Alexandra Gersten Vassilaros

Summary

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The Observable Unknown

Episode: Alexandra Gersten Vassilaros
Host: Dr. Juan Carlos Rey
Date: July 13, 2025

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Overview

In this episode of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey invites playwright, author, and Make Meaning Workshop founder Alexandra Gersten Vassilaros for an in-depth exchange on the intersection of grief, healing, and creative expression. The conversation weaves personal narrative with spiritual and psychological inquiry, highlighting Alexandra’s journey from personal loss to facilitating transformative writing workshops for those grappling with grief. Together, they examine how writing, especially in judgment-free community settings, can catalyze deep self-discovery and resilience—bridging scientific insight and mystical experience.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Alexandra’s Path: From Grief to Guiding Others

• Catalyst for Her Workshop
  • Alexandra recounts how volunteering at the Bowery Mission during her husband's battle with cancer exposed her to women facing multiple crises. She recognized a shared vulnerability and the need for authentic community.
  • “I was so caught up in my own head, I thought I might want to volunteer just to see what I can see. These women are all in struggle. I probably have a lot in common with them.” (04:22)
• Writing as the Chosen Modality
  • The workshops evolved organically from reading poems and using writing prompts. She avoided discussion and feedback to bypass participants’ defenses, fostering a space for genuine self-exploration.
  • “We were writing, we weren’t talking…we move below the layer of that. And the prompts guide us…to a more…a deeper place, a more…a private place.” (07:05)

The Mechanics and Philosophy of the Make Meaning Workshop

• No Judgment, No Feedback Environment
  • Workshops emphasize listening and bearing witness rather than discussion or critique. This prevents participants from retreating into ego or defensiveness, creating what Alexandra calls “a kind of holy space.”
  • “We don’t interrupt each other…we hold the space in a kind of holy way. We deeply witness each other. We’re listening without needing to prepare to speak, which is a really big relief.” (13:55)
• Universal Access to Writing
  • Alexandra underscores that no special training is needed—writing is for everyone, not just “writers.” She celebrates personal language and narrative as transformative tools.
  • “Here’s the pen. This is your hand. You can write. Maybe somebody told you it’s…only for writers, but it’s not. It’s for all of us.” (18:35)

Grief, Creativity, and Resilience

• Writing as Stabilization and Self-Kindness
  • Alexandra views writing as a means to stabilize tumultuous emotions and “hijacked” thinking after traumatic loss, approaching oneself with mercy and forgiveness.
  • “We’re trying to stabilize hectic thinking, frightened thinking, hijacked emotion…with great forgiveness and great kindness…with mercy for all that we’ve been through.” (11:09–12:07)
• Grief as Complexity, Not a Linear Process
  • She challenges the “stages” model, asserting that grief is a “frontier”—fluid, cyclical, and deeply individual. Closure is not her goal; rather, she values staying alive and responsive to ongoing change.
  • “I think I’m in all stages all the time…Life is too lively to be contained in some of these notions…” (45:04)
• Asking Beautiful, Unanswerable Questions
  • Alexandra, citing the poet David Whyte, asserts that loss begets profound questions rather than neat answers. The spaciousness in these questions fosters philosophical reflection and resilience.
  • “A beautiful question almost doesn’t need an answer. It almost makes space for itself. And that spaciousness is even a relief.” (36:26)

Influences: Literature, Theater, and Ritual

• Early Literary and Theatrical Influence
  • Alexandra describes how exposure to plays by Edward Albee, Arthur Miller, Lorraine Hansberry, and Tennessee Williams shaped her appreciation for the complexity of human character and contradiction.
  • “When I saw Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the complexity of those characters reminded me of some of the people that I lived with…wonderfully complicated people.” (25:29)
• Personal and Cultural Rituals
  • Rituals such as lighting candles for the dead in her Greek Orthodox heritage provide metaphor and comfort; Alexandra believes we can all create our own sacred rituals to process grief.
  • “I can burn incense in my own home and I might get that…I can create my own holy space. I do it in the workshops.” (43:37)

The Power of Merciful Self-Compassion

• Mercy as a Guiding Principle
  • The phrase “Mercy me” encapsulates Alexandra’s message of self-forgiveness and tender self-care during the healing journey.
  • “Some of the work we do is an invitation to mercy. Mercy me. Let me mercy me. I’ve been through so much. Let me help me to mercy me.” (49:45)

Family, Community, and Ongoing Love

• Intergenerational Impact
  • Alexandra shares how her son acknowledged her resilience ten years after her husband’s passing, affirming the ongoing transformation and the deepening of love beyond physical loss.
  • “I’ve helped to communicate to the boys... to inspire them to use language, to explore and expose more of themselves.” (47:46)
• From Grief to Love Counseling
  • She advocates for focusing on love, not just loss, framing herself as a “love counselor” as much as a grief guide.
  • “I want a grief counselor to also be a love counselor because the reason I’m grieving so much is because I love so much.” (47:32)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Grief and Writing
  • “Grief is not a feeling, it’s a frontier…it’s like climbing into a covered wagon…carrying on and going somewhere unfamiliar.” – Alexandra, (31:31)
• On Community Healing
  • “When you’re writing about [love] with a lot of other people who’ve lost people, you realize, oh, you are not alone… In community…can we restore our own kind of heartbeat, our own interest in life?” – Alexandra, (35:54)
• On the Uniqueness of Loss
  • “No two people will lose the same way. We might gain the same way. But the loss is what…dignifies us.” – Dr. Rey, (12:28)
• On Judgment-Free Expression
  • “Wouldn’t it be freeing not to have so much feedback all the time?... So I could explore more, not be sharply rebuked or touted.” – Alexandra, (10:43)
• On Finding the Sacred
  • “We all have this potential to create that which is sacred to us… I can create my own holy space. I do it in the workshops. And I think all of us can do that originally, as originally as we want to do it.” – Alexandra, (43:16)
• On Self-Kindness in Grief
  • “With mercy for all that we’ve all been through. Because there’s nobody on the planet who gets to live a longish life…before they understand that challenge, crisis, interruption, disappearance is part of the human experience.” – Alexandra, (12:12)
• On Beautiful Questions
  • “A beautiful question almost doesn’t need an answer… It makes us all philosophers.” – Alexandra, (36:26)

