Shows
Grief House - PortalsA Stand Of Old Growth MagicIn this episode Sascha and I talk about magic as a remedy for soul-bleaching imperialism. We share our personal strategies for sniffing out old stands of magic growing in the forests of our beings and tips for how to notice and tend spots of re-emerging magic in the wider world.
2026-02-1041 minGrief House - PortalsShareIn this episode Sascha and I talk about the practice of sharing abundance. We consider how awkward and un-practiced we feel at noticing what we have in abundance, believing it is needed and delivering it to actual beings who can use it. Similarly we discuss how often we feel under-resourced and blindly grasping for help we can't find though we know (or at least suspect) they can't be more than a few connections away.We experiment with an abundance practice wherein we make short lists of what we, personally, need and have to give in t...
2026-01-211h 06Grief House - PortalsFree To RestIn this episode Sascha and I talk about how it feels to hand things over to something we can't see, know or control to tend. We look at moments when we've come to the end of our ability to act and understand but nowhere near the limit of our ability to care or worry. We wonder about what it means to let something go with a belief that it will be caught - by community, by forces of nature, by things we can't define - and how that compares to letting go with a feeling of...
2025-12-2543 minGrief House - PortalsPhosphorescent Self LoveIn this episode Sascha and I sit together in person and talk about the wonder of loving one's self. We consider our differing aptitudes for it, its various and glorious side effects, and how we've experienced it alongside and nurtured it in each other through out our long friendship.
2025-11-2635 minGrief House - PortalsDear Friends & Disenfranchised Grief: Sascha & Hannah RumseyJoin Sascha and Hannah Rumsey of Friends Missing Friends as we talk about the beauty and joy of having very dear friends and the disenfranchised heartbreak that can come along when those friends die. In a heteronormative world that likes to make hierarchies of our losses, I was so happy to spend time hearing about Hannah's dear friend Lauren. In Hannah's grief journey she began Friends Missing Friends (a podcast, a community and a collective) where she helps folks find community while working through this particular note of loss.
2025-11-1945 minGrief House - PortalsBury Your ZombiesIn this episode Sascha and I talk about death as a balancing gesture to birth. We explore the pregnancy stages of this process, in particular; the periods where one body is held inside another as it slowly makes or unmakes itself into distinction from or integration into the bigger system. We look at the beings whose deaths needed to be held and integrated in order to birth the Grief House and wonder, more generally, what happens when we create new life without allowing death to fully gestate.
2025-10-1838 minGrief House - PortalsRefuge From The FloodIn this episode Sascha and I talk about the concept of refugia - protected spaces creatures can survive during periods of destructive havoc - the importance of diversity and how we might tend each other during times of flood.
2025-09-2845 minGrief House - PortalsElk's Club SantaLike a sack full of gifts proffered by a stranger sitting on a folding chair at a club you don't quite understand, this episode is a grab bag of random things you may or may not need or want offered without rhyme or reason.There's dreams about death, poop on a bed, mammograms, top-less fort building and, as always, Sascha's and my deep appreciation for our friendship. If you get something you don't like, you can always re-gift it. We won't mind one bit.
2025-09-0953 minGrief House - PortalsPotion Mage PotionIn this episode Sascha and I explore what it's like to interact with reality mediated by different kinds of brains. We realized that one good way to describe our current experience is this: Sascha is a potion mage and I am a potion. This feels just right to me. I revel in her jars and shelves, feel grateful for my tremendous luck this time around and move off in the world more self aware and oriented.Along the way we discuss lions and panthers, spiders and iguanas, orb creatures, horses and Melon bank.W...
2025-07-211h 01Grief House - PortalsVigilance - Pulled Apart and ConsideredIn this episode Sascha and I look at vigils, vigilance and hyper-vigilance. We consider how each state shows up in our lives and how they interact with each other. We offer personal stories and learn a little more about each other.
2025-05-2740 minGrief House - PortalsVigilance; A Loose, Friendly Wander Through Its Fields & Flood PlainsIn this episode Sascha and I throw structure to the wind and invite you into friendship chatting about vigilance and loss. We discuss: outrage at day spas, prairie dogs, non-aquatic anemones, aikido and how it feels when we open the door to our pain and fear, and try to move and roll with it.Maybe this structure demonstrates one of the antidotes for hyper-vigilance: what comes when we feel deeply safe and therefore free to follow each other down whichever paths open up as far as they allow, then turn off or circle back and e...
