I wanted to close out the year with one more solo episode, talking about how I am celebrating and keeping things soft and simple. I am also sharing ideas for including loved ones we lost into our rituals, setting boundaries with family and making travelling more comfortable. Finally, there are some rituals for the winter solstice and a Rauhnaechste practice I am doing in here. 

Whatever you are up to, I hope you are ending the year with lots of rest and permission to dream. 

✨ The Winter Glimmer Sessions begin in early January: weekly creative and ritual circles where we can rest, create, and tend to our inner worlds together. You can find all the details at https://glimmerportal.com/blessings/

Love,

Yarrow

Misha of Hafez Death Care, my guest for today's episode, has a really beautiful podcast I hope you will check out too - it's called Halva for the Heart and I was honoured to be on episode 14. In this conversation for Grief Magic, we went both deep and wide into some really meaningful topics that I hope you'll enjoy too: 

• Dying and grieving in diaspora
• Small and big rituals that help us navigate losses
• Listening to our bodies in the face of death
• Continuing connections with people we have lost 

Misha (she/he/they) is an Iranian-American death doula and grief tender whose work honors the sacredness of death and the political power of mourning. Their path into this calling began at the tender age of twenty, when they were blessed with the gift of witnessing their mother’s death. Today, through Hafez Death Care, Misha offers culturally-rooted, anti-imperialist support for dying people and their loved ones before, during, and after the dying process.

They also provide grief tending for personal, collective, and ancestral grief, teaching that grief is both an emotional process and an act of resistance. They facilitate community grief events, offer one-on-one death midwifery and grief support, and host Halva for the Heart, a podcast exploring death and grief through a diasporic lens. Misha’s work is grounded in the belief that by caring for our Dying and tending to our grief in community, we strengthen our movements for justice and deepen our capacity for collective care.

https://hafezdeathcare.com/

You are invited to join the Winter Magic retreat here: https://glimmerportal.com/tarot-for-grief-winter-solstice-retreat/

Thanks for listening!

Love,

Yarrow

I loved the chance to talk to Alexis Cunningfolk again - we did an interview back in 2019 for episode #82 (in the before times!) and now got to catch up about their new book and expansive, beautiful and inspiring magic. Here is some of what we covered:

• Building a collective library of plants, magic & spells
• Economic justice & supporting access to community education
•  Slowing down and setting a place for grief at the table
• Building sustainable and magical creative practices

Alexis J. Cunningfolk is creating plant-led spaces of healing because none of us are meant to do this work alone. Practicing as an intersectional herbalist for over fifteen years and as a witch for nearly three decades, her work has led her around the country, presenting at various magickal, herbal, and academic conferences, as well as facilitating rituals for groups ranging from a handful of folks to hundreds. Alexis focuses on evidence-based and embodied plant healing while drawing on her experiences as a lesbian, a woman of mixed ancestry, and a third culture kid to create practices that help folks re-enchant their world and call themselves back home to their bodies. In addition to working with plants, she has been reading tarot since she was twelve, teaching since she was nineteen, and sneaking off to places in-between since she could walk. Alexis offers much of her work for free or low-cost, wild seeding wisdom as an act of gratitude and a spell of collective liberation.

Find her work at www.wortsandcunning.com.

Join my virtual winter solstice tarot retreat over here: https://glimmerportal.com/tarot-for-grief-winter-solstice-retreat/

Thank you for listening!

Love,

Yarrow

I am so honoured to share a beautiful conversation with Gabriela de Golia, who was also on episode #158. This time, we had a chance to go deeper and check back in on how the last few years have shaped us. Here is some of what we talked about:

• Discerning our unique relationship with the divine
• Grief and mortality as a gateway to understanding the mystery
• The politics of spiritual care
• Ritual practice for tending, resilience and resistance

Gabriela De Golia is the amalgamation of many beings, experiences, and possibilities. Weaving from a wide range of ancestral, spiritual, intellectual, political, and creative lineages, she serves as a spiritual care provider, ritualist, artist, writer, and a devotee of the mystery from which all things emerge and to which all things return. They support people in accessing the holy depths within and beyond us, to help co-create a world where all beings can be truly and deeply free.

https://gabrieladegolia.com/

Join us for weekly sessions here: https://glimmerportal.com/blessings/

Receive a grief blessings tarot reading: https://glimmerportal.com/grief-blessings/

Thank you so much for listening!

I am falling back in love with the tarot at the moment, as is custom each fall, and wanted to share some ideas and inspiration. These practices are sweet and simple to easily fit into your life and hopefully bring you some comfort and insight as we go deeper into the cozy season. 

