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68. Poetry, A Way To Bridge Connection- With Neil Beresin
75 Plays4 years ago
Neil D. Beresin is a counselor and interfaith chaplain, and specializes in helping individuals navigate the unstable and disorienting waters of grief and loss. Neil has worked with individuals and families in hospitals, hospice, nursing homes, schools, and private practice. Multiple lenses frame his practice, including the work of theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel, Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön, psychologists Francis Weller and Murray Bowen, Founding Director of the Zen Hospice Project, Frank Ostaseski, and the practice of mindfulness through poetry.
Neil sees deep listening and reverent attentiveness as a spiritual practice. He meets individuals where they are and focuses on helping them increase their ability to cope with what are often extraordinary circumstances. It may include assisting individuals to connect or reconnect to practices, people, and principles that matter most to them. Neil may use poetry to provide additional comfort, deepen the space, and encourage reflection and opening. His article, “A Chaplain’s Notebook: Poetry as Spiritual Nourishment” was published by the Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling in March of 2020.
Neil’s clients are often experiencing overwhelming heartache related to loss—on the tailwinds of divorce, the death of someone dear, or, from some other life-altering struggle. Others have been carrying loss and trauma for many years, and they suddenly experience an acute form of anxiety or anguish that pushes them to seek more effective strategies to cope with and relieve some suffering.
Connect with Neil Beresin: www.griefandpoetry.com
http://www.instagram.com/griefandpoetry
Connect with Kendra Rinaldi for coaching or to be a guest: http://www.griefgratitudeandthegrayinbetween.com
http://www.instagram.com/griefgratitudepodcast.com
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Transcript
The Power of Writing and Poetry
00:00:01
Speaker
writing it sometimes is even more profound. Very few people can speak this way. And so the writing hits a place, a deeper place than I call it ordinary language would. And there's the connection, your heart to this image, this metaphor, this work, this emotion that the artist
00:00:30
Speaker
was writing about.
Podcast Introduction: Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray in Between
00:00:35
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray in Between podcast. This podcast is about exploring the grief that occurs at different times in our lives in which we have had major changes and transitions that literally shake us to the core and make us experience grief.
00:00:59
Speaker
I created this podcast for people to feel a little less hopeless and alone in their own grief process as they hear the stories of others who have had similar journeys. I'm Kendra Rinaldi, your host. Now, let's dive right in to today's episode.
00:01:21
Speaker
Thank you for tuning in today.
Meet Neil Bareson: Chaplain and Counselor
00:01:23
Speaker
I am chatting with Neil Bareson and Neil is a chaplain as well as a counselor and helps people be able to process their grief through poetry as well. So did I kind of say that? Did I say that okay? What do you think? Is that a good intro and kind of like a good umbrella of what it is? That's the fine thing. Poetry is one, one tool I use in my work with people and it's an important tool for me.
00:01:49
Speaker
Perfect. Well, I'm happy you're here. And this is one of these calls in which we had some scheduling situations the one time that I had not put it in my calendar in the right slot and that I missed it. And we're finally here chatting.
00:02:10
Speaker
Funny enough, we were both in parallel universes. We were both in the recording room, but each of us in a different one that I had created. So now we're finally here. So I'm so grateful to you, for you and to you, Neil, for your patience in this process of creating this podcast. So thank you for being here. Of course, and the feeling is mutual, Kendra, sure.
00:02:32
Speaker
Thank you. So, Neil, let's dive into this. Describe then more of what it is you do, and then I want to then talk about how it is you ended up becoming what you do. Sure. I'm a counselor and an interfaith chaplain, Kendra, and I started about a year ago, a little less, a private practice, and my focus is grief, loss, and transition.
00:03:00
Speaker
And the other thing I do when I'm work-wise, when I'm not doing this work is I'm volunteering for a hospice agency and I'm making calls to folks who are bereaving the loss of someone.
00:03:16
Speaker
Now, what led you into that journey of doing this type of work, of working with people that are either in that, do you work with the people that are also about to transition themselves to in your process, like their own mortality, or do you mainly talk to people that are already grieving somebody that's passed away?
00:03:36
Speaker
Now I'm primarily working with people who are grieving the loss of someone. When I was a chaplain, I was working with people who were dying and who had died. So, um, but now it's mostly around people post the death of a loved one.
Journey to Chaplaincy: A Personal Path
00:03:52
Speaker
And as a chaplain, you were in the hospital setting. I was, I was, I worked in two different hospitals in Philadelphia, one in Philadelphia and one in, in Delaware. Okay. Is that so you are in Philadelphia and you used to live in Delaware before?
00:04:06
Speaker
No, that's where I did a residency in Chaplaincy. I've been in Philadelphia for a number of years now. So what led you into that? So that was the first thing you did was being a chaplain first before you became a counselor, or were they both kind of simultaneous? It's kind of a twisting story, if you want. I'll explain. Go into it. Here we go. That's why we're here. So I'm in my 60s. And when I was in my 20s, my
00:04:36
Speaker
goal was to be a family therapist. And so I entered a program and did a one year, where it was a two year, it was a two or three year program, master's program. And halfway through, I pulled myself out of the program. It wasn't right at the time. There's a lot of circumstances around that, that it's not really important to the story. And at the time, I think there were other things going on that I wasn't aware of.