2025-05-1647 min
Grief House - PortalsFeelings About FortsIn this episode Sascha and I discuss forts made from: sheets, refrigerator boxes, Vanderbuilt University, teacher's desks, Jim Smith, jungle gyms and each other.We wonder about the value of a dedicated practice of fort building. What (we query) are we training for when we build realities from make-believe? What more when we built them alongside other creatures? And when we invite in guests, then what? And when we accept each other's invitations? What does a life set in undocumented realms offer in contrast to one lived inside the reach of official maps?We answer...
2025-04-1742 minGrief House - PortalsRise Up RegulatedOn this episode of the podcast, Sascha talks with Kate Drummond of The Energetic Heart and About Play in Atlanta to learn more about her journey and discuss reality as it relates to regulation. They agree that emotional regulation does not equal submission, doesn't mean entering a non feeling place and doesn't require us to forfeit anger but, rather, offers stable access to deep feelings and the ability to respond rather than react to stimuli. Sascha and Kate talk about how to move toward this aware and sturdy place when you live in a world th...
2025-04-0351 minGrief House - PortalsI Am Making You Inside My HeadIn this episode of the podcast Sascha and I discuss the nature of reality. We consider the practical appeal of living inside a consensus reality, the value of remembering that real doesn't mean absolute and what it's like when truth we've relied on cracks apart to reveal who-knows-what swirling underneath.We look at examples from our lives of ways grief offered glimpses into layers of reality we weren't expecting, like and don't like the way that makes us feel and wonder at what kind of shimmering endlessness we might be swimming in.
2025-03-2233 minGrief House - PortalsViolet Is Not Waking Up, What Happens Next?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 o...
2025-02-2445 minGrief House - PortalsWebsIn 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.
2025-02-1042 minGrief House - Portals(No True) BeginningsIn 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).
2025-01-2054 minGrief House - PortalsWe'll Die Soon (therefore) Look For MiraclesIn 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.
2025-01-0149 minGrief House - PortalsPrayer For Relief with Krystle May StatlerIn 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._________Krystle May Statler (she/her) is a Black-multiracial artist...
2024-12-2047 minGrief House - PortalsI Trust UsIn 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,"...
2024-11-2555 minGrief House - PortalsOpen InvitationIn 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.
2024-11-1148 minGrief House - PortalsCapacity for LoveIn 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.
2024-10-1651 minGrief House - PortalsSolving For LoveIn 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.
2024-09-3051 minGrief House - PortalsVillainIn 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.
2024-08-3032 minGrief House - PortalsFalling LessonsIn 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.
2024-08-1948 min
Joyful Courage for Parenting TeensNavigating grief that can show up during the teen years with Sascha DemerjianIt’s a tough topic this week - parental grief. Sascha Demerjian is here from The Grief House and beautifully intertwines personal stories with information. We don’t only grieve for people that we’ve lost. Sascha explains that we also grieve for expectations, narratives, & ideas - sometimes beliefs we didn’t even realize we were holding. We talk about how meaningful it is to have somewhere safe for the messiness of grieving and how we can resist wanting to jump in and fix things when others are hurting. It comes back to trusting the process. R...
2024-07-2942 minJoyful Courage for Parenting TeensNavigating grief that can show up during the teen years with Sascha DemerjianIt’s a tough topic this week - parental grief. Sascha Demerjian is here from The Grief House and beautifully intertwines personal stories with information. We don’t only grieve for people that we’ve lost. Sascha explains that we also grieve for expectations, narratives, & ideas - sometimes beliefs we didn’t even realize we were holding. We talk about how meaningful it is to have somewhere safe for the messiness of grieving and how we can resist wanting to jump in and fix things when others are hurting. It comes back to trusting the process. R...
2024-07-2942 minGrief House - PortalsTrust Falls with Cheryl Delany, MS, LPCIn 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.
2024-07-2041 minGrief House - PortalsFledging - Par 2 Of A Two Part SeriesIn 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 - the ways we've found ourselves too large and crowded and bravely leaped for spaces that might hold more of us more completely.
2024-06-261h 07Grief House - PortalsFledging - Part 1 Of A Two Part SeriesThe 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 - how a strong and functional flock gets formed.In episode one we go deep into our stories. Included are such topics as: logging camps in Florida, supermarket chains...
