Michelle C. Johnson: Finding Refuge in Grief
Michelle C. Johnson is a clinical social worker, activist, yoga teacher and author of 'Finding Refuge: Heart Work for Healing Collective Grief' and 'We Heal Together: Rituals and Practices for Building Community and Connection'.
Michelle has a Masters degree from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill - and has offered training for the likes of Duke University, Google, This American Life, Auburn Seminary, Lululemon, and many others.
In this conversation, Michelle shares:
Stories and lessons from her honeybees
The role of the heart in healing and finding integrity
The powerful link between grief and aliveness
How grief can stagnate in our bodies and cause illness in our bodies and culture
The role of healthy grieving in addressing our collective wounds
How spiritual practices can help us hold our brokenheartedness and wholeness at the same time.
Michelle brings a beautiful perspective on the role of grieving - grounded in community, embodiment and ritual. All dedicated to our personal and collective wellbeing.
With all my heart, thank you for being here.
Love, Jono
P.S. If you're enjoying these episodes, I would be so grateful if you could rate the show and leave me a review on Apple podcasts. These reviews help more people discover the show. You could mention what you like about the show - the episode that made you a regular listener - or your favorite guest or episode. Here’s some easy instructions on how to leave a review. Thank you so much!
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Michelle [Excerpt] : And finding refuge is the story of losing a hive. And they left an entire box of honey that we had to process while we were mourning. And so this, I write about the sweetness. What do we do? Like the, you know, the grief and the sweetness from that and processing and metabolizing that as well. And what a gift and honey is medicinal, right? So, I mean, so many reasons. In so many ways it's medicinal and has been a healing agent for a long, long time. So to be left with that and that I would invite people to think about in the aftermath of loss, like where does the sweetness reside and how can it be medicine for us as we tend our hearts right, as we grieve, as we mourn, as we remember to be whole, even as we face our brokenheartedness.
Jono [Intro] : Thanks for joining me today and welcome to this episode.
Before we dive in today, I just wanted to reflect on some news that I received last night. I was about to go to bed when I received a text message, sharing the very sad and shocking news of a remarkable man that I knew who had ended his life. And this man who I had met a few times, I would say he was smart and kind and clearly surrounded by a loving family and friends and opportunities. And as I sit here with this news this morning, I remember how most of us, most of us, are not entirely okay. And even though we know this in our heart of hearts, we rarely have the chance to share it with others, and we rarely get the chance to hear other people sharing their stories of how they're not entirely okay. I mean, most information or stories that are shared on podcasts or social media or YouTube generally focus on high profile people sharing their greatest hits of success.
You know, it's new projects or new relationships or new babies or renovated properties or renovated bodies, or even hacks or tips for looking on the bright side for thinking positive or counting your blessings. And while none of these things are inherently problematic, It's critical to our soul's health that we have spaces for sharing the invisible parts of our lives. These parts that I remember, Patria King, calling “the D’s of our lives”, the disappointments, the deaths, the divorces, the diagnosis, the despair, the depression, or even the disasters. These experiences that most of us face at some point in our lives and some of us face regularly in our lives.
And in my experience, much of my resistance to really sharing the invisible parts of my life can be traced back to my relationship with grief and as the tragic news of this suicide reveals. This dear man clearly didn't feel okay, but most importantly, he didn't feel that he could share it with other people. And when this kind of grief or this kind of sorrow is dismissed or suppressed, or even carried in isolation, it brings so much harm. Harm to our health, to our families, to our communities. And then it comes out. It expresses itself in the form of addictions or abuse or numbness or even violence. And this small note that I want to preface this episode with is really a reminder.
A reminder that none of us is entirely okay. I'm not entirely okay. And you are not entirely okay. And this very fact should encourage all of us to return back to the mysterious and transformational medicine of grief, not as something to be denied, not as something to get over, but actually a sacred opportunity. An opportunity to keep our hearts open and responsive. An opportunity to keep ourselves out of despair and to tap into new sources of vitality. I mean, truly, I believe grief, particularly within a community of care, is an invitation, or you could even call it a portal into wellness. And I say wellness in the fullest sense of that word.
When I reflect upon the loss of this wonderful man last night, my hope for this podcast is that this can be a place where we talk less about the greatest hits of success and more a space for people to tell their real stories, the stories they don't always get to tell, to share the more invisible parts of our lives. And in doing so, I hope we can build a more honest and caring community and feel less lonely and more connected to each other as fellow human beings.
But let's move now into today's episode. Today's conversation is with Michelle Johnson. And Michelle is an author. She's a clinical social worker, an activist, and a yoga teacher. She's also the author of a book called Finding Refuge - Heart Work for Healing Collective Grief. And this was one of the reasons I wanted to reach out and have this conversation. She has this focus on collective grief that I think is such an important part of this season that we're exploring together. And she's also written her most recent book, which is called We Heal Together - Rituals and Practices For Building Community and Connection. And I love this. We heal together.
And for those who have been listening to this season, would remember how repetitive that message has been, that grief was never meant to be experienced on our own. And in this episode today, Michelle shares the centrality and the power of the heart for healing, for healing and for integrity, and how when we don't learn how to grieve, grief can actually stagnate in our bodies and cause illness to ourselves and to our culture. She also provides and articulates a very powerful link between grief and aliveness and the role of healthy grieving in addressing our collective wounds of racism and the mistreatment of the natural world and many other social issues. She also tells beautiful stories and lessons about her honeybees and how spiritual practices can help us hold our brokenheartedness and our wholeness at the same time, our brokenheartedness and our wholeness at the same time.
And as you'll soon experience in this conversation, Michelle, brings a beautiful and much needed perspective on the role of grieving, a kind of grieving that's grounded in community in embodiment and ritual. A kind of grieving that is dedicated to not only our personal wellbeing, but our collective wellbeing as a planet. And if any of this work of grief resonates with you, I'd love to invite you to attend one of our grief tending rituals online gatherings. That to me are stunning and are opportunities to really put this into practice. I'd also invite you to sign up to my newsletter@jonofishernow.com, and please also consider subscribing to this podcast on either Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And if there's anyone who you feel could benefit from this message and this episode, feel free to share it with them as well. It could really make the world of difference, but mostly I want to thank you.
Thank you for listening. It means so much to have you here today.
