Embodiment Matters Podcast
A Response To Our Times With Francis Weller (October 2, 2019)
Main Theme & Purpose
This episode welcomes back Francis Weller—psychotherapist, author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow, and renowned grief ritual facilitator—to discuss how we can meaningfully respond to the overwhelming grief, suffering, and disconnect pervading our present times. The conversation deeply explores Weller’s “Five Gates of Grief” model, the role of ritual and community in metabolizing sorrow, and how touching our grief not only opens us to more joy but invites us into fuller, embodied participation with life. Listeners are offered both philosophical insight and practical guidance for engaging sorrow as a source of healing and reconnection, rather than something simply to be endured or resolved.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
1. Living Without “Answers” But With Response
- Complexity of Modern Suffering:
The hosts set the context with references to environmental and social crises—Amazon fires, global ecological grief—asking Francis about navigating these unanswerable challenges.“Answers are like trying to give ourselves some sense of assurance...But the good news is that we do have the capacity to respond.”
—Francis Weller (05:28) - Response vs. Passivity:
Weller explores how response is rooted in affection, presence, and intimate engagement with the world, rather than resolving or fixing.“Should we be responding every day to the world around us?...even just appreciation and awe, that’s a response.”
—Francis Weller (06:41)
2. The Role (and Value) of Numbness and Denial
- Numbness as Temporary Medicine:
“All praise to that human capacity...Numbness becomes almost like a life-saving process.”
—Francis Weller (09:04)
He highlights how individuals are bombarded by global suffering in isolation—something we’re not wired for—and proposes a compassionate understanding of our instinct to numb or deny.
3. The Five Gates of Grief (Detailed Breakdown)
-
First Gate:
Everything you love, you will lose.
The foundational human reality. -
Second Gate:
Places within us that have never known love.
Aspects shamed or exiled from family, culture, or institutions. -
Third Gate:
Sorrows of the world.
The pain we feel for collective events: environmental destruction, injustice, extinction, etc.“There’s a certain anxiety in the culture right now...the collective anxiety about what is happening to the fabric...of the environment.”
—Francis Weller (18:11) -
Fourth Gate:
What we expected and did not receive.
The absence of ritual, belonging, and communal intimacy—elements endemic to ancestral life but now lost. -
Fifth Gate:
Ancestral grief.
Sorrows inherited across generations, from ruptured cultures, forced migrations, or historical violence.“Almost none of the grief I’m carrying is mine alone.”
—Francis Weller (18:11)
4. Creating Containers for Grief & the Role of Ritual
- Ritual as Homecoming:
Weller emphasizes ritual as an innate human impulse, available to reclaim in small community settings. - Collective vs. Private Grief:
“There’s this kind of terror and longing side by side. We’re afraid to talk about it because it’s become so private...But if we stopped anybody and said, are you okay? And if they could really trust the question, they would say, no. My heart is breaking.”
—Francis Weller (24:26) - Practical Rituals:
Guidance for starting simple grief gatherings—emphasizing permission, circle, poetry, support.
5. Individual & Collective Grief Practice
- “Solitary Work You Can’t Do Alone”:
Personal grief practice is courageous and useful but ultimately seeks collective holding for true transformation.“Our work here is learning to tolerate contact in the places where your sorrow lives. But ultimately, you’re going to need a larger holding space.”
—Francis Weller (27:38) - The Myth of Heroic Individualism:
A hard diagnosis or deep loss shatters the fantasy we can manage alone—suffering reveals our need for support and companionship.“The heroic fiction that I can somehow muscle my way through life alone...is abruptly confronted when you get cancer.”
—Francis Weller (30:59)
6. Grief as a Catalyst for Love, Action, and Joy
- Moving from Sorrow to Gestures of Affection:
Grieving is not about wallowing; it’s generative, leading to committed, heartfelt action in the world.“Action void of affection is partly where we got into this trouble in the first place...Grief, if we really listen...is almost invariably tangled up with what we love.”
—Francis Weller (38:11) - Beyond Tears — Outrage, Protest, Joy:
Grief is not just tears but also includes outrage, protest, refusal to accept injustice.“The sure sign of a soul awake is that it’s outraged.”
—Francis Weller, quoting James Hillman (39:09) - Joy is an Outcome, Not an Obligation:
Profound joy emerges as a natural consequence of metabolized sorrow, not as a forced counterpoint.“It is not our obligation to be joyful. It is a consequence of fully accepting our human nature.”
—Francis Weller (49:47)
7. Ancestral Healing
- Why Ancestral Connection Matters:
Engaging with our dead is both a source of help for us and a form of collective repair.“We are the current curators of the sorrow...not just I feel better, it seems to somehow mend griefs and losses that were not addressed.”
—Francis Weller (44:37, 48:23) - Transgenerational Trauma:
Much of our pain is not only individual but inherited, and healing resonates bidirectionally—reaching backwards and forwards in time.
8. Apprenticeship to Sorrow and the Path to Elderhood
- “Apprenticeship of Sorrow”:
Grief work is a long-term vocation, leading not to mastery but to the deep wisdom of elderhood.“In soul work, the long lineage of apprenticeship with sorrow doesn’t lead to mastery, it leads to elderhood.”
—Francis Weller (42:40)
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
-
On seeking answers vs. responses:
“Beyond a certain scope of influence...it’s hard to have that sense of being able to supply an answer for something so extraordinarily complex. But the good news is that we do have the capacity to respond.”
—Francis Weller (05:27) -
On the container for grief:
“We can call our neighbors over...and we can say, you know, we’re going to try something pretty radical. We’re going to try to talk about loss and sorrow tonight...People are just longing for the permission to speak about it.”
—Francis Weller (24:26) -
On the myth of doing it alone:
“The solitary journey we cannot do alone.”
—Ira Progoff, quoted by Francis Weller (30:25) -
On joy after grief:
“Joy...is not pretend, it’s not game show joy. It is truly heartfelt, oh my God, I am alive kind of joy.”
—Francis Weller (41:17) -
On the legacy of unwept ancestors:
“There are so few of those people walking the streets who have really digested their sorrows into something meaningful and something that can really address the bewilderment in the eyes of the young ones.”
—Francis Weller (44:00) -
On why joy is not a betrayal:
“It is not our obligation to be joyful. It is a consequence of fully accepting our human nature and not forgetting the exquisite beauty that is still abundantly around us.”
—Francis Weller (49:47) -
On the relationship between joy and tears:
“You have so much joy...and her immediate response was, well, that’s because I cry a lot.”
—Francis Weller (African elder anecdote, 51:08)
Timestamps for Important Segments
- Opening & context: 00:02–04:09
- Response vs. answers in a world of crisis: 05:13–07:52
- The place and prosocial function of numbness/denial: 09:00–10:51
- Five Gates of Grief explained: 12:44–23:30
- Grief containers, ritual, and collective holding: 24:26–27:03
- Personal vs. collective grief work: 27:03–30:59
- Grief as a source of courage, affection, and joy: 32:36–41:17
- Apprenticeship to sorrow & elderhood: 42:29–44:00
- Ancestral grief and its relevance: 44:37–49:01
- Joy, gratitude, and living in the current: 49:01–52:12
Final Reflections
This conversation is a poetic, gently challenging, and ultimately consoling invitation to awaken out of passive overwhelm. For Weller and the hosts, grief is not only a human inevitability but a capacity—one that, when cultivated in community, becomes our greatest resource for courage, connection, and the full enjoyment of life.
The episode is a balm for those grappling with both private and public sorrows, offering practical wisdom for engaging the times with full-hearted response.