Shauna Janz: Larger Currents of Resiliency
Shauna Janz offers an invitation into what she calls the “larger currents of resiliency” - which includes the wisdom of our bodies, our hearts, our ancestors, the natural world, ritual healing, imagination and altered states of consciousness.
Shauna Janz holds a Masters in Health and Social Services and has studied extensively with the likes of Francis Weller, Sharon Blackie, Linda Thai and Bill Plotkin. Shauna has previously spent more than 15 years offering grief support for youth, victims of homicide, violence and those with disabilities. And today Shauna offers grief, ritual and ancestral programs.
In this episode, Shauna explores:
The importance of building strong personal “river banks” to allow the rivers of unmetabolized grief to flow into the larger oceans of life, and not flood or overwhelm our lives
How the skills of grieving has brought her closer to her “birthright of joy” and her signature as a “lover of life”
What to do when we feel like we are going to get lost if we allow our grief to come forward
The impact of our severance from the “deeper wells of knowing” - including how we relate to our bodies, ancestors, ritual etc.
May this conversation help us rediscover the stunning moments of tenderness that are offered daily - and may you feel the arms of this community around you.
Love, Jono
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Shauna [Excerpt]: Well, let me say it this way. Can we imagine what it would be if we could change this in one generation? If all of us grew up in families and communities that responded to grief with open arms. That we had the rituals, the language, the relationships that we had, the connections, that despite the pain, we are able to lean in and say yes to this rite of passage, and what would it mean for this grief then to grow us? To become elders, to carry a wisdom that is only the wisdom that is part of the human experience, which is suffering and heartbreak. And you know, even now, perhaps it's not heartbreak, it's heart expansion. I don't know if our hearts break. I think there's an invitation for our hearts to expand and deepen. And what would the world look like and be like, and how would we move through the world and how would we relate to one another from that place?
Jono [Intro] : Thanks for joining me today and a warm welcome to this podcast. A podcast that's dedicated to exploring what I like to call the threads of beautiful leadership. And in particular, I'd like to welcome you to this, the fifth episode in the Medicine of Grief Season, a season where we've been exploring how grief can be a true gateway to transforming our lives, our leadership, and our culture. And today's conversation is with Shauna Janz. Shauna is an experienced grief practitioner, and she offers a very expansive invitation into what she calls the, “larger currents of resiliency”.
These larger currents of resiliency that she names include the wisdom of our bodies, our hearts, our ancestors, the natural world, ritual, healing, imagination, and altered states of consciousness. Shauna holds a Master's in Health and Social Services and has studied extensively with the likes of Francis Weller, Sharon Blackie, Linda Ty, and Bill Plotkin. And Shauna has previously spent more than 15 years of her life offering grief support for youth victims of homicide, violence, and those with disabilities. And today, Shauna is the founder of Sacred Grief, an online center for offering grief, ritual, and ancestral programs. And as you will soon experience in this conversation, Shauna brings a very sensitive, embodied, and tender invitation into the work of grief. I really hope you enjoy this conversation today. And if you or your organization are interested in grief programs or grief rituals, feel free to reach out at jonofishernow.com.
Thank you for listening. It really means so much to have you here today.
Jono [Interview Commences] : Yeah. Maybe, maybe if you could begin mm-hmm. However you would like to begin this conversation by way of practice, by way of blessing, probably in a similar way that you may begin a ritual or a session that would be really wonderful.
Shauna: Mm-hmm. So I'm normally welcoming with presence, with compassion, with excitement to be here with you, Jonah, and to be here with all of you who are choosing to listen in at whatever time and place that is. And before we begin, I would like to invite us all in whatever way makes sense to you and wherever you are and you're listening. And for us here in this moment, Jono, to take a pause and to look around the space that you are in, and perhaps even put on the glasses of curiosity as if you've never been in this space before. Looking around to take in shapes and colors, light, shadow, textures, noticing if there's any windows that you have access to look out of. What is it? To look out your window and into the horizon, into the distance. When we invite our gaze to look into the distance, it magically deepens our diaphragm and invites in more breath. So you might notice how your body responds in this moment, to taking a moment and connecting in with your surroundings. Perhaps seeing with new eyes the things that may be familiar, but with intention and a slowed down awareness.
We might see things with new eyes for a moment, and I invite you to choose something for your eyes to settle on or for your touch to settle on. Perhaps it's a warm cup of tea or a blanket that you're curled up with. Perhaps it's something in your environment that feels very soothing and pleasing to take in. And we'll spend a few moments here, inviting myself, inviting you to take that in. Notice again, textures, colors, shapes, and noticing how is it that you experience this as soothing, as pleasant? How does your body respond? Perhaps there are some feelings or sensations or emotions or a change in breath. Maybe you notice yourself yawning. Or a little bit more saliva in your mouth or your eyes are watering a bit. Just noticing how is it that you recognize and experience soothing pleasantness and knowing that at any time during our conversation, you can return here to this soothing experience. It is available, connecting in with yourself, your environment, your surroundings, and I'd like to offer a blessing before we begin from this place of presence and soothingness. Perhaps you choose in this moment to say yes, that whatever transpires here in this conversation that is yours to carry with you. That you are open and you say yes to this, any medicine that might be yours.
