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Navigating Grief and Healing Through Poetry with Cleo Childs
Send us a text The Wayfinder Show hosted by Luis Hernandez welcomes Cleo Childs, who discusses her spoken word poetry album 'Moving With', …
Oct. 15, 2024
Navigating Grief and Healing Through Poetry with Cleo Childs
The Wayfinder Show hosted by Luis Hernandez welcomes Cleo Childs, who discusses her spoken word poetry album 'Moving With', exploring her journey through grief after her mother's passing due to Alzheimer's. Cleo shares insights into understanding grief's uniqueness, the value of writing as a coping mechanism, and her family influence on poetry. The conversation delves into anticipatory grief and how to support others facing loss, emphasizing the importance of acknowledging grief and creating art as an expression of humanity and connection. The episode offers heartfelt advice for those supporting loved ones with Alzheimer's and showcases Cleo's personal experiences and poetry.
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Transcript
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My child's mind splintered when told my angel mother was not anointed.
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My child's mind couldn't comprehend.
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No angels or demons came to claim her.
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She was a woman completely incomplete.
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A tapestry of talents to wrap myself in.
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She didn't hang the moon.
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She swung from it, softly on a swing crafted by woodland fairies.
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Whose kitsch houses she made as a child.
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Georgia red clay flowed through her veins, coursing when catching Crick's salamanders under the watchful eye of her stick horse.
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My sister and I fell asleep to her lullabies sung by her gentle voice, rivalling chimes, rocking us as she swung above the world.
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Welcome to The Wayfinder Show with Luis Hernandez, where guests discuss the why and how of making changes that led them down a more authentic path or allow them to level up in some area of their life.
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Our goal is to dig deep and provide not only knowledge, but actionable advice to help you get from where you are to where you want to be.
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Come join us and find the way to your dream life.
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Welcome back to The Wayfinder Show.
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I'm your host, Louis Hernandez.
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And today we have Miss Cleo Childs with us.
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Cleo just released her spoken word poetry album Moving With on May 15th.
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This album is a culmination of two and a half years of writing about the journey of grief she experienced after losing her mom to Alzheimer's when she was 28 years old.
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Her mother was an English major in college and her grandmother, who is also one of her editors, was an English teacher for 30 years, so she came by her grief processing tool of writing poetry naturally.
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With this spoken word poetry album, she hopes to show the path her grief took from having her mother, losing her mother, and the peace and acceptance she feels now.
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She also hopes to give an authentic and honest look at what grief felt like so other people going through grief don't feel alone and feel community in their grief.
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Cleo, welcome to the Wayfinder show.
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Hi, I'm happy to be here.
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Yeah, thank you.
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I really I was really excited when I saw you come through requesting to be in a Wayfinder show because this is a topic that we don't usually talk about but it's a very adult topic, right?
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We all have to deal with it and we all have different ways of dealing with it.
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And I know for me personally, it's a very uncomfortable one.
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Just grief is just something I've never, I've never learned how to deal with, really.
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And so I'm hoping that you'll help us.
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Yeah.
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Well, I think that there's no, there's no one way to deal with it.
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And I think too, is that there are, it's so individual that it's really, if anyone gives advice, I would say to really just take advice also with a grain of salt when it comes to grief, because grief is so individual.
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But I think that the people that have gone forward and kind of work, who have moved with grief, which is what I am.
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And I know many other people have, you know, I think that we can be able to try to do our best to help to ease the path of other people that, you know, find themselves on the path of grief, but grief is so specific.
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It's so individual.
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And I had no idea about that, but before I went through grief, I had to deal with anticipatory grief, which is, cause my, I got, my mom got diagnosed and I was 21.
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So I lost her over the course.
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And then she passed away suddenly in 28.
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So I had to deal with unexpected grief because she was supposed to have two more years of life expectancy.
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But I think that, you know, when you're, when you're asking me and to all the listeners is, you know, how to deal with grief, it's so individual.
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And I think that there is no one way.
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There is no right way.
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There's just a way in your way.
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And I think that the people that have kind of gone there first can explain and tell about their journey I think the best you can do is hope to ease the path of someone that's on it because it is so individual.
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And once you're in your grief journey, there's nothing anyone could do to fix it, to make it better.
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But I think that what people can do is really just to figure out how to sit with you in your grief.
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And to make it maybe to ease the path that you're on.
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But it's not one that anyone can tell you how preemptively how to deal with it because it's so individual to each person.
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Yeah, you know, I think my discomfort mostly lies in how to acknowledge grief for others, when you're going through it.
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So I, I, I'm very good at dealing, I think, with my own problems in general, but when it's for other people, I feel like, I want to express my sympathy.
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However, I don't know how to do it, especially when it comes to something like this in a way that, comes off, without hurting the other.
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I think that one of the biggest misconceptions is that you can make it worse.
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Acknowledging it is so important because I think the discomfort lies and when there's discomfort, a lot of people go, well, I don't know what to do, so I'm going to do nothing.
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And then the person that's grieving goes, well, this huge thing happened to me and no one is acknowledging it.
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And that makes people feel isolated and alone, or at least it did for me, the greatest thing that someone ever did, which is what I do to anyone that's going through grief.
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I say, I can't do anything to make it better.
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I am so sorry that this happened to you.
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I'm here to love and support you.
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I send them food because when I forgot, someone sent me food, I forgot to eat.
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The first thing when, when I went through grief, my coworkers, my sweet coworker, Katie, she sent me a gift card for food.
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Because I forgot to eat, like it never even occurred to me.
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So I, since I want to get part to eat.
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And then the nicest thing, two of my friends did is they said, anytime you want to talk about your mom, I would love to learn about who she was and who she is anytime I would talk about her, because when you're going through grief and there's this level of discomfort around it.
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It becomes almost like a taboo topic.
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The thing and the person that you love that you just lost is kind of off limits.
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And that's the one person and the thing that's always on your mind, particularly in the early stages of grief.
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I can speak for myself.
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And so to have two friends come and just say, you know, anytime you want to talk about her.
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I'm happy to listen and happy to learn and to sit with you and to listen to you and hold space for me was one of the most valuable things that could have that they gave me was just the gift of holding space and sitting with me and allowing me to sit and to feel and holding that space for me.
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Wow.
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That's so good.
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Thank you.
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Thank you.
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As soon as you said that, it just, a lot of light bulbs started going off.
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That's great because you, it's just always good to have that tool.
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You know, to be able to know how to, react in a certain situation like that, because it can be so uncomfortable.
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Everyone.
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And it's just, the thing is, is that, you know, there's nothing you can bring up.
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It's always on someone's mind, particularly if it's new grief, at least I can speak to me was, it was on my mind and everyone's like, Oh, I don't want to bring it up.
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It's already done.
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I'm already thinking about what I don't want is what kind of happened or I think the inclination is, you know, to feel like she's off limits to people like I can't talk about because people don't know what to do.
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When the number one thing I want to do sometimes is to talk about her because I'm missing her and To have that space and just to offer it right.
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It's up for someone to take up on the offer, but to know that your safe space that they can go to and to feel like you if you have the capability and the capacity to hold space for someone to offer that to someone and to truly mean it and to say, you know, anytime you want to talk about them.
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Just having that is like a sounding board.
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Was the most helpful thing to me because then two people I could be able to say, Hey, I'm really missing mom.
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Do you mind if I talk about her?
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And they're like, yeah, absolutely.
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I'd love to listen to her.
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I'd love to learn about her.
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That was the most, that was the nicest kind of thing.
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So I always do that to people now.
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I love that.
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Well, with that in mind, tell us about your mother.
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Oh, she's wonderful.
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I have the most wonderful mother in the whole world.
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Her name is Candace.
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And my mother was an English major from the University of Georgia.
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She had fiery red hair and she was very soft spoken.
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And she's a very kind person when she passed, everyone said, you know, Oh, your mother is such a kind woman.
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And I think that is like the nicest thing that you could ever hope to hear about yourself or to hear about someone you love when they pass as everyone says that she's so kind.
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And I think that I never really understood my mother growing up.
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I can't, because she was a person that was soft spoken.
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She was a peacekeeper.
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She was, a person that really was.
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More okay with being a wallflower and allowing other people to take up space and being able to kind of take a backseat.
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And so it was all these things that I thought I was told were not strength.
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I was told that I kind of viewed her as weakness.
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I viewed it as weakness a little bit truthfully.
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And as I've grown up, I realized that there is strength and kindness and strength and gentleness and there's strength.
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And being able to take a back seat and knowing when to speak, you know, and not talk, you know, she knew when to speak and to say her bit, but she didn't feel the need to talk all the time about it, and that took a level of wisdom that I didn't recognize growing up.
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And so, you know, in the, one of the poems I say at the very end is I wish I could tell you what I know now.
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I wish I could hear you forgive me somehow, because, and to, you know, forgive and to let her know that I think I understand her better, but I think it took me being an adult really, and growing up and also being able to kind of grieve not having her in the way that I'm used to having her that a, I really began to understand my mother, in a way that I just didn't when I had her, because, you know, I was 21 when she got diagnosed and then it was downhill from there, but.
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She's wonderful.
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I'm so grateful for my mother.
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I have the most wonderful mother.
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Is, is there something you wish you could tell her now if she was still alive, outside of what you said in your poem?
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I'm thinking, I'm happy.
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She only wanted my happiness.
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Yeah.
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And I would just tell her that I'm happy.
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I think as a parent, that's probably what we would want the most for our kids, right?
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So, I think she'd be very grateful to hear that.
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She always wanted my happiness, and I would just let her know that I'm happy.
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So, you know, if we can, uh, go a little deeper into this.
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My, my mother, she lived with us for some time, about five years ago, and I had to put her in a home.
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She, she has dementia, borderline Alzheimer's, beginning of Alzheimer's.
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And, you know, I heard this saying, when I started taking care of my mother, which I learned to understand, you know, when you have a parent or a loved one with Alzheimer's or dementia that, you know, you lose them twice.
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Mm hmm.
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And, it's very true, right?
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You're watching them, lose weight.
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Their spirit, essentially, of who they are and who you love over that time.
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And then eventually you lose them physically as well.
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Can you talk about that process, that grieving process?
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Because it's an ongoing, longer process as well, right?
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Oh, it's anticipatory grief.
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It's a thing of, You are losing.
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And so I'm writing a book to expand on this, of this idea of what I put in the album.
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And so, but it is the process of losing who they, who you knew them to be and who you, the essential part of them.
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And it's learning about who they are now.
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And then there's different phases and stages that are really difficult with going through, at least with Alzheimer's, we did it with ours, but there are certain stages.
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Stages that seem to be universal, like there's a stage where they get kind of aggressive, which is my mother was very, very peaceful.
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So for her to be aggressive was a really jarring thing, but apparently it can be a common symptom that people go through I think that, going through the anger, but I understand the anger because it's the loss of independence that they have, right.
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That's something that's happening to them.
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So like when my mom, when we had to take her car away, because there wasn't a, she would be liable if she got into an accident and she didn't want to hurt anyone.
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My mother was the nicest, sweetest, kindest, most gentle person in the whole world.
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She wouldn't want to hurt anyone, but she was a liability at this point.
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So we had to take a car away.
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That was an incredibly difficult situation.
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And, you know, I think that it is challenging and there is, and all you can do, or all we could do, and all I would say is in an uncertain situation with no roadmap, basically, because everything's so individual, give yourself grace because you are doing the best that you can do.
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And it is hard.
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A, it is hard.
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Acknowledge it's hard.
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B, give yourself grace.
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that you are doing the best that you can do in a hard situation with someone that you love.
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Everything about this is hard.
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Nothing about this is easy.
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And see, I would say, just enjoy them, learn how to just swallow them.
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That's what I did because I knew that every day was going to be the best day that was going to have with her because it was degenerative.
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And I just swallowed my mother and I made memories that I carried, but I made them intentionally because I knew that those were the memories that were going to carry me.
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When I look back on my journey of losing her over time, I know that there's the hard, but I know that I'm so grateful that I chose to intentionally create the good.
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And I would say, You know, find out ways to still have joy together and also laugh because sometimes things are funny, you know, they're doing something and it's kind of funny and they can laugh too, you know, we're all humans.
