Feathers in My Face®

What happens when grief doesn't fit neatly into the relationships we're taught we're allowed to mourn? When someone has been absent from your life but never absent from your heart? When the loss isn't only a person, but decades of unanswered questions, an imagined future, and the belief that there would always be more time?

This episode is about grief without performance. Grief that doesn't need to become gratitude. Grief that doesn't require letting go of love in order to keep living. And the possibility that the bonds we form—especially the ones that began before we had language for them—may be far more enduring than we understand.

Grief is love. Grief is holy.

Permission Slip®

You do not have to turn brokenness into something beautiful.

You do not have to perform gratitude.

You are allowed to be angry, devastated, unfinished, and full of questions.

You are allowed to grieve someone regardless of whether anyone else understands who that person was to you.

Grief is love. Grief is holy.

Heaven’s Mix Tape®

Jamie Miller — Empty Room
P!nk — When I Get There
Chris Kläfford — If Not With You, For You
Sara Bareilles — Just a Kid
Thomas Rhett — Marry Me
Matt Hansen — Canary

You can find these songs on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, or wherever you stream music.

Music is not included in this podcast. All songs and recordings belong to their respective artists, songwriters, publishers, and rights holders.

Content Note

This episode contains discussion of death, sudden loss, intense grief, suicide, cancer, spiritual experiences surrounding death, and expressions of acute grief.

Privacy Note

Feathers in My Face tells a deeply personal story involving real people and real experiences. Names and identifying details have been changed where appropriate to protect the privacy of the people whose lives intersect with mine.

The spiritual experiences I share are my own. I'm not asking you to believe what I believe. I'm inviting you into the conversation.

#FeathersInMyFace #GriefIsHoly #HeavensMixTape #Grief #LoveAfterLoss #ContinuingBonds #Soulmates #LifeAfterDeath

Send us Fan Mail

Feathers in My Face® and Heaven’s Mixtape® are registered trademarks. If this episode stirred up a memory or story of your own, feel free to share it with us on the show’s fan page. Until next time, stay close to what stirred. There is more to remember.

Episode 2: What We Never Said

Some relationships are difficult to define because the usual categories never quite fit. In this episode, I share the story of J. and me as we moved from the ease and certainty of our childhood bond into adolescence—a time when separation, changing circumstances, other people's expectations, and the things we couldn't say began to alter a relationship that had always felt as natural as breathing.

This is a story about what it means when another person becomes home: a secure place in the middle of instability, someone who knows you without requiring you to perform, and someone whose presence becomes woven into your understanding of love and belonging. It is also about the moments when words—or the absence of them—can change the direction of a relationship, and why the bonds we form when we are young deserve to be taken seriously.

Permission Slip
You have permission to honor the significance of a relationship even when other people cannot understand, define, or measure what it meant to you.

Heaven’s Mix Tape®

• I Miss the Us We Never Became — You & Me Harmony
• Marry Me — Thomas Rhett 
• Champagne High — Sister Hazel 
• We Were Rich — Mark Wilkinson 
• Never Knew a Heart Could Break Itself — Zach Hood 
• Never Not Love You — Thirty Seconds to Mars

These songs are part of the story behind this episode. Due to copyright, the music isn't included in the podcast. Listen on your preferred music platform.

Content Note
This episode includes discussions of suicide, parental separation and divorce, adolescent drug use, depression, grief, emotional trauma, family instability, and religious faith.

Privacy Note
Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals discussed throughout the series.

Send us Fan Mail

Feathers in My Face® and Heaven’s Mixtape® are registered trademarks. If this episode stirred up a memory or story of your own, feel free to share it with us on the show’s fan page. Until next time, stay close to what stirred. There is more to remember.

What if your first soulmate was someone you knew as a child?

In this episode of Feathers in My Face, we explore childhood soulmates, childhood friendship, intuition, attachment, grief, and the deep connections that shape us for life. Through one story of meeting a little boy in kindergarten and instantly feeling recognition, safety, and familiarity, this episode asks whether some bonds begin before we have words for them and keep shaping us long after childhood ends.

Permission Slip:  If it felt real, it was. 

Episode 1 | Heaven’s Mixtape®

These are the songs J and I chose for this episode. Each one carries something of the memory, recognition, safety, and longing at the center of this story.

• Waiting in the Dark by Cathartic Fall 
• Empty Room by Jamie Miller 
• Glitter by Patrick Droney 
• The Promise by Tracy Chapman 
• I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston 

Listener Note
Due to copyright, we can’t share the music here, but we’ve listed the titles so you can listen on your preferred platform,

A note for listeners: this series contains mature themes, including childhood trauma, emotional neglect, addiction, suicide, sexuality, spiritual experience, death, and grief.

If this episode stirred up a memory or story of your own, feel free to share it with us on the show’s fan page. 

Send us Fan Mail

Feathers in My Face® and Heaven’s Mixtape® are registered trademarks. If this episode stirred up a memory or story of your own, feel free to share it with us on the show’s fan page. Until next time, stay close to what stirred. There is more to remember.

What if the child you once were recognized something the adult version of you was taught to forget?

Feathers in My Face is a podcast about childhood bonds, grief, imagination, attachment, memory, and the defiant hope that love doesn’t end.

Through raw storytelling and deeply personal reflection, this series explores the people who shape us forever, the parts of ourselves we abandon to survive, and the strange ways love continues reaching for us across time, silence, distance, and loss.

This trailer is the doorway into the story.

Content Note: This podcast contains mature themes including grief, suicide, addiction, trauma, emotional neglect, spirituality, and discussions surrounding death and enduring attachment. Listener discretion is advised.

Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals discussed throughout the series.

Send us Fan Mail

Feathers in My Face® and Heaven’s Mixtape® are registered trademarks. If this episode stirred up a memory or story of your own, feel free to share it with us on the show’s fan page. Until next time, stay close to what stirred. There is more to remember.