And so from my heart, from my body, from my mind, and from all the ecology of connections and relationships that have led to my life here and now, and that support me in the scene and unseen, I call in the beautiful blessing field. A blessing field that blesses the space of Jono and all of those who support Jono to be here in his way now. All those that support him in the scene and unseen in the wisdom of his heart, I ask that this space and this conversation be blessed. The space between us be blessed and be something that emerges that perhaps is delightful, insightful, new, surprising, healing, connective. And I extend and ask that this blessing field extend out in a warm, compassionate embrace to all of those who listen in across time and space, that you too, be blessed and that your heart and your knowing and your intuition be blessed. And that in this experience that there is something for you here that is medicine for you, for your life, for your relationships. May you recognize this. May you say yes to bringing it in. May you say yes to carrying it forward in ways that are easeful, that are beautiful, that are insightful, that are healing, and that are connective.
And may our conversation here and our heart space be blessed and may what transpires here continue to seed a larger collective vision, not only for personal healing, but for collective healing. Knowing that grief in these times is something that we choose to practice, to lean into and to allow it to elder us, to allow it to see clearly. What is, and to dream up new visions of what it means to move forward in a loving, just caring and compassionate connective ways. So may this conversation and the merits of our experience here, be an offering to that vision and be blessed. We thank you, we thank you, we thank you blessing field. And perhaps taking a few more moments just to notice a body level or a heart level response and inviting in a stretch. And if your eyes have been closed, inviting a gentle opening and connecting again to the space around you, perhaps noticing the edges of your body. Where they come into contact with the surfaces that are supporting you.
Jono: Thank you, Shauna. Well, welcome and thank you so much for just bringing yourself up into this conversation in the way that you have. And I'd love to just begin our time together, just exploring your personal story. And your personal, your personal coming into relationship with grief. Yeah. Would you mind?
Shauna: Yes. Thank you. Yeah. Perhaps my story and my entry into grief and grieving and, what is now a vocational calling to be a grief tender, is slightly different than one might anticipate. And in this moment, there's perhaps two main experiences or doorways in that have really been influential and have really shaped me. So I'll speak to those two.
The first most kind of formative experience of grief and, and brokenheartedness, is what I call spiritual grief. And it's the grief of that oftentimes resides underneath words and can take, has taken me many years to be able to name. But it's that longing, longing for a sense of home that for a majority of my life didn't feel like it was here. And not fully feeling received or welcomed earth side in this embodied incarnate realm. And of course, this was accentuated as it often is for those who resonate with this type of spiritual grief, this longing for home that feels like it's elsewhere other than here. This was accentuated by, you know, adverse childhood experiences and not being received, not not having the adults in my life who could offer the attunement the care needs, the emotional and attachment needs that one just needs to have at such a young tender age.
And so I hold this though. I, I really hold this in a large, compassionate embrace of understanding the larger intergenerational story of how that has come to be. And in, you know, I'm 41 at this point, and in my own healing journey, and in the soulfulness of what it means to carry that, to name it, to have it shape me and to also become more, in the okayness and also the joy of actually being here, is following the thread of, yeah, how do I name this? Sometimes the thing that we long for most, the thing that has been absent in our life is the, is the thread that draws us forward to come to so intimately know and yearn it that it becomes an intimacy that came through absence rather than presence. Right. And so I, yeah, I just, I hold that with a really large, uh, and compassionate embrace and the spacious embrace at this point. And it's been, it's largely shaped me.
And then the other doorway into, into grief that I think really galvanized me to be in this place here now, is in my early twenties for what, whatever transpired, many different ingredients and experiences, but I just, it became really flattened and immobilized by ecological and collective grief. And I mean, it's still so present here and it always will be. And I wouldn't want it any different. In my twenties when this just flooded my life, I was very immobilized. I was in depression, I was in despair at just the extent of ecological destruction and collective grieving,and collective sorrow around these themes and I don't know if I will ever have a coherent story of how it is that I turned that ship around to become in this place now, I think it's many things. It's the people in my life. It's the experiences that kind of came in through grace. It's art and creativity. But in all of that, I've seen the importance of grief work as a way to mobilize and, and be inspired to act from that broken heartedness, from that deep grief,has been the thing that has really allowed me to be here in this place now. And to have recognized that, oh, when I opened up to the profound grief and felt it, and was washed over it, by it and slowly started finding the support, both inner and outer to be with it that I recognized there's something here that is so necessary, not only for my life, but I started seeing the necessity of befriending grief.
