Today, I am deeply excited and honored to bring you a conversation that actually got recorded nearly a year ago.

At the time, I was offering a small online course around the different faces of the Goddess. Each month, we worked with the energy and mythology of a different archetype. Using each as a way to cozy up to a different aspect of our own divinity, our own depth, our own shadow. Our own Light.

The month this talk was recorded, we were channeling the energy of the goddess Dhumavati. A crone goddess who looks anything but. In pictures we see her seated among the ashes, her face and hands covered in soot. We see her leaning on a delapidated, old wooden cart that has no horse. No bull. Nothing to carry it forward. We see her in rags, her face deeply lined and wearing the full marks of her age.

What is her boon, you ask?

Why did we choose to sit inside the metaphorical ashes with her?

What did we hope to learn?

To answer this, I invited my teacher - Heather Heintz - to come on the call.

Heather is a long-time yogi, mama & Buddhist Chaplain, living and working on the Big Island of Hawaii.

I first met her a decade and a half ago when I started going to her little home-built studio - Balancing Monkey - on Mohouli St - and fell in love with the practice in earnest.

Whatever this woman had to teach I wanted to learn.

Years after I had left the Big Island, I continued to read Heather’s words and keep up with her story.

I watched agape, when, in 2011, she set up a blog called High Five Max.

The mission?

To create a space where she could communicate with and parent her son. - Max. Who, after 8 days in the world, left his body.

Here, Heather recounts the journey she took inside that space with her firstborn son. The fallout and process of being in and learning from and allowing her Grief - the Ashes - to teach her what they had come to impart.

She talks about the journey this took her on and the work that it has called her to now inside this world.

And , yeah, there’s some yoga chit-chat in there, as well.

I learned so much rolling out my little sticky mat those happy years in Heather’s studio.

I want to say, I learned immeasurably more, reading her words - her heart - her journey through profound and unfathomable LOSS. And watching her sift through and clothe herself in those ashes. And emerge - the phoenix - heart burst wide open to hold the whole damn world - and to carry others through those same dark places. She gave - and continues to give me - and I hope you, as well - a picture of the type of person I want to grow into being and offering this darkened world.

……..

I want to mention that, if you are catching this podcast LIVE - in December 2018 - when it’s first being broadcast - I want to extend an invitation your way.

This coming Sunday, December 9th @ 2:30 PST, I will be hosting a free call - called Writing in the Dark - to talk about holding space and utilizing the ritual of expressive writing to navigate grief, despair & loss.

There is so much happening inside the world at this moment.

There is so much heaviness and despair and, to be honest, I am of the opinion that it might all just get worse, before it starts to get better.

But we can hold one another.

Uplift and affirm and carry and reflect back the light at these times to one another.

If you needing some tools and community to help navigate the murky waters of grief rightnow inside your own life - please join me. This call will last about an hour and, at the end there will be the added option to join in a 3-week course to deepen the work we start on that day.

That’s Sunday, December 9th @ 2:30 PST.

Check the show notes for a link to sign up.

……..

I hope you enjoy this heartfelt chat with a woman whom I love.

May it crack something open in you.

May it open a window - a door - a whole fucking Universe for you, if need be.

May it help you to remember that are is a time to be inside the ashes.

That your sorrow is not a mistake or a fault in your stars.

It is a refinery.

It is where you can be sifted - to clear away that which is no longer needed - to dig deep - and unearth your GOLD.

Thank you for being here, as always.

Again, please make sure to leave a rating or review if these stories have touched or aided you in any way.

And be sure to check the show notes to find out where to read more of HEather’s gorgeous and prophetic words or find out more about her work and world.

And now… MEND.