Grief House - Portals
An ongoing exploration of the complexity of being human, through monthly conversations about trust, loss, feelings and perspective.
Episodes
75 episodes since 2021
Villain
In this short episode we explore the roles, burdens and responsibilities of heroes, villains and victims. Sascha tells me I'm not the villain I write myself as in the stories in my head, and I begin to believe her.
August 30, 2024
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32:50
Falling Lessons
In this episode on trust Sascha and I share lessons our mothers taught us about how to fall.We discuss falling well down flights of stairs, fallen cakes, and Mario Brothers' leap-and-falls. We explore the way lessons are taught in commu...
August 19, 2024
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48:10
Trust Falls with Cheryl Delany, MS, LPC
In this special episode Sascha talks with Cheryl Delany of Bit By Bit Counseling about control, perfectionism, chaos and letting go. They delve into the particular trust fall experienc...
July 20, 2024
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41:47
Fledging - Par 2 Of A Two Part Series
In part two of this series Sascha and I talk about the concept of fledging more generally: what happens when we're tossed from our nest into inhospitable landscapes? Has the goal always been to send our young ones off to better worlds? What hap...
June 26, 2024
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1:07:42
Fledging - Part 1 Of A Two Part Series
The two episodes in this series are a recording of a long conversation Sascha and I had whilst sitting in a mountain house in Georgia. Over coffee and tiny supermarket donuts we talked for (literal) hours about our maternal lines: where our mot...
June 26, 2024
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44:17
Grief House Q's and A's
In this episode Sascha and I respond to some frequently asked (and a few unasked) questions about The Grief House.The sound quality is a little off in this episode. You might ask Q: Laura, did you chose to record this sitting c...
June 04, 2024
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49:36
Death Companions
In this episode, Sascha, Jana DeCristofaro and I open a discussion with our death companions about how we might spend our final incarnate moments together.Being variously acquainted with/inclined toward the idea of death companions that...
May 15, 2024
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51:26
Our Mothers' Bodies
In this episode Sascha and I respond to the essay, The Body Of My Mother by Perdita Finn:Tell me about your mother’s body. Her hands and her feet, her belly and ...
April 29, 2024
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48:23
Disappointment Creatures (starring) Jana DeCristofaro
In this very special episode Sascha, Jana and I introduce ourselves and each other to our disappointment creatures. They are a rag-tag crew, but (in my opinion) overall pretty great. I would send them on any number of missions together.
April 05, 2024
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51:35
Wild Grief Creature Encounters starring Jana DeCristofaro of the Dougy Center
In this special episode Sascha, Jana DeCristopharo of the Dougy Center and I search out and approach our wild grief creatures. Some of them are lava monsters, some are trapped behind sliding doors. They are vaporous, shocked, frozen and misunde...
March 27, 2024
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1:03:05
When 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 ...
March 04, 2024
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1:01:49
Sascha + Laura = LOVE
In this episode (which I accidentally posted unedited the other day, and 14 of you listened to, likely with a feeling of confusion, before Sascha realized what I'd done and fixed it) Sascha and I say I love you to each other, again and again.&n...
February 14, 2024
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45:36
Love - Just Ride It Out
In this episode Sascha and I talk about our old strategies for self-protection when faced with the threat of uncharted love. We allow that they may be doing us more harm than good but we'll probably stick with them anyway. Featurin...
February 12, 2024
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36:29
Fear of Forever
In this episode of the podcast Sascha and I consider our fear of forever. Given our upbringing in a world that rarely acknowledges or even perceives things' natural edges, is it possible to feel into the cadence of experiences as they unfold? I...
January 16, 2024
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55:02
Things Will Go Wrong
Sascha talks with her husband Peter about the effect of unprocessed and intergenerational grief - how and where it hangs around. They talk about how Peter went about even noticing it and what it is to reconcile a painful past of genocide ...
December 10, 2023
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29:49
Decomposed
At the Grief House we're interested in building a rich, loamy soil in which our lost and fallen bits can be met as nourishment, broken down and taken in and made available, in a new form, to support new growth.We've decided to take this...
November 28, 2023
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31:57
Grief Hurricane
In this episode Sascha and I try to see the unseeable wind of grief, fail, and instead call out the names of all the swirling solid grief bodies we see as they whip past in the gust. Alphabetically.For a grief activity - so fun. Take a ...
November 06, 2023
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1:01:32
It 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...
October 16, 2023
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45:43
The Dread Vessel
In this episode Sascha and I talked about our dread vessels; the space inside our hearts and minds that is reserved for dread and fear. We wondered about the nature of the vessel and if it can be shrunk. We thought of strategies by...
September 27, 2023
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37:46
The Worst Thing
What happens when the worst thing arrives?What makes the worst thing the worst? How does it stay the worst? What happens if it doesn't? What breaks and what doesn't when the worst thing shows up at the door? What takes the place of the ...
September 21, 2023
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35:07
Local Magic
In 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 question...
September 06, 2023
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53:18
Magic At The Threshold
In 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 t...
August 17, 2023
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39:12
Rabbits, Tigers, Dumpster Fires
In 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 ...
August 03, 2023
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44:14