And, you know, that led into what's been 15 plus years of offering grief education and literacy and support in really gratefully so a diverse range of contexts and families and school settings and therapeutic settings, et cetera. So I feel very grateful because in this saying yes to this vocational calling, the soulful calling, it has continued to be a deep reciprocity of healing.
Jono: What touches me when you shared your story is the belonging piece and how you strike me now as being so embedded in a way. You struck me as someone who is really settled in their body, settled in their environment. And would you put that down to the work you've done with grief? Is that the place you would go when you would explain the settledness and even, I think you mentioned earlier in the blessing, the soothing quality of being in your body.
Shauna: Yes, yes. I affectionately in the last few years have found myself mainly saying to myself, I don't know if I've said it so publicly before. Grief is one of my elders. Grief is.. guides me. My work has been how to come out of the strategizing mind and the mind that wants to protect, for all very good reasons and how to discern and, and choose and work and, and come into my heart. And some people come through that through joy and love, and I've come through it through the absolute wholeness of the other aspects of joy and love is grief and sorrow and so yes. And, and the tremendous support relationships through time in the past 20 years that have been medicine for me. So, yeah, the ways that I've been taught and guided by others. And I would say in this moment, of course, there's lineages of learning that I'm happy to uplift and name. And in this moment it has been the profound gratitude and learning of other people inviting me into their grief journey, to that vulnerability to be alongside them, to be a companion alongside them. That has been probably the most potent teacher, uh, within the eldering. That is grief in how I would express it.
Jono: Could you talk a little bit more about that communal aspect in that, you know, I think so much of our world and our learning has become kind of siloed and on our own, or on a phone or on a
Shauna: Yes.
Jono: Set of headphones. Could you talk more about just the role of communal, grieving, communal learning?
Shauna: Mm-hmm.
Jono: How that's, how that's impacted your life. Mm-hmm.
Shauna: Well, just acknowledging, you know, I always, I'm always trying to weave in the personal and to the collective and the cultural, right? Because we are embedded in what we might call modernity or dominant culture, you know, all of us, depending on who we are, are impacted differently and influenced differently depending on our identities, our ancestries are lived experiences and wanting to also hold with a lot of tenderness, the reality that many of us in modernity do not have a deep experience of community. It's one of the, I think great sorrows that many of us are living and experiencing, whether we are naming it or not, or however conscious it is or not in our experience. And so it feels important in this moment to really name, and I'm, you know, I'm thinking what's coming to mind and memory is how many people, who have courageously, uh, in, in spaces that I've been holding or facilitating, whether that's been in grief rituals or educational kind of context or one-on-one. But all those people who have been the voice and named the thing that often gets silenced is that, yes, ideally our grief happens and our learning happens in community. We are hardwired for this.
And the reality is also that many of us either do not have this, have not experienced this, do not have access to it, or have not had safe experiences when we have tried to be in it. Right? This is a cultural wounding, not an individual inadequacy or failing. And so I always, again, hold with a wide embrace. I say that often that community looks many different ways. And for some of us bringing our grief to the community of maple trees and douglas fir and cedars is the community that we feel safe and that we can be in our vulnerability and tenderness and we bring in ritual and we make it relational and it, our grief becomes that offering and that is community. And for some of us, you know, we may have what I've affectionately called pop-up villages, you know, the weekend workshops that we go to that suddenly we're in community and we're getting fed. We are so hungry for this. And there's folks that, you know, are the first to sign up because there's a hunger for being in that community setting with other humans.
And that is not always an option for everyone. And so I always try to really just give a, like a lot of permission that community comes in so many different ways, shapes and forms, and depending on your own cosmology and spiritual orientation that includes our own ancestors, spirit ones, ecology of spirit, relationships that includes the animate exquisite world that's in sold and alive and sentient around us. That includes being in connection with our own inner community. All of the inner parts that we have and voices that we have. And younger aspects of ourself. Right. So yes, community is important and I might distill it to say kind of below that the bedrock of community is, relationship is important. Relational learning, relational grieving, relationality and connection. Connection to self, connection to our surroundings in the present moment. Connection to one another, connection to a larger story, to ancestral intergenerational resiliency, connection to the living world, connection to earth, et cetera, et cetera.
Jono: Mm-hmm. When you reflect back to those early introductions to grief work yourself, can you recall what was challenging about entering into these spaces. What did you encounter?