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And so I think that, you know, figure out how to swallow them, still find the joy because there's still joy to be found and, and just create those memories so that you have good ones too.
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And that it's not all bad and learn how to laugh when there's something to laugh at.
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Because there's still joy in the human experience.
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There's still joy.
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And that's what I would say.
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Yeah.
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You know, I'm tempted to share a funny story from when my mom was with us.
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You okay with that?
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Of course, yeah, I have lots of them.
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Yeah, so, you know when I first took her in again This is like it's now been about seven years ago when I first took her in I didn't realize I didn't understand The illness or her limitations or I just still remembered my mother had i'd been away from my mother for 30 years and I just saw her as this powerful little woman, right?
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She's little she's like four feet 10 you know four feet nine maybe even and but she's just I mean, she's super intelligent, kind, like you said, generous, helpful, just a strong, strong, strong woman.
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And so I just remember her that way all the time, right?
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Very capable.
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So when I took her in, I was like, I was still working and I'm thinking, okay, I'll just prepare some food for her.
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And, and, uh, and she can just warm it up in a microwave and eat when it's time for her.
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Right.
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And, so we prepare.
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It was joyful, like we prepared all these meals and we put them in mason jars, getting them ready, you know, and I gave her a couple of jobs because she felt like she needed to work.
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Right.
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So one of them was, cleaning the dishes and the other one was feeding the dog.
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Right.
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So I get home from work and I'm looking, I'm like, huh, the mason jars are all full.
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I wonder what's wrong there.
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And then I look at the dog food and it was empty.
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She confused the dog food with her food.
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And then, you know, she doesn't know English.
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She was Spanish.
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She was like, kind of sad.
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Like, yeah, I thought it tasted a little bland.
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It was just so funny.
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I hate to laugh at, you know, I haven't had had my mother dog food, essentially.
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But, you know, there's a funny story that we all laugh at in the family now.
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I mean, there's still laughter and there's still life to be had, you know, and I did it like my mom, I used to give her little tasks all the time.
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And I think the other thing too, is that was really hard for me at the beginning is to become okay with the idea that I could be a nice lady to her.
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And that would be okay with me because she didn't know who I was at the end, but I realized I'm a nice lady and she feel safe with me and she showed, and I can show her love that way, you know, and that's what also I would say is, you know, when you get to the point where they don't see it, when they don't recognize you, see if you can, Find joy and being someone they still feel safe with.
00:17:39.358 --> 00:17:42.169
And they think that you're a nice person to hang out with.
00:17:42.479 --> 00:17:44.138
So I hung out with my mom all the time.
00:17:44.138 --> 00:17:45.628
She's like, you're a very nice lady.
00:17:45.888 --> 00:17:47.709
And I was like, I am a nice lady.
00:17:48.298 --> 00:17:54.229
You know, I didn't be like, you raised me to be a nice lady, you know, but she's like, you know, you're really nice.
00:17:54.628 --> 00:17:58.288
And then she just kind of like gotten like this loop where she's like, you're a nice lady.
00:17:58.338 --> 00:18:01.878
And I was like, it didn't make every like on the 20th time of being told I'm a nice lady.
00:18:01.878 --> 00:18:02.419
I'll be honest.
00:18:02.479 --> 00:18:05.548
It was still as nice as the first time of being told that I was a nice lady.
00:18:05.989 --> 00:18:06.558
You know?
00:18:06.749 --> 00:18:07.318
And I was like, yeah.
00:18:07.989 --> 00:18:12.169
At some point it became like a, in a empowerment speech where she's like, you're a nice lady.
00:18:12.219 --> 00:18:13.969
And I'm like, I am a nice lady.
00:18:14.909 --> 00:18:15.269
Thank you.
00:18:16.179 --> 00:18:16.598
I love it.
00:18:18.108 --> 00:18:22.009
Cleo, so let's talk a little bit about your poetry and how you use that.
00:18:22.009 --> 00:18:25.259
First of all, backing up a little bit, did you have any background already?
00:18:25.259 --> 00:18:31.578
I know you said your mother and your grandmother, had experience in poetry and English literature, but how about yourself?
00:18:31.618 --> 00:18:33.659
Like, what was your background like first?
00:18:33.679 --> 00:18:35.689
I'm a darn good research paper writer.
00:18:35.689 --> 00:18:36.929
So I went to school for marketing.
00:18:37.019 --> 00:18:38.298
I was a marketer for 10 years.
00:18:39.179 --> 00:18:42.713
And I, grandma, Ooh, she put work into me.
00:18:42.963 --> 00:18:50.213
So she made me a good, really good reading English paper or English writer or research paper, English writer.
00:18:50.574 --> 00:18:56.354
And so I went through and I can write a darn good research paper, but I never wrote creatively.
00:18:56.894 --> 00:18:58.703
And then when I.
00:18:59.068 --> 00:19:04.929
After losing mom, maybe about a month later, I heard about two lines, the middle of the night in my head.
00:19:05.548 --> 00:19:10.669
And I, you know, I tried everything and I was just like, you know, fudge it.
00:19:10.669 --> 00:19:11.348
We'll just try this.
00:19:11.519 --> 00:19:18.388
So I went downstairs in the middle of the night at 2 AM and I wrote down the two lines that I heard in my head and they made it feel a little bit better.
00:19:18.388 --> 00:19:22.403
And so I just kept writing because it made it feel a little bit better.
00:19:22.403 --> 00:19:24.009
It didn't make it hurt less.
00:19:24.009 --> 00:19:26.419
It just made it feel a little bit better.
00:19:26.419 --> 00:19:28.249
So, and then I basically.
00:19:28.403 --> 00:19:33.574
Creep for, you know, for about six months, went into deep isolation, and then I just wrote.
00:19:33.913 --> 00:19:45.003
For my own sake, I never intended for it to be public, but I wrote as a way to be able to process what was happening in my body because I made the conscious decision to feel everything.
00:19:45.743 --> 00:19:49.253
I decided consciously that I wasn't going to shut myself off from any of the emotions.
00:19:49.324 --> 00:19:50.243
I think that.
00:19:51.064 --> 00:19:52.344
A lot of the emotion.
00:19:52.384 --> 00:19:57.864
I think that we think about emotions somewhat differently or wrongly potentially, or at least I did.
00:19:58.564 --> 00:20:07.773
I thought that anger and sadness and bitterness and all these things were really were wrong and I shouldn't feel them and I should feel bad for feeling them.
00:20:08.354 --> 00:20:21.513
But what I realized is that if I didn't feel anger, bitterness, sad, Mad, you know, all these things that I wouldn't feel joy and I wouldn't feel happiness and I wouldn't feel love for my mom and my dog and my husband.
00:20:21.513 --> 00:20:30.134
And I wouldn't feel friendship and camaraderie by going and shutting myself off from motions that I thought were, deemed bad.
00:20:30.374 --> 00:20:33.534
I was also shutting myself off from emotions that were deemed good.
00:20:33.933 --> 00:20:52.919
So when I was writing, I wrote for The sole purpose of being able to take what was happening inside my body and put it outside of my body so I could look at it, and I could do something productive with my time and constructive, and it would make it hurt a little bit less, and I could you know when I was looking and doing all the poetry not all of it is.
00:20:53.249 --> 00:20:58.219
All about doom and gloom and me being in grief and, you know, fudge this life and all this stuff.
00:20:58.648 --> 00:21:06.148
You know, there's a lot of ones that are also about gratitude and I'm happy today and my, my, I love my husband and I love my dog.
00:21:06.148 --> 00:21:12.798
So it's kind of by experiencing all of the emotions and not really putting judgment to them saying that they're good or bad.
00:21:12.798 --> 00:21:16.328
I was able to, you know, experience quote unquote, good emotions.
00:21:16.929 --> 00:21:20.419
And I just was able to feel everything and then process it.
00:21:20.669 --> 00:21:25.628
And then I fear experience, which I have now is peace and acceptance about my mother's death, but that took about six months.
00:21:26.078 --> 00:21:29.709
It took about, and I'm not even, you know, and I'm still moving with my grief for my mom.
00:21:29.709 --> 00:21:32.598
I'll probably never get over it because I love her so much.
00:21:32.608 --> 00:21:36.638
And I wish that she was here and I wish that I could hold her, but I can't.
00:21:36.719 --> 00:21:40.308
But I can be able to still carry her with me and experience her.
00:21:40.308 --> 00:21:44.189
By being kind to myself and to others, I am able to connect with my mom.
00:21:44.239 --> 00:21:50.269
And so I went and stopped writing after I ran into the world about six months after my mom passed.
00:21:50.278 --> 00:21:54.808
And then about two years later, I got inspired by songwriting.
00:21:54.818 --> 00:21:56.368
And so I picked up writing again.
00:21:56.368 --> 00:21:59.929
And I went to a mentorship session with an amazing producer, Jim Riley.
00:22:00.449 --> 00:22:02.919
And I was just like, here's some stuff I wrote.
00:22:02.969 --> 00:22:03.638
Can you help me?
00:22:03.659 --> 00:22:04.828
And he's like, you're amazing.
00:22:04.828 --> 00:22:05.669
And I was like, what?
00:22:05.959 --> 00:22:07.628
And I was like, I had no idea.
00:22:07.659 --> 00:22:08.888
Cause I wrote it for myself.
00:22:09.318 --> 00:22:10.459
And then he's like, I'll produce you.
00:22:10.459 --> 00:22:11.048
And I was like, what?
00:22:11.538 --> 00:22:13.598
Anyway, so then I found amazing editors.
00:22:13.598 --> 00:22:17.868
I have Sheree and Mary and my grandmother, who was 93.
00:22:17.868 --> 00:22:19.838
She's one of my editors, my maternal grandmother.
00:22:20.259 --> 00:22:26.499
And we put together this album and I released it with the hope that I felt so isolated in my grief.
00:22:26.769 --> 00:22:36.878
That if someone else could write about their honest experience, that maybe it won't make someone feel as isolated when they're going through something as I felt.
00:22:37.199 --> 00:22:40.749
And I feel like that is the only hope that I have with the album, is that.
00:22:41.229 --> 00:22:46.128
Someone can know that I sit with them metaphorically in the album.
00:22:46.548 --> 00:22:47.378
And I say, I get it.
00:22:48.108 --> 00:22:49.009
Someone gets it.
00:22:49.878 --> 00:22:54.429
And I have peace and acceptance and maybe you can too.
00:22:55.989 --> 00:22:56.368
Wow.
00:22:57.009 --> 00:23:02.689
Did, um, you, you chose poetry as your medium, right?
00:23:02.759 --> 00:23:07.903
Um, did you, did you look at, did you consider other mediums like poetry?
00:23:08.653 --> 00:23:17.034
Like you said songwriting or short stories or anything like that or did poetry just come naturally to you It was the only way that it made sense.
00:23:17.513 --> 00:23:31.334
Okay, it was it chose me I feel like I tried writing other ways but it's the only way that made sense to me was writing and poetry and I think that the creation of Art.
00:23:31.564 --> 00:23:34.013
I, I, cause I deem it more art than poetry.
00:23:34.054 --> 00:23:35.703
Cause I don't want to put a label on it really.
00:23:36.124 --> 00:23:40.584
But I thought about recently, you know, I was like, why, what is the purpose of art?
00:23:41.213 --> 00:23:44.493
Cause I'm this person that thinks about what the purpose of art is for about two days.
00:23:44.493 --> 00:23:44.713
Right.
00:23:44.713 --> 00:23:45.733
Cause that's who I am as a person.
00:23:46.124 --> 00:23:46.604
I thought about it.
00:23:46.604 --> 00:24:02.068
And I realized that what I, what my, my definition is, is that by connecting and creating from my own humanness and I own humanity, And putting it out there that someone can maybe consume it and then be connected to their humanists and their own humanity.
00:24:02.449 --> 00:24:03.798
And that is the purpose of art.
00:24:03.848 --> 00:24:08.729
And that's what I, created it with connecting to my own humanists, my own humanity.
00:24:09.209 --> 00:24:18.439
And I think that maybe, someone can, if they consume it or listen to it, that, or read it, that maybe that can connect to them, the humanists and humanity.
00:24:18.469 --> 00:24:24.459
And so I think that that's the purpose of art and that's what I hope that releasing the album will allow people to do.
