Grief as a Portal: The Wisdom of Breaking Open

What if the ache you’ve been carrying isn’t just sadness - but a sacred summons? Perhaps you are being called to walk into the wound to collect the wisdom that is stored there just for you.

In this episode, I open a raw and reverent reflection on grief- not only the kind that follows death, but the quiet, unseen grief that arises when we shed old selves, release inherited burdens, or choose to evolve beyond who we’ve been.

Through my own story of loss and delayed grieving, I explore how grief - when fully felt - becomes a passageway to power, authenticity, and soul-deep remembrance.

This isn’t about fixing what hurts. It’s about learning to let it move.

If you’ve tried to remain strong in the face of loss or felt on the edge of becoming, but sense a heaviness you can’t quite name - this episode may hold the mirror you've been waiting for.

Chapters

• 0:44 Welcome to the Sacred Space
• 1:58 My Mother's Death and Delayed Grief
• 3:36 How Society Hides Grief
• 6:03 Grief at the Threshold of Rebirth
• 8:13 Tears as Sacred Offering
• 13:43 The Wisdom of Mary Magdalene
• 18:58 Honoring Your Becoming

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:22

Hello, my friend, you have found your way into a sacred space and I am so glad you are here. Today's episode is not a lesson. It is an invitation to go deeper, into a place that we so often avoid or rush through or try to explain away. But grief. Grief is a portal, not only when someone dies, but whenever something inside of us is shedding or releasing or surrendering. So this is for those who are grieving not just what has been lost, but what must be let go of in order to step forward. This is for the ones who are at the edge of something new, who feel the tremble before the rebirth, and the ones who are ready to walk into the wound to find the wisdom it has to offer.

Speaker 1: 1:22

When my mother died, I was just 18. And when she was diagnosed, I changed my plans from going to school in Georgia and she died in July, and so weeks later I have gotten myself enrolled to attend the university closest to my house. Just change of plans. But it was time for me to get it together and I cried a lot. But the goal was to pick up the pieces, to be strong, to bounce back, to show the world that this wouldn't break me, which is exactly what I needed it to do. So it wasn't until I was in my 40s that I entered that wound, that I allowed the grief to be felt deeply enough for me to release it, to allow the pain of the loss to buckle me over on the floor and not apologize for the tears or the crumbling, to allow myself to witness all that I had stored as it came flying up through my tear ducts, because grief doesn't just hold sadness. For me, there was anger and resentment and loneliness and abandonment. I opened literal floodgates for several days and I sat with it all and I journaled until my pen tore the paper and I cried until I looked like I'd been in a boxing match with swollen eyes, and I honored it all.

Speaker 1: 3:03

Finally, in many ancestral cultures, grief is not a private inconvenience, something you have to excuse yourself to do. It is a sacred passage. People were given 40 days or six weeks or a full moon cycle to mourn, and that is just not out of respect for the person who lost. It is out of respect for those left behind who need to be tended and to be changed by the loss. Grief was marked by clothing and by ritual and by song. It was not hidden, it was witnessed. Now we're given maybe a day, a brief pause, a casserole, a text, and the world expects us to be good as new. But your soul knows that grief is not done in a day. It is a season, it's a spiral, it is a sacred undoing and that's its job. I mean here.

Speaker 1: 4:25

We don't even speak of pregnancy during the first trimester, in case there is loss. And then that loss is then hidden, secretive, silent. When a woman has a hysterectomy or endures complications after birth, we often remind her to be grateful of what she already has, glossing over the loss of what she never will. We're so good at moving on. We have a society so fixated on appreciating strong that we've forgotten the potency of falling apart. And here's the truth the grief it stays, it lingers, if unattended. You might numb it or avoid it or delay it, but it waits patiently until you are brave enough to meet it. But there are quieter griefs too. Grief doesn't only come when someone dies. It shows up at these thresholds, at the edge of change, at the soft death of who we've been. We think it's fear, but often it is this ache of release, it is this grief of no longer shrinking to make others comfortable, the grief of becoming more you than you ever have been and knowing that not everyone will come with you.

Speaker 1: 6:03

I recently had a birthday and prior to it I declared it to be a rebirth. Long before it arrived, I felt it coming. There has been this inner transformation that I have been quietly walking and 47 was going to be my coming out party. I timed it with the Keeper's Garden and with the launch of the Remembrance Codes podcast, but the rebirth was going to be kind of declared and shared, because I am different, I am showing up differently and I will be speaking differently. So before I shared transmissions more publicly, it was going to be like a soft launch. Hey, this has been stirring in me. So when I show up in a new way, that is new to you, just know, it is not new to me, but it is true to me. So I posted a picture of me ready to walk forward in this rebirth and I mentioned that 47 was always a number for me. That held this fear.

Speaker 1: 7:12

For a while, my mom turned 47 and she was vibrant and healthy and she died shortly after 48. And so for years, with little kids, I would think about how old they would be and I would walk on her path in fear instead of realizing I had my own. But after I grieved her properly, walked into that wound and healed that, I no longer carry that. I don't carry that fear. My only fear now is dying with truth stuck in my throat, things that I wasn't brave enough to say. So I no longer have the fear of death. I have the fear that I haven't lived fully enough or truthfully enough, as I know I am meant to.