00:05:06
Speaker
cycle through a lot of nonprofit work, working in schools, working with communities of older adults on either healthy aging initiatives or initiatives in nursing homes in Pennsylvania. And I wind up at the end of a 20-year career with an organization, a lovely, lovely organization, as a program manager with two different kinds of projects.
00:05:32
Speaker
I ended up having an experience where my niece, who is now a rabbi, was in her rabbinic training. And one of the requirements is an internship in some way. And she did a internship essentially in Chaplaincy at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital here in Philadelphia. And at the end of that experience at a family gathering, she turned to me and she said, Neil, you'd be really good at this.
00:06:03
Speaker
A light bulb, very bright light bulb went off at that moment.
00:06:09
Speaker
I started to talk to some chaplains. I networked with some chaplains in the area. And I decided very soon after that that I wanted to start, do really an encore career, go in a different direction. And I studied and became a chaplain.
Poetry in Practice: A Healing Tool
00:06:30
Speaker
So I kind of call myself like in the job that I was doing as a program manager, there was a lot of counseling opportunities. I don't mean formally, but informally.
00:06:38
Speaker
And I did end up getting a Master's of Education in school counseling. So it's not far from where I was, but Chaplaincy has brought me back full circle.
00:06:51
Speaker
to this magnificent work of individual work, and I'm also doing some group work as well. And to me, I say it's a backdoor. It's the backdoor into something I started in my 20s, and I think now with life behind me, when I say that, I mean with a lot of experience in life, both professionally and personally, in relationships and in other ways.
00:07:16
Speaker
I'm much more prepared psychically to do this work. And it's been, it's really a home for me. This is my, this is what I want to do the rest of my life. There's no question. Now, I'm curious in that 20s, because you're saying kind of like going back, it's kind of like it just led you back to the beginning to something. So what was it that you were doing in your 20s that it kind of led you back again to your core, really?
00:07:42
Speaker
What was I doing in my 20s? Well, I was in and out of different kinds of jobs, just trying to make a living. I was in graduate school getting that master's pulled out, did some odd things, just wanted to get away from it. The stress was enormous for me at the time. And so I was playing. In a sense, I was doing a lot of playing in the middle between that first year of graduate school when I took a year off
00:08:11
Speaker
I did a lot of playing odd jobs and things that were relatively easy and just not stressful and thinking about my future and what it meant and then decided to go back and get that master's in school counseling.
00:08:28
Speaker
Now, I found it so beautiful that it was your niece that recognized that there was something there that connected to who you are and that you'd be good at it. So was it the type of relationship that you have, let's say in your family, was grief or talking about death, was it something that was common within your family unit that she would think that you'd be good in that particular role?
00:08:57
Speaker
That's interesting you say that. It's not that we really were a family that talked about grief easily. I think it was really that she knew me from family gatherings and she knew that I had sort of this intensity. I was always looking for kind of the sacred and the profound in day-to-day living, in nature, in relationships, in communication, I think.
00:09:25
Speaker
She just observed that. I don't think it was because we talked about death. Our family had normal conversations. We were extraordinary around this whole issue of end of life. I just think that she found something that resonated in me.
00:09:50
Speaker
and wanted to share that as sort of a, and I thought of it, I think of it as just a love moment. You know, like you'd be really good at this. She turned like, she literally, exactly. I'm seeing you and I'm seeing this work as fitting into who you are in a beautiful way. Little did she know that I would end up doing that. And so I remind her probably once a year, if not more, it's because of you, honey. It's because of you.
00:10:20
Speaker
Oh, that's beautiful. That's sweet. Yeah. That is beautiful. Now, what are some of these ways in which you help, then, people process their grief? You mentioned, you know, poetry is one of the things, one of the tools you use. What are some of the other ways? Or if you want to talk a little further as to how you dive into poetry being one of these tools.
00:10:43
Speaker
Okay, so maybe I'll do a little bit about the transition to poetry and then sort of the larger work around poetry and other tools, okay? Okay. Perfect. So, great. So, I was talking to a colleague of my niece, the one who, the rabbi who said what she said at the end of that summer. What's her name? What's her name? Rebecca. Okay, Rabbi Rebecca. Rabbi Rebecca, and they call her Beck, Becca as for short, so Rabbi Becca.
00:11:12
Speaker
Rebecca was talking to me about a colleague who she really admired in her summer internship that she was working with her. This chaplaincy work when we train, we train with groups of chaplains that are interns together or residents together and we learn, we do a lot of group work together and learn from each other.
00:11:30
Speaker
And the woman sounded really interesting and she said, why don't you call her because she was doing, you know, obviously Becca was moving towards rabbinical training and being a rabbi, but this person was really interested in the work of, she was in a hospital spending lots of time there, even though she wasn't a formally trained professional chaplain. She was really a volunteer, but had gone through all the training as if she wanted to be a professional chaplain.
00:11:55
Speaker
And we started, we had a conversation one day and actually had coffee and she showed me that she had been carrying a notebook. And I said, what's that for? She goes, you know, I'm not really great at remembering prayers. So I carry some of the ones that I'm closest to in this book so I can look at the book at times and not have to memorize. Um, and it's just, it's a comfort for me, like a blanket. She didn't, I don't think she used the word blanket, but I took it that way. And, uh, I,
00:12:25
Speaker
immediately had an image. When my parents, and this is another story that I'll sort of weave in, but not go all the way there, my parents died five weeks apart in 2014, which clearly influenced me. I was with them for many, for every day, the last nine months of their lives. And that's another story. But that experience was life changing also. I began to percolate.