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Important Timestamps

• [02:51] Alexandra’s origin story: Volunteering during her husband’s illness
• [06:53] Workshop method: Writing, not talking; neutral space for expression
• [11:09] Writing as a tool for inner mercy and stabilization
• [13:55] On holding “holy space” and deep listening
• [18:35] Accessibility of writing: “You can write. No training necessary.”
• [25:29] Early influences from theater and complex characters
• [31:31] Grief as a frontier, not a linear feeling
• [35:54] Power of community in healing
• [36:26] “Beautiful questions” as spaciousness for the grieving mind
• [43:37] Creating your own rituals and sacred space
• [45:04] On refusing closure and living in ongoing transformation
• [47:32] Advocating for “love counseling” as well as grief counseling
• [49:45] “Mercy me” as an invitation to self-compassion

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Connect with Alexandra & the Workshop

• Website: makemeaningworkshop.com
• Instagram: @makemeaningworkshop
  • “There’s a lot of content. I’ve written every single word myself…come there.” (51:55)
• Other Workshops:
  “I also do a workshop called ‘I love you but be elsewhere’ for people who are moving through relationship struggles or…codependency...” (52:17)

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Tone & Takeaways

True to the podcast’s vision, this episode gracefully bridges rigorous self-inquiry and mystical insight. Alexandra’s compassion and candor make even the most daunting aspects of grief approachable, offering listeners language and practical methods for transforming suffering into self-awareness, community connection, and even awe. Writing becomes not just a tool for healing but a sacred act—a means of engaging with the “observable unknown” within each of us.

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Closing Thought

“Everyone’s journey is different and everyone’s healing is unique, like a fingerprint…what appears unknowable often stands right before us, waiting to be observed through both the lens of science and the wisdom of spirit.” – Dr. Juan Carlos Rey (54:08)

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Transcript

[A]

Hello and welcome to the Observable Unknown, where science meets the unexplained. I'm Dr. Juan Carlos Reh of Crowscover.com and after two decades of working at the intersection of comparative religious studies, grief counseling, anthropology, quantum mechanics, and consciousness studies, I've discovered that our most profound human experience experiences often exist in the space between what we can prove and what we can perceive. In this podcast, we'll explore the measurable impacts of immeasurable forces, those hidden influences that shape our reality but often escape our traditional scientific frameworks. From the latest research and consciousness studies to the ancient wisdom that's now finding validation neuroscience and quantum physics, we're here to bridge the gap between academic rigor and spiritual insight. Whether you're a skeptic, a seeker, or simply curious about the deeper mechanics of human experience, you're in the right place. Together, we'll examine the evidence, challenge our assumptions, and explore what happens when we dare to look beyond the obvious. In today's episode, we'll meet Alexandra Gersten Vasileros, playwright, actress, mother, author, daughter, and founder of the Make Meaning Workshop. Through the Make Meaning Workshop, Alexandra has brought tremendous healing to individuals crippled by grief. Through a unique method that has for quite some time gone overlooked, she has facilitated remarkable rebirths and fantastic revelations. So without any further ado, let's get to the conversation.

[B]

Alexandra, it's wonderful to see you today and I'm so glad we had a chance to have this conversation. I am really impressed by the testimonials that I have heard and watched over the workshops that you present and the kinds of healing you're able to bring to people based upon their personal journals. Through grief and coming out on the other side, I can't help but to imagine this is part of your personal journey and you're sharing it with others. You're bringing them along for the ride. I'd love to hear more about what for you started this and obviously where you see it going, if you see any end in sight.

[C]

Love that you're asking that.

[D]

I'm so excited to be here with you because I also admire the work that you do and that you've even done with me.

[B]

I appreciate that.

[D]

I started to imagine these workshops when I volunteered for service at the Bowery Mission in New York City, which is a mission to help people who are currently struggling with homelessness or crisis. And I was so caught up with my husband's illness. He had fourth stage colon cancer and I was so in the bubble of fear and anxiety and concern for our future Mine and his, of course, and our families, because it looked like this could be and actually became to be life threatening. He died three years after he was diagnosed in 2012 and died in 2015. But during the time that he was ill, I was so caught up in my own head, I thought I might want to volunteer just to see what I can see. These women are all in struggle. I probably have a lot in common with them. They're temerity, their courage might rub off on me. So I was kind of thinking that I needed a community of people who are vulnerable and people who truly understood what it was be to what it was like to be kind of on a precipice of change.

[C]

And.

[D]

And considered challenge.

[C]

Right, Challenge, change.

[D]

And they were in the Barry Mission for Transformational Care. So I thought, wow, this is great. They've already agreed to that. So they were at the Women's center. And I was lucky enough to begin to do this kind of workshop. I wasn't calling it the meaning workshop at the time. I had had a career, an engaged career as a playwright, had won awards, had plays on Broadway, off Broadway, many regional theaters. But the stress in my home life was such that I thought I have to do something else than just do work that's so stressful in the world. And when I went to work with the women, that was the beginning of a kind of awakening for me.