Jono [Interview Commences] : Now, I couldn't have this conversation with you without actually talking about the honeybees, and I understand that you are a beekeeper of sorts.
Michelle: Yes.
Jono: And I'd love for you to talk about the origin of your relationship with these bees and how they are a teacher for you.
Michelle: Mm-hmm. I will say the bees came to me during a time of stress and grief. My mother was very ill when all of a sudden I woke up and ordered everything. One needs to have honey bees from a dream, I think. And bees are psycho pumps, and so bees are, uh, able to help people transition between realms. And at the time I thought my mother was transitioning from the earthly realm. That's what everyone thought. She's still here. Her name is Clara, and I'm so glad I get to spend time with her. And, bees are, you know, mystical and they create the sweetness of honey and they also do so much in the darkness of the hive. And when I think about grief, sometimes I think about darkness, right? And, how we still birth and build and communicate and vibrate and thrive with one another, even through the darkness. So they're a great teacher for that too, because most of what they do is in the dark. And, we are wading through times where there's darkness, right? And how do we, how do we still build and birth and create?
And what I'll share is that I have had honeybees, I have lost hives due to the winters and unexpected arctic air. And I lost a hive recently. My oldest hive, when it was like seven degrees in North Carolina, which is where I was, was very cold. And we had done everything we could do to keep them warm, but they couldn't keep up and warm themselves and we were going to take apart the hive. And the day this I discovered, they weren't alive. We didn't have time to do it. And so we left it. And when we came back from being out of town, honey bees were all around the hive and at first I thought they were going in to get honey and get stuff, but they were actually just, they didn't take anything. They were there visiting. They took propolis, which seals the hive and protects the hive. They took that but they didn't take the honey.
And I was like, oh, these bees, it's making me think about our conversation about grief. They're coming to visit this hive and the vibration of this hive, and they're coming to be with it. And so I had this practice of like mourning the loss of the hive and sitting in front of this hive body and watching bees come from all over, all the different directions to go into the hive, to like, I don't know what they, I mean, I wasn't in the hive. I don't know what they were doing, but it felt like they were mourning the loss of the hive. That they were loose, the vibration felt like it was still alive in the hive, cuz I could hear a sound when I put my ear up to the hive. Right. And it felt like, sounded like a low hum. And if we chanted in a room for four years, which is how old this hive was, the resonance would remain, which is what was happening.
And so I feel like they've been a teacher recently around loss around, mourning a body while it's still there. I would say their hive body and around the like, mystery of what these other bees were, have been doing in the hives. And that feels like such medicine for life, right? Like be in the mystery of it, right? Be with in, I mean, metaphorically for people, if it's a physical body, like be with what you've lost, right? Honor it in some way. We didn't dismantle it. And something mysterious and magical might happen like that has been the teacher for me lately, with these bees. So that's, I mean, there's, there are a hundred other lessons, but it's been fascinating to like watch. Are these bees listening to the song of this hive and then sharing it with their hives because they know this hive box is here and there was a hive that existed in it. And are they honoring it? You know, and how are they honoring it? And I just have made meaning of it in that way. I think they are. Because they haven't moved into it, so they're just, it's like they're, they're coming to be with it too. It's powerfully fascinating. So that's my story about the bees right now, because that's what's alive for me.
Jono: Mm-hmm. Can you also talk about what they've left behind?
Michelle: Mm-hmm. They've left honey. And finding refuge is the story of losing a hive. And they left an entire box of honey that we had to process while we were mourning. And so this, I write about the sweetness. What do we do? Like the you know, the grief and the sweetness from that and processing and metabolizing that as well. And what a gift and honey is medicinal, right? For so, I mean, so many reasons. In so many ways it's medicinal and has been a healing agent for a long, long time. So to be left with that and that I would invite people to think about in the aftermath of loss, like where does the sweetness reside and how can it be medicine for us as we tend our hearts right, as we grieve, as we mourn, as we remember to be whole, even as we face our broken heartedness.
Jono: When I was considering this series, which we're calling the Medicine of Grief, I was looking for people who could offer different perspectives, different approaches, different ways in to grief. And I was really struck by the title of your book, particularly the subtitle actually. The Heart Work. The Heart Work for Collective Grief. And why the heart is so central to your work.
Michelle: Yeah. I love this question about the heart, and I believe that the heart is central to our healing. And, for me, the heart is an organ and it's a passageway, and it's a doorway and it's an access point for connection. And it is a place where I can cultivate whatever exists beyond empathy and empathy, but like the beyond empathy, right? Resonance and attunement is what I think of when I think of the heart and deep connection with all that has been is now and will be. And the heart also feels like a place that keeps calling me to turn toward it and to be with what is present.
And for me most often, what is present is that I'm responding to and feeling into the ways that we, and when I say we, I mean the collective, are taught that we're separate and individuals and not connected and the heartbreak that comes from that space. The heartbreak that is really, it derives from the way it, with my identities in particular, I, I might experience harm in the world because of structures and systems, the way I might also harm people because of structures and systems and what I don't know. And then the grief that is connected to that heartbreak, in response to I'm not awake to everything. And I do feel like I, since I was a child, been very observant and feeling into what's happening here and curious about where there was disconnection and why it existed. And, I think I was also a very sensitive child.
And grieving as a child in some ways, grieving for like my family and grieving for in response to these systems and, and grieving because other people weren't grieving around me. Right. They weren't. Or they were in their own way, or they weren't encouraged to. I mean, it's layered, it feels very layered. Or they didn't have space to grieve, or their grief wasn't held with tenderness and care. So the heart feels like, for me, the place where we began, and it feels like a place where compassion is like rooted in the heart. Compassion for self, compassion for others, compassion for all beings and the planet.
And I just feel like. I do a lot of different work, justice work, grief work. They're not separate things, and the heart is central to creating conditions for justice. The heart is central to our healing individually and collectively. The heart feels like the center. The heart guides my actions in the world, and in so many ways the heart calls me into integrity, t and aligning my values with my actions. So the heart feels so resonant, and such a big part of my experience as I think about lived experience and interactions with others. And the moment. I keep saying moment, but the time we're wading through, that we have to like, get to the heart of what is and also remember, which is, and we have to get into our hearts to be moved, and to change and be willing to be changed. So it's a lot of different thoughts about the heart. That's what comes into my awareness and presence at this time.