00:12:55
Speaker
around the notion of working in this end of life area without a lot of detail. I have a concrete plan of any sort. Anyway, talking to this... Oh, I know what it was. So back to that story. I wrote a poem for each of them for their respective memorial services, and that experience of writing those poems and delivering them was very meaningful.
00:13:18
Speaker
And from that day on, and that was approximately, well, that would be in February, March, April of 2000, March. March, yeah, so it's an anniversary now. I decided that I started to read poetry like more than I'd ever had before. It was interesting to me, but not something that I was moved by in a big way where I was reading it all the time.
00:13:48
Speaker
started reading it. And then after I had this conversation with this colleague of Becca's, I thought to myself, why don't I just collect poems that really resonate with me that I think patients and their families in a hospital setting might find some
00:14:07
Speaker
I want to say comfort in, but I also want to say some peace maybe. Could they find something about the nature of living and this loss and all the things that people are going through as universal? Also, the notion of mystery and what connects us to each other beyond ourselves.
00:14:30
Speaker
I started to collect them and put them in a notebook and within that first year, the internship in Philadelphia, in a hospital in Philadelphia, I had collected about 195 poems and I had placed them, literally taped them into the notebook and carried that with me wherever I went. There were a few prayers in it, important prayers to me, but 95% of it was poems.
00:14:57
Speaker
And I began to read poetry to patients and families, end of life situations, maybe someone was about to have surgery after surgery. And I began to rely on my intuition and my unconscious to choose a poem that I felt resonated with this person after hearing something of their story.
00:15:18
Speaker
after listening to how they spoke to me, what was important to them, if I could get that from them, if they were willing to tell me. I chose these poems and, you know, reading poetry aloud to patients also slowed me down.
00:15:36
Speaker
which was a lovely thing. When I read poetry, and I'd love to read one to you today, you'll get a sense of the pace, and every word needs to be heard. So I talk almost this slowly so that people don't miss a word. I get to slow down, and it may slow them down, and it may offer them something.
00:16:01
Speaker
It may help them hear something that they wouldn't have otherwise heard about their own story, reflect on their own story, see an image or hear an image and be taken immediately to a body of water because water was in the poem. And often people would tell me stories after the poem.
00:16:24
Speaker
Oh, that reminds me of a further opening into their life. So it was an opening. It was a way to bridge, connect to people. It was a way for me to say, I heard you. It was a way for me to underline mystery, connection, and things larger than ourselves.
Counseling Tools: Radical Presence and Attentiveness
00:16:46
Speaker
So I got to part of your question about, so I've been using poetry also in my private practice. It's been lovely. Tools, I think the most important tools beyond poetry, and you don't need poetry to be successful in this work, I think, is really radical presence.
00:17:07
Speaker
And I like the word radical. I mean, it just sounds big. It sounds in some ways mysterious also. It's about radical attentiveness. It's trying to slow people down so that they can listen to their heart, also listen to their heads, although they're used to that.
00:17:28
Speaker
and find their soul. And when I say soul, without really going into a great definition of it, it's about themselves, but it's about the larger world again. It might be about family, it might be about family history, it might be about, you know, Jung, and not that I'm an expert on Jung, talked about archetypes, but it's these things that are beyond us that are historical and profound. And when you can slow things down,
00:17:58
Speaker
in this work and people give you permission to. And you have to ask for it, I think, as a counselor. It allows people to get to things that sometimes they often they can't get to in their normal lives. You help people reframe things. You help them realize that life is not easy. Even without this loss, life isn't easy. So what you're saying is this is a great battle.
00:18:26
Speaker
And you're one person in it. Your grief is to be expected. There's no timetable. And we will work together until you feel like you're not suffering anymore. And I'll use that word. I don't use that word a lot with my patience, but it's an important word because you will suffer after you lose someone who's dear to you. And as you know, it is a process.
00:18:56
Speaker
And there's no, there's not five steps to it being over. It goes on forever. It goes on forever. And if we as a culture could wake up, there are some great books out there. I'm sure you know some of them. Macon divine has written one called, I think something like, but I think it's called something like, it's okay that you're not okay.
00:19:23
Speaker
And it's a lovely book about how our culture, in part, it's about how our culture just freaks out around grief and doesn't have the patience for it. Really? Yeah. I think that that is, yeah, what you said is, by the way, like I just, I love your voice is so soothing. I don't know if you've written like meditation or recorded meditation.
00:19:50
Speaker
episodes or something, but maybe you should. Maybe you and I will do that together as a project. Like you need another one. Well, you know, it could be just even the recording of the reading of the poems, you know, and audio wise. What I was going to say is the aspect of being able to, and I lost my train of thought,
Societal Discomfort with Grief
00:20:19
Speaker
Oh, yeah. So in order to be comfortable talking about grief, we have to first be comfortable talking about death. And that's one of the things I think that it has to shift in our society, right, is more this taboo around the topic of death and talking about it so that we don't feel so
00:20:38
Speaker
awkward around people that are grieving the death of a loved one and so forth because it's something we all are going to experience, right? I don't know how that's going to shift. I think this year has really been one in which, of course, this topic of grief has come to the surface much more. Have you noticed that?
