Jul 24, 2019
This week, I have a conversation with Melissa Lynne.
Melissa’s mother died in March 2014 and everything changed in
that instant...her priorities, her career, her purpose and passion,
her outlook on life and death. She crumbled into a heap under the
blankets and shut out the world, where she stayed for almost a
year. The thing that brought her back and kept her going was
returning to the page, returning to the written word, returning to
something that felt like life. The words came through her body and
soul and heart and gut and quite literally saved her life. She
wrote her way back to a life she needed and wanted to live. She
resurfaced with a fearlessness to look grief head on and to feel
all of it...the pain, the insanity, the beauty and love, the snotty
tears on the shower floor or the shoulder of the kind stranger at
the grocery store. She gave herself permission to grieve and
trusted herself to feel anything that came.
Today, Melissa’s grief lives in her body, in that place where love
and creativity intersect. Where she blesses and honors it. Where
it’s fed and watered. Where it’s shown darkness and sunshine. Where
it is cherished. Where it leads her one day into the next.
Melissa is co-founder/curator/editor of Grief Rites Foundation,
where she encourages the use of art as agency to survive through
grief. Connection and storytelling are how she walks beside others
who are feeling the loneliness and isolation of grief. She is a
death doula and a grief specialist. She is currently writing a
grief memoir. Melissa lives in Portland, Oregon with her 3
children, 2 cats and 1 dog. She thrives in words and water and
trees and moss and mist.
Instagram: @breatheinbreatheoutlive
Instagram: @griefritesfoundation
Website: griefritesfoundation.org
Facebook: facebook.com/GriefRites
Subscribe to this podcast by using one of the following:
Contact me using any of following:
email - darwyn@dealingwithmygrief.com
twitter - http://www.twitter.com/dealwithgrief
web - http://www.dealingwithmygrief.com
voice/message - (240) 778-5200