00:24:26.499 --> 00:24:28.298
And did you go and perform it as well?
00:24:30.318 --> 00:24:31.338
Just released an album.
00:24:31.338 --> 00:24:33.388
And yeah, I wrote it.
00:24:33.519 --> 00:24:34.449
I got it edited.
00:24:34.798 --> 00:24:35.749
I felt really good.
00:24:35.808 --> 00:24:40.469
And then I released it with the hope that someone else may be able to not feel so alone.
00:24:40.729 --> 00:24:47.848
By talking about grief openly and honestly and about someone's grief journey and about all the facets of it, because it's so multifaceted.
00:24:48.239 --> 00:24:53.159
It's not, you know, as I say I thought that grief was like shade, like the one big shade of gray.
00:24:53.574 --> 00:24:54.104
I'm grieving.
00:24:54.864 --> 00:24:55.314
It's not.
00:24:55.713 --> 00:24:57.884
For me, at least, it was like some days I'm gray.
00:24:57.973 --> 00:24:58.854
Some days I'm light gray.
00:24:58.854 --> 00:25:00.663
Some days I'm not as light gray.
00:25:00.683 --> 00:25:01.663
Some days I'm blue.
00:25:01.784 --> 00:25:02.884
Some days I'm red.
00:25:02.913 --> 00:25:04.723
Some days I don't know what color I am.
00:25:04.723 --> 00:25:05.963
Some days I'm not a color.
00:25:06.243 --> 00:25:12.344
You know, it's to, to, it's so complex.
00:25:12.443 --> 00:25:17.243
The emotions into it are so complex that I just.
00:25:18.364 --> 00:25:19.163
Released the album.
00:25:19.163 --> 00:25:28.374
I did not, I haven't, you know, I haven't performed it, but I released it because I didn't understand that it could be so complex because no one told me.
00:25:29.189 --> 00:25:37.898
And then I felt, and then I used art to be able to understand it and to try to explain the complexity that was going on in my body.
00:25:39.638 --> 00:25:40.019
Gotcha.
00:25:41.338 --> 00:25:47.098
So I didn't prepare you for this, but I'm hoping you can maybe share a piece with us.
00:25:47.888 --> 00:25:49.048
And then we can talk about it.
00:25:49.979 --> 00:25:51.898
Yeah, let's see.
00:25:54.838 --> 00:25:59.058
I will share who my mother was in poetry, if that's alright.
00:26:01.459 --> 00:26:06.628
My child's mind splintered when told my angel mother was not anointed.
00:26:07.128 --> 00:26:09.189
My child's mind couldn't comprehend.
00:26:09.959 --> 00:26:12.749
No angels or demons came to claim her.
00:26:12.989 --> 00:26:15.598
She was a woman completely incomplete.
00:26:16.138 --> 00:26:18.538
A tapestry of talents to wrap myself in.
00:26:19.429 --> 00:26:20.848
She didn't hang the moon.
00:26:21.259 --> 00:26:22.528
She swung from it.
00:26:23.108 --> 00:26:25.638
Softly on a swing crafted by woodland fairies.
00:26:26.128 --> 00:26:35.548
Whose kitch house as she made as a child, Georgia red clay flowed through her veins, coursing when catching crick salamanders under the watchful eye of her stick horse.
00:26:36.288 --> 00:26:43.699
My sister and I fell asleep to her lullabies sung by her gentle voice, rivaling chimes, rocking us as she swung above the world.
00:26:44.699 --> 00:26:45.048
Wow.
00:26:45.058 --> 00:26:50.009
Sounds, like you went back in time to who Cleo remembers his mother as a child.
00:26:52.409 --> 00:26:54.179
Yeah, that's my mother.
00:26:55.298 --> 00:26:57.659
Georgia red clay flowed through her veins.
00:26:57.749 --> 00:27:03.358
And so whenever I go and I inscribe, I found like this little Georgia book.
00:27:03.419 --> 00:27:08.919
And so I will send it whenever one of my friends has a baby or something, I, inscribe it.
00:27:08.949 --> 00:27:11.548
And I say, may Georgia red clay flow through your veins.
00:27:12.604 --> 00:27:19.693
You know, with love, Cleo Childs, as a way to kind of honor my mom and say, Georgia red clay flow through her veins, it flows through mine.
00:27:20.294 --> 00:27:21.943
And I hope it can flow through yours.
00:27:24.314 --> 00:27:24.743
Beautiful.
00:27:25.713 --> 00:27:26.003
Thank you.
00:27:28.094 --> 00:27:38.683
Well, Cleo, is, before we move on to our world famous Wayfinder 4, I'm wondering, is there anything else that you wanted to share about this?
00:27:39.683 --> 00:27:44.114
I would just share, it's all about love.
00:27:46.798 --> 00:27:47.878
It's all about love.
00:27:50.308 --> 00:28:05.999
And I would just say in the really hard times, cause there are hard times that I look back on it and I just still know my mother loved me when everything was really hard and maybe she didn't know I was in, she just knew I was a nice lady.
00:28:07.193 --> 00:28:09.794
She loved me and I loved her.
00:28:10.673 --> 00:28:18.344
And I think that, you know, I would, I'll do one more, which is that it's called holding your hand.
00:28:18.344 --> 00:28:20.374
I wrote it for someone and I knew about it.
00:28:20.374 --> 00:28:26.644
And they came to me and they said, you know, my, my husband is dying of, of lung cancer.
00:28:27.394 --> 00:28:30.973
And they asked me about anticipatory grief and they said, what was it like to lose her?
00:28:31.753 --> 00:28:37.253
And this is what I wrote for, for them, which is here, holding your hand.
00:28:37.818 --> 00:28:45.459
I press it gently into my skin, trying to absorb you into me to a place where my good health can be a respite for you.
00:28:46.179 --> 00:28:52.509
Feeling your hand in mine, I make a mold of it in my memory, track every crevice, mark every line.
00:28:52.919 --> 00:28:58.419
I pray to become a black hole, a black hole to suck you in, to keep you safe, warm, alive.
00:28:59.324 --> 00:29:02.983
But I am not a black hole, and you'd land past me sucking you in.
00:29:03.814 --> 00:29:08.443
So I hold your hand, radiating love to you, as you radiate love to me.
00:29:09.124 --> 00:29:11.574
Here, holding your hand, we are whole.
00:29:13.874 --> 00:29:18.243
So I would just say in those hard times, they love you, and you love them.
00:29:19.364 --> 00:29:20.834
And I think that's a wonderful thing.
00:29:21.134 --> 00:29:24.013
And I forgot it sometimes, so I would just remind you about it.
00:29:24.903 --> 00:29:25.864
And it's all about love.
00:29:28.023 --> 00:29:28.324
Thank you.
00:29:28.324 --> 00:29:37.753
Especially, I think that's really helpful to remember during that phase after our loved one has passed the first time if they have Alzheimer's, right?
00:29:38.023 --> 00:29:42.114
It's really hard to recognize that sometimes, right?
00:29:42.588 --> 00:29:53.898
I remember I forgot it a lot and I'm reminding myself and I wish, you know, I wish I could go back and remind myself of that, but that's what I would say is I would just remind myself that it's all about love.
00:29:54.898 --> 00:29:55.358
Thank you.
00:29:56.058 --> 00:29:58.959
Well, clear on that point.
00:29:59.384 --> 00:30:03.913
Let's, if you could, we can transition a little bit to our world famous Wayfinder 4.
00:30:03.913 --> 00:30:06.003
Woohoo! Yeah, you ready?
00:30:06.733 --> 00:30:07.163
Yeah.
00:30:07.884 --> 00:30:09.554
All right, give us a hack.
00:30:12.013 --> 00:30:21.304
If you have someone that's going through something, give them like a going through the early stages of Alzheimer's or even late, find little tiny tasks that they can do.
00:30:21.663 --> 00:30:23.124
That you could be able to do that.
00:30:23.124 --> 00:30:27.753
They can be able to help you with, because it matters for, independency and feeling of agencies.
00:30:28.223 --> 00:30:33.213
For example, at Thanksgiving, I would just ask my mom, Hey, can you hand me that thing over there?
00:30:33.243 --> 00:30:39.134
The tinfoil, for example, and I could easily get the tinfoil, but my mom loved to be able to help me.
00:30:40.044 --> 00:30:47.923
And so I gave her the small opportunities doing things that she could do to be able to help me and feel like she still had agency and independence and she was contributing.
00:30:48.344 --> 00:30:57.673
So I would say, try to find those tiny little things that they can be able to help you with and allow them to help you and be just, you know, and allow them to share that with you.
00:30:59.173 --> 00:30:59.673
I love that.
00:31:00.499 --> 00:31:07.969
Yeah, I mentioned, you know, with my mom, first thing we did was give her a job again, which at first was, and I mentioned how short she was.
00:31:08.628 --> 00:31:10.528
I had to build a step platform.
00:31:10.888 --> 00:31:13.848
You couldn't just use a regular step stool because she also had Parkinson's.
00:31:13.878 --> 00:31:15.499
So she had really bad balance.
00:31:15.499 --> 00:31:20.719
And so I built a, with just some scrap wood, a big platform.
00:31:20.719 --> 00:31:21.489
So she couldn't just fill up.
00:31:21.888 --> 00:31:25.588
Although she did end up still trying to come down that step and that was too much.
00:31:25.588 --> 00:31:28.868
And so I had to take that job away, which was very difficult for her.
00:31:29.384 --> 00:31:34.384
You know, but you can always find new jobs, you know, yeah, that's the good news about jobs.
00:31:34.534 --> 00:31:43.854
It was really cute Absolutely the pride that she took in that it was just adorable to watch right but yeah, okay How about a favorite?
00:31:45.263 --> 00:31:52.953
I love cozy murder mysteries now these seem like things that should not go together It's a Venn diagram that I'm very pleased with.
00:31:53.324 --> 00:31:58.903
So it is like, so my mom loved Agatha Christie and she got me into Agatha Christie.
00:31:58.903 --> 00:31:59.773
She loved Nancy Drew.
00:31:59.773 --> 00:32:00.933
She loved a good murder mystery.
00:32:01.403 --> 00:32:14.493
And so I love murder mysteries, but I found some, cause like one of them is called, It is, it's the magical bookshop series and it's uses the works of Emily Dickinson to help solve murders.
00:32:14.564 --> 00:32:17.223
And I'm like, tell me more, please.
00:32:17.663 --> 00:32:21.183
So I'm waiting, I read them at different seasons.
00:32:21.183 --> 00:32:23.874
So the next one set in October for Halloween.
00:32:23.874 --> 00:32:25.453
So wait until October to read it.
00:32:25.683 --> 00:32:28.814
And they're using the works of Edgar Allen Poe to help solve mysteries.
00:32:29.104 --> 00:32:35.003
If that doesn't make you excited about reading, I don't know what will like, okay, that's great.
00:32:36.003 --> 00:32:37.183
I don't know what to say about that.
00:32:37.183 --> 00:32:38.003
That sounds great.
00:32:39.003 --> 00:32:40.243
I know it is great.
00:32:40.314 --> 00:32:40.963
It's fantastic.
00:32:41.653 --> 00:32:43.804
So I read like two hours every morning.
00:32:43.804 --> 00:32:50.134
I get up and I read from seven to nine, my cozy murder mysteries, and I got a stack of them and they just make me happy.
00:32:50.294 --> 00:32:50.824
You know?
00:32:51.864 --> 00:32:52.054
Yeah.
00:32:52.919 --> 00:32:55.489
What about a piece of advice for your younger self?
00:32:57.358 --> 00:32:58.368
It's all about love.
00:32:59.219 --> 00:33:00.138
That's what I would say.
00:33:00.648 --> 00:33:01.828
Sometimes I forgot that.
00:33:02.429 --> 00:33:05.469
And I would just say, you know, just keep loving her.
00:33:05.798 --> 00:33:06.769
And she loves you.
00:33:07.179 --> 00:33:07.979
And you love her.
00:33:08.878 --> 00:33:12.229
And that makes it really, all the hard times a little less hard.
00:33:12.719 --> 00:33:13.798
And I forgot that.
00:33:14.009 --> 00:33:15.388
And that made the hard times harder.