Shauna: Mm-hmm. Yeah, there's several responses kind of alive in me in this moment. I think the one that's taking center stage within me at this moment is because of my very particular experience and upbringing where safety was not found in my home or with my caregivers.Oh, I just have such a warmth for, for the nature ones that, that were my connections. And so for me, Hmm. The learning edge, the continued invitation has been, and the challenges showing up more to community grief processing and rituals with other humans has been the discernment and the work around feeling safe, feeling safeness within and without, to be in vulnerability. You know, grief work is vulnerability work, and so all of us are gonna be, I think, on a different spectrum of experience in terms of, you know, some of us may very much be connected with ourselves and, and our learning edge is how to be in connection with self, while also opening up to other, and being in connection with other, while remaining still in contact with self.
And that has been my learning edge. And for others, the learning edge may not be so much connection with others. You know, there's a familiarity and a feeling held in a room full of people who are there for the same reasons, for the same heartfulness. And the invitation for them is to actually stay in connection with their own internal world and their heart and their internal process. While in connection with other, so there's, yeah, depending on our experiences, depending on where we're coming in, where our learning edges are, I think can really illuminate and bring more awareness to what might be challenging and what the invitation is. And so, yeah, for me again, it has been really knowing what it is I need. And in order to know what it is I need, I actually need settledness, a sense of safeness to go within to be with what is to then name? Is it a communal grief ritual I need or is it a journaling that I need? Is it silent, witnessing? Is it wailing? Right? And it might be something different in any given moment. So I pause there and just see how Yeah. How that's landing.
Jono: Yeah. What I notice is in that I, where my curiosity goes, particularly on behalf of people listening is, could I get lost in this experience of grief? You know, you touched on earlier your kind of gateway into this work being through what's happening to the natural world. And I think we all have our own version of what's affecting us or what has affected us deeply. What would you say to someone who's, who would be listening now and would think, that sounds wonderful Shauna, and yet if I was to participate, like, I don't know that I could come out of that that experience. If I would allow myself to be that vulnerable. Like would it ever end?
Shauna: Yes.
Jono: So I'd rather just kind of keep it packed up, uh, and just kind of continue on.
Shauna: The first thing I would say is let's respect that response because there's a reason why it is there. Let's zoom out again and understand that although we all have the capacity to have emotional responses, grieving is a learned skill. And in modernity and in this dominant culture, many of us have become untethered from the lifeways, the rituals, the ancestral practices. The sense of self-efficacy, the support, the community, the relationships that we need to not only learn the skills of grieving, but to then also be held in it in a way that we can have some sense that despite the pain, we're able to lean in and connect and have the sense of, “I've got this, God, this is painful, and I'm hitting rock bottom.” And there's still a sense of I am held and I'm carried through and I will make it out the other side. So I wanna name the broader cultural stories and experiences that are very real, that justify and request our respect.
There's a reason why there's trepidation. There's a wisdom there in the resistance, and I'm gonna uplift that, that is important and this is workable. If grieving is a learned skill, what we can do is start relearning. And part of that is what I've seen and what I've also learned through one of the, the kind of largest gifts from learning from Francis Weller and within therapeutic realms is containment, having a container.
And this is for all of those listening, like full permission to be with where you are at. We can have ideals about what grief should look like, or yes, that we should be able to come into community and be in big ritual together and be vulnerable together. And what is actually true in this moment for you? That is what, that is the practice. That is the invitation. And that is what I believe one of the teachings of grief is, is how to be with what is and not override it with shoulds or ideals, but what is it that we're actually in now? And so for those of you listening who are in a place of like, “whew! I feel like if I go in, I would never come out.” I just wanna respect that response. And it is workable.
There's a larger storyline here that you are embedded in. It's not an individual failing. And there are places, and more and more gratefully that are offering these skills of grieving and the practices that we started off with the connection to surroundings, embodied presence that doesn't even, that doesn't even necessarily mean going inwards. If going inwards feels too much or overwhelming. It means being connected through our senses to our surroundings. And, you know, let me end with this. The image that that comes through, and it's been coming through recently in the last few weeks, in the cultural wounding of being untethered from the skills of grieving and also how that's perpetuated, in dominant culture not given the time or the validity or the space or the resources to grieve.
You know, it's like we're, if we were a, a river, it's like there's a big dam upstream from us and of unmetabolized grief of the, the ways that we have not been received or attuned to or been held in the ways that we've needed for that grief to have flowed. And we can't just lift the dam and let the waters flow. What is it gonna do? It's going to wipe out the riverbed. It's gonna flood the landscape around it, it's gonna be overwhelming. It's gonna feel unmanageable. And so when we're in this cultural moment when many of us have that dam of grief, maybe ancestral grief also, right intergenerationally, and it's upstream from us, our work, our invitation is to start strengthening those riverbeds. And we do that through embodied presence, connection to self, connection to surroundings, connection to community in the broad definition of what community and relationships are. We do that through calling in these relationships, through bringing in ritual, calling in support, and we start to strengthen those riverbeds.