00:21:02
Speaker
that you read more articles about it, like they're talking about how we're in this collective grief and grief as not just the aspect of death, but just grief in general, about the loss of jobs or loss of freedom or so forth. Have you noticed that? Yeah, loss and transition, just constant loss, loss of
00:21:26
Speaker
I mean, then we're stuck in houses with people and it is hard for people to be stuck in a house together without a lot of resources to fall back on a distraction from each other, which we need. We need our own space and our own time. And so when we're forced to be in spaces with people we love, it can get hard.
00:21:50
Speaker
So yeah, there's a lot of loss and a lot of lots of constant moving and changing and shifting, which is really what our life is. It's all about change. It is about change. Absolutely. It is about the moment that the moment we are.
00:22:05
Speaker
Created, it starts to be about change. There's nothing stays the same. No second in our process of creation do we stay the same, right? The moment we are in that growth process, even in utero, right? Every single day there is a change, and then when we're born, the same.
00:22:24
Speaker
And when we, but somehow we get this attachment of wanting to keep things the same. Like when people like, Oh, I can't wait for things to go back to normal, how they used to be like this attachment to the before or this attachment, right? It's like, as if we just holding on, uh, and we were just so uncomfortable with change and transition, but it's so part of our,
00:22:49
Speaker
our being of who we are as humans. You sound like a Buddhist. I do? Yes, you do. Did you know that?
00:22:59
Speaker
No, I don't. I don't know if you know, are you familiar with the Baha'i faith? No, not deeply. I mean, I know some prayers, but that's about it. Okay, I'm a Baha'i. My religious practice is Baha'i. But anyway, I'm open, of course, I believe in all religions and all major religions. So for me to sound like a Buddhist doesn't surprise you. No, but I've never heard it.
00:23:31
Speaker
I'm not an expert, please, but the notion that everything is changing constantly, and the words are leaving my mouth, and they're falling on your ears, and then there's another word, and then you're hearing something else. Everything down to an atom is changing constantly. Absolutely, Jane.
00:23:50
Speaker
And we can't keep up with it, but yeah, go ahead. Yes, go ahead. Well, you said something about, you said like we're, we're, we culturally, we're having, we have a hard time with death and we have, and it's, I'm not an historian around it, but it's clear to me. And the other thing that we're really uncomfortable with is we're uncomfortable with people when they cry often. And a lot of this work is metaphorically handholding.
00:24:16
Speaker
letting people grieve actively, be as emotional as they want to be, feel like they have a safe, sacred, and peaceful space to do it in. And my job, if I do it well, is to let them be in this space, let them feel what they need to feel, their heart, their soul, their bodies. And when they're ready to
00:24:43
Speaker
move on and I mean that I don't even mean that permanently but I just mean that like in this conversation now when they're ready to Not cry anymore. They move into something else so it's really being attentive to You're listening
00:25:03
Speaker
you're listening, you're looking at someone's face and body, if you're in presence with them physically, you're listening for what the words they say and then what they're not saying. And you're looking for what's here that may be missing, that they may be missing. What are they being told by this? What could they learn from it? I'm not didactic, oh, you could learn this from it,
00:25:32
Speaker
I'm trying to look at that while they are looking at that as well. What is to be learned, if anything, about this loss? It's not going to fix it. It's not going to take away. It's just going to help us understand it more deeply. That's all.
Personal Insights from Loss
00:25:46
Speaker
What do you think was your biggest learning of the loss of both your parents in those five week period? What was your biggest growth experience and learning from having lived through that? That's a good question. I would say, I think having the capacity to
00:26:18
Speaker
visit with them every day and be a helpful source of comfort for them in those last nine months. Not that they're difficult people, they're not. But the idea of, I mean, up until then I had never spent every day, other than when I was a child, right, with them.
00:26:47
Speaker
essentially just being with them, that's all. And so just the capacity to be in this space with them, you know, every day for those last nine months, I think that that was a wake-up call around purpose, you know, like, wow, you could do this with your parents, and it was satisfying how could you do this with others.
00:27:17
Speaker
That is so, so beautiful. Were they were they ill? Were they both ill in that in that those nine months that you are mentioning? Is that why you were by their side? Yeah, one was on hospice. And he and my dad, Carl went on hospice in September of 2013, maybe August, September. And he died in February 2014. And my mom was diagnosed
00:27:47
Speaker
in the summer of 2013. And she was a very serious, I wanna say leukemia, but I don't think it was leukemia. My words are failing me now, maybe, because of this interview. A type of cancer. Yeah, a type of pretty serious cancer, and it affected her. It was lymphoma, excuse me, I don't remember. It was lymphoma.
00:28:13
Speaker
And there are different kinds of lymphoma, and it's complicated, but she thought she had the better one if there is such a thing. And we were told in September, October, that she went into remission. And then just as we heard that, she started to go down. So yes, they were both sick at the end. She never went on hospice. It was really fast for her from October, and then she died in March of 2014.
00:28:44
Speaker
So October is when your dad was in hospice and then died. And October is when she really found out how sick she was. So very, very close timing both of these experiences.
00:29:00
Speaker
Yeah. What were some of the do you recall or or do you want to share either one of the poems that you wrote for their memorial since that's that's so sweet of you started. So sweet of you want to. Oh, I don't have immediate access. And I think it might take me a little too long to find no problem. Which one would be one you'd like to share? Because you mentioned you're asking.