00:33:15.398 --> 00:33:20.328
And I think that I would have, if I had remembered that, then the hard times would have been a little bit easier.
00:33:21.328 --> 00:33:28.568
How about a, either you can choose either a limiting belief or a big opportunity limiting belief.
00:33:28.568 --> 00:33:29.409
I thought about this.
00:33:29.798 --> 00:33:31.239
Okay, because I, I prepare things.
00:33:31.239 --> 00:33:31.868
I'm gonna prepare.
00:33:31.868 --> 00:33:32.318
I love it.
00:33:32.318 --> 00:33:34.509
I'm not survivalist prepare.
00:33:34.568 --> 00:33:35.078
Absolutely.
00:33:35.078 --> 00:33:43.388
I tell my husband to just leave me'cause I'm gonna slow him down and then apocalypse situation just like, but when it comes to like preparing thoughts, I'm pretty good at it.
00:33:43.749 --> 00:33:47.138
So I would say the blending bleep is I can't make art.
00:33:47.378 --> 00:33:54.324
And I'm not an artist because my belief is that art is art.
00:33:54.604 --> 00:34:02.743
Use it's creative expression that is created from connecting to human, your humanity and your humanness in any way.
00:34:02.983 --> 00:34:03.723
I think that's true.
00:34:03.723 --> 00:34:10.034
It's like, and then releasing it and then someone else can consume it and then get connected to their humanity and their humanness.
00:34:10.673 --> 00:34:13.594
I think that we all have the capability to create art.
00:34:13.954 --> 00:34:16.974
I think that it just depends on the mode that you want to do.
00:34:16.994 --> 00:34:21.324
And I would say, find the mode that sparks joy or the make that hurt a little bit less.
00:34:22.304 --> 00:34:29.264
For example, me doing wood carving makes it hurt a lot more because I get frustrated, but maybe doing writing makes it hurt a little bit less.
00:34:29.344 --> 00:34:33.324
And I would just say, you know, you, I think everyone has the capability to be an artist.
00:34:33.333 --> 00:34:34.934
I think everyone is an artist to begin with.
00:34:35.554 --> 00:34:39.293
I think everyone's medium is different, but they're all equal in their measures.
00:34:39.344 --> 00:34:46.403
And I think creating art and using creative expression and doing it and bringing in your humanity allows us.
00:34:46.838 --> 00:35:00.739
To connect to others and remember that we're not alone in the human experience And we are more than alone than alike or more alone than different No, we are more alike than different and we are not alone And I think that's a wonderful thing to remember and art helps us do that.
00:35:01.778 --> 00:35:02.429
Yeah, I agree.
00:35:02.429 --> 00:35:06.188
And I also think our The concept of art, right?
00:35:06.188 --> 00:35:18.043
How we define it can be much more than just what we think of as the creative stuff like you said wood carving or poetry or what have you we had a guest, Charles Penoza, I think it was episode 97.
00:35:18.204 --> 00:35:21.954
He wrote a book about leadership as a masterpiece.
00:35:22.338 --> 00:35:29.239
What he did is he looked at businesses and business problems and how they were resolved through the humanities and classic works of art.
00:35:29.518 --> 00:35:32.298
And he looked, you know, it just made you understand.
00:35:32.298 --> 00:35:39.469
I think like, a lot of the world's great business leaders are actually, you know, they're not operators, they're artists.
00:35:39.568 --> 00:35:42.239
They're looking at their business as an art and how to grow it.
00:35:42.248 --> 00:35:48.489
So I think we can, it can apply in a much more broad fashion than just what we normally think of as art.
00:35:48.719 --> 00:35:50.248
I think we are creators.
00:35:50.469 --> 00:35:55.289
I believe that humans are creators and what we have the capability to create is art.
00:35:55.648 --> 00:36:00.048
And I think art is anything that connects us, that we create, that connects us to our humanness and our humanity.
00:36:01.293 --> 00:36:10.143
By putting it out there, it connects other people to their humanness and their humanity, and then I think that art helps to prove that we're not alone in the human experience.
00:36:10.204 --> 00:36:15.543
And I think that that really helps to, it brings me hope and it brings me joy.
00:36:15.693 --> 00:36:18.293
And I think art is just creation.
00:36:19.423 --> 00:36:19.634
Yeah.
00:36:19.634 --> 00:36:20.083
Well put.
00:36:21.273 --> 00:36:21.563
Thanks.
00:36:21.934 --> 00:36:23.173
I told you, I thought about it.
00:36:24.224 --> 00:36:27.253
I'm not this eloquent when I haven't thought about things.
00:36:27.264 --> 00:36:29.543
So I try to think about it beforehand.
00:36:30.244 --> 00:36:30.673
Yeah.
00:36:30.744 --> 00:36:32.273
And you're also super well prepared.
00:36:32.474 --> 00:36:34.793
so Cleo, this has been a real joy.
00:36:34.833 --> 00:36:40.304
If anybody else wants to, Get ahold of your album, your upcoming book, just learn more about you.
00:36:40.563 --> 00:36:41.724
Where should we point them to?
00:36:42.344 --> 00:36:44.744
Yeah, I have a website called cleo childs.
00:36:45.034 --> 00:36:45.443
com.
00:36:45.443 --> 00:36:46.443
Try to make it simple.
00:36:46.463 --> 00:36:49.393
So that's C L E O child.
00:36:49.414 --> 00:36:51.224
C H I L D S.
00:36:51.273 --> 00:36:57.934
I put the album out on everything, all the places I could find to put it out on.
00:36:57.934 --> 00:37:04.623
I did cause I didn't want to, you know, put it behind a wall where people who may relate to it.
00:37:04.798 --> 00:37:05.639
Couldn't get to it.
00:37:05.648 --> 00:37:07.429
So it's out there in the ether.
00:37:07.829 --> 00:37:11.219
I'm currently editing the book, so don't go looking for it yet.
00:37:11.349 --> 00:37:14.048
Give me a little bit of time, but I'm really excited about it.
00:37:14.449 --> 00:37:26.398
And it's really just helping to expand the idea of the journey so that people can be able to relate more maybe, or feel not so alone and it's different, experiences that I went through that really I would have to pare down for the album sake.
00:37:26.969 --> 00:37:30.188
And then, Yeah, that's pretty much me.
00:37:30.278 --> 00:37:33.059
And I'm just, you know, grateful and thankful.
00:37:33.059 --> 00:37:34.679
And thank you so much for having me.
00:37:34.958 --> 00:37:36.219
Yeah, thank you for being here.
00:37:36.219 --> 00:37:39.849
Just as a reminder, the title of your album is moving with correct?
00:37:39.978 --> 00:37:40.358
Yes.
00:37:40.739 --> 00:37:43.268
Because as I said, there's no moving on.
00:37:43.728 --> 00:37:47.378
There's just moving with Yeah, I love that.
00:37:47.398 --> 00:37:52.509
So look up moving with anywhere in in the ether, as you said, by Cleo Childs.
00:37:52.748 --> 00:37:54.659
And do you have a title for your upcoming book yet?
00:37:56.628 --> 00:38:04.849
Currently we're working on moving with the expanded edition, but I think that's probably going to change because it's called moving with book.
00:38:05.059 --> 00:38:16.688
So I think that we have, we have an opportunity here to maybe rethink it, but, um, it will be on my website whenever, you know, I release it, but it's in the editing process right now, but I'm really pleased with it.
00:38:17.298 --> 00:38:17.628
Awesome.
00:38:18.809 --> 00:38:20.748
Well, Cleo, thank you so much for being here.
00:38:20.748 --> 00:38:24.929
Thank you for, you know, sharing your experience with us, your art with us.
00:38:25.309 --> 00:38:34.478
And personally, I'm most grateful for you sharing the tool, of something I, clearly I get uncomfortable with it, which is just how to express my, you know, sympathy for grief with others.
00:38:34.478 --> 00:38:38.898
And, that's something I'll, I'll take with me hopefully for the rest of my life.
00:38:38.898 --> 00:38:40.059
So I'm, I'm really grateful.
00:38:40.369 --> 00:38:40.719
Thank you.
00:38:41.083 --> 00:38:41.673
You're welcome.
00:38:41.693 --> 00:38:45.494
I'm glad that, it resonated with you and, please feel free to use it and pass it along.
00:38:45.974 --> 00:38:46.724
Yeah, we'll do.
00:38:46.994 --> 00:38:54.793
Thank you, Cleo We hope you've enjoyed The Wayfinder Show.
00:38:54.943 --> 00:38:59.164
If you got value from this episode, please take a few seconds to leave us a 5 star rating and review.
00:38:59.454 --> 00:39:03.704
This will allow us to help more people find their way to live more authentic and exciting lives.
00:39:04.364 --> 00:39:05.664
We'll catch you on the next episode.
00:00:02.399 --> 00:00:07.570
My child's mind splintered when told my angel mother was not anointed.
00:00:08.070 --> 00:00:10.130
My child's mind couldn't comprehend.
00:00:10.890 --> 00:00:13.689
No angels or demons came to claim her.
00:00:13.929 --> 00:00:16.539
She was a woman completely incomplete.
00:00:17.079 --> 00:00:19.469
A tapestry of talents to wrap myself in.
00:00:20.359 --> 00:00:21.789
She didn't hang the moon.
00:00:22.199 --> 00:00:26.570
She swung from it, softly on a swing crafted by woodland fairies.
00:00:27.070 --> 00:00:29.059
Whose kitsch houses she made as a child.
00:00:29.739 --> 00:00:36.490
Georgia red clay flowed through her veins, coursing when catching Crick's salamanders under the watchful eye of her stick horse.
00:00:37.219 --> 00:00:44.649
My sister and I fell asleep to her lullabies sung by her gentle voice, rivalling chimes, rocking us as she swung above the world.
00:00:54.549 --> 00:01:05.950
Welcome to The Wayfinder Show with Luis Hernandez, where guests discuss the why and how of making changes that led them down a more authentic path or allow them to level up in some area of their life.
00:01:07.010 --> 00:01:14.930
Our goal is to dig deep and provide not only knowledge, but actionable advice to help you get from where you are to where you want to be.
00:01:16.219 --> 00:01:18.870
Come join us and find the way to your dream life.
00:01:28.629 --> 00:01:30.319
Welcome back to The Wayfinder Show.
00:01:30.319 --> 00:01:31.909
I'm your host, Louis Hernandez.
00:01:32.248 --> 00:01:35.418
And today we have Miss Cleo Childs with us.
00:01:35.498 --> 00:01:41.868
Cleo just released her spoken word poetry album Moving With on May 15th.
00:01:42.588 --> 00:01:53.168
This album is a culmination of two and a half years of writing about the journey of grief she experienced after losing her mom to Alzheimer's when she was 28 years old.
00:01:53.978 --> 00:02:05.608
Her mother was an English major in college and her grandmother, who is also one of her editors, was an English teacher for 30 years, so she came by her grief processing tool of writing poetry naturally.
00:02:06.713 --> 00:02:17.133
With this spoken word poetry album, she hopes to show the path her grief took from having her mother, losing her mother, and the peace and acceptance she feels now.
00:02:17.774 --> 00:02:26.903
She also hopes to give an authentic and honest look at what grief felt like so other people going through grief don't feel alone and feel community in their grief.
00:02:27.889 --> 00:02:29.769
Cleo, welcome to the Wayfinder show.
00:02:30.618 --> 00:02:31.959
Hi, I'm happy to be here.
00:02:32.579 --> 00:02:33.378
Yeah, thank you.
00:02:33.688 --> 00:02:45.889
I really I was really excited when I saw you come through requesting to be in a Wayfinder show because this is a topic that we don't usually talk about but it's a very adult topic, right?
00:02:45.889 --> 00:02:48.579
We all have to deal with it and we all have different ways of dealing with it.
00:02:48.949 --> 00:02:52.989
And I know for me personally, it's a very uncomfortable one.
00:02:53.688 --> 00:02:59.028
Just grief is just something I've never, I've never learned how to deal with, really.
00:02:59.498 --> 00:03:01.479
And so I'm hoping that you'll help us.
00:03:02.649 --> 00:03:02.758
Yeah.
00:03:03.549 --> 00:03:06.739
Well, I think that there's no, there's no one way to deal with it.