Jono: Yeah. I was speaking to someone just the other day about this series, and she said to me, why bother, why bother grieving? You know, like she said, for her, she said, I feel like I'd either be completely overwhelmed or she said, I sometimes just feel so desensitized that I wouldn't even know how to grieve. I'm curious to know, just as we really begin to warm up into this conversation, what happens to us when we don't grieve? And what are the, what, what opens up as possibilities when we do?
Michelle: Yeah. I think a lot about grief and liberation, and grief and joy too. The relationship between grief and joy and grief and liberation. And, so when we don't grieve, often we continue to experience loss because in this human form, we're going to lose everything at some point, right? Even who we think we are and our identities, we're gonna have to let go of that. And there can be so much resistance to that for many reasons. And so I feel like, you know, when we don't grieve, we affect our system physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. And grief builds upon grief, it builds upon grief, right? And it, it, stagnant energy, I feel like then builds in the body and the heart and the spirit. And I feel like, there isn't any, I mentioned containment, any opportunity for release then or access to what happens after I process this. And it may be an ongoing process.
I wanna be clear. What happens when I speak it, when I feel into it, when I'm in a circle with people and we're talking about grief and loss and our hearts and what we're waiting through, there's not only connection that happens through that, but there's release. And then in that release, for me personally, there's space and then maybe I get to this place if there's a little more movement in my body or my heart, right? Or my spirit. That's how I feel about it. That energy just stagnates. And that's not good. I'm not judging it. It's just not good for us. When that happens is what I'm saying in all the ways. And I also feel like when energy stagnates in my experience, I like replicate patterns that are not actually helpful, they're toxic. I can do that in relationships, right? I can do that in relationship to self. These things that don't actually advance an opportunity for me to find some freedom and to process and release and be resourced right as I do these things, but can build up more toxicity for me.
And I also think that when, when we don't grieve, because other emotions are connected to grief, like anger and sadness and confusion and ambivalence, and I think a lot of what I'm experiencing in my body in this,in the US where I live, and this may be true in other places too, I just like to contextualize because I haven't lived other places. I think part of what I'm seeing is people's rage and anger that actually is connected to grief, but we're not having that conversation. And so when I think about systems, like, and then I think the, you know, when we do grieve, as I've named the, there's an opportunity for connection. There's an opportunity for space, there's an opportunity for movement. There's an opportunity to instead of shying away from or moving away from the reality of what's happening, to lean into it and to understand why do we suffer and how do we mitigate some of the suffering.
There's like all of this space to explore and investigate, and be a different way when we grieve. And grief, I also wanna say, feels like grieving an ongoing process. I expect to be grieving something forever, and I wanna name that the flavor of grief or the texture of it may be different depending on the particular loss. And it feels like it's part of being human to experience loss. And so grief then feels like is part of being human if we actually allow ourselves to access that mourning grieving practice.
Jono: I noticed when you talk, you are, you are closing your eyes and you are feeling into your body as you talk. And I and you even, you mentioned that you, you mentioned also it just, even in your words that, you know, the way I feel it in my body and it reminded me of this piece I think from Resmaa Menken who wrote this incredible, which I wanna come back to as well endorsement for your book. But he said something around no amount of discussion or laws or legislation will rid us of this kind of trauma. All this metabolizing happens in our bodies. Can you talk about the relationship between our ability to actually experience grief and how we are in relation to our bodies?
Michelle: Yeah. I love this. I love resume's work, and I love this question. And often when I say in spaces when I'm facilitating or holding space for healing, Be that to, for us to raise consciousness or to move through a grief process or ritual, I talk about us being in bodies like we're alive in bodies. And I also talk about we're bigger than our bodies. And what I mean is we're more expansive than our bodies. And also we're bodies and our, like, my bodies interacting with other beings in bodies and systems are affecting our bodies and the way we get to move or not move right.
The way we have to navigate through the world. And so I don't, I don't know if there's a, I don't believe there's a way for us to heal without bringing the body into the practice and the work, because we're having this physical human experience in our bodies. And our bodies are also sending so many cues to us. And I also, as I'm thinking about your question, am thinking about the containment and compartmentalization, which often can happen through thinking and not actually living and being in the body. It's like, I'm gonna put this over, over there, this loss, I'm gonna put it over there. I may never come back to it when in fact it affected us on every level, physically, energetically, spiritually, emotionally, right. In all of the different ways.
And so I feel like the body has to, to be in the practice, the conversation, and to Resmaa’s point about metabolizing, we have to acknowledge what's going on as we understand it. We have to move through this process of metabolizing, of digesting, and then of integrating the experience to actually come back into wholeness and feel so connected to our grieving process. We have to acknowledge we are losing and have lost something. And men, I mean, we've lost so much, really. And we have to be with it, which is uncomfortable for many, I would say, and included, right? I'm including myself in that. And, we have to understand that it's, it's part of the experience alive in us, right? How are we relating to what we've lost or who we've lost or the anticipation of moral loss? And then I think part of the integration related to grief is one, how will I continue to honor this grief? And two, how will I heal and how will I remember so I don't go into old patterning around not turning toward my heart or my grief.
And, and to me Resmaa’s work about embodiment feels we're not robots like we we're, like a live sensing, feeling beings, you know? And yet so many systems want us to operate as if we're robots, right? No feelings. We don't wanna prioritize that. We don't know, especially, again, if it's grief, if it's sadness, if it's a feeling we don't really know what to do with, or like it's sticky or we're implicated in causing some suffering, it's difficult for people to feel into that. And so I think grief and the, and the body and this experience of being human is, is, you know, and metabolizing is really about us feeling the fullness of what it means to be alive. Grief is part of what it means to be alive. And there's a lot of denial. That's patterned around that. And I think that does a disservice to us as beings here and now.
Jono: Yeah. I'm really, I'm really touched by your focus and emphasis on the body. You know, I think for much of my life, you know, there was just a kind of living from the neck up kind of experience, and it wasn't till kind of, getting into my kind of early thirties that, that the body started to put up its hand in a way, you know?
So I'm, I'm here as well, you know, but there was never any encouragement, you know, to recognize this full organism apart from like a biology class or whatever, you know, that might be talking about it in a, in a very detached kind of way. But I also love this word, cause I've listened to some of your, interviews and such before this one and this word metabolizing. And I looked it up cuz I'm like, I kind of know what it means, you know? But I looked it up and it's the, it's kind of used generally around food and food and how we can, it says, I wrote it down. We can turn it into a form that can be then used by our bodies.