00:29:27
Speaker
I'm going to read this one that I was looking through my notebook before our call and saying which ones resonate with me today in the spirit of what we're about to what we're doing on our conversation. And somehow this one jumped out at me. It's called blessing. And it's by Laurie and
00:29:50
Speaker
Guerrero. Guerrero. Guerrero. There you go. G-U-E-R-R-E-R-O. Beautiful. Yeah. Guerrero. Thank you. You said it beautifully. My mouth can't do that. It's okay. It's the double R's. It's the double R's. Guerrero. Blessing. Blessing. For my son, I have ignored you for a year. I have not dwelt on the soft fur of your arms or the way you rubbed my cheek with your own starry cheek.
00:30:16
Speaker
I splintered your hands away from my heart when you exited me. Of the men who have claimed my body, only you reflect my exact goodness, tragic as a cotton field ripe with bloom. But I have not dwelt on this either, not in one year or three. The way you break open your own throat, singing, sculpting, one world, another.
00:30:42
Speaker
Or kiss a girl in my kitchen, calling her love, my love. No, I have ignored you for a year or six, maybe, not touching your feet or your shoulders to dab them dry, not humming in your ear, as I did once, not holding your head against my chest in this sad night.
00:31:02
Speaker
I have not dwelt on other women who speak sweetly for you, laugh with you, or hold your head against their chests in the sad night. I have ignored you for a year or ten, finally severing the root, purging, drying out the heart. Go. That's it.
00:31:32
Speaker
Wow. Yeah, I would close my eyes. I was listening. Thank you for sharing that. Oh, you're welcome. Just to give you, I don't spend time analyzing, Kendra. I don't want people to try to extract some meaning. I want them to just let it fall on them like you did. And that's a beautiful thing. But if you had to ask me about this, it's about loss.
00:31:58
Speaker
And so it can resonate with anyone in the world, no matter what their loss is. Yeah, it's about, like, I felt that being that loss of those missed opportunities and chances of connecting with somebody else, that we just kind of let it just fall through the cracks kind of in our day to day. And like it says there, like, you know, a year or 10 or, you know, all these times in which we've had that
00:32:24
Speaker
opportunity to connect with another, in this case, it's, you know, mother-son type of relationship of what I hear, but the aspect of just connecting to another human being and just missing that chance. And I think that that is one of the things, and I'm actually curious if you, as your worker, when you worked with Chaplin, as a Chaplin, with Chaplin, I'm like, did you hear my, with Chaplin? No, you didn't work with Chaplin. I missed it, I missed it.
00:32:53
Speaker
I completely missed it.
Common Regrets in Grieving
00:32:57
Speaker
When you worked as a chaplain, what were some of the things that people would say they regret the most in their life? Do you remember? Yeah, I do. I want to be careful that, you know, when you're in a hospital setting and things are moving so fast and you're trying to slow things down in these visits,
00:33:23
Speaker
many people are very defended. Do you know what I mean by that? Defended? I mean, they're not able to talk about regret. Sometimes you don't get there when you do. So I want to make sure that whoever's listening understands that not everybody is able to or capable or willing to talk about regret. But those who do, I think it would be about
00:33:50
Speaker
attentiveness. They might not use the word the way I just did. But it's about I wasn't loving enough, paying attention or loving enough. I was busy moving too fast to notice, to love. And I see that in my clients also, today, you know, in the private practice.
00:34:18
Speaker
Like the ones that are grieving then do, is that one of the things that then they share the most in terms of what they wish they would have done with the person that they've just lost, that they would have been more present? That's a good question. I'm thinking about someone I'm working with and a lot of what I'm saying is coloring this.
00:34:43
Speaker
So a lot of what she's been talking about is, gosh, if I had known that he was going to die when he did, I would have been softer. I would have been more curious. I would have gone on errands with him when I said, no, you go by yourself. I would have spent more time with him.
00:35:06
Speaker
That aspect of regret, of the regret. Yeah, there's regret there. And we're going to hold that. We're going to hold that softly and in a sacred, holy way. And we're not going to change it. We're not going to say, oh, well you had your own, you know, no, we're going to just explore it. See where it goes.
00:35:24
Speaker
Yeah, because that's what you just said about not wanting to change it. That's one of the things that I feel we were talking about how people have discomfort sitting with somebody that is, for example, crying and so forth. Like we feel that we're in this culture of wanting to fix things and wanting to fix, you know, like if a child falls and cries, like we just want to make the
00:35:49
Speaker
feel better here have this lollipop stop crying like you know fixing the emotions um and with grief that's not the case like in general like emotions it's not about fixing it's about just accepting that they're there and like you said sitting with them kind of holding space for them um and then just yeah
00:36:11
Speaker
and either sometimes releasing them for that you know holding them that moment sometimes they release you don't necessarily need them anymore for a little while then they come back it's just the flow of emotions
00:36:22
Speaker
right, and permitting yourself and being compassionate towards yourself, both curious and compassionate. And it's hard. This is a practice. This is, you know, we have habits we get into about, you know, we're angry with ourselves for this or that or the other thing. And when I see, if I see suffering, which is where someone is
00:36:43
Speaker
not being kind to themselves in terms of, Oh my God, I'm going to cry now, like, and just start beating themselves up. Um, just talk about that moment and how they might approach it. That's all like, it's an opportunity. It's an opportunity to try something different in terms of how you speak with yourself and how you hold yourself.