2024-06-2644 minGrief House - PortalsGrief House Q's and A'sIn 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 by how much it made me feel like an otter, but now I see the folly of my...
2024-06-0449 minGrief House - PortalsDeath CompanionsIn 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 differently in each of us.In the end we talk about: shame and guilt, cougars, respectful informality, Sicily and trust. I do not officially sign up to be death-witness for the general public...
2024-05-1651 minGrief House - PortalsOur Mothers' BodiesIn 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 not tell me, yet, about how she failed you, disappointed you, infuriated you, frightened you...
2024-04-2948 minGrief House - PortalsDisappointment Creatures (starring) Jana DeCristofaroIn 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 appropriate age for disappointment to go into private legal practice and what conditions might prompt her to give the courtroom up for a nice, plush couch and some daytime TV. I find out my...
2024-04-0551 minGrief House - PortalsWild Grief Creature Encounters starring Jana DeCristofaro of the Dougy CenterIn 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 river of loss. We make contact and start up conversations and then wonder about how this work might work in the bigger world.Featured: The Dougy Center and The Grief House. Mys...
2024-03-281h 03Grief House - PortalsWhen Harry Met Sally (and by Harry, we mean us and by Sally we mean the endless universe)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 sitting on a couch with her, even better.
2024-03-051h 01Grief House - PortalsSascha + Laura = LOVEIn 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 you. It's not for everyone, but if you ever want to try it, come on over the The House for a gr...
2024-02-1445 minGrief House - PortalsLove - Just Ride It OutIn 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, explained in an upcoming episode).Love! Who can understand it? Certainly neither of us.
2024-02-1336 minGrief House - PortalsFear of ForeverIn 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 place? We don't know. We're interested in finding out.
2024-01-1755 min
Grief House - PortalsThings Will Go WrongSascha 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.
2023-12-1029 minGrief House - PortalsDecomposedAt 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, earthworms a particular mushroom who may herself be a community and a festive, scary, beautiful bacterial. We're going to keep at this, these a...
2023-11-2831 minGrief House - PortalsGrief HurricaneIn 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.
2023-11-061h 01
Grief House - PortalsIt Scares Me So I Conquer It.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 conqueror.
2023-10-1745 minGrief House - PortalsThe Dread VesselIn 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 felt glad and more stable.Then I forgot our conversation and trotted off into my life dreading just like before. B...
2023-09-2837 minGrief House - PortalsThe Worst ThingWhat 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 dreading. Come peruse the worst of the worst with us!
2023-09-2135 min
Grief House - PortalsLocal MagicIn this special episode two of my favorite Portland women, Jenny Serna and Moe Bowstern, talk about their magic. We constructed this episode in a universe's grab-bag/Stir The Pot sort of way - I made a list of questions, Moe and Jenny took turns choosing numbers and we trusted the swirling everything to turn up what wanted considering. It was perfect as they are perfect as this whole beautiful, devastating, glorious thing is perfect.Take a listen!
2023-09-0653 minGrief House - PortalsMagic At The ThresholdIn this special episode Sascha talks with our friend Rachel the space where magic meets intensive care. Rachel is a ICU nurse and a student of paganism and traditional Earth Magic from the British Isles. She and Sascha talk about the intersection of these two aspects of her life and work, how one might protect magic while embracing modern medicine and allow both to be alive and protected during powerful moments of transition.
2023-08-1839 minGrief House - PortalsRabbits, Tigers, Dumpster FiresIn this episode, Sascha and I talk about Trust and Risk - by which, I think, we mean love; because there's no way to untangle them.Love is risky. It's trustworthy in a devastating, heartbreaking, generous, way that makes no sense at all and is the only thing that makes any sense. We discuss tigers, rabbits, shadow girls, flaming garbage, safety and fear.
2023-08-0344 min
Grief House - PortalsRisk AssessorsIn this episode about risk Sascha and I explore the varied ways we gage the danger of any given situation. We talk about mothers, swings, logs in the woods. We make note of the ways our sure and imminent death plays into our calculations and how grateful we are for the hard, brave work past versions of ourselves have done in service of our current selves.Come join us on this friendly romp through risky landscapes!