And as one of my teachers, Linda Ty, beautiful expression, sip, sip. We don't, we don't lift that dam all at once. We lift it bit by bit and we allow what it is we can hold and contain within those riverbeds at any given time. And the vision, the hope, the blessing, the prayer even is that we as a collective, as a culture, regain what it is to have strong riverbeds, to know how to support one another, to have those strong river banks so that when grief comes flowing through, it has a direction, it's contained, it's directional, it's in flow, and it is an offering. And we may see, you know, at the other end, it washes into the ocean, you know, a source of life and diversity that's life giving. And our grief becomes, again, part of a wider, vast ecology and ecosystem of health and wellbeing.
We cannot expect one individual, one body to take on that reservoir of backed up grief all at once or in any one given moment. So we hold that again with a lot of compassion. This is not an individual fault or failing or inadequacy. This is embedded in a larger cultural wounding and depending on who you are and whether you have grown up in a family system, an environment that has befriended grief or not, whether you've grown up in traditions, faith-based traditions, cultural traditions, practices that are still intact, that have the rituals to meet and hold grief or not, whether you, have access to community. All of these different aspects of that relational ecology that we're talking about will depend on what shape our riverbeds are in and what the invitation is uniquely for each and every one of us to start strengthening that.
Jono: I am so touched by your sensitivity and respect for where people are at. I think sometimes grief can be spoken about in broad brush strokes, leaving behind many people as to where they're at. When you speak about the river beds and strengthening the river beds, what, is there anything specific you're talking about that comes to mind when you think about strengthening the river beds? Mm-hmm.
Shauna: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Strengthening those river beds or strengthening that sense of containment, that sense of self-efficacy, that sense of, I've got this, we've got this. I think there's many different. How I hold the work and how I invite others into it, as we learn together and reclaim these skills, is that the very foundation is the embodied presence practices. And again, that's gonna look differently.
So what I offer is more, it's, I move away from any kind of prescribed practices or prescriptions and more principles, right? So, cause again, it's gonna depend on some of us, some of us, the learning is how to, uh, we are already in our hearts. Our hearts are broken and we are feeling it all. And the invitation is actually to invite more containment and soothing and connection outwards to feel like we can titrate it or to manage a little bit, manage might be the wrong term, but to have a bit more sense of agency over the sooth. Like how do we invite in soothingness so that we don't feel overwhelmed in it? Others, it is our work to sip, sip, go in slowly and start to feel right. And so it really depends on the principles and the discernment of where am I in this moment? What is my story? How have I been taught implicitly or explicitly to relate to grief? You know, some people may resonate with attachment language.
So I would say in dominant culture, we all have a different, typically insecure attachment to our own grief. We don't trust that we got this, that we're gonna know what to do with it. And our roots back to a secure attachment to our own grief will look different for an everyone and embodied presence is and somatic practices and learning a little bit about the exquisiteness that is our nervous system and our own range of resiliency of how much that riverbed can hold at any time in any given moment that allows us to stay present and to also tune in and start to attune to ourselves. I'm starting to actually leave my state of presence. That means it's no longer grief that's flowing, it's protective strategies that are starting to come in, noticing, okay, what needs to happen to shift then?
And so, Gosh, yeah. There's so many inroads, right? So we can start at the embodied presence. We can start at the very, like working with, understanding our own learning and relationship to grief and what it is exquisitely that each and every one of us uniquely needs to, not so much learn how to grieve, but to actually unlearn all the ways that have kept us from being in the authentic expression of it. And from that place, gosh, another way that we can strengthen those riverbeds is opening ourselves up to the myriad of relationships that are available to us. Whether those are other humans, whether those are the other than human ones, whether those are spirit ones, whether that's your own spiritual practices, et cetera. And then, and then ritual opens up a whole other layer. And that soulfulness and that opening up to the mystery that helps to metabolize and allow grief to become, eventually a, a nurturing aspect of our own growth of our own humanity.
Jono: I think I've heard you, I listened to another podcast of you speaking and you use this phrase, larger currents of resiliency opening up to these larger currents. And as I hear you talking about the body, as I hear you talking about the multitudes of relationships that are available seen and unseen.
Shauna: Mm-hmm.
Jono: I just notice in myself feeling the vastness of strength that's available to us.
Shauna: Yes.
Jono: You know?
Shauna: Yes.
Jono: And I think what I also hear, which I so appreciate, you know, I, I think there's a lot of talk about intergenerational trauma or intergenerational difficulties and which are so legitimate and don't want to negate that in any way. But I also hear this intergenerational resilience that you're talking about that is Yes, that is possible to tap into that. There is probably health somewhere back there. And yeah, just curious to know what your thoughts are about that.
