Grief House - Portals

In 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.

In 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 spea...

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.

In 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 ...

In 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.

In 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.

In 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 litt...

In 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 o...

In 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 ...

In 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 cr...

In 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.

In 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.

This 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...

In 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.

This 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.

In 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 fam...

In 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.

In 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 s...

In 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.

In 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...