[B]

I love that. And I always recognize that charitable efforts, volunteerism, giving back to community, is very cathartic on its own. What I also recognize is that frequently it causes people to face things they haven't in the past faced. Clearly, what you were going through with your husband was terrible and you have my condolences. I hope that your family and you have reached a new plateau of healing that has helped you to grow closer. Frequently, in the loss of a loved one, families are torn apart. And in the instance of specific tragedies, like these women who you were describing as homeless and possibly with some other issues, they might have been recognizing specific instances, events in their life that represented a low point. Now, I would rather presume that the loss of your husband was the lowest point. If I'm incorrect, I would love to hear what your lowest point was and what single catalyst, if there was one, pulled you out of that and made you decide you couldn't stay there forever.

[D]

A great question. Well, firstly, I have to say I was very moved by the women that I was working with because we were writing, we weren't talking, and because many of the women and I identified with them had 4, 5, 6 crises in a row. Not just homelessness, but loss of children, drug addiction, bad. They were battered, many of them barely able to survive, in some cases living on the streets.

[C]

So they had a.

[D]

One thing which I noticed, they were so used to being misunderstood, indeed even misunderstanding themselves. But what they did have was a lot of defendedness. And I thought instead of even talking about any of these things, we would just get to writing, because. So I would read a poem, we would. I'd read it out loud, I would give them six or seven prompts, and then they would start writing. One of the chief culling aspects of this is that we don't talk. So we don't, in those groups, use the presentational self, the self that had to survive, the self that is, has kind of survival mechanisms, response reactions. And we move below the layer of that. And the prompts guide us, me included, because I write with them to a more. A deeper place, a more. A private place, sometimes a place we don't go that often because we're always talking. So there's no talking. It's just writing and reading. No criticism, no crosstalk, no commentary, not even, oh, I love that.

[C]

I love that.

[D]

Because if you say that to one person, the next person would wonder why you hadn't said it to her. And all of us, we're back in defended ego or fragility. We want to still move towards what. What actually is guiding our spirit, our soul. How do we talk to ourselves between the layers? And so. So you asked me a question.

[B]

No, that's okay. No, that's okay. I love the direction you took it in. So to that end, what I would ask is, did your background as a playwright inform you to the value of writing? Did you decide that the catharsis of writing is more transformative than, for instance, verbal speech? Did you decide that the value of writing was somehow something that accessed principles that people might have recorded somewhere of healing, principles of growth and development that they can't access through any other method, whether that's interpretive dance, if that's speech, if that's playing musical instrument. Do you feel because of your history as a playwright and perhaps through other avenues of the written word, that you've explored that writing is, in its own right, a special tool, a special vehicle for catharsis, healing or growth?

[D]

I love that you asked that.

[C]

And I can.

[D]

I immediately thought of. In the third grade, I got a. A little paperback and from my teacher who given us an assignment on the top of the page, it said too much Dialogue. So the. Of that can't. Can't really be under. Overstated because now that's what I had a talent in.

[B]

Right.

[C]

Encouragement in so much of our schooling.

[D]

Is to be a generalist and to not sort of identify the specialness of some of the things we're prone to do more of. So one of the things. And that I also resisted always as a playwright, opening plays in large venues, you know, being reviewed by the Times, the Tribune, you know, whatever paper was large, very vulnerable feedback, like. I mean, I was vulnerable to. To feedback from those, you know, important arbiters of taste and culture. And I thought, wouldn't it be fun?

[C]

Wouldn't it be freeing not to have.

[D]

So much feedback all the time?

[B]

Of course.

[D]

So I could explore more, not be.

[C]

Sharply rebuked or touted, you know, one.

[D]

Or the other, this extremity of opinion control, so much of my own business, the life and business of my plays. Because ultimately what I discovered is I was trying to say something.

[C]

I may not say it perfectly.

[D]

I don't think that's necessarily the goal, especially in my workshops. Right. We're not trying to, you know, nail anything we're trying to explain for ourselves on paper. We're trying to stabilize hectic thinking, frightened thinking, hijacked emotion sometimes, especially when it's interrupted by loss or GRE Or. Or grief, death, crisis. And start to slow us down enough to hear ourselves bond, engage with ourselves, you know, a little less fearless fear, fearfully, because we're not having to do it. So we get an A. So we get approval. So we are understood. We're trying to very mercifully engage ourselves.

[B]

With great forgiveness and great kindness. I want to circle back. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

[C]

Yeah, with kindness. I like that.

[D]

With mercy for all that we've been through.

[C]

With mercy and compassion for all that we've all been through.

[D]

Because there's nobody on the planet who.

[C]

Gets to live a longish life. Even they have to live a long life before they understand that challenge, crisis.

[D]

Interruption, disappearance is part of the human experience.

[B]

It absolutely is. I think loss is what makes the human condition as unique as it is. No two people will lose the same way. We might gain the same way. But the loss is what sets. Separates us and sometimes dignifies us. To that end, I'll circle back to the detail you brought up about the women who were writing in the workshop, where you don't want to necessarily applaud or obviously criticize any one or another agent. That is to say, each one of them is Independent and their work is treated neutrally. Is that neutral approach? Because I got a sense of this when you were discussing writing in school. And of course, writing in a way that would have you possibly anxious over what critics might say regarding your work on Broadway. Do you believe that in these neutral environments the exercise of writing is somehow more cleansing, more valuable? Have you seen specific instances where people come to you and said, I like that in these workshops I'm writing without judgment and therefore may be capable of exposing things to myself and the people around me that I never thought I could verbally or I never thought I could in any other medium of art, whether that's interpretive dance, that's musical instruments, sculpture, painting, etc, beautifully said.