Shauna: Yeah. I mean, I have a big smile on my face cuz it's not just probably it is right. We all, regardless of who we are and how far ago, or recent that perhaps there's been a severance in ancestral connection or life ways and practices. We all have, what I, who I call elder ancestors, you know, and then we all have access to a field of elder, ancestral elder wisdom in which, and, and how I kind of speak to, and feel and, and, and relate to is, is those who, yeah, lived in a time when there was connection to land, undisrupted lineages of learning and tending and ritual, and a way of being with one another that was like generational wisdom, true living elders, but also elders in spirit and ancestral tending where there was, gosh, you know, it can be so clunky when we're on the other side of a severance because we work to have language to name things that would've been just the waters we swam in, right?
So this what we might call animacy animate for, you know, that other beings in our world are full of soul and consciousness and sovereignty. What a, what a clunky word that would've never needed to existed. And I think I also wanna name, because I also, it's very true. Again, why there may be trepidation or self-doubt that that is possible to turn our attention again towards our own people, our own blood and bone people.
And I hold a lot of that with compassion too. It's often what's brought up when I'm holding ancestral healing work. Again, just like that resistance to coming into grief. We want to listen to the voice of resistance and trepidation, understand why it's there as a protective strategy and work alongside to bring relationship to that, and to stretch into the conceptual and heartful knowing, and I would say bone resonance, deep cellular, knowing that all of us come from a people that at some point there is just such a wholeness in terms of tending to grief, to love to a deep reciprocity. And that grief and grieving is actually seen and celebrated as an important aspect in role to help keep the balance and harmony and health of the community. And if we can invite that back in. Gosh. Talk about again, strengthening the riverbed that allows our grief to become an offering and that is not to minimize or bypass the very real depths of pain and despair that folks experience at sudden loss. But there would've been a tending to those ones. They wouldn't have felt so alone in like, in a bottomless, unsupported experience.
Jono: When I think about ancestors mm-hmm. And engaging with ancestors, there's still a part of me that where it can feel imaginary. In a way. And I'm curious to know whether you've done any kind of geographic work to actually make what can seem imaginary to people from this kind of society can make it kind of real, like these people actually existed. This is where my people are from. Yeah. I'm just curious, have you been able to kind of bring that down to the ground for you? Yeah. And what, and what has that done for your relationship with your ancestors. And your, what has that done for your life? .
Shauna: Mm-hmm. Well, first of all, again, big smile on my face. I wanna uplift and give kudos to our imaginations because this is something get that gets squashed a lot or, uh, relegated to childish realms. And our imaginations are a portal of intuition and imagery and symbolism. It is, I would say, one of the main, bridges between consciousness and unconscious, between the seen and unseen between our own soul longings. And so I first invite people to befriend and or to lean into the possibility that your imagination is an ally and a partner in, how it is your sensing and perceiving, knowing, feeling intuiting, imagining connections with the unseen, whoever, and whatever it is that you are calling in for support.
So, uh, welcoming in and celebrating imagination first and foremost. That is an embodied cognition. So talk about bringing it into the here and now. Part of our work and where I, you know, I get very passionate about this and especially in terms of what does it mean to, come back in and to,embrace our imminence our, you know, the Latin word imminere means to be within, to reside within, or be coming within. And so, again, in a, I'm gonna zoom out to the dominant culture, cultural aspects, there's such a wounding and a disconnection to spirit, to ancestors, to imagination, to intuition, to other ways of knowing, to altered states of consciousness and wisdom. And so, and a type of, maybe overfocus that's a legacy of, more fundamentalist, religions, to, towards transcendence about going somewhere else, right? And a transcending. And so I think there's a real invitation and necessity at this time, and I believe grief is part of the teacher of this is an imminence of coming and being within.
And what does that mean to be in our embodied cognition, our heartfulness, to be in the wisdom of body, heart, and mind working harmoniously as these centers of wisdom. So imagination being one of the faculties of the mind wisdom, and emotional resonance and empathy and a compassion being part of the faculties and wisdom of the heart. And sensations and gut knowing and, and embodied, sensing, and impulse or, or, gestures that are part of the faculty and wisdom of the body. And so, I see imagination and I, and, and I invite it to be grounded in by being in connection to heart and body.
Because so much of our culture focuses and our culture, I mean, dominant kind of western culture, colonial capitalists, those values are so intellect driven, right and focused. Many of us, you know, no one center was meant to work on its own. Right. It becomes out of balance. So the gifts of the mind, imagination being one, become distorted when it becomes disconnected from heart and from body. And so part of the work of grieving and of, I think relating and loving is to reconnect head, heart, body or belly. And to start sensing into the wisdom in each and have them working together. So how does that connect to the ancestral pieces?