And I love that when you're talking about grief, because I think some people, we think that grief is this permanent state, or we're just gonna sit around and cry all day forever. You know, is that what's gonna happen? This kinda lack of experience we have with it. We have these stories about what it means, but when you talk about metabolizing, it's this changing of form and energies in the body into something else. And yeah. I'm just curious if you could just talk a little bit more about that in your experience and, and whether there are experiences you've had in your life that really can illustrate or bring to life that metabolizing effect.
Michelle: Yeah, I love this question and this definition of what it means to metabolize, and it, the first thing that came to mind is like, that's alchemy, right? That the body takes. If, if we're, if we just think about food, it's like transforming food into something else through this process of metabolizing, right? And I just think that that's magic, right? Like to, and then how do we use that? Food gives us energy, right? It can, it fuels us. It can, you know. And so it just, it's really powerful to think about that as alchemy and grief as alchemy in that way too, if we allow ourselves to metabolize it and process it, and the digestion of that too, which happens before we're able to metabolize it, or in relationship to, to metabolizing it.
And what, you know, what comes to mind is, and this is in Finding Refuge at the beginning, I share a story about being in pieces on the floor in response to, the acquittal of George Zimmerman, who, for those who may not know, murdered Trayvon Martin, who was a black child, going to the store to get candy. And, I often talk about that moment as, it wasn't as if I didn't understand, racism existed, or the culture I was living in or, that something like that could happen. But that moment shook me in a way. I don't know that anything else has shaken me to the core in that way so much. So I was like, I mean, I fell to the floor physically when I read the news and, was undone, like didn't really know what was happening. So I, there, I couldn't integrate the process. I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know why I was so overcome, with grief and sorrow at that time. I was just, literally felt like I was breaking apart.
And I don't think I was isolated in that I'm in a relationship with other people. And I've had conversations with them about that particular moment and how it disrupted their entire nervous system. And I think, you know, for many people I'm in community with it. It wasn't just an individual experience, it was a collective experience of like, what is going on. And of course, that is part of what ignited the Black Lives Matter movement. Right? And so, And I think I felt a lot of, like, this was a child. Not that anyone deserves any of that, but I was like, there was resonance there for me too. And that's part of what I think shook me to the core as well. Like, going to do something so as innocent as buying candy at the store and then not making it home. Like I just think that, it just broke me.
And in that moment of like, I don't know what's happening to me. I don't know if I'm gonna be okay. Uh, the tears were coming. It felt like just, ancestral is often how I talk about it. So it felt like that about that moment, but bigger than that moment too, and, I feel like reflecting on it, because that was many years ago and reflecting on it now is 10 years ago, it almost 10 years ago. I have certainly taken that experience of feeling broken open, of feeling cracked, open to the point of not knowing if I would be able to repair myself and my heart, or mend my heart and, and taken that experience of grief individually and collectively. And I mean it that in so many ways, informed finding refuge, right? It's like what created that, that need to write about it, even though I didn't understand that at the time. Like, what are we doing to each other and why are we doing this and how are we cracked open and we're not actually acknowledging it? Right?
And so to me that's, it was a long process, but it was a sort of what just happened and the healing I was trying to do, which was again, took a long time. I'm still healing from that, I'm sure. And then turning that into, I'm like gonna commit to my healing around this and, and to try to repair the disruption. And I'm gonna turn that into the form of an offering which could have finding refuge or something else for people, right? But an offering that really calls us into having a practice. And for me, a spiritual practice to hold us in those moments when we feel shattered. That to me feels like an example of metabolization, right? Like, I'm gonna take this and I'm gonna use this not just for myself, but I'm gonna share what I learned about this experience of being broken, open, and, I'm gonna, hopefully I will inspire others to be in their practice, be with a practice, create a practice.
Because what we're up against culturally is the magnitude of it is so vast and it is overwhelming to be alive and awake and a human at this time, right on this planet. And we need something to hold us. So there are other examples, but that feels like the most present example of a big process of metabolization of grief. And also the beginning of that, not knowing if I was gonna feel whole again. And I, and I certainly do, even though things continue to happen in the world that disrupt me.
Jono: What I appreciate about this, the experience and thank you for sharing that, is the, sensitivity and openness to receive actually what is happening in the world. You know, there's a tendency for so much of us, you know, someone told me the other day about just going to their parents' house and witnessing them eating their dinner in front of the news. And this was a person who actually doesn't really like, hasn't really watched the news for a long time, in that form, like in a, you know, kind of a national news kind of context and, and just looking at their faces, she said, and just recognizing how nothing was kind of registering, nothing was being felt, you know, in the, in the experience.
And I guess it also, it points to, to this second part of the subtitle of your book, you know, about healing collective grief. And it's also one of the reasons I really wanted to talk to you, because I think a lot of, “grief work” can only focus really on personal loss. Uh, what's happening in my personal life, which I'm not in any way trying to minimize, but there's something bigger going on. And I'd love for you to help us just frame and talk a little bit about how what collective grief really means and how it shapes us as individuals and a culture. Yeah.
Michelle: Yeah. I wanna start with the, well, what you said about the sort of eating dinner and watching the news, right? The pattern of that, and it makes me think about when I've seen, I saw some headline in the New York Times. I didn't read all of it. Right. It was like too overwhelming for me. It was like three different things that actually made no, I was kind of like, what's going on in the world? When I read this headline earlier today, I was like, this is happening and Amazon's doing this, and Russia is doing, I mean, I was just like, whoa, where am I? What universe? Where am I? I had that moment earlier today, so it felt like that. I was like, wait, is this the reality I'm in right now? Because this feels kind of bizarre.
I mean, it was, it was that, and I have that almost every day actually, and what you're naming it, but I had the moment of like, I see this and I don't even know how to process this because it feels so strange to be in this reality at this time, which might resonate with other people. I'm sure many of us have had that experience and the like, how dissociated we can be. Right. I don't, I'm not judging this, but for me to like, I'm sure I've done it actually before where I've been like eating dinner and reading about the traumas of the day. You know, it's like, what is that? Why don't I pause and feel into that? Right. Instead of dissociating from it. But there's so much conditioning and shaping around that, and that's where I wanna start in response to your question about collective grief.