[D]

Absolutely. So I have found that there is.

[C]

I can't think of one example. I can't literally can't think of one.

[D]

Example of a person writing in these workshops that hasn't moved me and changed some part of my own awareness of what we all are balancing. We're all trying to discover and recover within ourselves. And the other thing about the group, because we don't interrupt each other, we don't laugh, people might cry quietly or be moved, but because we don't just react, we hold the space in a kind of holy way. We deeply witness each other. We're listening without needing to prepare to speak, which is a really big relief.

[B]

It is, it is.

[C]

We're just listening as if you're just leaning in to listen intently. And they don't have to worry that you're about to interrupt them.

[D]

And so they're not even interrupted by their own concern that they're about to be interrupted.

[C]

They just begin to settle down in the.

[D]

The experience of deep listening and witnessing.

[C]

And they start to expose, explore and.

[D]

Expose themselves, first to themselves and then to one another.

[C]

And it is so moving it for me.

[D]

I mean, I'm always made new. I. Deeply listening to another person's life experience. The written word for me is more moving than even, you know, the spoken word for me. So. So we have this.

[C]

And inevitably people are like, you thought that, I thought that you felt that way, I felt that way. And we hold that until the very end. Right. So there's a shared humanity that's hard to. It's hard to resist, it's hard to be.

[D]

This is my special story.

[C]

And nobody's ever felt it.

[D]

When you see that other people maybe.

[C]

Don'T have the exact same story, but definitely it can evoke some of the same deep emotion.

[B]

Absolutely, absolutely. One of the things that I'M reminded of when I consider not only the testimonials that I know many of your clients have, have given you, trying to explain the amount of healing you've got to them, but then to hear you speak about this, there is an undercurrent of psychiatric awareness. The idea that somehow you can functionally offer catharsis to the unconscious mind or to the conscious mind in a way that is unique through writing rather than through speech. I have to ask only out of curiosity, is this because in your own life you found one great psychologist's writings or another that led you to the idea, I want to have catharsis, but I'm not sure how to put myself in that flow. And you landed on writing, which of course was natural to you. This was your instinct. You were writing very early on. You come from a family of brilliant writers, so the idea of writing wasn't foreign to you. But putting it into the context of a therapeutic model, I would love to know what the catalyst for that in particular was.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

And if it came from nothing else, if it was just your innovation, I'd love to hear that too.

[C]

Well, some of it was my innovation in that I just wanted to be.

[D]

In and create an atmosphere where there.

[C]

Wasn'T so much feedback all the time. It wasn't so much, oh, I identify with that.

[D]

Oh, I really.

[C]

It just gets so colloquial and so casual that I. I can't always tell what's.

[D]

What's unique. It starts to get all general. And I just also always was lit by the energy that words could carry. So, of course, you know, I grew up in a family that was very prolific producers of not for profit theater. And I saw a lot of plays.

[C]

My mom was an actress.

[D]

Her best friends were actors. My uncle was a producer at Lincoln center and the New York Shakespeare Festival.

[C]

I must have seen 100 plays by.

[D]

The time I was, you know, 22. So language was moving to me and I could feel goosebumps sometimes just sitting in a dark theater listening to extraordinary language.

[C]

It didn't have to be pretty.

[D]

And that's something I even established early on in the workshops.

[C]

People often say to me, I can't write.

[D]

I was never a writer.

[C]

I mean, literally, here's the pen. This is your hand.

[D]

You can write. Maybe somebody told you it's, it's so. It's so it's only for writers, but it's not.

[C]

It's. It's for all of us. I've seen more extraordinary writing come out.

[D]

Of the, you know, of the Mouths, hands, you know, thoughts of people who.

[C]

Have no writing.

[D]

Training. You don't need to be trained to write a letter to yourself or to write yourself down.

[C]

No training necessary. This is a huge relief.

[D]

We have so much to say. We've noticed so much more than we can speak casually.

[B]

Absolutely no.

[C]

And people would say the Barry mission, and, you know, it's a Christian mission.

[D]

So they're very Bible friendly. And so oftentimes they would start. They would start their share by saying something like, I don't know, maybe today my writing is a little dark.

[C]

And I said, what light ever came, including in the Bible, from something that wasn't dark first? I mean, and what story did you ever want to read that didn't have enormous conflict in it?

[D]

I mean, that almost disqualifies itself if.

[C]

It doesn't have conflict, if the stakes aren't really high, if we're not going.

[D]

To save a life or someone else's life or make a meaning from some important, you know, occurrence. And I often say, and this was.

[C]

True for me, I might have heard.

[D]

Richard Rohr talk about this, or maybe it was Joseph Campbell, who clearly had an influence on my life.

[C]

But the crucifixion itself, the crucifixion gets a lot of attention.

[D]

The Ascension is the story, you know, of ev.

[C]

Of.

[D]

Of. Of transformation. So when I would say that to.

[C]

The women, like, would you even be interested in the Bible if it didn't.

[D]

Have a lot of conflict and darkness.

[C]

And challenge and betrayal?

[D]

I mean, these are, this is, this is what we're trying to expose to ourselves.

[C]

Not only what's.

[D]

What's good about us, but what we've endured and come through the other side of.

[C]

We've done a lot more than people.

[D]

Really know how to identify. I don't think I was ever in a therapist's office. Well, maybe that's not true. Where they identified how much strength it took to be the caregiver of my soulmate.

[C]

That they didn't know how to say or identify in language beautiful enough how much love was given and received and how much care and devotion was, Was made, was.