2023-07-1042 min
Grief House - PortalsStrategies For ThawingThis month on the podcast we're feeling deeply into numbness. In this our second episode we explore strategies for thawing - should the desire for sensation arise. We offer hot cocoa, secret audio messages, moaning and proximity to lakes as methods to more toward more feeling. We also spend a lot of time talking about how thawed isn't better and frozen isn't worse. Thaw if thawing is right. Re-freeze whenever you need to. Sascha and I will skate and swim happily in any of your states.
2023-06-3047 min
Grief House - PortalsNumbIn this feelings episode Sascha and I discuss numbness. We decide it is useful and problematic, a path to deeper feeling and a worrisome defensive move. We ponder surgical numbness, numbness brought on by waterfalls, and times when numbness leads to far too many vacuum cleaners. we hope you will enjoy our romp through numbness.
2023-06-2053 min
Grief House - PortalsWhat Are You Having For Lunch?In this special episode my best friend Emmy Garr and I discuss everything in the bowl; memories from our friendship, our trip to the casino, gross things we love, the time I made her room mate very mad and more. We offer a glimpse into friendship that can't possibly be ranked below any other kind of love. Plus you get to heat Emmy's voice - which is the most lovely voice. Don't pass this chance up, folks. Don't pass it up.
2023-06-0640 minGrief House - PortalsPlaidQ: What's happening in that picture with all the plaid?A: Sascha and I are dancing the Salty Dog at our high school pep rally.Q: But, why?A: Because we started a bowling club.Q: But...why?A: It depends on who you ask.More questions? Listen to this bonus episode! Still more? Become a patron and we'll answer any question you dream up.https://www.patreon.com/PortlandGriefHouse
2023-05-2716 min
Grief House - PortalsMore Than/Just FriendsIn this episode Sascha and I discuss the trouble of just and more than friends. We offer hues that fall outside the spectrum as we were raised to understand it, try to see each other shake in love we can't make into easy labels and feel grateful for our perfect, wonderful only/more than friendship.
2023-05-2444 minGrief House - PortalsUnder ControlIn this episode Sascha and hop into and out of control, peer around both places and report our findings. We discuss the sneaky forcefulness of the prey faced, our parallel 3rd grade power moves, dog packs and our friendship. We hope you'll come climb under and above and all around control with us.
2023-05-151h 01
Grief House - PortalsDeep Listening To DreamsIn this recent Portals episode, Sascha talks with Tina Tau, a dreamworker and Portland Grief House board member. They discuss deep listening to dreams, looking for the message you do not already know, and do some dream processing together. Tina has recently written a book called Ask for Horses: Memoir of a Dream-Guided Life, and she loves to listen to people's dreams. We hope you will check it out, join us for some dreamwork here, and consider a dream journal or dream group if that speaks to you.
2023-05-0337 min
Grief House - PortalsValiantly Disappointing, Heroically Disappointed.In this episode Sascha and I discuss our brave ventures out into the land of disappointment. We share tales of heroism from encounters with needs we cannot meet and valor from wanting things that might not want us back. We discuss my father, Sascha's mother and how they might be the reasons we are broken or might be the exact medicine our souls need to turn themselves smooth.We would love to share our disappointed, disappointing hearts with you.
2023-04-2059 min
Grief House - PortalsCreature BodyIn this special episode I talk with my good friend and Portland Grief House-mate Hannah Hillebrand about our creature-y-ness. We talk about comfort and need, the price of delayed mortality, the joy of giving things up, and how we might integrate our wildness with modernity. We come up with plans to lean our animal bodies further and further away from human-made notions of good and successful, we hope for a day when we know the people we love by their smell and that we are beautiful by the way they light up when they see us.
2023-04-1047 minGrief House - PortalsInterview With A BodyIn this episode Sasha and I interview each other's bodies. We ask about how they feel being in relationships with our brains and personalities, consider the good old days of swingsets and makebelieve, and hope for futures where we live together more honestly, tenderly and completely.
2023-03-3040 min
Grief House - PortalsBetter PatternsIn this episode Sascha and I discuss the patterns that exists within the mysterious, swirling everything, how we orient towards them, what we risk in that turning and why we turn despite the risk. We review Atlanta, Hypochondria, partnership and gossip. We are, as always, grateful for each other and for all of you.
