Welcome home cojourners. I'm glad you're here for another episode. I'm Dr. Tama, licensed

psychologists, ordained minister and sacred artists here to help facilitate your journey home to

yourself. And on today, we want to talk about the gifts of grief, the gifts of grief.

And we'll start today with a poem, as we do most of our episodes. This is a piece called Heavy

by Mary Oliver, who recently transitioned to light herself. That time, I thought I could not go any closer to grief without dying.

I went closer and I did not die.

Surely God had his hand in this, as well as friends.

Still, I was bent, and my laughter, as the peel poet said, was nowhere to be found.

Then said my friend Daniel, brave even among the lions, it's not the weight you carry, but how you carry it. Books, bricks, grief.

It's all in the way you embrace it, balance it, carry it, when you cannot and would not put it down.

So I went practicing.

Have you noticed?

Have you heard the laughter that comes now and again

out of my startled mouth?

Heavy.

Oh, this is such an important piece for us to consider not only the challenge and the weight of grief,

but also the gifts that it brings. When we think about grief, we recognize the place for sorrow. We recognize that there can be longing

and loss. There can even feel a sense of emptiness or overwhelmed. For some people, grief

includes feeling stuck, feeling like a sense of confusion of how do I go on from this, or what can life look

like without this person in my natural realm, in my physical space? And while we want to leave space

for the sorrow, for the pain, for the discomfort,

we also want to hold our hands and hearts wide enough to also see the grief of the moment.

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