[D]

Was engendered.

[C]

And that care and devotion gave me the strength to carry on even after he died, knowing that I was the beneficiary of that much care and devotion from him. Giving it to him just made the.

[D]

Circle even more meaningful to me.

[C]

I needed language like that to bring me alive after his death. And so I. I couldn't always find it in therapeutics sort of rooms.

[B]

Right.

[C]

And I found it More on paper.

[B]

And you could give it to yourself on paper by obviously exercising not only your skills as a writer, but your experiences as you had them, describing them.

[C]

Along listening to other people. Yeah, for sure. Transforming one little layer, one atom at a time. What Walt Whitman says, for every atom belonging to you as good, evil belongs to me. That's the beginning of Song of Myself. And that absolutely was true. Each word was like an atom that was offered to me and offered to the room that would re. Engage us with our tenderhearted selves.

[B]

That's fantastic.

[C]

Yeah. Pull us out of. Out of just survival mode.

[B]

Just survive, which is where a lot of people end up finding themselves after a tragedy, trying to survive. Because the difficulty of losing a loved one or a breadwinner or a parent or a child is so heartbreaking that it leaves them bereft of understanding, not really knowing where to find their center. So the survival mode kind of gives them a bit of an amnesia, I find. I love this, and I have to.

[C]

Say that I love that you just said that kind of amnesia. Right. You have almost soul amnesia. And I think there's, like, language amnesia because language can transform us. Words have energies better. Words can be better, make better listeners.

[B]

Absolutely. They absolutely do. As strange as it may seem, I believe that your take on this method of therapy, especially for him and grief, really is very innovative. There aren't a lot of people in your space. There are people who are doing these workshops who are prescribing this method, not in a way that the public is widely aware of. So that makes me wonder about the interior consciousness that you walk around with and what shaped that. I always try to go back to inspirational pieces that people were brought up with or born with in their family culture or the arts and literature that they were exposed to you. Now, you did mention saying that for many years you were constantly going to plays. Was there one that you could see, say, absolutely shaped your path and that you can reflect on today, especially with the kind of healing you brought to others that you think really shaped your attitude towards what grief is, what healing is, what catharsis is, and what you're delivering to the people who come to you?

[C]

Good question. Well, I was supposed Edward Alby, who was such extraordinary a master of language, and that language could be the carrier of so much content of a person and character and that each person who spoke in his plays was themselves and not the other person. They didn't sound alike. And something about, I guess, which one of his plays would have had the most effect on me. I suppose. I mean, when I saw who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the complexity of those characters reminded me of some of the people that I lived with.

[B]

Me too.

[C]

For better, for worse, wonderfully complicated people. And until I saw his plays, I didn't always know how to approach them. You know, they could be sort of so overwhelming that I kind of stood back and as I got older and found that dramatists like Edward Albe, Arthur Miller, of course, Shakespeare, but I understood Shakespeare because the poetry of Shakespeare, especially around love, was so extreme, almost like worth swooning over.

[D]

Those were.

[C]

That was the beginning of my attraction.

[D]

To.

[C]

Beautiful or considered language that I felt that it. Language had energies. And that energies could change you. And also Edward Albee, Arthur Miller. I'm trying to think of Lorraine Hansberry for sure. Oh, my God. I'm thinking Raisin in the sun and how moved I was by that Tennessee Williams. So I would say then Streetcar Named Desire, because I had a massive crush on Marlon Brando. But Streetcar Desire had Blanche dubois as a character who was fragile and frantic. She was scared and scary. She was vulnerable and a liar. She was lying to herself. And so it seemed that she had to lie.

[D]

To others so they wouldn't.

[C]

Confront her because she was so fragile. So those characteristics of somebody like that reminded me of people in primary members of my family. Yet in watching Blanche, I really felt for her. It felt like she was trapped in her own complexity and in. In feeling. And I have goosebumps while I'm thinking about it, because his. His language, his care first to also discover himself and what he'd been through. Right? He's doing that on paper now. He's actually doing a service for all of us. But somebody like Blanche and even the position that her sister was in trying to, you know, accommodate this complex, needy, fragile, spectacular person also so that all these contradictions could live within one person. I found that to be extremely. It gave me a way to love people that were in my family that were sometimes so complicated I couldn't understand them, but I couldn't understand them, but I could still love them.

[B]

That's fantastic. I love that.

[C]

That's what drama gave me, gave me an invitation into the complexity of people who were neither bad nor good all the time. They were both, often simultaneously.

[B]

That's fantastic. So do you think that in the instance of Bunch dubois, the complexity and contrarianism that she exhibits, obviously something that you found resonating with a primary member of your family gave you insight into navigating similar personality types, identifying perhaps traits within yourself. And then carrying that a step further into this method you've developed of getting people to write about their grief. Do you believe that, based on the Blanche archetype, if I can use that word loosely, everyone possesses within themselves the kinds of contradictory points or contrarian natures that won't really find a home until they're explained. This explanation being through writing, this explanation being through the written word, because of the value and the weight that you attach to it.

[C]

Well, I love that. I love your questions.

[B]

Thank you.

[C]

They're so incisive. And they also have a wonderful way of trading energy with me, you know, which is really, really part of what I love to do, which is why I was a playwright. But now I get to do it even more intimately, one person at a time, 10 people at a time. You said something about explaining, I think, one of the wonderful things we can do on paper, especially when we're not tasked to make it look pretty or nice or full sentences, and I'm going to say something about that in a minute.

[B]

We're.