That each one of us is shaped, we're socialized by culture, by family, by institutions, by norms. And some of the ways when I spoke to around modeling how we grieve, right or not, not to grieve. Right. So all of this, this shapes us, and I wanna start here because we're not, I'm not being shaped in a vacuum. I'm being shaped in a culture and by a culture. And that means everyone else is being shaped to the way we may have been shaped, could be different based on our identities, right?
So I'm, I'll just give an example that for me, I am a black person. I live in America and I live in a white supremacy culture, and that shapes my experience and it shapes everyone's experience. Actually, I'm in relationship with black and indigenous and people of color and white bodied people as well. It's like we don't, we can't transcend that or bypass it or escape it. It's part of our shaping. I'm also abled. I don't have a physical disability. I'm shaped by an ableist culture, which prioritizes my needs over people who are living with physical disabilities, for example. I just wanted to give people an example of it, like break it down in that way.
And I have many other identities and the culture is giving me messages about what it means to be me and what I get to do and, and power and how power is assigned to me, or where power may be taken away from me at times. So there's that kind of shaping that is happening for each one of us, which to me points to the reality that while I might have individual experiences of grief and loss, I'm not experiencing being human on the planet at this time in isolation. I'm experiencing it in relationship to other beings and to how we are being shaped and how systems teach us to treat us, is what I wanna say about it.
And so I do agree that I feel like some, if there's a conversation centered around grief, that often it is about individual grief as if we're not in relationship with one another and experiencing systemic oppression, or we're more proximal to power because of the identities we embody. And it's why I wanted to elevate a conversation about collective grief because I actually think most people feel like something is gone awry on our planet. I feel like some people don't have words for it. I feel like some people don't understand why it's happening. Some people are not, wouldn't use the same language I just used about shaping and culture. I get that. And I think most people, when we take a breath and feel into like our experience and the experience that's happening in the world and the natural world and the experience that's happening to others around us, like often there's something that tells us something's wrong, right? Like something is wrong or maybe it's not imbalance is another way to think about this.
There's an imbalance here and I don't know what to do about it. And so I think this practice of acknowledging collective grief is really about bringing us back into balance. But it's through the experience of like, how are we understanding, how have we been shaped? What have systems done to us? What are the messages we've received that we actually need to interrogate and challenge? Why are we lose.. Why are we at war with some, you know, it's like, why are we doing, why are we, why is climate change? It's so evident. It's real. Why, why is it happening? And how have we contributed to it? I feel like why are, why are systems harming people, dehumanizing people? Why are we devaluing others, right? And the experience they're having.
I feel like these are all the different things that we might be grieving and there's more, and we need to start talking about this collective experience we're having on the planet at this time. If we wanna heal and come into balance and wholeness. Otherwise, I'm not sure what's gonna happen. And finding refuge, I say we're just gonna replicate the same system and we're not here on our own. This feels so important to remember we're not here by ourselves. Like we're here with other beings. And we inherited a whole set of ideas and inherited systems as we when we were born into these different incarnations of who we are at this time. And we have an option to actually disrupt some of these systems and these behaviors so we can actually experience less grief. So, and it takes me back to the heart and the power of the heart and heart work and that the ability the heart has to move us into a different way of being.
Jono: And when you talk about the heart and you talk about these systems or conditions or water that we're swimming in, how does it kind of interrupt, I guess, the relationship with the heart, with the body? You know, like that's something I'm interested in. We've been talking about the kind of, the pervasiveness of disconnection from the body or not, not sitting in the heart, you know? What is the relationship between what's actually in place culturally and how that impacts our disconnection?
Michelle: Mm-hmm. I mean, I think I appreciate this question. I feel like systems, when I say systems, I mean some of those systems I've named and structures I've named, that they benefit from us believing we're separate from one another. We're separate from our hearts. We are not whole beings, right? They thrive on us believing we're disconnected and us doing things that further disconnect us, right? It's like, and, they will continue to thrive if we buy into the belief that we're separate. And if we do not practice feeling into the heart and the ways we're talking about. And so that's one thing I'll say about the relationship between the heart and disconnection that many of us are conditioned to believe we are separate.
I feel like it's the spiritual crisis at this time to believe we're separate. I feel like it's like the imperative is like how do we, how do we remember we're actually in deep relationship with everything. And not just now, but everything that has been, and as I said earlier, is now and, and will be. And I wonder what would happen. I sit with this question a lot if sometimes when we talk about the heart, I feel like people say, well, I'm compassionate. I'm kind, I'm loving. And what I wanna say about myself is I can value compassion. I can try to practice compassion. I can try to show up to sit on my cushion, to meditate every day, to cultivate more compassion. And it may actually happen for me if I'm doing that, just for me and not connected to other beings it makes me wonder how that practice of compassion is of service to something bigger than me.
And often I sit with the question for the sake of what? Right? and this has to do with my spiritual path and practice and what it's called me into. And I would also say my spiritual practice is yoga. But I grew up in a Baptist church where I watched my grandmother be deeply devoted to God, that which is bigger than her, right? And to try to make meaning of what was happening in the world and mend her heart through her spiritual practice.
So I think it began for me before yoga, like witnessing what it means to be devoted to something bigger that feels like heart work. And that feels like an antidote to the structures and systems we've been talking about, which are not about our hearts. They don't systems hope. We actually don't connect to our hearts, right? So we continue to dehumanize each other. That's how I feel about it and it's been my experience of it. And so practice can call us back into the heart. I'm inviting us to think about practice for the sake of what, and center that question from the heart.
Jono: We have this, I live in a particular part of Australia where there is a big Buddhist, monastery that's being built overlooking the ocean. And right next to the monastery is this huge statue of, uh, Quanyin. And I was with my daughter. I took her up there the other day. She's four and she was really quite taken. She's a sensitive, really very sensitive being, and she wanted to know about Quanyin, like who is she? Who was she? And as I was looking online more about her, and you, you're probably familiar with this, but it just feels relevant to bring it into the conversation that she was kind of known as one who was listening to the cries of the world. She was listening and, and, and it was in response to her immense kind of heart capacity to actually listen, feel, and probably clearly respond.
