his murder in 2019 by the Inglewood police. We consider what it means to suffer deep injury that can't be explained or relieved, how complicated grief can lead to isolation and the way poetry might help weave a story that...

In this special episode Sascha sits down and talks with Jojo Donovan about trust and invitations. Jojo is good and wise and kind and perfect, as we find her always. Sascha (who is also good and kind and wise and perfect) feels lucky to be in a circle with jojo and the magic she pulls. You can follow Jojo's work online at sevenstonestarot.com ; on Substack at sevenstonestarot.substack.com ; an...

In this episode Sascha and I talk about how it feels to extend and be offered open invitations. We agree that, from both directions, it is simply the best. We try to figure out what makes it possible to do this glorious, simple thing; consider examples from our lives, discuss our siblings, our recent trip to see my family in Mexico, my remarkable Aunt Pipis, and the difficult politics of our count...

In this episode Sascha and I talk with Heather Dorfman  about love, grief, and interconnection. Heather tells us how standing trees send water and nutrients to their fallen family and what that might look like in a thriving human ecosystem. Sascha and I feel amazed at this news, and overjoyed. We reflect on motherhood, mycelium, and how networks of all kinds grow and grieve and grow.

In this episode Sascha and I discuss long-term relationships, letting go and staying connected, distance and persistence. We explore the idea of our selves as stacking dolls and strata of earth, contemplate forever, and devote ourselves to notebooks filled with unsolved equations where love is a known that can't be zeroed out.

In this short episode we explore the roles, burdens and responsibilities of heroes, villains and victims. Sascha tells me I'm not the villain I write myself as in the stories in my head, and I begin to believe her. 

In this episode on trust Sascha and I share lessons our mothers taught us about how to fall. We discuss falling well down flights of stairs, fallen cakes, and Mario Brothers' leap-and-falls. We explore the way lessons are taught in community, and, again, delight in our good luck in falling into each others' lives and hearts.

In this special episode Sascha talks with Cheryl Delany of Bit By Bit Counseling  about control, perfectionism, chaos and letting go. They delve into the particular trust fall experiences of non-standard brain chemistry and parenting and the rewards of allowing things to move in uncharted, un-called-for ways.

In part two of this series Sascha and I talk about the concept of fledging more generally: what happens when we're tossed from our nest into inhospitable landscapes? Has the goal always been to send our young ones off to better worlds? What happens when we stayed close and built something complex nearby each other?  We also think about the many ways we've thrown ourselves from nests - th...

The two episodes in this series are a recording of a long conversation Sascha and I had whilst sitting in a mountain house in Georgia. Over coffee and tiny supermarket donuts we talked for (literal) hours about our maternal lines: where our mothers' people came from, the gifts and challenges of their particular nests, how they sent their young ones out into the world. We wonder about fledging...

In this episode Sascha and I respond to some frequently asked (and a few unasked) questions about The Grief House. The sound quality is a little off in this episode. You might ask  Q: Laura, did you chose to record this sitting cross legged in an armchair with your microphone balanced on a pile of books balanced on your lap?  And I would have to answer  A: Yes, I did. At the time I was delighted b...

In this episode, Sascha, Jana DeCristofaro and I open a discussion with our death companions about how we might spend our final incarnate moments together. Being variously acquainted with/inclined toward the idea of death companions that are born alongside us and accompany through mortality teaching and reteaching us ways we might fall into their arms, this experiment plays out a little differentl...

In this episode Sascha and I respond to the essay, The Body Of My Mother by Perdita Finn: Tell me about your mother’s body. Her hands and her feet, her belly and her breasts. Tell me about her skin and her hair and the color of her eyes. Tell me about her smell—her breath, her underarms, the scent of her when she leaned in close. In the beginning I do not want to know your grievances with her. Do...

In this very special episode Sascha, Jana and I introduce ourselves and each other to our disappointment creatures. They are a rag-tag crew, but (in my opinion) overall pretty great. I would send them on any number of missions together.  We talk about the utility of disappointment, it's reasons for being, what kinds of disappointment was served up at our various childhood tables, the appropri...

In this special episode Sascha, Jana DeCristopharo of the Dougy Center and I search out and approach our wild grief creatures. Some of them are lava monsters, some are trapped behind sliding doors. They are vaporous, shocked, frozen and misunderstood.  They grieve death, separation, abandonment and things unknown. They are adrift and anchored and swimming strongly in their own and a big communal r...

In this episode Sasha and I tell our love stories with the universe.  When she first caught our eye, our courtship, the rough parts, the different ways we made up and how we feel about each other now. It's a lot like the movie when Harry me Sally but less funny and no scenes in diners.  We'd love you to send us clips from your love stories with the Universe! If you can film yourself sitt...

In this episode (which I accidentally posted unedited the other day, and 14 of you listened to, likely with a feeling of confusion, before Sascha realized what I'd done and fixed it) Sascha and I say I love you to each other, again and again.  It makes me feel squirmy joyful and fed and so so so so lucky. It's a brave experiment - asking someone you know loves to tell you why they love y...

In this episode Sascha and I talk about our old strategies for self-protection when faced with the threat of uncharted love. We allow that they may be doing us more harm than good but we'll probably stick with them anyway.  Featuring: fathers, fire escapes, dreams, Greek Salad, some murder, tenacity, ice castles, and a mention of the Rat Stove (which will be better, though never fully, explai...

In this episode of the podcast Sascha and I consider our fear of forever. Given our upbringing in a world that rarely acknowledges or even perceives things' natural edges, is it possible to feel into the cadence of experiences as they unfold? If we don't schedule the unfolding of our experiences, will they naturally evolve into new things? Or stall? Will we be stuck, eternally, in one pl...

Sascha talks with her husband Peter about the effect of unprocessed and intergenerational grief - how and where it  hangs around. They talk about how Peter went about even noticing it and what it is to reconcile a painful past of genocide and suicide, especially when it lives in our bodies and in the shadows. 

At the Grief House we're interested in building a rich, loamy soil in which our lost and fallen bits can be met as nourishment, broken down and taken in and made available, in a new form, to support new growth. We've decided to take this metaphor and  turn it into matter. And then back to metaphor and on and on. Cycles and cycles - just like everything. We start here with beetles, earthw...

In this episode Sascha and I try to see the unseeable wind of grief, fail, and instead call out the names of all the swirling solid grief bodies we see as they whip past in the gust. Alphabetically. For a grief activity - so fun. Take a listen, won't you? NOTE: Extra points and gratitude for anyone who illustrated any portion of this, the start to our ABC book of sadness. 

In this episode Sascha and I attempt to address grief head on. We do our best to gaze right at the huge swirling everything of her, and more or less fail. We do manage to talk about pooping in the woods, burying my mother, FedEx-ed cremains and how it feels to want help that isn't readily for sale.  In the end we realize our work is to be afraid, small, and together; neither conquered nor con...

In this episode Sascha and I talked about our dread vessels; the space inside our hearts and minds that is reserved for dread and fear.  We wondered about the nature of the vessel and if it can be shrunk. We thought of strategies by which we might understand it more, how things come pouring in, how they pour out, what things never leave, what could never be inside it. It was really helpful and I f...

What happens when the worst thing arrives? What makes the worst thing the worst? How does it stay the worst? What happens if it doesn't? What breaks and what doesn't when the worst thing shows up at the door? What takes the place of the worst thing when the worst thing is past?  In this episode Sascha and I compare notes about worst things we have outlived and those we are currently drea...