2023-03-0645 min
Grief House - PortalsShame SoupIn this episode Sascha and I decide to sit shame down and ask her if there's anything she needs that we can offer. While not committing to provide full board and lodging, we extend the offer of a warm bowl of soup on a cold night.We discuss abandoned accents, the mystery of asparagus, the shock of 9th graders talking about college plans for fun and joy and sorrow of ham in every meal. We let each other's shame lie down with her head in our laps and pet her quietly. I cry a little bi...
2023-02-1950 min
Grief House - PortalsThe Remedy For ShameIn this episode Sascha and I talk about shame.We agree that it feels terrible, contemplate the devastating effects of its deployment, ponder its kinship with creeping infestations and howling caves and wonder about how it can be transformed. After aspiring never to ride in trucks with shame we spend some talking about how great it feels when it lifts, how friendship can work as a lifting agent and how lucky we are to have remedies for our shame in each other. In the end we come to a place of tenderness for the fear that lives...
2023-02-1046 min
Grief House - PortalsSleep Standing UpIn this episode which was meant to be about the joy that comes with accepting the present moment as it is, Sascha and I explore the hysterical misery of present moments that actually suck quite a lot.We talk about how it feels to see the right-ness of something while also wishing it would be completely different. We ponder possible culprits for downturns in enlightenment levels including the horizontal posture often assumed for sleep and decide to maintain our periods of hopeful outlook by sleeping upright always.We hope you will enjoy our hilarious romp...
2023-01-2632 min
Grief House - PortalsStir The Pot with Moe BowsternIn this episode I talk with Moe Bowstern about her project which asks the question: What does it mean to do community magic in a bar?We discuss the magic of asking questions a whole room of people answer from their unique place of expertise and whether a person needs special shoes to come play along (you don't). We explore the difference between intentional magic and common magic, our different experiences of childhood magic and how magic changes as it's handed down a shredded lineage. I cry a little bit about my dog Matty and Moe and...
2023-01-2046 min
Grief House - PortalsGood Death TalkIn this episode Sascha and I talk about how panicked my body is about my mother's body dying. We talk about how to survive in a culture that doesn't have a plan for how to help our bodies integrate this kind of loss. We explore things that might help and what it will be like if nothing really helps. We talk about other bodies that have left us and also how they've stayed.
2023-01-0254 minGrief House - PortalsLeaving to StayIn this episode Sascha and I talk about how the longest, soundest stays are sometimes born from many departures. We discuss the nature of death and rebirth in every phase of evolution and how building relationships that move with that cycle might offer a deep attachment we both want.
2022-12-1740 minGrief House - PortalsStrategies For StayingThis month Sascha and I are talking about staying. We discuss how staying with the hurt bits and the fears is not passive; it's muscular. It burns calories. We notice how it feels, to us, like an endeavor for which a person requires a support crew - to wave and shout encouragement and offer snacks and flashlights when the sun goes down. It also doesn't feel intuitive - it feels like something we are learning, slowly, by trial and error. In hope that shared knowledge might help us fall less often and less pai...
2022-12-0553 minGrief House - PortalsRiver Rocks & Full DevotionIn this episode Sascha and I talk with each other about how it felt to talk with our sisters about how it feels to trust our parents. We discuss rocks and rivers, how it might change a sentient river to watch swimmers play in or flee it, and our hope of some day becoming sentient rivers at peace with the elements that made us. We talk about different kinds of commitment and sign our names to a kind that embraces change, and deep, tolerant love. We wonder about how our families might have loo...
2022-11-2944 min
Grief House - PortalsTrusting TheresaIn our second sister episode, Sascha talks with her sister, Isadora, about trusting their mother, Teresa.Sascha and Izzy discuss the complexity of trusting someone who lived in a reality they couldn't quite fathom, how that effected their ability to trust their own perception of reality and how it shaped their ability to trust themselves and each other.Sascha and Izzy offer a glimpse into their resilient, tenacious love that makes me feel hopeful about our human hearts.
2022-11-2357 min
Grief House - PortalsTrusting GerardoIn this bilingual episode about family, I talk with my sister about if and how it could be possible to trust our father, Gerardo.We talk about how it feels to be people who have been set aside, the particular pain of being let-go-able. We explore how gratitude and sadness live together in our bodies, and wonder if there's a way to trust our father as a gift bearer and to trust the gifts - our mothers, our family, each other - he's brought us. I marvel at my sister - her strength, com...