00:37:09
Speaker
How do you think that this applies also this aspect of compassion and the work in terms of grief just in other aspects of our life?
Self-Compassion and Inner Voices
00:37:18
Speaker
Can you say that question again, Kendra? Yeah, maybe. Let me see if I can rephrase it. Sure. In this aspect of the emotions that come in terms of grief, like if we're hard on ourselves because of this emotion coming up and then just sitting with it, how can we apply this aspect of compassion in other aspects of our life?
00:37:41
Speaker
That's a great question. I don't know if I have a good answer. I feel bad sometimes for my guests because they don't know what's going to come. No, don't feel bad for us. I just say whatever's coming in my head. We don't have an answer, we don't have an answer. It's just a conversation. So how do we use compassion in other places in our lives?
00:38:05
Speaker
within us, yeah, about being compassionate towards ourselves in other situations in our life. So, yeah, we are our worst critics, are we not? We are also completely and positively, and I mean positively in a different sense, focused on the story of ourselves, right?
00:38:32
Speaker
our greatest hits, the greatest hits of ourselves. And we ruminate situations that I've passed about, oh, we could have done this, we could have done this, we could have done that. And we also ruminate about the future. Oh, this is coming up, and I hope I want to be able to do this, and I want to be able to do this, and I hope I look really good.
00:38:52
Speaker
It is, we are hard on ourselves and we are living a life that is integrated with who we are and the expectations we have of ourselves.
00:39:14
Speaker
Probably one of the most important things is in every aspect of our lives when we are critical of ourselves, we hear the voice that we notice. We notice that it's this critical voice. And that's the first step towards being able to do anything about it.
00:39:33
Speaker
And it is a compassionate step towards understanding oneself, but just noticing without trying not to go down the road of the words we used against ourselves. Just notice. And then in this work, I will say to people, what did you notice when, da-da-da-da, just, right?
00:39:58
Speaker
and the person notices. And this is the first time sometimes that someone's ever even asked them, did you notice? Or what did you notice? And they start to go there. And once they start explaining it, sometimes they fall upon
00:40:17
Speaker
information about themselves that they weren't even aware of. They say it, right? It's like when a writer is writing and they say, I wasn't even writing, like someone else was writing for me in that moment.
00:40:34
Speaker
or when you are able to express something and realize, oh my God, this is about this. Those are insights that are often subconscious or unconscious that we, by addressing it and noticing it, we begin to then pull it out slowly, gently, right?
00:40:52
Speaker
And there's another opening towards self-knowledge, awareness, and being able to make changes in what we say to ourselves. It's huge. It's huge work. So self-compassion, self-awareness is one of the biggest gifts we can give ourselves of how to do that kind of work.
00:41:14
Speaker
Yeah, the giving ourselves grace, right? To that aspect of, I always hear like, give yourself grace, like in the hardship and wherever, like, how would you treat somebody else that was going through that same, that was going through that moment as well? Like, would you be telling them, you know, like, would you be as critical as somebody else that's experiencing this? No, somehow we happen to be.
00:41:36
Speaker
very critical about ourselves and yet we wouldn't treat somebody else that way. So yeah, that having grace. Now, what are some other tools that you use in your own journey, in your own grief journey that you've used as well as then with your clients?
00:41:58
Speaker
Sure.
Poetry as Spiritual Practice
00:42:00
Speaker
My grief journey, I think reading poetry to myself has been, in a sense, almost a spiritual practice. It's opened my heart and tenderized it. And it is this grief walk that we do.
00:42:25
Speaker
is the grief we're sitting with grief and then we're sitting with joy when it comes and both can be true and both can be held. So in a sense these poems are about loss and grief and they're about anxiety, they're about vision, they're about curiosity. All these things
00:42:49
Speaker
When I read them, they open my heart and allow a lot of things into my heart. And again, I like the word tenderize. I started using that recently. They soften and open the heart. So it allows us to connect with others in deep ways. And in a sense, that's our consolation.
00:43:16
Speaker
our consolation is our, is the love and the connection we can make with people we care about. So that's one thing, you know. Yes, I wanted, when you're talking about how you talk about that connecting through poetry to these emotions, it's really because somebody else that wrote it to then find this connection of the fact that somebody else felt the way you do in that moment,
00:43:45
Speaker
There's, again, that connectiveness of not feeling alone in the journey and that understanding. Somebody else comprehends a glimpse of what your emotions are when you're reading something. Wow, this is how it relates or resonates with me. And sometimes, like you said, there's not necessarily
00:44:05
Speaker
I have to be like an understanding of exactly what it means, but just like how does it make you feel? Like I feel that way even about dreams too, like when you wake up from a dream, it's not like exactly like what it is that I dreamt, but how did it make me feel? And instead of really trying to understand it, do you feel that way about poetry, that it's more about that connectiveness?
00:44:31
Speaker
Yes, I do. Is that the right word? Connected? That's the right word. It is. It is. Connectedness is the perfect word. The writer had a vision. The writer had an image. The writer had a matter that they put into words. And the words express something that sometimes normal ordinary words of everyday life
00:44:52
Speaker
can't quite say. Writing it sometimes is even more profound. Very few people can speak this way. And so the writing hits a place, a deeper place than I call it ordinary language would.
00:45:14
Speaker
And there's the connection, your heart, to this image, this metaphor, this work, this emotion that the artist was writing about.