And yeah, I just wanted to bring the spirit of Quanyin into this conversation because I think it's interesting that in a tradition like Buddhism that clearly venerates someone like Quanyin it's in relation to her ability to hear and listen to what's actually going on in the world. And I was actually, I was in the, you know, cause I've been thinking about this conversation the last part, particularly the last couple of days, and I was in the shower last night and this, just this phrase came into my mind, of genocide. Particularly in relation to this country in Australia. And I just, I kind of went online and I just Googled Genocide Australia and up came, you know, from the Australian kinda natural museum, I think it was, saying there was, this is clearly what happened and they, it began to articulate that the First Nations population was estimated at one to one and a half million people. And by the early 19 hundreds there was a hundred thousand here and there's a few things about that for me.
One that I had to Google, right? The genocide piece. Like, oh, is that, is that relation to our country? And then to just receive those numbers and then to recognize too, that we're talking about, you know, roughly 200 years and I'm 50 years of age and going, wow, this is so, so, so close. And I just, I guess I wanna bring it into the conversation because that's where I'm from. Yeah. And also just to acknowledge what you are talking about here, there is a talk about water that a country is swimming in, you know, but you know, where we talk about ourselves as the lucky country. Everything's great here. You know, there's such a like a positivity, let's move on. And yet, you know, the land is kind of drenched in blood.
And, and I think about as much for just psychically what's going on. And also the possibility for this country, if we were to turn and face the other way as opposed to always facing forward, which I think is the only direction you can face if you haven't had the space to grieve. But if we were to face back and actually, or even just face the present and feel the impact, what would be possible for the soul of a nation? Uh, and talk about the metabolizing of a truly lucky country, you know, in the, in the deepest sense. Yeah.
Michelle: Yeah, thank you for sharing that and the different layers of your experience with it and the questions you're seeding around. What does it mean to go back? Quanyin is on my altar, and is always on my altar, and I found Quanyin, I don't remember how, but many years ago. And I hear that listening to the sorrows of the world, right? What is, how do the heart helps us build our capacity to do that, right? So that's why the hard work is so essential for us to do and as you named to actually respond to what's happening or has happened and the gravity of what you shared.
I just was listening and feeling and to my body like, and thinking about all of the examples of that where we haven't talked about, we haven't gone back. Even if we don't understand it or weren't alive then, right? Like, but we haven't gone back to really think about what does it mean, to for a culture to lose that amount of people and cultural practices and to experience genocide in that way. And how is that housed in the body and past on ancestrally right into the future. So the past has something to do with now and the future, right? And people's inclination is to say, let's move on. There's, that's, there's just patterning around that or let's move forward. And you know, this is silly, but I always. I cannot put furniture together ever. Just no one can. I can't. But when I tried to, I put it together backwards. So the pieces, one time I put a fire pit together and the pieces were like not right. And I stood it up and I was like, this is not right cuz the legs are not going the right direction. And my partner came home and he said, you always do this. And he said, Michelle, it makes sense because you always want us to go back. You're like, wait, we need to do this thing first. And I don't know how that fits in with the furniture, but it was funny that he was like, because we don't, it's just funny that he reflected that to me.
Like, of course you're doing it this way because you all, you like have this urge for us to talk about what happened, right. Connected to what is happening now. So that hopefully we can mitigate some suffering in the future. Right. That we can't bypass the past, in the spirit of, and, you know, of moving forward, because how are we moving forward? Are we gonna do the same things we did and what we're seeing and feeling into and grieving is that this replication of the same things? It may not, it may not look exactly the same way because tactics and strategies have changed throughout time, but they're, you know, if we look close enough, the pattern is there of genocide in all of these different ways, right? Of dehumanization, which we've spoken to.
So I love this like, how do we build our capacity to, to go back and often I'll call it remembering how do we remember, right? That collective grieving is about remembering, it's about recovering. It's about uncovering in the spirit of healing.
Jono: Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think about all the rich textures that also can be remembered as part of these traditions. You know, when I think about their relationship to the First Nations, people's relationship to land and ocean and sky and ritual and community and spirituality, you know, there's so much richness that could be of so much value to people here as well. You know, so there are just so many layers, and I think so much too.
Once again, I just feel like, you know, whenever this conversation kind of arises, I feel like it's, it's naturally going to be like, what good could come from that? And yet they're, all I see is possibility. You know, I don't see it as being a walk in the park by any means. I see it as being quite an excruciating experience for a country. But yeah, in my experience, you know, I've just, just in my own life, you know, being able to revisit loss has brought so much aliveness to me and so much potential for living fully and so much appreciation for my life and what is current here. That, yeah, and I guess I also wanna say my reason for bringing that up too was just part of my response cause there was a hesitation, cause I know a lot of people that would listen to this would go, you're somehow betraying us, you know, by talking about this. And yet, it's, you know, it's the elephant in the room, so to speak, that how could we not talk about that in relation to this conversation.
But, you also talk about how we can be broken hearted and whole. And I think that could also help us to just understand again, that grief isn't just about the falling apart and not being able to get up. Could you talk a little bit more about that that they can actually exist at the same time?
Michelle: Yeah. It's so interesting because, years before I wrote that and finding refuge, I would say it, and I don't know how it emerged, but I would, I started to say it in trainings and facilitations, like something, and in particular racial equity trainings. And what I would say is I am broken hearted most of the time, if not all of the time. And I am open-hearted as well, and my brokenheartedness is because of my sensitivity and awareness and lived experience and yearning for us to heal, in the ways we've talked about. And, there's a lot of socialization and conditioning around this narrative that we're broken, right? We're not whole. And that is deficit thinking. And it leads people to in a system of capitalism, purchase things to feel whole, for example, right? It's like, I need to fill up with this. I need to purchase this to feel better. Right?
And so it works for capitalism for us to believe we're we're broken. And certainly things have happened that have broken me open as like I described earlier, but I've always had the orientation or I think for a long time, and I was a therapist for a long time, especially in that setting, had the orientation like, we're, you're not broken, right? You're whole and your heart is broken at this time and you're responding to this. So it's just how I've thought about myself and, and others as to not feed that narrative that you're broken. And I also wanna say what I shared, reiterate that my wholeness is not separate from yours. And so I need to be thinking about how do we actually come back into, or remember as often when I say our wholeness through this process of acknowledging what is breaking our hearts and why, that feels like part of the practice.