2022-11-1448 minGrief House - PortalsWant CreaturesIn this episode about feelings Sascha and I call our wants over. We watch them move and tell each other what we see. Then we hand our want creatures to our friend (and Portals editor) Sid and he makes music they can dance to. I wasn't at all sure how this experiment would turn out but in the end what came is exactly what I wanted.
2022-10-2834 min
Grief House - PortalsSmuggling HopeIn this episode about feelings Sascha and I discuss what it's like to want. We consider categories of want, wonder about the difference between wanting things for ourselves and wanting things for our beloveds and explore what lessons the tea cup carnival ride has to teach us about want.We consider want in the parent-child relationship where it quite often feels bright and like survival and work our way towards a more expansive relationship with wanting - one that allows pinwheels to spin to their full potential, sparing fingertips their sharp slap.We hope you'll...
2022-10-0544 min
Grief House - PortalsPerspective - I Have You Inside MeIn this episode Sascha and I talk about how it feels to hold people in our hearts, thoughts and consciousness. We consider what it's like to be born, again and again, into vessels that then wander off holding you however they see fit. What it's like to carry someone who doesn't know you have them. What it's like to carry someone who may or may not be alive.We think about how we're born in you, each time you listen to this podcast and feel glad for the chance to be expansive and held
2022-09-2239 min
Grief House - PortalsI Am A New SnakeIn this episode Sascha and I discuss the many iterations of our birth. We consider what it means to be born into a communal reality that's made from individual realities that overlap like bubbles in foam, how it's possible to be born into someone's world years and years before they're born into yours, and what happens when you begin to suspect birth is an act of creative invention and play in it as such. We pull up chairs for our gray haired snakes and reminisce with them about the many times they have been born. We...
2022-09-0741 minGrief House - PortalsLight On GodsIn this episode Sascha and I contemplate how Gods soak through the fabric of reality. We wonder how to best maintain open, nourished portals - how to live like everything might be a doorway to divinity. This is another of our special, scored episodes. Our friend Parsa makes sound doors through which our gods come dancing. It's quite magical and completely good.We hope you'll come lie in God fields with us!
2022-08-2830 min
Grief House - PortalsThe God Of Fucking UpThis month on Portals we discuss fucking up. We talk about what it's like to make mistakes, hurt people and stay close, and what it's like when we can't stay close. We discuss the merits of a fallible God - how much we might learn from a deity who messes up and is still worthy of trusting with the care and tending of our souls.
2022-08-0644 min
Grief House - PortalsMagic GazingIn this episode about magic (which we recorded in-person during Sascha's visit to Portland), our friend Parsa, who makes music for our feeling creatures, joins us with his voice!Sascha and Parsa agree to play a game where we take turns overhearing each other talk about our magic. It's like cloud gazing but the clouds make pictures of our mysteries. I love it so much I can hardly contain myself and make plans to include it at all the parties I attend from now until forever.Maybe you'll come to a magic gazing party sometime...
2022-08-0231 minGrief House - PortalsTrust - Witchcraft and HopeIn this episode on trust, Sascha and I discuss the importance of magic. We explore the ways we were raised to believe and where our belief grows brittle. We wonder about the patriarchy and how it got to be in charge of what is and isn't real. We decide we don't have an interest in valuing things based on the extent to which they benefit the post-agrarian, capitalist machine and decide to lean more and more heavily into witchcraft and hope.
2022-07-0745 min
Grief House - PortalsFeelings - Stuck Loving Stuck ThingsIn this episode Sascha and I explore what it's like to love things that are stuck and staying stuck or moving deeper into stickiness; to know your love won't fix the thing you love or free it, and still give it well and fully, and with all your heart.
2022-06-1227 minGrief House - PortalsThe Bright Trouble Of Everyone's Complicated FeelingsThis moth at The Grief House we're looking at how it feels to be stuck - in shirts, the pharmaceutical industry, our eagerness to end all pain. We wonder how to make space inside tangles and how to lie down, trapped in confusion, and cry ourselves calm.
2022-06-0243 min
Grief House - PortalsBring In Your Dirty FernsIn this episode Sascha and I explore the path from cultivation to wilderness.We discuss the botanical term wildering: a plant that has run wild or escaped cultivation, wonder about fenced wilderness and the wisdom of elk, and consider how long a person should sit with their dirty ferns in a sanitized lunch room before they give up hope for a meadow. We think, maybe, forever.We hope you'll join in our bewilderment.