Our ancestors are our blood and bones. They're not just out that they're both out there and relationally. We can connect in spirit. However it is that your instrument, your body, may exquisitely perceive them. And oftentimes it's work to hone in on these intuition channels again, and our own sensing, our own impulses, our own cellular memory, and what, uh, rises below language and typically takes some time to then translate into language or into head. That is part of connection to our ancestors also because their lives have led to the here and now, to our, to our breath, to our muscles, to the sense of your own body being held wherever it is that you are to the sense of your feet on the earth. And, you know, in some traditions and teachings, the earth body is also the ancestral body. When we die, what we are made of goes back to the earth. And so tending to earth, connecting to earth, connecting to land is also a way of ancestral connection. So there's many other entry points, but there's some possibilities of especially for folks who feel like that more tangible aspect of ancestral connection is the, the easeful and accessible first way in. Beautiful. Beautiful. Absolutely.
Jono: And just the other piece to that question about geography, like,
Shauna: Oh yes.
Jono: Your geography and your ancestors. Have you ever done any of that work and has that affected how you relate to that?
Shauna: Yes.
Jono: Relate to ancestry and. Yeah, this is another dimension. Yeah. Yeah, because I say that too, because I'm also intrigued about how there has been this kind of very natural, uh, excitement it would seem around ancestry from a discovering who are the people in my life. You know, you see these kinds of websites and these advertisements everywhere about ancestry, you know, this innate kind of deep curiosity. Who are these people? And you know, I think you can kind of look at that as just folly or just interest or is there something much deeper going on for what we're actually wanting?
Shauna: For me, just on a very personal level, something that was so, gosh, I'm, I think I'm still integrating. I will be i'll, I'm continuing to kind of harvest the fruits, so to speak. I did an ancestral pilgrimage, in 2019 through parts of Europe. And even though I don't know exactly the stories and the exact places my ancestors came from, because of, you know, records not being accessible, et cetera, it was so profound for me to first of all be on land that I know in some way, shape or form my people walked to be near the waterways that would've sustained my people's lives. And to do, you know, I'm, I'm someone who does a lot of ritual work and opening up my senses to the other realm and to my ancestors. And so for me, part of what has been so healing and restorative and reconciliatory within and between my own lineages is recognizing and visiting the places in which I've had strong lineages of Catholicism, of which there were strong lineages of those who followed the Mennonite path, who of course there a lot of persecution and those who had more indigenous ways of being.
And to tune in and visit sites that help the spirit of the energy of a historical storyline of all of those pieces. And to start reconciling them within my own body, within my own mind and heart, and within what I call the ancestral ecology, the spiritual ancestral ecology around me. And to be on the land there singing songs, and inviting in a type of cohering of the places that there's, there's been disconnection in my own lineages and how that has shown up in very lived ways in my own living family and in my own experience. And that is still feeding a certain kind of momentum.
And l let me say this is, it's like one of the perhaps, and I say this with levity, the disclaimers, you know, the small print disclaimer of coming into connection with our people and our ancestors is that our elder ancestors, those who are, you know, deeply in their spiritual sight, who have both the wisdom of a lived, incarnate, exquisitely human experience and all the joys and pains of that, and are now in their spirit form, holding that wisdom and in their eldership they are so invested in their grandchildren, us being in our fullness, being in our gifts, being in our medicine, and in our resiliency. And being in the here and now, so we can bring those gifts and that wisdom through in ways that match the here and now, and allow us to be present for what is here so that we can see clearly, and from that place respond in right sized, appropriate wisdom filled, loved, filled ways. I think that is an invitation to us all and that, yeah, that makes me take a big breath in and feel the warmth of my own heart.
Jono: I get this sense from you, Shauna, that this work has freed up a lot of energy in your life when you even were speaking, then this kind of energy to more fully show up in your life to be able to offer your gifts. Would I be right in saying that that's been a part of, or an outcome of this work for you?
Shauna: Yes. Yes. Thank you for that witnessing and reflection in this moment. I say it allows me to be more in my birthright of joy and in the actual signature of who I am, and it makes me emotional to say, but as a lover of life, a lover of life, the here and now, the exquisiteness of now, and coming from an entry into this world where that was definitely not my experience. Right. And to now have the juxtaposition, the two experiences of the absence of. And now the presence with, and of course this is gonna be ongoing, but yes, there has been more vitality, more of perhaps me coming online. And I see that in many people who are saying yes to both what it means to live an ethic of grieving, to say yes to doing this, relearning the skills of grieving. Cause that also opens up energy, right?
When that river starts to flow again and there's no more backlog. And we are in our vitality and we are in the more current, we're more current and we're in the vitality of our own life expression. And that's the same, yeah it's the same momentum and invitation and possibility that happens when we consciously and intentionally choose to be in more relationship with those who came before us. And that can be the ones far back in time. The elder ones, it may not be recent family for very good a myriad of reasons, and that's okay. Right. But yes, I sense it, I feel it in my own life. There's more vitality, there's more joy and there's more of gratitude. And as I said, like an archetypal or signature way for me is a lover of life. And that has been able to actually now start to come online more. And I feel so grateful for that.