00:03:07.098 --> 00:03:21.878
And I think too, is that there are, it's so individual that it's really, if anyone gives advice, I would say to really just take advice also with a grain of salt when it comes to grief, because grief is so individual.
00:03:22.484 --> 00:03:29.704
But I think that the people that have gone forward and kind of work, who have moved with grief, which is what I am.
00:03:29.723 --> 00:03:40.954
And I know many other people have, you know, I think that we can be able to try to do our best to help to ease the path of other people that, you know, find themselves on the path of grief, but grief is so specific.
00:03:40.963 --> 00:03:41.924
It's so individual.
00:03:41.924 --> 00:03:50.503
And I had no idea about that, but before I went through grief, I had to deal with anticipatory grief, which is, cause my, I got, my mom got diagnosed and I was 21.
00:03:50.883 --> 00:03:51.693
So I lost her over the course.
00:03:51.778 --> 00:03:55.128
And then she passed away suddenly in 28.
00:03:55.158 --> 00:03:59.408
So I had to deal with unexpected grief because she was supposed to have two more years of life expectancy.
00:03:59.859 --> 00:04:06.739
But I think that, you know, when you're, when you're asking me and to all the listeners is, you know, how to deal with grief, it's so individual.
00:04:07.218 --> 00:04:09.468
And I think that there is no one way.
00:04:09.813 --> 00:04:11.114
There is no right way.
00:04:11.334 --> 00:04:13.514
There's just a way in your way.
00:04:14.074 --> 00:04:24.363
And I think that the people that have kind of gone there first can explain and tell about their journey I think the best you can do is hope to ease the path of someone that's on it because it is so individual.
00:04:24.413 --> 00:04:29.624
And once you're in your grief journey, there's nothing anyone could do to fix it, to make it better.
00:04:29.644 --> 00:04:33.834
But I think that what people can do is really just to figure out how to sit with you in your grief.
00:04:34.303 --> 00:04:37.524
And to make it maybe to ease the path that you're on.
00:04:37.663 --> 00:04:44.673
But it's not one that anyone can tell you how preemptively how to deal with it because it's so individual to each person.
00:04:45.343 --> 00:04:53.783
Yeah, you know, I think my discomfort mostly lies in how to acknowledge grief for others, when you're going through it.
00:04:53.793 --> 00:05:02.324
So I, I, I'm very good at dealing, I think, with my own problems in general, but when it's for other people, I feel like, I want to express my sympathy.
00:05:02.403 --> 00:05:09.824
However, I don't know how to do it, especially when it comes to something like this in a way that, comes off, without hurting the other.
00:05:10.454 --> 00:05:15.524
I think that one of the biggest misconceptions is that you can make it worse.
00:05:17.603 --> 00:05:26.053
Acknowledging it is so important because I think the discomfort lies and when there's discomfort, a lot of people go, well, I don't know what to do, so I'm going to do nothing.
00:05:26.704 --> 00:05:32.733
And then the person that's grieving goes, well, this huge thing happened to me and no one is acknowledging it.
00:05:32.903 --> 00:05:39.973
And that makes people feel isolated and alone, or at least it did for me, the greatest thing that someone ever did, which is what I do to anyone that's going through grief.
00:05:40.319 --> 00:05:42.459
I say, I can't do anything to make it better.
00:05:42.894 --> 00:05:45.923
I am so sorry that this happened to you.
00:05:46.553 --> 00:05:49.394
I'm here to love and support you.
00:05:49.774 --> 00:05:54.223
I send them food because when I forgot, someone sent me food, I forgot to eat.
00:05:54.254 --> 00:06:02.108
The first thing when, when I went through grief, my coworkers, my sweet coworker, Katie, she sent me a gift card for food.
00:06:02.108 --> 00:06:04.278
Because I forgot to eat, like it never even occurred to me.
00:06:04.278 --> 00:06:05.588
So I, since I want to get part to eat.
00:06:06.059 --> 00:06:19.788
And then the nicest thing, two of my friends did is they said, anytime you want to talk about your mom, I would love to learn about who she was and who she is anytime I would talk about her, because when you're going through grief and there's this level of discomfort around it.
00:06:20.468 --> 00:06:22.369
It becomes almost like a taboo topic.
00:06:22.639 --> 00:06:26.108
The thing and the person that you love that you just lost is kind of off limits.
00:06:26.538 --> 00:06:31.079
And that's the one person and the thing that's always on your mind, particularly in the early stages of grief.
00:06:31.079 --> 00:06:32.028
I can speak for myself.
00:06:32.569 --> 00:06:37.139
And so to have two friends come and just say, you know, anytime you want to talk about her.
00:06:37.439 --> 00:06:53.439
I'm happy to listen and happy to learn and to sit with you and to listen to you and hold space for me was one of the most valuable things that could have that they gave me was just the gift of holding space and sitting with me and allowing me to sit and to feel and holding that space for me.
00:06:54.139 --> 00:06:54.499
Wow.
00:06:54.538 --> 00:06:55.149
That's so good.
00:06:55.149 --> 00:06:55.629
Thank you.
00:06:55.848 --> 00:06:56.459
Thank you.
00:06:56.459 --> 00:07:01.088
As soon as you said that, it just, a lot of light bulbs started going off.
00:07:01.389 --> 00:07:05.559
That's great because you, it's just always good to have that tool.
00:07:06.024 --> 00:07:12.603
You know, to be able to know how to, react in a certain situation like that, because it can be so uncomfortable.
00:07:12.744 --> 00:07:13.293
Everyone.
00:07:13.293 --> 00:07:17.644
And it's just, the thing is, is that, you know, there's nothing you can bring up.
00:07:17.863 --> 00:07:25.334
It's always on someone's mind, particularly if it's new grief, at least I can speak to me was, it was on my mind and everyone's like, Oh, I don't want to bring it up.
00:07:25.759 --> 00:07:26.428
It's already done.
00:07:26.728 --> 00:07:38.869
I'm already thinking about what I don't want is what kind of happened or I think the inclination is, you know, to feel like she's off limits to people like I can't talk about because people don't know what to do.
00:07:39.139 --> 00:07:46.718
When the number one thing I want to do sometimes is to talk about her because I'm missing her and To have that space and just to offer it right.
00:07:46.718 --> 00:08:01.439
It's up for someone to take up on the offer, but to know that your safe space that they can go to and to feel like you if you have the capability and the capacity to hold space for someone to offer that to someone and to truly mean it and to say, you know, anytime you want to talk about them.
00:08:01.959 --> 00:08:04.738
Just having that is like a sounding board.
00:08:04.988 --> 00:08:11.408
Was the most helpful thing to me because then two people I could be able to say, Hey, I'm really missing mom.
00:08:11.408 --> 00:08:12.449
Do you mind if I talk about her?
00:08:12.968 --> 00:08:14.478
And they're like, yeah, absolutely.
00:08:14.478 --> 00:08:15.309
I'd love to listen to her.
00:08:15.338 --> 00:08:16.288
I'd love to learn about her.
00:08:16.538 --> 00:08:19.278
That was the most, that was the nicest kind of thing.
00:08:19.278 --> 00:08:20.509
So I always do that to people now.
00:08:21.103 --> 00:08:21.663
I love that.
00:08:22.213 --> 00:08:24.413
Well, with that in mind, tell us about your mother.
00:08:25.233 --> 00:08:26.394
Oh, she's wonderful.
00:08:26.574 --> 00:08:28.444
I have the most wonderful mother in the whole world.
00:08:28.444 --> 00:08:29.473
Her name is Candace.
00:08:30.093 --> 00:08:34.293
And my mother was an English major from the University of Georgia.
00:08:34.323 --> 00:08:37.854
She had fiery red hair and she was very soft spoken.
00:08:38.384 --> 00:08:44.514
And she's a very kind person when she passed, everyone said, you know, Oh, your mother is such a kind woman.
00:08:44.964 --> 00:08:53.384
And I think that is like the nicest thing that you could ever hope to hear about yourself or to hear about someone you love when they pass as everyone says that she's so kind.
00:08:53.994 --> 00:08:57.533
And I think that I never really understood my mother growing up.
00:08:57.553 --> 00:09:00.283
I can't, because she was a person that was soft spoken.
00:09:00.614 --> 00:09:01.793
She was a peacekeeper.
00:09:02.104 --> 00:09:06.813
She was, a person that really was.
00:09:07.443 --> 00:09:12.933
More okay with being a wallflower and allowing other people to take up space and being able to kind of take a backseat.
00:09:13.423 --> 00:09:16.884
And so it was all these things that I thought I was told were not strength.
00:09:17.004 --> 00:09:19.224
I was told that I kind of viewed her as weakness.
00:09:19.224 --> 00:09:20.884
I viewed it as weakness a little bit truthfully.
00:09:21.323 --> 00:09:27.124
And as I've grown up, I realized that there is strength and kindness and strength and gentleness and there's strength.
00:09:27.394 --> 00:09:42.264
And being able to take a back seat and knowing when to speak, you know, and not talk, you know, she knew when to speak and to say her bit, but she didn't feel the need to talk all the time about it, and that took a level of wisdom that I didn't recognize growing up.
00:09:42.663 --> 00:09:47.124
And so, you know, in the, one of the poems I say at the very end is I wish I could tell you what I know now.
00:09:47.274 --> 00:10:12.374
I wish I could hear you forgive me somehow, because, and to, you know, forgive and to let her know that I think I understand her better, but I think it took me being an adult really, and growing up and also being able to kind of grieve not having her in the way that I'm used to having her that a, I really began to understand my mother, in a way that I just didn't when I had her, because, you know, I was 21 when she got diagnosed and then it was downhill from there, but.
00:10:12.568 --> 00:10:13.708
She's wonderful.
00:10:13.869 --> 00:10:15.578
I'm so grateful for my mother.
00:10:15.609 --> 00:10:17.158
I have the most wonderful mother.
00:10:18.658 --> 00:10:26.698
Is, is there something you wish you could tell her now if she was still alive, outside of what you said in your poem?
00:10:29.058 --> 00:10:33.359
I'm thinking, I'm happy.
00:10:35.609 --> 00:10:37.139
She only wanted my happiness.
00:10:37.639 --> 00:10:38.009
Yeah.
00:10:39.099 --> 00:10:40.729
And I would just tell her that I'm happy.
00:10:41.879 --> 00:10:47.389
I think as a parent, that's probably what we would want the most for our kids, right?
00:10:47.818 --> 00:10:50.418
So, I think she'd be very grateful to hear that.
00:10:51.548 --> 00:10:55.288
She always wanted my happiness, and I would just let her know that I'm happy.
00:10:57.239 --> 00:11:01.818
So, you know, if we can, uh, go a little deeper into this.
00:11:01.818 --> 00:11:08.379
My, my mother, she lived with us for some time, about five years ago, and I had to put her in a home.
00:11:08.408 --> 00:11:13.078
She, she has dementia, borderline Alzheimer's, beginning of Alzheimer's.
00:11:13.078 --> 00:11:28.099
And, you know, I heard this saying, when I started taking care of my mother, which I learned to understand, you know, when you have a parent or a loved one with Alzheimer's or dementia that, you know, you lose them twice.
00:11:28.678 --> 00:11:29.129
Mm hmm.
00:11:29.589 --> 00:11:31.178
And, it's very true, right?
00:11:31.198 --> 00:11:33.278
You're watching them, lose weight.
00:11:33.889 --> 00:11:37.719
Their spirit, essentially, of who they are and who you love over that time.
00:11:38.519 --> 00:11:41.318
And then eventually you lose them physically as well.
00:11:42.479 --> 00:11:45.168
Can you talk about that process, that grieving process?
00:11:45.178 --> 00:11:47.989
Because it's an ongoing, longer process as well, right?
00:11:48.558 --> 00:11:49.849
Oh, it's anticipatory grief.
00:11:50.308 --> 00:11:53.469
It's a thing of, You are losing.
00:11:53.609 --> 00:11:58.078
And so I'm writing a book to expand on this, of this idea of what I put in the album.
00:11:58.678 --> 00:12:09.589
And so, but it is the process of losing who they, who you knew them to be and who you, the essential part of them.
00:12:10.188 --> 00:12:13.249
And it's learning about who they are now.