And I'll add that for me, healing happens through the experience of acknowledging my brokenheartedness and without naming it or expressing it in some way, it makes me wonder how healing would happen if I don't. Like I was broken-hearted when you shared that story, right? Which was someone's lived experience, right? Which is an entire group of people tempted annihilation and genocide I don't, my body doesn't even really know what to do with that. My heart doesn't even really know what to do with that. And yet I was like, and it happened, right? And so I'm broken hearted about this and it happened, and your call in so many ways to talk about it, to be with it so we can heal.
And, and I also, I'll just say that one more thing about it, that, repair is possible. So as I think about my broken heart, I'm also in a process of trying to repair, right? It's like it's, it doesn't feel separate. And I just wanted to name that. It's not as if I'm in a state of brokenheartedness in this sense of I'm immobile, I'm unable to be alive and relate to people and connect, right? I'm broken hearted and still trying to show up in, in my fullness, my wholeness, my aliveness, and to connect. My practice has helped me, spiritual practice and this path has helped me be able to continue to show up, with my broken heart and in my wholeness. So I wanna offer that to people as well.
Jono: Beautiful. Well, I'd love that to be a, like a segue way in our conversation towards practice, cuz I know that is a big part of your work that you offer. And before we go there, do you mind if I read the quote from Resmaa about
Michelle: Oh, sure. Yeah.
Jono: Your book without you getting embarrassed about ..
Michelle: I won't be embarrassed. It's fine. Remember, I'm a Leo, I'm a modest Leo, but I'm a Leo.
Jono: But I really liked it because, you know, I, I, you know, I, I think we all have our, allergies. To things, and I know people have allergies to certain forms of spiritual practice or what spiritual practices are actually doing. And there was something about what Resmaa said about your work that just orientates me and I hope the listeners too to the context in which you're practicing.
He said, “too many of us try to use”, and I just wanna say Resmaa Menakem wrote a book called My Grandmother's Hands, just for anyone who wants to read and know more about his work, which I'd strongly encourage “too many of us try to use spiritual practices to lower the charge and weight of our grief. Michelle wisely encourages us to do the opposite, to accept, embrace and metabolize grief’s full charge and full weight. Instead of shying away from our breaking hearts, we need to lean in and experience the breaking. Thus, we find refuge, not from our grief, but in it. Michelle wisely reminds us. Spiritual practice is about awakening and becoming aware it is not about bypassing our collective trauma.”
Is there anything you wanted to say about that before we dive into some more practical practices that you'd like to offer?
Michelle: It was just, I haven't heard it or read it in a while, so it was, I remember when, I mean, I've read it many times, but I remember when Resmaa sent that over and it's beautiful. Like it feels like. Yes. We need to lean into this in the way Resmaa described in response to what I've written about practice. So thank you for sharing it is what I wanna say. And reading it cause I hadn't heard it in in a while, so..
Jono: Well, it's my pleasure. And I think the reason I also wanted to share it was because I too have seen a lot of, within my own life and others just that using practices to bypass actually what's going on. And I say that with all, kind of compassion and understanding that that's like a way to cope and a way to kind of get through and yeah, just think it's important to kind of name that as well. But I'm curious to know, you've mentioned spiritual practice probably five or six times.
Michelle: Yes…
Jono: In our time together. Could you talk a bit about what is your spiritual practice? What's kind of alive for you right now? I know you've also written a new book. That's also moving from a kind of personal individual to more of a communal, yeah. I'd just love for you to kind of riff on where you're at right now spiritually and what's important and what you'd like listeners to know in the context of this conversation about collective grief.
Michelle: Mm-hmm. Often I say practice can hold that, which I do not believe I can hold. Right. It's like it is, my spiritual practice is bigger than me and so it can hold what I feel like I can't hold or whatever might overwhelm my system. And I start there because I'm thinking about collective grief and what you named earlier that often people feel like if I, if I acknowledge it, if I open to it, or individual grief for that matter, if I open to it, I'm not going to be able to piece myself back together again. Which is a natural feeling to have and that has not matched my experience and it has not matched some of the experiences people I'm in relationship with that right in response to grief. Somehow we, many of us, if we have the resources and a practice and something to hold us in community, right? We continue to show up or we continue to parent or we continue to care give, or we you know, it's like, I don't mean to, to push through, I just mean we continue to be in our human lives as we're grieving. Like that's what I've witnessed more of. Even in the moments when people are like, I have no idea what to do, but, but the teacher for me has been, but actually what my body's done is kept moving forward.
Again, that is a bypass. And I've continued to show up for the work that I do in the world. Right? Maybe broken-hearted and overwhelmed, has shown up to do it right. And I've tried to reach out when all I wanna do is like, be by myself, right? But I wanna, the practice for me would be to connect because other people are having a similar experience or I've had similar experiences. So this is what I know about grief. Like we're, there are other things that may disrupt our lives and I don't, for me, I don't think grief is the thing that's gonna like, take me outta here. I think, I think not grieving could, because of what can manifest from that space. And as I said, we need a practice. And so what feels so alive for me, related to practice is, I feel like I'm so devoted and committed to practice. And I feel like what I'm calling people into more deeply and fully is to practice, to have a practice, whether that's like meditating or sitting or walking meditation, how you relate to someone. Journaling about compassion, a movement, practice, a sadhana you're a part of a community where you study and you practice together and you work, you know, relate, right? with one another, people with the same identities or across difference, right? whatever practice looks like, or practice given what might be going on for someone of a friend whose father has been in the hospital and their practice has been going to the hospital every day and trying to remember to eat three meals a day themselves and like take a minute.
So practice will shift based on the context and conditions that are present at the time. So I do wanna normalize that and name that, practice can look many different ways and I feel like the other thing that feels alive is that there's, for me, an always an opportunity to be in practice. It's not like I go to practice. I really try to live my practice and I'm human, so I make mistakes all the time and practice calls me back to myself and to be accountable to my values and what I believe, right? And how I want us to heal as a collective so that there's that piece.
And a lot of practice for me because I'm in community with people a fair amount of the time. So a lot of my practice is listening. It's getting still, it's being quiet. It's praying, it's writing gratitude statements. It's all, I love building altars. It's sitting in front of the altar, it's building the altar. I love to build them inside and outside, right? It is going outside. Practice is that, it is communing with nature. Remembering I am nature, these things feel like, just things that come to the surface that I do almost every day as part of my practice. And without practice, I'm not sure where I would be. And I'm just, I've gotten more clear about that.
