We are thrilled to share our first community stories episode.

We look forward to weaving and sharing the experiences of our grief house community members.

Our theme this month is perspective and reality - the conversations on this episode explore how grief can change our experience of the world around us.

Today’s stories are shared by Jamie Thrower, Alex, Edith and Morgan Fava. They were recorded at the Portland Grief House during our Art & Medicine fair and at a Compassionate Death Companion gathering.

We hope to offer one community episode each month. We'll be sending out information about upcoming themes, in-person recording dates in Portland and Atlanta and ways folks in other places can send us their stories.

Check out our Patreon page for more stories, writing and meditation prompts and other offerings.

Find out more about the folks on this episode below:

Jamie Thrower - End of Life Doula and Educator.

Alexandrea Wilson - counselor, death worker, Grief House board member.

Edith - griever

Morgan Fava - Death Doula

In this special episode I talk with Serena Trexler about her experiences as a death care worker, death rights advocate and green death/human composting engineer.

We Discuss Serena's personal relationship with the dead and their bodies (curious, honored to know them, not afraid) in contrast to many people's relationship with the dead (closed off, hopeful they won't be near, quite afraid). We explore the possibilities that open up when there isn't a requirement for fear of death and what might change if we had communities that supported us as we explored this universal, unavoidable part of our cycle. We discuss the biology of returning to the earth and the ways human's bodies might be used to heal wounds we've cause in our ecosystem.

I feel amazement about Serena, incredible good luck to know her, and hope about what might come from this particular moment she's spending incarnate.

In this episode Sascha and I talk about webs.

We ponder the way they are spun from hunger and instinct. How hope weaves a web, how death works in the weaving. We consider the web from a spider's perspective - how they never see the full scope of their work. We wonder about how we might weave well, where we are. We talk about our mothers and our fathers - the webs they wove for us, the nourishment they offered. We talk about the web from the perspective of the fly.

We end with a story about the ways we might weave webs that bring food for each other, without ever knowing and gratitude for the ones who have woven us into this strange, sparkling strength we're a part of today.

In this episode, Sascha and I try to put our fingers on the ache inside beginnings. We wonder about the way life grows out of death, how joy grows alongside sorrow, and whether anything ever really starts for the first time.

In an act of cunning metaphor, we take a while to get rolling with this episode. Eventually, inside our large meandering, we make a circle that comes round in a way that feels complete to us (and hopefully to you).

In this episode Sascha and I contemplate miracles, reality and how the two things intersect.

We discuss: my father's death and the dog miracles that came in its wake,
the delusion/magic weaving Sascha's mother practiced in her life, what sky diving might teach us about the nature of reality, how one might work at miracles, whether a tendency toward miracles can me spread, caught or learned and what to do with mysterious luck.

In the end, we feel (as always) grateful for the miracle of each other and all of you.

In this episode Sascha and I talk with Poet (And Grief House board member and collaborator) Krystle May Statler 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 can't be forced into linear narrative into something true that can be held and shared.
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Krystle May Statler (she/her) is a Black-multiracial artist living in Portland, OR and is the author of Prayer for Relief (2024). Her poems are featured in Poetry South, Epiphany Magazine, Fugue, Sixfold, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Poetry From Instructions, poetry.onl, 1455’s Movable Type, and Cultural Weekly. When she’s not artisting or designing books, Krystle can be found volunteering with The Grief House as the Fundraising Board Chair and Epiphany Magazine as a poetry reader, working as the Director of Operations at The Pathfinder Network, or nurturing life in Portland with her partner Kevin, their plant babies, and oodles of loved ones.

You can follow Krystle’s work online at krystlemaystatler.com and/or on Instagram at @2kay1. You can order her collection of poems, Prayer for Relief, here.

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; and on Instagram @sevenstonestarot. You can book a Wayfinding session here.

Referenced during the podcast:

"Summons" by Aurora Levins Morales

"Ready," song by Ahlay Blakely. You can learn about Ahlay's offerings at healingattheroots.com

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 country.

As always, we feel lucky to have each other to practice open, endless, unconditional welcoming.