00:45:27
Speaker
There was one particular poem that was very influential for me when I started chaplaincy work. And the poem was called Love After Love. It's a very well-known poem by Derek Walcott. I'd love to read it to you because I think that it's the kind of poem that I would read every week or two to myself for probably a year. That's how important it was to me.
00:45:56
Speaker
Would it be okay if I read it? Absolutely. Love After Love by Derek Walcott. The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other's welcome and say, sit here, eat.
00:46:18
Speaker
You will love again the stranger who was yourself. Give wine, give bread, give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart.
00:46:36
Speaker
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes. Peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.
00:46:52
Speaker
It reminds me of how you were talking about people thinking of their past or also worrying about their future rather than that aspect of sit feast in on your life, like of what is it now of the it feels like of the sitting with being present somehow. That's how I feel that last line sits with me. Yes. And I think the larger theme here, just like you said, this is about reconciliation.
00:47:23
Speaker
It's magnificent. Give back your heart to itself to the stranger who has loved you. That was the line for me that resonated over and over again every time I read it. In your perspective, would you think that to the stranger, give back your heart to itself to the stranger who has loved you.
00:47:48
Speaker
all your life who has loved you all your life you ignored for another I'm sorry I should have I wanted to give you the rest of that because I think there's more clues yeah oh yeah yeah that loved you all your life so who who do you feel the stranger or what would you or what or who would that stranger be that would be me you're this is always about the self
00:48:11
Speaker
A self. Yeah. So like we are so like in the ego component that our own self, our real soul or our trueness is like lost within that. It's like in that stranger is kind of like our our soul kind of like, hello, I'm here. That's right.
00:48:28
Speaker
It's always been there and it's just a matter of finding it, right? And some of us, that's a lifelong process. Others may be more lucky, but I think it's that process of rediscovering what you love about yourself. Not that I don't go for the self-love stuff, but that you like yourself, you're compassionate towards yourself, right? That there's parts of you that you've ignored for another.
00:48:54
Speaker
who knows you by heart. So this other self, this soul that you talk about beautifully has known you, is part of you, is almost the mirror image of yourself and you've ignored it. You've ignored it and it's complicated why you've ignored it, but you've ignored it.
00:49:17
Speaker
or you've just not found it centering, you just not found it compelling. And I don't, I mean, I think, I don't know, I hope I'm not overdramatizing it, it was just
00:49:32
Speaker
I love the poem. You're talking to a theater major, by the way. That's my majorist theater. And you know, it's interesting that we're talking about poetry because last night I was thinking of just like even just how I was like doing this little short meditation. And my brother had said that one of the ways you meditate sometimes is like doing this chronological
00:49:54
Speaker
Kind of way of taking back like to like when you're a kid and kind of just going backwards So I was trying to do that last night. I don't meditate often so I was doing that last night and Thinking of my essence to some extent like of what is what did the child of me? who was who have I always been and that journey right and and
00:50:13
Speaker
For me, poetry was one of the things I did. I was in the poetry festival and so forth, and I would write poems or write songs, and then I ended up studying theater. So I love that we're having this conversation today because it's been a long time since I've sat down and read
00:50:32
Speaker
Poems and so and it's interesting the person I interviewed this morning to she that's how she shares on Instagram as well as poems about her law her loss and her she lost both her parents to So it's very interesting that both of you today have been people that poetry has been one of their
00:50:51
Speaker
So maybe that's an answer to me of having to reconnect with that as well. Sorry that I did this tangent. So you don't need to over dramatize, you said. So now continue with your train of thought as I interrupted it for five minutes. I think that if you think about this poem, not about me,
00:51:12
Speaker
But it was about me, it's about any of us. But when you think about reading it to a client or a hospital patient or a family, you understand how it might, not always, but it might resonate. It might say something that you might not be able to say having just met them 30 minutes ago, right? It allows you to say things, again,
00:51:41
Speaker
most times in our social rules, implicit rules, that you might not be able to say, but you're able to say it in a poem. And then if they get something great, if they don't,
Poetry in Therapy: Bridging Connections
00:51:57
Speaker
It's okay. There'll be another chance, maybe, maybe not, but this is all intuitive guessing about, hmm, I've heard you, this is the poem I'm thinking about that might be useful for you. Useful, it sounds very, doesn't sound right, but it might move you, but it might connect with you in some small way. Not expecting it to change everything for you. It's not gonna change everything.
00:52:27
Speaker
And it's a portal for conversation in that moment. It's a portal for conversation. Yeah, to be able to, like you said, if something that struck that person in that moment, that kind of rang true to them, that then they can share. Because you're right, these cultural, I guess, yeah, rules, like you were kind of saying,
00:52:52
Speaker
that the aspect of not maybe allowing our intuition to maybe, because I break that rule a lot of times, I have to say, I'm sorry, is it okay if I say kind of what I'm thinking right now? What's come up? Depends on what you say.
00:53:07
Speaker
But I ask people that sometimes I'm like, is it okay? Because sometimes you get these people call them downloads or this kind of information that just kind of comes up and you don't know if it's your own thoughts or if it's something that is maybe going to resonate with the person you're speaking.
00:53:23
Speaker
And when you have that empath component, it sometimes ends up happening more than others. So I'm assuming that in your case, and assumptions are not good to do, but I am gathering by the information you've shared,
00:53:42
Speaker
that you may end up having these kind of perceptions of, you know, and kind of feelings when you're talking with a client, but you use the poem as your way of communicating what has kind of just tapped into you. Yes. It's one small way to communicate something and maybe may act as a bridge, may act as a way to connect us in a deeper way.