00:12:13.278 --> 00:12:20.109
And then there's different phases and stages that are really difficult with going through, at least with Alzheimer's, we did it with ours, but there are certain stages.
00:12:20.369 --> 00:12:28.899
Stages that seem to be universal, like there's a stage where they get kind of aggressive, which is my mother was very, very peaceful.
00:12:28.938 --> 00:12:44.438
So for her to be aggressive was a really jarring thing, but apparently it can be a common symptom that people go through I think that, going through the anger, but I understand the anger because it's the loss of independence that they have, right.
00:12:44.499 --> 00:12:45.918
That's something that's happening to them.
00:12:46.379 --> 00:12:54.438
So like when my mom, when we had to take her car away, because there wasn't a, she would be liable if she got into an accident and she didn't want to hurt anyone.
00:12:54.438 --> 00:12:57.778
My mother was the nicest, sweetest, kindest, most gentle person in the whole world.
00:12:57.778 --> 00:13:01.099
She wouldn't want to hurt anyone, but she was a liability at this point.
00:13:01.099 --> 00:13:02.139
So we had to take a car away.
00:13:02.239 --> 00:13:04.379
That was an incredibly difficult situation.
00:13:05.173 --> 00:13:34.854
And, you know, I think that it is challenging and there is, and all you can do, or all we could do, and all I would say is in an uncertain situation with no roadmap, basically, because everything's so individual, give yourself grace because you are doing the best that you can do.
00:13:35.744 --> 00:13:37.004
And it is hard.
00:13:37.283 --> 00:13:38.053
A, it is hard.
00:13:38.063 --> 00:13:38.854
Acknowledge it's hard.
00:13:39.683 --> 00:13:41.114
B, give yourself grace.
00:13:41.634 --> 00:13:46.994
that you are doing the best that you can do in a hard situation with someone that you love.
00:13:47.474 --> 00:13:48.563
Everything about this is hard.
00:13:48.563 --> 00:13:49.543
Nothing about this is easy.
00:13:50.653 --> 00:13:56.524
And see, I would say, just enjoy them, learn how to just swallow them.
00:13:56.624 --> 00:14:01.923
That's what I did because I knew that every day was going to be the best day that was going to have with her because it was degenerative.
00:14:02.403 --> 00:14:12.104
And I just swallowed my mother and I made memories that I carried, but I made them intentionally because I knew that those were the memories that were going to carry me.
00:14:12.594 --> 00:14:28.234
When I look back on my journey of losing her over time, I know that there's the hard, but I know that I'm so grateful that I chose to intentionally create the good.
00:14:29.823 --> 00:14:43.394
And I would say, You know, find out ways to still have joy together and also laugh because sometimes things are funny, you know, they're doing something and it's kind of funny and they can laugh too, you know, we're all humans.
00:14:43.874 --> 00:14:56.364
And so I think that, you know, figure out how to swallow them, still find the joy because there's still joy to be found and, and just create those memories so that you have good ones too.
00:14:56.823 --> 00:15:01.344
And that it's not all bad and learn how to laugh when there's something to laugh at.
00:15:01.729 --> 00:15:05.099
Because there's still joy in the human experience.
00:15:05.099 --> 00:15:05.989
There's still joy.
00:15:06.688 --> 00:15:07.369
And that's what I would say.
00:15:08.349 --> 00:15:08.698
Yeah.
00:15:10.318 --> 00:15:14.178
You know, I'm tempted to share a funny story from when my mom was with us.
00:15:15.339 --> 00:15:16.249
You okay with that?
00:15:16.759 --> 00:15:18.078
Of course, yeah, I have lots of them.
00:15:18.339 --> 00:15:35.719
Yeah, so, you know when I first took her in again This is like it's now been about seven years ago when I first took her in I didn't realize I didn't understand The illness or her limitations or I just still remembered my mother had i'd been away from my mother for 30 years and I just saw her as this powerful little woman, right?
00:15:35.729 --> 00:15:47.938
She's little she's like four feet 10 you know four feet nine maybe even and but she's just I mean, she's super intelligent, kind, like you said, generous, helpful, just a strong, strong, strong woman.
00:15:48.849 --> 00:15:51.509
And so I just remember her that way all the time, right?
00:15:51.538 --> 00:15:52.019
Very capable.
00:15:52.379 --> 00:15:57.928
So when I took her in, I was like, I was still working and I'm thinking, okay, I'll just prepare some food for her.
00:15:57.928 --> 00:16:01.759
And, and, uh, and she can just warm it up in a microwave and eat when it's time for her.
00:16:01.759 --> 00:16:02.028
Right.
00:16:02.438 --> 00:16:04.359
And, so we prepare.
00:16:04.668 --> 00:16:13.278
It was joyful, like we prepared all these meals and we put them in mason jars, getting them ready, you know, and I gave her a couple of jobs because she felt like she needed to work.
00:16:13.278 --> 00:16:13.528
Right.
00:16:13.528 --> 00:16:17.288
So one of them was, cleaning the dishes and the other one was feeding the dog.
00:16:17.658 --> 00:16:18.038
Right.
00:16:18.879 --> 00:16:23.879
So I get home from work and I'm looking, I'm like, huh, the mason jars are all full.
00:16:23.879 --> 00:16:24.798
I wonder what's wrong there.
00:16:24.798 --> 00:16:30.489
And then I look at the dog food and it was empty.
00:16:30.504 --> 00:16:37.884
She confused the dog food with her food.
00:16:39.073 --> 00:16:40.703
And then, you know, she doesn't know English.
00:16:40.703 --> 00:16:41.394
She was Spanish.
00:16:41.403 --> 00:16:42.783
She was like, kind of sad.
00:16:42.793 --> 00:16:44.833
Like, yeah, I thought it tasted a little bland.
00:16:47.323 --> 00:16:48.494
It was just so funny.
00:16:48.844 --> 00:16:52.793
I hate to laugh at, you know, I haven't had had my mother dog food, essentially.
00:16:52.793 --> 00:16:57.094
But, you know, there's a funny story that we all laugh at in the family now.
00:16:58.469 --> 00:17:05.538
I mean, there's still laughter and there's still life to be had, you know, and I did it like my mom, I used to give her little tasks all the time.
00:17:05.538 --> 00:17:13.909
And I think the other thing too, is that was really hard for me at the beginning is to become okay with the idea that I could be a nice lady to her.
00:17:14.388 --> 00:17:38.939
And that would be okay with me because she didn't know who I was at the end, but I realized I'm a nice lady and she feel safe with me and she showed, and I can show her love that way, you know, and that's what also I would say is, you know, when you get to the point where they don't see it, when they don't recognize you, see if you can, Find joy and being someone they still feel safe with.
00:17:39.358 --> 00:17:42.169
And they think that you're a nice person to hang out with.
00:17:42.479 --> 00:17:44.138
So I hung out with my mom all the time.
00:17:44.138 --> 00:17:45.628
She's like, you're a very nice lady.
00:17:45.888 --> 00:17:47.709
And I was like, I am a nice lady.
00:17:48.298 --> 00:17:54.229
You know, I didn't be like, you raised me to be a nice lady, you know, but she's like, you know, you're really nice.
00:17:54.628 --> 00:17:58.288
And then she just kind of like gotten like this loop where she's like, you're a nice lady.
00:17:58.338 --> 00:18:01.878
And I was like, it didn't make every like on the 20th time of being told I'm a nice lady.
00:18:01.878 --> 00:18:02.419
I'll be honest.
00:18:02.479 --> 00:18:05.548
It was still as nice as the first time of being told that I was a nice lady.
00:18:05.989 --> 00:18:06.558
You know?
00:18:06.749 --> 00:18:07.318
And I was like, yeah.
00:18:07.989 --> 00:18:12.169
At some point it became like a, in a empowerment speech where she's like, you're a nice lady.
00:18:12.219 --> 00:18:13.969
And I'm like, I am a nice lady.
00:18:14.909 --> 00:18:15.269
Thank you.
00:18:16.179 --> 00:18:16.598
I love it.
00:18:18.108 --> 00:18:22.009
Cleo, so let's talk a little bit about your poetry and how you use that.
00:18:22.009 --> 00:18:25.259
First of all, backing up a little bit, did you have any background already?
00:18:25.259 --> 00:18:31.578
I know you said your mother and your grandmother, had experience in poetry and English literature, but how about yourself?
00:18:31.618 --> 00:18:33.659
Like, what was your background like first?
00:18:33.679 --> 00:18:35.689
I'm a darn good research paper writer.
00:18:35.689 --> 00:18:36.929
So I went to school for marketing.
00:18:37.019 --> 00:18:38.298
I was a marketer for 10 years.
00:18:39.179 --> 00:18:42.713
And I, grandma, Ooh, she put work into me.
00:18:42.963 --> 00:18:50.213
So she made me a good, really good reading English paper or English writer or research paper, English writer.
00:18:50.574 --> 00:18:56.354
And so I went through and I can write a darn good research paper, but I never wrote creatively.
00:18:56.894 --> 00:18:58.703
And then when I.
00:18:59.068 --> 00:19:04.929
After losing mom, maybe about a month later, I heard about two lines, the middle of the night in my head.
00:19:05.548 --> 00:19:10.669
And I, you know, I tried everything and I was just like, you know, fudge it.
00:19:10.669 --> 00:19:11.348
We'll just try this.
00:19:11.519 --> 00:19:18.388
So I went downstairs in the middle of the night at 2 AM and I wrote down the two lines that I heard in my head and they made it feel a little bit better.
00:19:18.388 --> 00:19:22.403
And so I just kept writing because it made it feel a little bit better.
00:19:22.403 --> 00:19:24.009
It didn't make it hurt less.
00:19:24.009 --> 00:19:26.419
It just made it feel a little bit better.
00:19:26.419 --> 00:19:28.249
So, and then I basically.
00:19:28.403 --> 00:19:33.574
Creep for, you know, for about six months, went into deep isolation, and then I just wrote.
00:19:33.913 --> 00:19:45.003
For my own sake, I never intended for it to be public, but I wrote as a way to be able to process what was happening in my body because I made the conscious decision to feel everything.
00:19:45.743 --> 00:19:49.253
I decided consciously that I wasn't going to shut myself off from any of the emotions.
00:19:49.324 --> 00:19:50.243
I think that.
00:19:51.064 --> 00:19:52.344
A lot of the emotion.
00:19:52.384 --> 00:19:57.864
I think that we think about emotions somewhat differently or wrongly potentially, or at least I did.
00:19:58.564 --> 00:20:07.773
I thought that anger and sadness and bitterness and all these things were really were wrong and I shouldn't feel them and I should feel bad for feeling them.
00:20:08.354 --> 00:20:21.513
But what I realized is that if I didn't feel anger, bitterness, sad, Mad, you know, all these things that I wouldn't feel joy and I wouldn't feel happiness and I wouldn't feel love for my mom and my dog and my husband.
00:20:21.513 --> 00:20:30.134
And I wouldn't feel friendship and camaraderie by going and shutting myself off from motions that I thought were, deemed bad.
00:20:30.374 --> 00:20:33.534
I was also shutting myself off from emotions that were deemed good.
00:20:33.933 --> 00:20:52.919
So when I was writing, I wrote for The sole purpose of being able to take what was happening inside my body and put it outside of my body so I could look at it, and I could do something productive with my time and constructive, and it would make it hurt a little bit less, and I could you know when I was looking and doing all the poetry not all of it is.
00:20:53.249 --> 00:20:58.219
All about doom and gloom and me being in grief and, you know, fudge this life and all this stuff.
00:20:58.648 --> 00:21:06.148
You know, there's a lot of ones that are also about gratitude and I'm happy today and my, my, I love my husband and I love my dog.
00:21:06.148 --> 00:21:12.798
So it's kind of by experiencing all of the emotions and not really putting judgment to them saying that they're good or bad.
00:21:12.798 --> 00:21:16.328
I was able to, you know, experience quote unquote, good emotions.
00:21:16.929 --> 00:21:20.419
And I just was able to feel everything and then process it.
00:21:20.669 --> 00:21:25.628
And then I fear experience, which I have now is peace and acceptance about my mother's death, but that took about six months.
00:21:26.078 --> 00:21:29.709
It took about, and I'm not even, you know, and I'm still moving with my grief for my mom.