[C]

We're inviting people to explore and not necessarily even explain themselves to themselves. We're just exploring our contradictions. We're exploring. Like, for instance, one of my teachers who was working, doing. And I mentioned Byron and Katie had a huge influence on my. On my.

[D]

On.

[C]

And the work that she offers people, you know, without being kind of the. The leader or the one to follow. She's inviting people to do work on paper, to explore themselves and stressful thoughts on paper. So this is very meaningful to me because there were ways that beliefs we hold about who we think we're supposed to be, especially around grief. There's a lot of cultural inheritance, inherited thoughts about, I was supposed to have this much time grieving and no more than that, and then I should move on and I should be okay. Meantime, grief is such a rugged territory. I often say it's not a feeling, it's a frontier, because it's like climbing into a covered wagon in the dust.

[D]

And dirt and rain and throng of.

[C]

The elements and carrying on and going somewhere unfamiliar.

[B]

Right.

[C]

You know, often without reassurance of what you were going to find. But the journey had. The journey of life has adventure in it. And it has. It kind of requires a. A ruggedness.

[B]

It does.

[C]

And so. And it. And it isn't. It can't be. It. It's not met with cliche. And it. And I. That's why I love to invite people to write themselves down because their complexity is kind of a mercy to themselves because they can say, ah, that's complicated. Maybe I'll go a little deeper in there, see what I believe, not what somebody told me to believe. What. What's true for me, what makes me interesting to me. How can I. Yeah, how. How can I find myself fascinating enough to discover and recover the parts of me that seem underwater so I can bring them up and out and maybe with that kind of discovery, discovery, feel resilience emerging within me. Appetite, wonder, awe.

[B]

So that's a really valuable point. Do you believe that this journey of self discovery that writing provides a person with is necessarily a catharsis, as Cathars tharsis is, or something that distracts them from the pain or the grief that they're going through sufficiently that they can heal?

[C]

I don't know that they're distracted. I think that is. So that creativity is a. A way to.

[D]

Is.

[C]

Is resilience. Creativity is resilience for me. I mean, especially because in our groups.

[D]

And it's designed this way, we get to explore.

[C]

Like, for instance, let me give a good solid example. A lot of times we'll say, I'm so depressed. I'm so depressed I can't move. I'm just depressed. And they've taken this expression we use so much in our culture. I'm depressed, I have no energy. I don't want to do anything. But if you really break it down, you might be depressed. But then the phone rings and. And somebody calls you, and then your child calls and you're eager to talk to them, or you look out a window and you see a beautiful expanse of flowers or one flower or something that calls your attention to it or bird. So that if we slow down enough and pay attention to some of the details and how those details move in on our spirit and our awareness, we might discover, oh, we're not unilaterally depressed. We're not unilaterally anything. Just like grief doesn't come to stay, it comes to pass, to come again, to pass again, to come again.

[D]

And the more fluid we are with.

[C]

All these natural circumstance, like an ebbing tide that never stops. So are we part of that process of coming and going and coming and going on so many levels and that makes, you know, movement possible. So we're not static, not this one.

[B]

Thing, oppression, constantly flu.

[C]

Thing called grief. We're in love, a lot of love and grief. And so. So sometimes we write about that love and it's so alive within us when we get to write about the details of that love, even just writing about it can bring us alive. And then when you're writing about it with a lot of other people who've lost people, you realize, oh, you are not alone. As a matter of fact, in community with others going through similar things in a vibrant way, can we restore, you know, our own kind of heartbeat, our own interest in life?

[B]

Beautiful. That's fantastic. And I do believe that's a great tool for others who don't have it in their toolbox. That being said, you've spent years studying grief and obviously suffering it yourself. Is there anything you've come across that for you, at the very least, has been truly fascinating, something that you never expected to learn about grief as a process or something that you recognize was. Was transformative but never got the credit that it deserved for being transformative?

[C]

Okay. Yes. I found, especially working with others, that one amazing thing about grief, loss, death, is you start to ask really great questions. David White, the poet philosopher, calls it. You invite yourself to ask beautiful questions. A beautiful question almost doesn't need an answer. It almost makes space for itself. And that spaciousness is even a relief. It makes us all philosophers. It makes us ask beautiful questions. What am I doing with my life? How. Who. Who am I today versus yesterday? What's being asked of. Of me? Not just why me, right.

[D]

But why am I still here?

[C]

What have I. What.

[B]

What.

[C]

What should I do more of what attracts me? What about love? Where does it go? You know, is it gone? Is it here? You know, so it's so many great questions. You. You almost don't need the answers. But, but you can ask your own questions and then gradually, gradually, you know, begin to suggest an answer could be different tomorrow. You know, the fluidity of a good. The fluidity of life is often overlooked.

[B]

It is.

[C]

And so it really is.

[D]

It's such a journey.

[C]

I mean, I like Frontier because for me it's like, let's go, horsey, you know, keep going. Let's go. Where are we going? No, it's. It's. There's more to it than sometimes the flat, the flattest language permits. So, for instance, with that in mind, the beautiful question, the miracles around death, pay attention because I think that spirit wants in. When death arrives, there's, I always say, look out for the miracles. You know, people say, I found this feather, or whatever the miracles are, they're inevitably miracles. Right. You hear it all the time.

[B]

I do, but.

[C]

Right all the time. So how do we grow our awareness so that we can be more intrigued by those dimensions now as they dimensionalize us and bring us, as I said, they bring us to life. They bring us alive. Yeah, I love that.