And, I finally, what I'll say is I was in a training, leading a training and someone mentioned they're doing really challenging work in the world and they also embody many identities where they experience oppression. And I think at times feel like there's like an uphill battle, which creating conditions for justice can feel like this, an uphill battle. And they said, well, how, what if my practice isn't working? And I said, I don't know if it's working, but do it anyway. I was like, I don't know. Right? Like, I don't know if prayer is working for what I want to have happen in the world, like in the collective. I don't know if my walking meditation, right, or sitting with the honeybees, I don't know if that's working right. Whatever working quotes means.
But I do know that the alternative, which is, is not to practice, isn't going to work, right? And so I would invite people listening to, know your practice might change over time, based on what you're moving through and what's moving through you. And I would also invite people to, to have a practice and have some, if possible, faith. That the practice and the fruits of their practice will have an impact. We just may not see it. We may not always feel it. So practice to me also is connected to faith as well, but inviting people to commit to something, and have faith that it's changing you. And that, that's then changing the outer world again, because we're, we're interconnected. So there's more I could say, but these things feel most alive for me.
Jono: Thank you. I'm really struck as I hear you talk about this, how just with your presence and the vitality. I feel from you as you talk and as I just sit with you as well, that once again, the, the kind of the paradox that, you know, I think I hold, and I'm sure many other people hold that to be invested in quote unquote hard work means that you become a kind of a depressing kind of person. You become a burned out kind of person. You are clearly not the person who's got joy in the room.
And I, yeah, I just really want to name and acknowledge that that just the experience I have with you is quite the opposite of all those beliefs that we often associate, you know, and what I probably want to say is quite opposite to the numbness that I see so much around me, you know? Because of wanting to avoid the quote unquote hard work. And yet, why do you wanna be numb? Or do you wanna open up the possibility of all the keys on the piano kind of thing?
Michelle: Yeah. And be alive. Right. And be fully alive. Right. And their aliveness.
Jono: You also mentioned, you know, and maybe it's the water you're swimming in too, but, and it was, you know, when you're practicing together, and I know that your new book is entitled, We Heal Together. What in relation to practice does or do other people have to do with that? And what's the importance of that?
Michelle: Yeah. We held together. I'm so excited about it. It's actually sitting next to me. It really is about, this knowing that, in my lineage, and I would say this is true for other people as well, if we go way back, people were in circle around the fire, engaging the elements, celebrating and mourning and healing and calling in the rain that they needed. Right? And singing together and dancing together. And even though I don't have access to that in this body right now, to those people in my lineage, I know it happened. And when I get really curious about that, I'm like, people were healing through singing and dancing and eating together and taking care of one another's children. Right. And being in the elements, and engaging with them as allies and partners. And that, that's what feels true to me. Like that is our origin story.
Of course, I wasn't here, but I believe that was our origin story. Like that's how we came into being. And so We Heal Together as is a call for us to remember that origin story and for us to engage in rituals and practices together, to heal together. And many of the themes in finding refuge are in, we heal together. The stories are different, but many of the themes that we've talked about today are in We Heal Together. And the rituals speak to the different themes of ancestry, right, and lineage or why we might need to heal together or rituals and practices and the importance of practice together. And each, when we heal together there, each chapter ends with practices and there's a practice for people who wanna. Come into community, but may want to practice on their own initially. And, and are thinking about how do I connect, I've been isolated, right? How do I connect?
And then there are practices that are about, if we wanna practice with others in circle. And then there if are practices, if one is leading the practice and wants to do that. And so there are these different access points for people to think about practice, but the idea is we weren't meant to heal in isolation. That was never the, I don't think that was the point. I think we were always meant to heal together. And, and I think if we trace back, we have examples of how this, and, and even if we look, you know, for me, if I look outside of the US, there are ways people are continuing to practice in the way I named and circle around a fire right? With one another. That is still happening, but in the US like I haven't, that there hasn't been socialization or conditioning around that for me. There may be communities who are doing that, right? and I'm certainly in community with people who do that, but it's, it's, so it has happened and I think it is happening in spaces and there's learning for us to do from that and healing for us to do, from that as well. So…
Jono: Yeah. I love that. And what, what comes to mind is the, Francis Weller talking about primary satisfactions. And you know, you, you listed nearly all of them. You know, the shared food. The shared dance, the singing, the being together, storytelling, grieving together, all these primary satisfactions. And he said that, he said that when they aren't met, you naturally default to the secondary satisfactions, which are all about power and control and manipulation and, you know, all these different aberrations really on who we are as people. So yeah, I look forward to hearing more and reading the book. And it's interesting how many people in this series of conversations have indicated that none of this was ever intended to be done on our own.
And so I deeply appreciate that because, I mean, part of my conditioning has been, you know, really to do, to do it all, you know, and there's, there's like a nobility and a strength and a, that's when you're actually, you've done it
Michelle: Right.
Jono: If you can do it on your own, you know, and it's such a disabling message. You know, when I now have the opportunity to actually do life with other people and for them to actually know what's going on and just how much richer life is, you know, and how much more I can do, right? Cause I have all this kind of wind at my back, you know, from all these other people.
Michelle, I've loved this conversation and thank you for who you are in the world and your personal willingness to face what needs to be faced and to feel what needs to be felt and to then metabolize and offer what you're offering into the world. It's deeply appreciated and it's really impacted my life and I. My prayer is that it touches other people's lives in a similar way. So thank you so much for your time today.
Michelle: Thank you so much. Thank you.
Jono [Episode Wrap up]: Thanks so much for listening. It means the world to have your support, and if you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing on Apple or Spotify. That way you'll be notified when a new episode is ready. It would also mean a lot if you would take the time to write a review about this podcast. This way more people can discover and participate in this work, and if you feel like this episode could benefit someone else, please share it with them, whether that's a friend or family member, or even on your social channels. Finally, if you are interested in participating in grief rituals or any other of my programs, feel free to head on over to jonofishernow.com where you can sign up to my newsletter and you'll receive seasonal invitations and episodes as they are released. And please always remember that although the hour is late, we can always make beauty. We can always make beauty. Sending love to you and your loved ones.
About the Guest
Michelle Johnson
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