2022-05-2424 min
Grief House - PortalsMaybe It Will Be GreatFrom the moment we occur in this iteration of consciousness we are transforming. Our bodies are lost and replaced thousands of times.Some day you might be old. What if you are, and it is great? What if it's more like magic than anything you've known so far? Most likely our predictions about what's coming next don't alter the course of our glorious fall, so - why not predict the best? Sascha and I have decided to spend some time doing just that. We'd love you to join us. What kind of...
2022-05-0229 min
Grief House - PortalsYour Beautiful ShakingIn this short episode our friend Parsa offers us his beautiful shaking in the form of piano music. It shakes out worlds and worlds and I share one of them.
2022-04-2511 min
Grief House - PortalsTrust - Striking Deals With Growing OldIn this trust episode Sascha and I discuss the experience of living in constantly aging bodies. We talk about deals we've struck with fear, our soft bellies, reunions with our former incarnations and the joy of declining to run in the race. We wonder how it would feel to have more models of glorious women we might some day become, decide it would feel good, and begin to invent a gallery of old ladies.I make a plan to become good friends with a mule and possibly smoke a pipe, Sascha brings a photo of s...
2022-04-0527 min
Grief House - PortalsUn-lose-ableIn this episode about loss and acceptance Sascha and I discuss what happens when loss is offered and we decline. How does it look to decide to stay despite external cues that insist leaving makes the most sense. What happens when someone leaves you, but you don't leave them back.We discuss the tired dogs guarding our wall-less houses, the way painful no's can tether us tight and whether we might be able to construct a touring experience in which we get to amble through the abandoned psychiatric hospitals of each other's souls.This is...
2022-03-1830 min
Grief House - PortalsFind Yourself A Composer: A Handbook For PleasureIn this very special episode our friend Parsa scores Sascha and my pleasure. We then play with laying the different pleasure offerings down on top of each other. It is the best thing in the world and Sascha and I both die and are reborn several times while listening to it. We wonder about pleasure and perception; whether or not pleasure can ever occur in isolation. We think about cycles of pleasure and how one cycle sets off the next. We talk about the pleasure of jelly coats and jelly shoes, the pleasure of frozen air in lu...
2022-03-1644 min
Grief House - PortalsNaked Loss BadgersIn this episode Sascha and I discuss our Loss Badgers. We explore what it's like to live with them in various states of acceptance. We talk about their teeth, their smell and the way they act in public. We contemplate the merits of suits for Loss Badgers and special shoes for wading in Loss Badger lakes. We make plans to build ecosystems where the Loss Badgers can roam in all their glorious presentations.We invite you to show us your Loss Badgers - clothed or unclothed, at a nice cafe or naked in the fields.
2022-03-0639 minGrief House - PortalsZombie Fish and Live Music - The Edges Of PleasureIn this first episode of our month-long exploration of pleasure, we look at expected and unexpected pleasure, wonder about how fear limits and enhances pleasure, and how we trade in types and shades of pleasure.We talk about the complex pleasures of live music, ravenous zombie-fish, sour cream and onion potato chips and tearing barbecued flesh from the bone and how welcomed and acknowledged grief can spread and deepen joy.We'd be so pleased it you would come join us.
2022-02-1149 min
Grief House - PortalsTime And Time AgainIn this episode Sascha and I talk about time as a many layered thing. We discuss truths of our mothers, the truths of our childhoods, and truths about love, We consider what it feels like to imagine truths of different moments collecting and collaborating rather than replacing each other. Liking how this feels, we proclaim it our reality.
2022-01-2841 min
Grief House - PortalsTime Is A Story We Tell OurselvesIn this episode we discuss the nature of time. What does she look like when we aren't watching. What do we look like from her perspective? We wonder about all the ways we interact with time - spending her, saving her, wasting her, keeping her - the games we play with her as individuals and communities. We consider which of them help us, which of them hurt us, and whether there's a way to invent new games?We talk abut our different relationships with time and what it's like to watch other people hang out wi...
2022-01-0336 min
Grief House - PortalsComfort - I Can Sleep And I Won't Be EatenIn this episode Sascha and I introduce our comfort creatures. We consider Comfort as a formica table top, a sandwich a calm place in the woods. We wonder about the way our comfort loves us, the way it feels to be with her, the way she can be overlooked. We imagine our comfort creatures spending an afternoon with our fear creatures. We wish we could spend time sitting in a one of those ball rooms with slides, where everything is bright and soft and cushioned, with them all.Our friend Parsa gives them voices. It's 100% m...