[B]

You know, the idea that the beautiful question as a tool can help us derail the depression that uses grief as a vehicle is a wonderful model that I'm sure a lot of your clients and many people who have acted as participants in your workshops have come to find more useful than anything they've gotten from their psychiatrists or maybe from the grief counselors at their local parish or temple. Do you believe in that conversation regarding what community brings to a person's group grieving, that your personal community, in the form of your family or your personal religious tradition, offered you any cultural myths, folktales, stories that you could identify with as you were grieving? That in your own growth and in your own healing, you understood yourself as externalizing your identity through. A great example might be someone. Someone who ends up losing, let's say, a child. And they look at the Pieta, seeing the Madonna's loss of Christ, thinking how beautiful that piece of art really yields. The feeling of loss, the sensation of grief. Was there anything that was offered to you that you said, I see myself in this, and therefore work through that to find my healing, to find my. My closure or my best.

[C]

I don't know. I've Just one word. I don't know that I ever even want to find closure. I'll say that I don't know that closure is a goal for me. I don't even expect it, just as I don't expect healing. Now, talking to you is healing, right? Because I'm alive in it. I feel alive when I feel. When I'm noticing anybody's aliveness, I feel healed. I feel called into life. So images often. And you'll see I'm surrounded by them. I mean, here's. Here is the. This is a. I don't know if you can see it. Maybe. Yeah, it's a. It's. It's in my. I was raised in a Greek Orthodox. Greek Orthodox background, and the liturgy wasn't as important as some of the rituals. And one of the rituals is that you light candles for the dead, and you light a candle for each one, and they inevitably get put in this sort of. I don't know what this is called. It's like a little sand pit, and they all start to kind of. You know, there's this family of candles, and they're bending under the. Under the fire of each other's heat, and there's something. So, you know, it's like a metaphor. They Burn bright and they burn out and they kind of like. And then they become the place where we put other candles, you know, so. So I'm always looking at imagery and myth. Certainly, you know, for me, the crucifixion, ascens, Ascension is such an important myth that we rise from the ashes of our old thoughts. You know, of too much inherited flat language that we rise out of it un. Not understanding what even happened, just accepting that something extraordinary happened and. And keeps happening continuously.

[B]

It's really magical that you don't feel the need or really even the value in closure, because more often than not the thinking is closure is what's required to give a finality to grief. What I hear you saying is that you are seeing the strength and the virtue, the value in continuing with grief and allowing that transformative process to unfold in perpetuity throughout the entirety of your life. You also reference Joseph Campbell earlier and in so I'm now comparing that to this notion you've presented of looking at the ritual lighting candles for the dead, then disposing of these candles as somehow symbolizing or acting as a metaphor for the family, the community, the continuation of practices and ideas and events that unfold from lifetime to lifetime to lifetime. In this.

[D]

Can I.

[C]

Can I say something about that? I like to encourage in myself that I. And we all have this potential to create that which is sacred to us like that. That's sacred. So when I smell frankincense, for instance, because I grew up smelling it in.

[D]

Church and seeing the priest do this, this, this. The sound of the bells or the.

[C]

Clink, the clinking, and, and, and the, and the, the incense immediately can distill me. And I feel very. I. I feel that for me there's a holiness in that. And I'll take it. Like, I don't actually have to go to church to feel that. I can feel that I can burn incense in my own home and I might get that I can create my own holy space. I do it in the workshops. And I think all of us can do that originally, as originally as we want to do it. Once early on, when I was right after my husband died and I felt very. There were so many images that were disturbing, beautiful and disturbing, but I was very focused on the disturbing ones. And they were kind of a little haunting to me. And so I went to a therapist and the therapist said, oh, what stage of grief are you in? And I said, I really tried to answer the question before. I thought I should have an answer. I thought, do I have an answer? Her I said, what stage of grief? I. I'd heard about the whole Elizabeth Kubler Ross stages of denial around a diagnosis. And I, I know that that's been misappropriated in, in to. To grief. But that said, I said to myself, I am in a stage. And I said, I think I'm in all stages all the time.

[B]

Wow.

[C]

And that was the most true thing that I could say. I stopped to think about it and then I thought, I wonder if she's had a primary loss. Because I don't know too many people that primary losses or are in fresh grief that could actually decide to be in a stage of grief or to even feel they had to be, you know, characterized as being in this stage. Life is too lively to be contained in some of these notions that are get, you know, sort of fed with them with the best of intentions. But that's why I like working with individuals and how are they in groups because their specialness of seeing helps other.

[D]

People.

[C]

Draw near to their own special. You know, we have our own. It's just like a writer. Right. Well, I have some writers here that I admire. Right. Here's David White, Joseph Campbell, Byron. Katie. I have this book was like a tome for me. See how worn out it is. Clarissa Pinkola Estes these books, you know, are like little mini bibles to me. I love to see how worn out they are. What I love about it is that they introduced me to qualities of my own thinking, my own originality that I could be also act as a guide to myself and. And not just employ other people words to find myself. I could find. I could use my own words.

[B]

You could do it yourself. That's fantastic. Because most people don't feel that empowered. Most individuals going through anything at all foreign to them or unique to them will seek the guidance of psychiatrist, psychologist, a grief counselor from their religious background or maybe just a friend or a family member.

[C]

Yeah, I would also say, say, I love that you said grief counselor because I also thought, I want to love counselor. I love counselor. I don't want to just agree. I want a grief counselor to also be a love counselor because the reason I'm grieving so much is because I love so much.

[B]

Absolutely. Yeah. And so a love counselor would be a better individual to guide you through what it felt like now to have all this love and a changed object of your love.