00:21:29.709 --> 00:21:32.598
I'll probably never get over it because I love her so much.
00:21:32.608 --> 00:21:36.638
And I wish that she was here and I wish that I could hold her, but I can't.
00:21:36.719 --> 00:21:40.308
But I can be able to still carry her with me and experience her.
00:21:40.308 --> 00:21:44.189
By being kind to myself and to others, I am able to connect with my mom.
00:21:44.239 --> 00:21:50.269
And so I went and stopped writing after I ran into the world about six months after my mom passed.
00:21:50.278 --> 00:21:54.808
And then about two years later, I got inspired by songwriting.
00:21:54.818 --> 00:21:56.368
And so I picked up writing again.
00:21:56.368 --> 00:21:59.929
And I went to a mentorship session with an amazing producer, Jim Riley.
00:22:00.449 --> 00:22:02.919
And I was just like, here's some stuff I wrote.
00:22:02.969 --> 00:22:03.638
Can you help me?
00:22:03.659 --> 00:22:04.828
And he's like, you're amazing.
00:22:04.828 --> 00:22:05.669
And I was like, what?
00:22:05.959 --> 00:22:07.628
And I was like, I had no idea.
00:22:07.659 --> 00:22:08.888
Cause I wrote it for myself.
00:22:09.318 --> 00:22:10.459
And then he's like, I'll produce you.
00:22:10.459 --> 00:22:11.048
And I was like, what?
00:22:11.538 --> 00:22:13.598
Anyway, so then I found amazing editors.
00:22:13.598 --> 00:22:17.868
I have Sheree and Mary and my grandmother, who was 93.
00:22:17.868 --> 00:22:19.838
She's one of my editors, my maternal grandmother.
00:22:20.259 --> 00:22:26.499
And we put together this album and I released it with the hope that I felt so isolated in my grief.
00:22:26.769 --> 00:22:36.878
That if someone else could write about their honest experience, that maybe it won't make someone feel as isolated when they're going through something as I felt.
00:22:37.199 --> 00:22:40.749
And I feel like that is the only hope that I have with the album, is that.
00:22:41.229 --> 00:22:46.128
Someone can know that I sit with them metaphorically in the album.
00:22:46.548 --> 00:22:47.378
And I say, I get it.
00:22:48.108 --> 00:22:49.009
Someone gets it.
00:22:49.878 --> 00:22:54.429
And I have peace and acceptance and maybe you can too.
00:22:55.989 --> 00:22:56.368
Wow.
00:22:57.009 --> 00:23:02.689
Did, um, you, you chose poetry as your medium, right?
00:23:02.759 --> 00:23:07.903
Um, did you, did you look at, did you consider other mediums like poetry?
00:23:08.653 --> 00:23:17.034
Like you said songwriting or short stories or anything like that or did poetry just come naturally to you It was the only way that it made sense.
00:23:17.513 --> 00:23:31.334
Okay, it was it chose me I feel like I tried writing other ways but it's the only way that made sense to me was writing and poetry and I think that the creation of Art.
00:23:31.564 --> 00:23:34.013
I, I, cause I deem it more art than poetry.
00:23:34.054 --> 00:23:35.703
Cause I don't want to put a label on it really.
00:23:36.124 --> 00:23:40.584
But I thought about recently, you know, I was like, why, what is the purpose of art?
00:23:41.213 --> 00:23:44.493
Cause I'm this person that thinks about what the purpose of art is for about two days.
00:23:44.493 --> 00:23:44.713
Right.
00:23:44.713 --> 00:23:45.733
Cause that's who I am as a person.
00:23:46.124 --> 00:23:46.604
I thought about it.
00:23:46.604 --> 00:24:02.068
And I realized that what I, what my, my definition is, is that by connecting and creating from my own humanness and I own humanity, And putting it out there that someone can maybe consume it and then be connected to their humanists and their own humanity.
00:24:02.449 --> 00:24:03.798
And that is the purpose of art.
00:24:03.848 --> 00:24:08.729
And that's what I, created it with connecting to my own humanists, my own humanity.
00:24:09.209 --> 00:24:18.439
And I think that maybe, someone can, if they consume it or listen to it, that, or read it, that maybe that can connect to them, the humanists and humanity.
00:24:18.469 --> 00:24:24.459
And so I think that that's the purpose of art and that's what I hope that releasing the album will allow people to do.
00:24:26.499 --> 00:24:28.298
And did you go and perform it as well?
00:24:30.318 --> 00:24:31.338
Just released an album.
00:24:31.338 --> 00:24:33.388
And yeah, I wrote it.
00:24:33.519 --> 00:24:34.449
I got it edited.
00:24:34.798 --> 00:24:35.749
I felt really good.
00:24:35.808 --> 00:24:40.469
And then I released it with the hope that someone else may be able to not feel so alone.
00:24:40.729 --> 00:24:47.848
By talking about grief openly and honestly and about someone's grief journey and about all the facets of it, because it's so multifaceted.
00:24:48.239 --> 00:24:53.159
It's not, you know, as I say I thought that grief was like shade, like the one big shade of gray.
00:24:53.574 --> 00:24:54.104
I'm grieving.
00:24:54.864 --> 00:24:55.314
It's not.
00:24:55.713 --> 00:24:57.884
For me, at least, it was like some days I'm gray.
00:24:57.973 --> 00:24:58.854
Some days I'm light gray.
00:24:58.854 --> 00:25:00.663
Some days I'm not as light gray.
00:25:00.683 --> 00:25:01.663
Some days I'm blue.
00:25:01.784 --> 00:25:02.884
Some days I'm red.
00:25:02.913 --> 00:25:04.723
Some days I don't know what color I am.
00:25:04.723 --> 00:25:05.963
Some days I'm not a color.
00:25:06.243 --> 00:25:12.344
You know, it's to, to, it's so complex.
00:25:12.443 --> 00:25:17.243
The emotions into it are so complex that I just.
00:25:18.364 --> 00:25:19.163
Released the album.
00:25:19.163 --> 00:25:28.374
I did not, I haven't, you know, I haven't performed it, but I released it because I didn't understand that it could be so complex because no one told me.
00:25:29.189 --> 00:25:37.898
And then I felt, and then I used art to be able to understand it and to try to explain the complexity that was going on in my body.
00:25:39.638 --> 00:25:40.019
Gotcha.
00:25:41.338 --> 00:25:47.098
So I didn't prepare you for this, but I'm hoping you can maybe share a piece with us.
00:25:47.888 --> 00:25:49.048
And then we can talk about it.
00:25:49.979 --> 00:25:51.898
Yeah, let's see.
00:25:54.838 --> 00:25:59.058
I will share who my mother was in poetry, if that's alright.
00:26:01.459 --> 00:26:06.628
My child's mind splintered when told my angel mother was not anointed.
00:26:07.128 --> 00:26:09.189
My child's mind couldn't comprehend.
00:26:09.959 --> 00:26:12.749
No angels or demons came to claim her.
00:26:12.989 --> 00:26:15.598
She was a woman completely incomplete.
00:26:16.138 --> 00:26:18.538
A tapestry of talents to wrap myself in.
00:26:19.429 --> 00:26:20.848
She didn't hang the moon.
00:26:21.259 --> 00:26:22.528
She swung from it.
00:26:23.108 --> 00:26:25.638
Softly on a swing crafted by woodland fairies.
00:26:26.128 --> 00:26:35.548
Whose kitch house as she made as a child, Georgia red clay flowed through her veins, coursing when catching crick salamanders under the watchful eye of her stick horse.
00:26:36.288 --> 00:26:43.699
My sister and I fell asleep to her lullabies sung by her gentle voice, rivaling chimes, rocking us as she swung above the world.
00:26:44.699 --> 00:26:45.048
Wow.
00:26:45.058 --> 00:26:50.009
Sounds, like you went back in time to who Cleo remembers his mother as a child.
00:26:52.409 --> 00:26:54.179
Yeah, that's my mother.
00:26:55.298 --> 00:26:57.659
Georgia red clay flowed through her veins.
00:26:57.749 --> 00:27:03.358
And so whenever I go and I inscribe, I found like this little Georgia book.
00:27:03.419 --> 00:27:08.919
And so I will send it whenever one of my friends has a baby or something, I, inscribe it.
00:27:08.949 --> 00:27:11.548
And I say, may Georgia red clay flow through your veins.
00:27:12.604 --> 00:27:19.693
You know, with love, Cleo Childs, as a way to kind of honor my mom and say, Georgia red clay flow through her veins, it flows through mine.
00:27:20.294 --> 00:27:21.943
And I hope it can flow through yours.
00:27:24.314 --> 00:27:24.743
Beautiful.
00:27:25.713 --> 00:27:26.003
Thank you.
00:27:28.094 --> 00:27:38.683
Well, Cleo, is, before we move on to our world famous Wayfinder 4, I'm wondering, is there anything else that you wanted to share about this?
00:27:39.683 --> 00:27:44.114
I would just share, it's all about love.
00:27:46.798 --> 00:27:47.878
It's all about love.
00:27:50.308 --> 00:28:05.999
And I would just say in the really hard times, cause there are hard times that I look back on it and I just still know my mother loved me when everything was really hard and maybe she didn't know I was in, she just knew I was a nice lady.
00:28:07.193 --> 00:28:09.794
She loved me and I loved her.
00:28:10.673 --> 00:28:18.344
And I think that, you know, I would, I'll do one more, which is that it's called holding your hand.
00:28:18.344 --> 00:28:20.374
I wrote it for someone and I knew about it.
00:28:20.374 --> 00:28:26.644
And they came to me and they said, you know, my, my husband is dying of, of lung cancer.
00:28:27.394 --> 00:28:30.973
And they asked me about anticipatory grief and they said, what was it like to lose her?
00:28:31.753 --> 00:28:37.253
And this is what I wrote for, for them, which is here, holding your hand.
00:28:37.818 --> 00:28:45.459
I press it gently into my skin, trying to absorb you into me to a place where my good health can be a respite for you.
00:28:46.179 --> 00:28:52.509
Feeling your hand in mine, I make a mold of it in my memory, track every crevice, mark every line.
00:28:52.919 --> 00:28:58.419
I pray to become a black hole, a black hole to suck you in, to keep you safe, warm, alive.
00:28:59.324 --> 00:29:02.983
But I am not a black hole, and you'd land past me sucking you in.
00:29:03.814 --> 00:29:08.443
So I hold your hand, radiating love to you, as you radiate love to me.
00:29:09.124 --> 00:29:11.574
Here, holding your hand, we are whole.
00:29:13.874 --> 00:29:18.243
So I would just say in those hard times, they love you, and you love them.
00:29:19.364 --> 00:29:20.834
And I think that's a wonderful thing.
00:29:21.134 --> 00:29:24.013
And I forgot it sometimes, so I would just remind you about it.
00:29:24.903 --> 00:29:25.864
And it's all about love.
00:29:28.023 --> 00:29:28.324
Thank you.
00:29:28.324 --> 00:29:37.753
Especially, I think that's really helpful to remember during that phase after our loved one has passed the first time if they have Alzheimer's, right?
00:29:38.023 --> 00:29:42.114
It's really hard to recognize that sometimes, right?
00:29:42.588 --> 00:29:53.898
I remember I forgot it a lot and I'm reminding myself and I wish, you know, I wish I could go back and remind myself of that, but that's what I would say is I would just remind myself that it's all about love.
00:29:54.898 --> 00:29:55.358
Thank you.
00:29:56.058 --> 00:29:58.959
Well, clear on that point.
00:29:59.384 --> 00:30:03.913
Let's, if you could, we can transition a little bit to our world famous Wayfinder 4.
00:30:03.913 --> 00:30:06.003
Woohoo! Yeah, you ready?
00:30:06.733 --> 00:30:07.163
Yeah.
00:30:07.884 --> 00:30:09.554
All right, give us a hack.
00:30:12.013 --> 00:30:21.304
If you have someone that's going through something, give them like a going through the early stages of Alzheimer's or even late, find little tiny tasks that they can do.
00:30:21.663 --> 00:30:23.124
That you could be able to do that.
00:30:23.124 --> 00:30:27.753
They can be able to help you with, because it matters for, independency and feeling of agencies.