Jono: Before our conversation, I came across this, this quote that I just wanted to read to you at some point in our conversation. And it feels like the right time to do that. And I'd just love to hear your reflections. What comes up for you when I read this? It's from your earlier teacher, Francis Weller. He said “There is something feral about grief, contrary to our fears, grief is suffused with life force. It is riddled with energy, an acknowledgement of the erotic coupling with another soul, with a human, animal, plant, or ecosystem. It is not a state of deadness or emotional flatness. Grief is alive, wild, untamed, and cannot be domesticated.”
Shauna: So in this moment I just, I want to share first, you know, I've got tears in my eyes. A real emotional heartful resonance. I'm very aware of my hands and my feet right now and a type of sensation and warmth and tingling, and my curiosity went to the listeners. And I just feel moved to invite them to notice also how they're responding to that.Yeah, I feel just a vibrancy and, like, energy, throughout my arms. I feel heat through my center body. And I name this to bring in what is under words, you know, just the senses. And what listening to that Jono, what it does, what it, how it influences me in this moment is it just, it's affirming, it reaffirms the soul path of what it means to be here. Be committed and dedicated to the heart of grief, to how grief invites us back into our humanity. And my, like very heartful desire, vision, hope.
Sometimes words feel not large enough that, let me say it this way. Can we imagine, whatwould it be if all of us could change this in one generation, if all of us grew up in families and communities that responded to grief with open arms. That we had, the rituals, the language, the relationships, that we had the connections, that despite the pain, we were able to lean in and say yes to this rite of passage. And what would it mean for this grief then to grow us to become elders? To carry a wisdom that is only the wisdom that is part of the human experience, which is suffering and heartbreak. And you know, even now, perhaps it's not heartbreak, it's heart expansion. I don't know if our hearts break. I think there's an invitation for our hearts to expand and deepen.And what would the world look like and be like, and how would we move through the world? And how would we relate to one another from that place? I think it'll be vastly different than what's happening now. And that is my hope, and that I'm contributing to that.
Jono: In that spirit of what you are offering into the world. And maybe in, as we kind of enter into the, the ending of our conversation, how would you describe what you do today? How, what would you describe as the offering that you are making?
Shauna: Say, at the essence of Sacred Grief is the vision, the rituals, the practices, and the multiple pathways that invite us back into connection with ourselves, our hearts, with each other, with the animate, beautiful living world and with our own capacity to be with what is so that we can dream into new worlds, new ways of being. And that holds, again, with that large, welcoming embrace of what it means to be in this and of this at this very particular time. In these cultural moments, support people define themselves in their own medicine.
Jono: I was wondering, given how beautifully you opened our time together, I'm wondering if there's anything that occurs to you as to how we may close our time together, whether that's a, a practice, a prayer, or anything else that you may want to say just to ground what has been shared today.
Shauna: Yes, thank you. Again, I'm drawn to the wider circle of listeners through time and my invitation in my curiosity is to pause and to perhaps ask, and I'm not gonna ask myself this, and Jono, maybe you ask yourself too, what is here? What has arisen in your experience that is for you to carry with you? What has been medicine for you today? However, it has landed in whatever shapes, movements, emotions, words, images, symbols, feelings, senses, imaginings and to consciously and intentionally whether you can name what the, what you're caring forward with you or not, whether it's a sense or something else, but the intentionality of saying, yes, I am open to receiving what is mine to receive, to carry forward. I'm open to receiving the medicine that was here for me today, and I'm opening and receptive of it influencing me.
So as we bring intention and attention and a choosing ‘yes’ to what is here for each and every one of us to carry forward, I would like to just offer up and extend and invite and request in a prayerful way that all of the ecology of relationships seen in unseen that were invoked and invited in in our conversation that what was spoken here today, what was felt, what was in this field of blessing, that it'd also be an offering to all of you. And that may, this vision and what was seated here in our conversations and in this space and in the space between and within. May it also be an offering to a future vision that is deeply loving, that is deeply sustainable and relational, kind and inviting that each and every one of us get to be in moments more and more of our fullness and our vitality, and the sense that we are being held and companioned. And then finally, just heartfelt gratitude from my own heart for this time, for this invitation. Yeah, feeling a bit of a brilliance coming through my body, which feels great. So thank you.
Jono: Well, I want to thank you, Shauna. I particularly want to thank you for your sensitivity that I felt throughout the whole conversation, and I can feel that it is so infused in your work in a world that can sometimes feel dense and one-dimensional. You are bringing that gift, that great gift of sensitivity to all these other forms of intelligence, all these other quote unquote technologies, that humans for a long time have had had access to. And I just want to thank you for bringing that so clearly forward with so much respect for where people are at. Yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure to spend some time with you.
Shauna: Likewise.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
Shauna Janz
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