[C]

And my, my love for my husband has actually grown in dimension since he passed. I have more respect for what we. What we did together. And my son, even the other day Said at my, at the 10th anniversary of my husband's death was, was two days ago, my son called me and he said, I know it's this special day for all of us, mom, but I also want to call attention to what you've done in the past 10 years without dad. And I was so, I mean, I must, I, I really literally swooned. I thanked him so deeply and because I've helped to communicate to the boys, you know, these young men, they're not boys anymore, but I, I, I've, I've tried to inspire them to use language, to explore and expose more of themselves. First to themselves and then to others, which is what he was doing with me. You know, he was generously thanking me with language that was very, had largesse and generosity. And it was, it was really like I couldn't pass for anything more.

[B]

That was really heartwarming and I'm sure really gave you a sense of accomplishment to put at the end of all of this. Even though it hasn't ended. I know it's going to go on forever. But at this junction where you are now, with your grief and your development, in all the things that you've recognized on this journey and in the lives you've touched through your workshops and through your efforts, through your art and through your writings, what is the one thing you personally have never said out loud, but you see it as a driving force behind the things that you do, the things that you feel and you say and you externalize for the sake of art, healing or helping others.

[C]

Something that comes to mind. I may have said this once before, that phrase, mercy me. Mercy me. Oh, mercy me. I think you know that lovely phrase. So I actually think that some of the work we do is an invitation to mercy. Mercy me. Let me mercy me. I've been through so much. Let me help me to mercy me.

[B]

You know, the license to ask for pity either from yourself or, or maybe from others. That's where you feel safety can be found and, and maybe a motivation to growth.

[C]

Yeah, I guess I don't. Just because of the way I intuit pity. I think mercy is like you were talking about, you know, the way that Mary, you know, holds her child, you know, a beautiful. I take a lot of pictures of Mary's all over the world and I love, look at how they're looking at whatever they've got in their. What the child, you know, that, that they have this, this countenance of love, of, of, of activated love, of love that knows no bounds, kindness of sweetness, of Tenderness and, and something that can also tenderize a kind look. Can tenderize.

[B]

Yeah, it can.

[C]

And that is the mercy, I'm thinking.

[B]

Okay, I love that. That's fantastic. So I really appreciate you sitting with me today. This has been a fantastic conversation. I want to hear how people can find you if they're looking to join one of your workshops.

[C]

Right. They can go to makemeaning workshop.com and find the website and there's a lot of tools and different tabs they can pick from. And the schedule of my workshops will be on there. They can go to Make Meaning workshop on Instagram. There's a lot of content. I'm very proud of it. I've written every single word myself. And the imagery that the associate I work with and I.

[D]

You know, work.

[C]

Together on co create is. Is visceral and I hope affecting and I put my heart and soul in it. So come there. There's another opportunity there to find out more about my workshops. I also do a workshop called I love you but be elsewhere for people.

[D]

Who are moving through relationship struggles or.

[C]

Kinds of codependency that disallow their own inner knowing to deliver, deliver them to more peace. And so we, we just call their own knowing on paper, you know. Yeah.

[B]

Fantastic. So the number one that you'd probably love everyone to visit is the Instagram. I know that's where I look up a lot of your wonderful quotes and some of the testimonials that are really heart wrenching, but this is AT Make Meaning Work AT Make Meaning.

[D]

No, it's.

[C]

I guess you could just write Make Meaning Workshop.

[D]

You know, you don't always need the.

[C]

At single, but symbol. Make Meaning workshop will come up on Instagram right away as it will Make Meaning workshop dot com.

[B]

Yeah, anyway, yeah, these days AI figures it out for you, doesn't it?

[C]

So, yeah, it's pretty simple. Make Meaning Workshop will get you to Make Meaning Workshop on either of those platforms.

[B]

Yeah, I. I adore that and I adore you. Alexander, thank you so much for sitting with me today. Your guidance is refreshing in a world of otherwise very grim looking views. So I thank you for not only the healing you bring to others, but the wisdom that you've granted to the people who have had the benefit of being in your presence. Thank you so much. And I will hope to speak to you again. Oh, absolutely. Hopefully we'll have a chance to speak to you again soon.

[C]

Okay, me too.

[B]

Cheers.

[A]

In today's episode, we discovered that the grieving process is not universal. The work of thinkers like Elizabeth Kubler Ross, have sometimes been distorted and misused by those who mean well but might not understand or properly empathize with those.

[B]

They are given counsel to.

[A]

What we must understand is that through the process of grief and grieving, we are constantly re exposing ourselves to the initial trauma and therefore growing in sometimes new and frightening ways through these startling moments of change and adjustment. We have to have a wide variety of tools in order to be able to to adapt quickly and survive. Sometimes what works for you isn't what's going to work for your neighbor, and what works for your neighbor might not work for your spouse. Having access to the best conceivable method isn't something that we'll ever discover until we find ourselves there. What we should consider is that everyone's journey is different and everyone's someone's healing is unique to them, like a fingerprint. Whether you can find relief from your grief quickly and easily through talk therapy or through medication, or perhaps you're left suffering under the burden for a very long time, it is important that if you want to heal from the trauma, you find not only the right method but but you achieve success through an openness to a wide variety of opportunities at discovering new ways of looking at yourself and understanding what you've been through. I personally believe that writing is a very valuable tool, and I frequently recommend journaling to many of my clients. But thinking of it in this aspect, the concept Alexandra presented us with writing in a way that is in a silent environment with no judgment and no praise is unique and refreshing. I think that there's lots to be said about the value of the written word and its use as a tool for healing. Remember, what appears unknowable often stands right before us, waiting to be observed through both the lens of science and the wisdom of spirit. Until next time. Next time. This is Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscubboard.com inviting you to look deeper into the observable unknown.

[B]

Sa.