00:54:11
Speaker
And when I'm working with clients, they love it. It feels like a gift to them. It's often at the end of a session, but it feels like they often close their eyes like you did and they enjoy it as if they're being served a delicious cup of tea.
00:54:26
Speaker
Like, doesn't it say here something of, I actually had a feast, a feast on your life, like a feast. I had to pull it up so that I could see the words as you were reading them. This is just so beautiful. Now share with the listeners, by the way, is there something else you'd like to share before you tell us also how people can find you? And I'll make sure to add your website on the show notes. Is there something else you want to leave the listeners with as to either grief or
00:54:55
Speaker
or anything else that I might ask. That's a great question. I often, when I'm asked this, if I'm talking to somebody, I want to share, if I could, a quote that has been, well, actually, I know what I want to do.
Geologic Speed: Depth in Soul Work
00:55:14
Speaker
There's a great book out there for those who are in working in the grief space and even for people who are grieving. It's called The Wild Edge of Sorrow. It's Making Its Rounds. People are loving it. It's by Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow. And Francis tells a story. I'm not sure if it's even in his book. It doesn't matter because the book's great. He was in San Francisco many, many years ago.
00:55:43
Speaker
looking for to study and have a mentor. And he walked into an office of somebody and started. And the first thing this gentleman said to him was, he pointed to a large rock on his desk. This is the therapist he wanted to, he was interviewing his potential mentor. The therapist pointed to a rock on his desk and he said, this is my clock.
00:56:11
Speaker
I operate on geologic speed. If you're going to work with the soul, you need to learn this rhythm. Because this is how the soul moves. And Francis said that that was the beginning of his education, his formal education. And he said that message that that gentleman said to him was more important than any books or any message he got his entire graduate school.
00:56:43
Speaker
So he's made it his life work to work on the soul. I have now a rock on my desk. And it reminds me that I have to slow down, and I want to help my clients slow down, if not in their life, in the time we're together. And that's a fantastic message. We're moving too fast for ourselves.
00:57:14
Speaker
and slowing down, yes, it means that we may have to feel something that we don't want to, but ultimately it will be really much, much better for ourselves.
00:57:25
Speaker
I think this year has been one of those of slowing down, slowing down and of us realizing really how much of the things we did and the busy work really were not that meaningful in reality. So where people can reach me, thanks for asking. Yes.
00:57:49
Speaker
Kendra, there's really two primary places I think that make the most sense. I have a website, it's griefandpoetry.com. And I'm on Instagram at griefandpoetry. And I post maybe two or three times a week, often poetry, not always. Often poems that resonate with me and that I'll use in my work as well.
00:58:18
Speaker
Wonderful. And thank you. And I'll make sure to link those. Yes, I'll link those at the in the show notes. And I just actually just found because you connected what we connected was via you went to the website. So I'm now following you on Instagram. So I can see all of your poems. Thank you so much for the beautiful. You know what it's like I feel now so like Zen, as they say, you know,
00:58:43
Speaker
like I just feel like this piece is just because again it's just even but I tend to be blah blah blah you know so as you've noticed already in our conversation I didn't notice you did not I did not I did not notice Kendra where are you going with this you assume I noticed I didn't you're just bully you're just bubbly
00:59:06
Speaker
I tend to be like when somebody calls, like even just when I joined the conversation here on the link, I was like, I'm sorry, I was on the other, I don't even sometimes stop to say hello. So thank you for this. If there's still time, if there's still time, I'd love to read your poem. And let's do this. I'll say goodbye now. And when the poem's done, we'll just leave space for silence.
00:59:34
Speaker
Perfect. But I'm going to say that thank you so much for your interest in me and my work and letting me talk about me and what I do. I appreciate it. Love it. And thank you for all you do and the space you hold for others as well in their grief journey. So thank you. You're welcome. It's a joy. This is called The Lessons of Water by David Wagner.
01:00:00
Speaker
When given a place to wait, it fills that place. I'm going to start over. The Lessons of Water. When given a place to wait, it fills that place by taking the shape of what contains it, its upper surface poised and level, absorbing, accepting what it can as lightly or heavily as it does itself.
01:00:26
Speaker
If pressed down, it will offer back in all directions everything it was given. If chilled, it will shatter. Daylight and white into stars will harden and sharpen and turn unforeseeably dazzling. Neglected, it will disappear, being transformed and lifted into thin air. Or thrown away, it will gather with other water, which is all one water, and rise and fall.
01:00:57
Speaker
regather and go on rising and falling, the more quickly its path descends, and the more slowly as it wears that path away, to be left a while to stir for the moon, to wait for the wind to begin again.
01:01:26
Speaker
Thank you again so much for choosing to listen today. I hope that you can take away a few nuggets from today's episode that can bring you comfort in your times of grief. If so, it would mean so much to me if you would rate and comment on this episode. And if you feel inspired in some way to share it with someone who may need to hear this, please do so.
01:01:54
Speaker
Also, if you or someone you know has a story of grief and gratitude that should be shared so that others can be inspired as well, please reach out to me. And thanks once again for tuning into Grief Gratitude and the Gray in Between podcast. Have a beautiful day.