2021-12-1134 min
Grief House - PortalsLoss - A Blue Acorn, A Strange Spiky FruitIn this episode we discuss grief in all its ambiguity.We talk about grief's waiting room and what it's like to linger there, the intersection between chaos and order, how boxes can be used for liberation and knives can be used to open jars. We explore the notion that some loss might be more real than other loss, and try to nail down, for certain, whether any loss is unambiguous. At the end we make a special request of you, our listeners. Oh, we hope you hear it and make the thing we ask for. W...
2021-11-0342 min
Grief House - PortalsBuilding Playgrounds For Our FearIn this episode Sascha and I build playgrounds for our fear creatures and watch them swing and slide while we sip coffee on a bench off to the side. We discuss how to be friends with a creature that swallows you every night after dark, the dimensionality of fear, fear as a paper doll, a shadow and The Babadook. We discuss the particular horror of being the thing we fear the most and the strange tenderness that comes from offering our fears a chance to take a break and soak in a hot tub together.T...
2021-10-1646 minGrief House - PortalsEpisode 7: Loss - Putting Makeup on Our DeathIn this episode we discuss death. We talk about our evolving relationships with death as a state of being and our personal relationships with our own deaths. We talk about the hard work of being held, the ways we have tried to evade and defeat death and the evolution of our respective friendships with her. We have some creative playtime with death, during which we let our deaths dress up in costumes of their choosing (Sascha's is a Dachshund crossed with a black bear accompanied by a woman in rainbow gowns!) and, in the end, feel so m...
2021-09-1042 min
Grief House - PortalsTrust - When You Get To The Stream, It's So Good ThereIn this episode Sascha and I perform an act of meta-trust by allowing each other to tell our early experiences of blind trust. We (or at least I) find it surprising and revelatory.We discuss God, backpacks filled with survival tools and the utility of magical thinking. We explore whether or not it is a good idea to trust wolves who hate whistling, women who do face painting at health fairs and powerful children. We look into the many ways to trust a beach, what it's like to trust our own and other people's bodies and how...
2021-08-0443 min
Grief House - PortalsLoss - All You Have To Do Is Offer ItIn this episode we explore loss as it pools at the feet of our fathers and our mothers. We consider the ways loss might function as an offering; could forest creatures line their nests with our downy loss? Could it be licked up and swallowed and turned into life by beings know and beyond our knowing? Could it be that our loss is not just something we need to learn to tolerate - could it be that our loss is something we need, collectively, to be well and whole? It's unclear - but worth looking into. We'll s...
2021-06-1939 min
Grief House - PortalsAsana - What Is Your Position?In this episode (our first interview!) we talk with Alison Alstrom about yoga, goddesses, perspective and the right way to pronounce the word asana. We discus the joys and troubles of being physically manifest and why one might decide to embrace having a body despite it all. We talk about the concept of portals from the perspective of the South Indian yoga tradition Alison studies and how knowing about it changes the view from each of our windows.
2021-06-0833 min
Grief House - PortalsFeelings - The Swirling Light ThingsIn this episode we talk about feeling: charting feeling, herding feelings, feelings as landscape, feelings as Savannah cats, feelings as colorful blobs.We discuss how we inherit and develop language to describe our feelings and the ways that language does and does not bring us closer to knowing ourselves and each other. We also consider alternate communication options for transmitting feelings - including lying in heaps on stones in the sun, and side-by-side turnip harvesting - and how long enduring friendship changes the way feelings move between people.
2021-05-1636 min
Grief House - PortalsTrust - Yes, You Can Soak In My BathtubIn this episode we explore trust – what it means to “earn trust”, the markers we use to identify people as trustworthy, and experiences and circumstances that build barriers to trust. We talk about baths as a shortcut to secure friendship, swimming in the ocean in combat boots and the particular kind of trust evoked by Millie Vanilli in the early 90’s.
2021-05-0229 min
Grief House - PortalsPortals - Play In Your SpaceIn this, our inaugural episode, we discuss the nature of reality, how our individual perspectives on the world shape the reality we experience and how our unique realities overlap and influence each other. We talk about fitting in, epilepsy, high school and the mind-opening value of friendship.
2021-04-1124 min