Here are the spreads I mentioned:

• Daily Cards
• Drawing Closer - intentionally choosing a card and then drawing cards to explore what to release or invite in order to bring more of this energy in 
• Past, Present, Future on specific areas of life
• A relationship spread: 1. How to stay grounded in my centre? 2. What do I have to offer? 3. What do I really want? 4. What might come up?

The deck I told you about is the Nova Witch deck by Suki Ferguson and Ana Novaes and the two books I mentioned are She is Sitting in the Night by Oliver Pickle and All of our Stories by Beth Maiden. 

If you'd like space to practice, come join us for weekly Fall Blessing sessions: https://glimmerportal.com/blessings/

or request a reading here: https://glimmerportal.com/grief-blessings/

Thank you for listening!

Love,

Yarrow

Welcome to October! This is a beautiful interview with Charlene Lam, a creative and thoughtful voice whose work weaves together storytelling, curation, and deep personal reflection.

Charlene speaks with honesty about the sudden loss of her mother and the early days of navigating grief and shock. We talk about how she approached the emotionally complex process of going through her mom’s belongings, and how her background as a creator shaped the way she honoured her mother’s memory. She offers practical, meaningful tools that can help anyone who is navigating grief to move forward with more ease and gentleness. 

Charlene Lam is a certified grief coach, TEDx speaker and the founder of The Grief Gallery. After her mother died suddenly in 2013, Charlene leaned into her creativity and instincts as a curator to guide herself through grief. Her Curating Grief® framework is a creative, accessible way grievers can navigate dealing with the physical stuff and the emotional stuff. Her first book, Curating Grief: A Creative Guide to Choosing What to Keep After a Loved One Dies, is out now.

Website www.charlenelam.com

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/charclam/

Instagram ​​https://www.instagram.com/curating_grief

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@thegriefgallery

Join Fall Blessings: https://glimmerportal.com/blessings/

Get on the waitlist for ROOTED: https://pinkwellstudio.com/rooted/

Friends, I am so happy to share this beautiful conversation with Uma Girish with you. We talked about loss as a portal, honouring all kinds of grief, letting relationships evolve and transform and finding ourselves in a steady and loving way in the process. 

Uma Girish is a Grief Companion for women who feel lost as they’re grieving a loss. She serves as a loving witness and companions them on their journey so they can feel seen, heard, and supported as they heal.
Her Substack publication is called “Light After Loss.”
Uma is also the author of four books, the latest being “Sacred Fire: Memoir of A Marriage” which speaks to the grief in a long-term partnership when two people who love and respect each other deeply choose to walk different soul paths.
You can learn more about Uma and her work at https://umagirish.com

Join us for Fall Blessings sessions here: https://glimmerportal.com/blessings/

Thank you for listening!

Love,

Yarrow

This episode is an invitation to join me for supportive, affordable sessions every Monday this fall. We continue on from the summer blessings series, every Monday from 7-8pm UK time, with gentle space to write, make art, do rituals or dream. No pressure, come as you are and use the code FRIENDS to join for free if you can't afford the normal price of 60 GBP. 

Sign up here: https://glimmerportal.com/blessings/

and join the branding & canva fundraiser workshop over here: https://pinkwellstudio.com/fundraiser-workshops/

Love,

Yarrow

What happens to the poetry, the paintings, the sketches and songs of our loved ones when they pass? In this beautiful conversation with Sarah Sawyer we talked about her friend and award-winning poet, Andrea Werblin Reid, who left us a stunning collections of poems called To See Yourself As You Vanish. It gave me so much precious food for thought about final wishes, the things we leave behind and what we can do for those we love as we say goodbye. 

In the last 3 years of her life, Andi 150 fierce, frank, witty poems on living with ovarian cancer and end of life. Before she died she asked a group of friends to do what we could to get it into the world. Sarah Sawyer is of those friends and is thrilled to share that this, her 3rd and strongest book yet--To See Yourself As You Vanish--is being represented by Rob McQuilken and will be published by Wesleyan Press September 9th. 

The book: https://www.weslpress.org/9780819502070/to-see-yourself-as-you-vanish/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrea_werblin_reid_poetry/ 

Sarah Sawyer is a writer and a chaplain specializing in psychedelics and end of life. She lives in Boulder, Colorado and is proud to be helping to shepherd Andi's work to publication. Sarah's work: https://www.sarahksawyer.com/ 

You can join Fall Blessings over here: https://glimmerportal.com/blessings/

Thank you for listening!

Love,

Yarrow

Last week was the first anniversary of my mum's passing, so I wanted to share an episode on what surprised me, what I needed, how I changed and what we did to mark the day. I hope this episode will offer you some space to reflect on your own grief and feel less alone in the process <3

If you have a question, you can send me a voice note here: https://speakpipe.com/yarrowm

Much love,

Yarrow