Speaker 1: 8:04

So a lot of things happened with that day, a lot of processing, of integrating, of shedding. But the comments on this post nearly all of them were about the loss of my mom and remembering her and her loveliness and she was lovely and their memories of her and of their own parents passing and of their own parents' passing. In my post. They stayed at the death when what I was sharing was resurrection, and that's okay. I witnessed the reverberation, the unresolved echoes of their loss because collectively we have forgotten how to grieve and I no longer carry that grief for my mother. I carry love for her. She is woven in my being, but I was brave enough to crumble into the pain that I carried for years. But on my birthday, I still grieved.

Speaker 1: 9:07

If you declare a rebirth, know this aggrieved. If you declare a rebirth, know this you are telling the universe that you are ready to let go of what no longer is aligned. And birth, my friends, isn't always soft music and candlelight. Sometimes it is messy and it is raw and it is loud and it will bring you to your knees before it raises you back up. And that's what happened.

Speaker 1: 9:36

I had to face parts of me that were at the end of the road, including hesitation to put things out there because I will be misunderstood. Or, in the case of my birthday post, just not fully heard. Or, in the case of my birthday post, just not fully heard. And I can control the transmission but not the reception and not the interpretation. And this has been a big hurdle for me and I had to watch and realize and cry and release, knowing that there is so much more to share and some may only hear the first note and not the crescendo. And that's okay, that if I cast out seeds of truth, some will land on stone but many will take root, and that's okay. And I say this now, later, easily and honestly, felt deeply in my bones. But what had to happen to get me. There was a lot of tears.

Speaker 1: 10:43

Sometimes you must release the part of you that made things palatable for others, the part of you that made things palatable for others, the part of you that softened truth to stay safe. I did, I cried for her, I loved her, but she cannot come with me. So let me say this you don't have to rush it, you don't have to fix it, you don't have to pretend it doesn't hurt, even when you asked for it. You can sit with it, you can honor it, you can bless the part of you that brought you this far and you can hold her hand as she gently steps aside. So if you are at a threshold, don't fly forward through the door without a ceremonial goodbye. Ensure that you feel all the feels, so that the new you is not just a garment laid upon the old you.

Speaker 1: 12:01

Some of you listening may feel other grief too, the grief that you feel and you don't know why there's no recent loss, there's no rebirth in. Know why there's no recent loss, there's no rebirth in the cards, there's no event to point to, just an ache. There's a heaviness, a wave that rises with no name attached, and that too is grief. Not all grief belongs to you personally. Some of it is ancestral, carried through generations, passed through the womb, unspoken but inherited. You may be grieving what your lineage never got to grieve, stuck in survival and not allowed to process trauma or ache, or silence or erasure. You may also be grieving for the collective, for the world's pain, for the disconnection for the earth herself, for the disconnection for the earth herself. And when we don't name this grief, often we mislabel it Anxiety, depression, fatigue. But beneath it all is the sacred ache asking to be felt.

Speaker 1: 13:36

So what do you do with grief that you can't name?

Speaker 1: 13:40

Don't fix it. Let it move. Become the riverbed and not the dam. Some gentle ways you can allow grief to move through you is to move slowly, let your breath lead. Place your hands on your heart or your womb with intention. Let your body know that you're listening. Cry without apology, even if you don't know why. Now I say my tears are my offering. If they come, I let them come. Speak to your grief. I don't need to understand you, to honor you. You are welcome here. I trust this is holy, even if I can't name it. When it's too much, return to the earth, lay on the ground, sit beneath a tree, let something older than the pain hold you. You're not broken. You are breaking open, no-transcript, and it has felt like a really beautiful give and take. I offer transmutation, but grief truly is a portal, and I have received so much inner knowing and wisdom by allowing it to flow through me.

Speaker 1: 15:30

We treat grief like it is a detour, but it was never meant to be rushed. It is meant to be entered. So I'm going to share something with you that I have carried for a little while. It is not a secret, but it is sacred. I walk with Mary Magdalene, and perhaps I always have, and perhaps I always have. She did not come in some magical lightning bolt moment, but in the quiet, between the words. She found me in the stillness. She came not with hierarchy, but with the knowing that what is holy has often been hidden. So there's more to share with regard to Magdalene. But this is where she wants to enter. She knows grief and she does not turn away from it. So if you'd like to receive her words, take a breath, place your hand on your heart and open. If your heart is breaking, let it break all the way open.

Speaker 1: 16:57

Grief is not a weakness, it is not failure. It is the proof that you have loved, and love, even when it shatters you, is always holy. You do not need to rise too quickly. Let your knees find the ground, let your breath tremble. Let the salt of your tears baptize the space between what was and what is becoming. I was there when the women wept at the tomb. I was there when the men could not bear to stay. I did not run, I did not hide, I did not rush the resurrection. Let me sit with you in the ache. Let me hold vigil with your memory, not to fix, not to heal, but to honor. This too is sacred, and you, even here, are not alone.

Speaker 1: 18:22

Let your breath return slowly, let Magdalene's words linger, but ask yourself gently where am I? At the edge of something new? Can I name what I am grieving, even if it looks like anxiety or hesitation, or fatigue? What would it feel like to bring presence to my own blooming, like to bring presents to my own blooming? Grief is not the opposite of joy. It is proof that something mattered. And you do not need to rush this part. You can honor your own becoming, not just for what you're stepping into, but for what you're stepping into, but for what you're releasing. May you trust the ache, may you sit beside the self that's shedding. May you bless what brought you here, even as you bless what you're becoming brought you here, even as you bless what you're becoming. And may you know, even in the tender ache of goodbye, that you are held. Y'all you are held. If something stirred in you and you feel like going deeper, there is a place for you in the Keeper's Garden. Until next week, I love you. No-transcript.