00:30:28.223 --> 00:30:33.213
For example, at Thanksgiving, I would just ask my mom, Hey, can you hand me that thing over there?
00:30:33.243 --> 00:30:39.134
The tinfoil, for example, and I could easily get the tinfoil, but my mom loved to be able to help me.
00:30:40.044 --> 00:30:47.923
And so I gave her the small opportunities doing things that she could do to be able to help me and feel like she still had agency and independence and she was contributing.
00:30:48.344 --> 00:30:57.673
So I would say, try to find those tiny little things that they can be able to help you with and allow them to help you and be just, you know, and allow them to share that with you.
00:30:59.173 --> 00:30:59.673
I love that.
00:31:00.499 --> 00:31:07.969
Yeah, I mentioned, you know, with my mom, first thing we did was give her a job again, which at first was, and I mentioned how short she was.
00:31:08.628 --> 00:31:10.528
I had to build a step platform.
00:31:10.888 --> 00:31:13.848
You couldn't just use a regular step stool because she also had Parkinson's.
00:31:13.878 --> 00:31:15.499
So she had really bad balance.
00:31:15.499 --> 00:31:20.719
And so I built a, with just some scrap wood, a big platform.
00:31:20.719 --> 00:31:21.489
So she couldn't just fill up.
00:31:21.888 --> 00:31:25.588
Although she did end up still trying to come down that step and that was too much.
00:31:25.588 --> 00:31:28.868
And so I had to take that job away, which was very difficult for her.
00:31:29.384 --> 00:31:34.384
You know, but you can always find new jobs, you know, yeah, that's the good news about jobs.
00:31:34.534 --> 00:31:43.854
It was really cute Absolutely the pride that she took in that it was just adorable to watch right but yeah, okay How about a favorite?
00:31:45.263 --> 00:31:52.953
I love cozy murder mysteries now these seem like things that should not go together It's a Venn diagram that I'm very pleased with.
00:31:53.324 --> 00:31:58.903
So it is like, so my mom loved Agatha Christie and she got me into Agatha Christie.
00:31:58.903 --> 00:31:59.773
She loved Nancy Drew.
00:31:59.773 --> 00:32:00.933
She loved a good murder mystery.
00:32:01.403 --> 00:32:14.493
And so I love murder mysteries, but I found some, cause like one of them is called, It is, it's the magical bookshop series and it's uses the works of Emily Dickinson to help solve murders.
00:32:14.564 --> 00:32:17.223
And I'm like, tell me more, please.
00:32:17.663 --> 00:32:21.183
So I'm waiting, I read them at different seasons.
00:32:21.183 --> 00:32:23.874
So the next one set in October for Halloween.
00:32:23.874 --> 00:32:25.453
So wait until October to read it.
00:32:25.683 --> 00:32:28.814
And they're using the works of Edgar Allen Poe to help solve mysteries.
00:32:29.104 --> 00:32:35.003
If that doesn't make you excited about reading, I don't know what will like, okay, that's great.
00:32:36.003 --> 00:32:37.183
I don't know what to say about that.
00:32:37.183 --> 00:32:38.003
That sounds great.
00:32:39.003 --> 00:32:40.243
I know it is great.
00:32:40.314 --> 00:32:40.963
It's fantastic.
00:32:41.653 --> 00:32:43.804
So I read like two hours every morning.
00:32:43.804 --> 00:32:50.134
I get up and I read from seven to nine, my cozy murder mysteries, and I got a stack of them and they just make me happy.
00:32:50.294 --> 00:32:50.824
You know?
00:32:51.864 --> 00:32:52.054
Yeah.
00:32:52.919 --> 00:32:55.489
What about a piece of advice for your younger self?
00:32:57.358 --> 00:32:58.368
It's all about love.
00:32:59.219 --> 00:33:00.138
That's what I would say.
00:33:00.648 --> 00:33:01.828
Sometimes I forgot that.
00:33:02.429 --> 00:33:05.469
And I would just say, you know, just keep loving her.
00:33:05.798 --> 00:33:06.769
And she loves you.
00:33:07.179 --> 00:33:07.979
And you love her.
00:33:08.878 --> 00:33:12.229
And that makes it really, all the hard times a little less hard.
00:33:12.719 --> 00:33:13.798
And I forgot that.
00:33:14.009 --> 00:33:15.388
And that made the hard times harder.
00:33:15.398 --> 00:33:20.328
And I think that I would have, if I had remembered that, then the hard times would have been a little bit easier.
00:33:21.328 --> 00:33:28.568
How about a, either you can choose either a limiting belief or a big opportunity limiting belief.
00:33:28.568 --> 00:33:29.409
I thought about this.
00:33:29.798 --> 00:33:31.239
Okay, because I, I prepare things.
00:33:31.239 --> 00:33:31.868
I'm gonna prepare.
00:33:31.868 --> 00:33:32.318
I love it.
00:33:32.318 --> 00:33:34.509
I'm not survivalist prepare.
00:33:34.568 --> 00:33:35.078
Absolutely.
00:33:35.078 --> 00:33:43.388
I tell my husband to just leave me'cause I'm gonna slow him down and then apocalypse situation just like, but when it comes to like preparing thoughts, I'm pretty good at it.
00:33:43.749 --> 00:33:47.138
So I would say the blending bleep is I can't make art.
00:33:47.378 --> 00:33:54.324
And I'm not an artist because my belief is that art is art.
00:33:54.604 --> 00:34:02.743
Use it's creative expression that is created from connecting to human, your humanity and your humanness in any way.
00:34:02.983 --> 00:34:03.723
I think that's true.
00:34:03.723 --> 00:34:10.034
It's like, and then releasing it and then someone else can consume it and then get connected to their humanity and their humanness.
00:34:10.673 --> 00:34:13.594
I think that we all have the capability to create art.
00:34:13.954 --> 00:34:16.974
I think that it just depends on the mode that you want to do.
00:34:16.994 --> 00:34:21.324
And I would say, find the mode that sparks joy or the make that hurt a little bit less.
00:34:22.304 --> 00:34:29.264
For example, me doing wood carving makes it hurt a lot more because I get frustrated, but maybe doing writing makes it hurt a little bit less.
00:34:29.344 --> 00:34:33.324
And I would just say, you know, you, I think everyone has the capability to be an artist.
00:34:33.333 --> 00:34:34.934
I think everyone is an artist to begin with.
00:34:35.554 --> 00:34:39.293
I think everyone's medium is different, but they're all equal in their measures.
00:34:39.344 --> 00:34:46.403
And I think creating art and using creative expression and doing it and bringing in your humanity allows us.
00:34:46.838 --> 00:35:00.739
To connect to others and remember that we're not alone in the human experience And we are more than alone than alike or more alone than different No, we are more alike than different and we are not alone And I think that's a wonderful thing to remember and art helps us do that.
00:35:01.778 --> 00:35:02.429
Yeah, I agree.
00:35:02.429 --> 00:35:06.188
And I also think our The concept of art, right?
00:35:06.188 --> 00:35:18.043
How we define it can be much more than just what we think of as the creative stuff like you said wood carving or poetry or what have you we had a guest, Charles Penoza, I think it was episode 97.
00:35:18.204 --> 00:35:21.954
He wrote a book about leadership as a masterpiece.
00:35:22.338 --> 00:35:29.239
What he did is he looked at businesses and business problems and how they were resolved through the humanities and classic works of art.
00:35:29.518 --> 00:35:32.298
And he looked, you know, it just made you understand.
00:35:32.298 --> 00:35:39.469
I think like, a lot of the world's great business leaders are actually, you know, they're not operators, they're artists.
00:35:39.568 --> 00:35:42.239
They're looking at their business as an art and how to grow it.
00:35:42.248 --> 00:35:48.489
So I think we can, it can apply in a much more broad fashion than just what we normally think of as art.
00:35:48.719 --> 00:35:50.248
I think we are creators.
00:35:50.469 --> 00:35:55.289
I believe that humans are creators and what we have the capability to create is art.
00:35:55.648 --> 00:36:00.048
And I think art is anything that connects us, that we create, that connects us to our humanness and our humanity.
00:36:01.293 --> 00:36:10.143
By putting it out there, it connects other people to their humanness and their humanity, and then I think that art helps to prove that we're not alone in the human experience.
00:36:10.204 --> 00:36:15.543
And I think that that really helps to, it brings me hope and it brings me joy.
00:36:15.693 --> 00:36:18.293
And I think art is just creation.
00:36:19.423 --> 00:36:19.634
Yeah.
00:36:19.634 --> 00:36:20.083
Well put.
00:36:21.273 --> 00:36:21.563
Thanks.
00:36:21.934 --> 00:36:23.173
I told you, I thought about it.
00:36:24.224 --> 00:36:27.253
I'm not this eloquent when I haven't thought about things.
00:36:27.264 --> 00:36:29.543
So I try to think about it beforehand.
00:36:30.244 --> 00:36:30.673
Yeah.
00:36:30.744 --> 00:36:32.273
And you're also super well prepared.
00:36:32.474 --> 00:36:34.793
so Cleo, this has been a real joy.
00:36:34.833 --> 00:36:40.304
If anybody else wants to, Get ahold of your album, your upcoming book, just learn more about you.
00:36:40.563 --> 00:36:41.724
Where should we point them to?
00:36:42.344 --> 00:36:44.744
Yeah, I have a website called cleo childs.
00:36:45.034 --> 00:36:45.443
com.
00:36:45.443 --> 00:36:46.443
Try to make it simple.
00:36:46.463 --> 00:36:49.393
So that's C L E O child.
00:36:49.414 --> 00:36:51.224
C H I L D S.
00:36:51.273 --> 00:36:57.934
I put the album out on everything, all the places I could find to put it out on.
00:36:57.934 --> 00:37:04.623
I did cause I didn't want to, you know, put it behind a wall where people who may relate to it.
00:37:04.798 --> 00:37:05.639
Couldn't get to it.
00:37:05.648 --> 00:37:07.429
So it's out there in the ether.
00:37:07.829 --> 00:37:11.219
I'm currently editing the book, so don't go looking for it yet.
00:37:11.349 --> 00:37:14.048
Give me a little bit of time, but I'm really excited about it.
00:37:14.449 --> 00:37:26.398
And it's really just helping to expand the idea of the journey so that people can be able to relate more maybe, or feel not so alone and it's different, experiences that I went through that really I would have to pare down for the album sake.
00:37:26.969 --> 00:37:30.188
And then, Yeah, that's pretty much me.
00:37:30.278 --> 00:37:33.059
And I'm just, you know, grateful and thankful.
00:37:33.059 --> 00:37:34.679
And thank you so much for having me.
00:37:34.958 --> 00:37:36.219
Yeah, thank you for being here.
00:37:36.219 --> 00:37:39.849
Just as a reminder, the title of your album is moving with correct?
00:37:39.978 --> 00:37:40.358
Yes.
00:37:40.739 --> 00:37:43.268
Because as I said, there's no moving on.
00:37:43.728 --> 00:37:47.378
There's just moving with Yeah, I love that.
00:37:47.398 --> 00:37:52.509
So look up moving with anywhere in in the ether, as you said, by Cleo Childs.
00:37:52.748 --> 00:37:54.659
And do you have a title for your upcoming book yet?
00:37:56.628 --> 00:38:04.849
Currently we're working on moving with the expanded edition, but I think that's probably going to change because it's called moving with book.
00:38:05.059 --> 00:38:16.688
So I think that we have, we have an opportunity here to maybe rethink it, but, um, it will be on my website whenever, you know, I release it, but it's in the editing process right now, but I'm really pleased with it.
00:38:17.298 --> 00:38:17.628
Awesome.
00:38:18.809 --> 00:38:20.748
Well, Cleo, thank you so much for being here.
00:38:20.748 --> 00:38:24.929
Thank you for, you know, sharing your experience with us, your art with us.
00:38:25.309 --> 00:38:34.478
And personally, I'm most grateful for you sharing the tool, of something I, clearly I get uncomfortable with it, which is just how to express my, you know, sympathy for grief with others.
00:38:34.478 --> 00:38:38.898
And, that's something I'll, I'll take with me hopefully for the rest of my life.
00:38:38.898 --> 00:38:40.059
So I'm, I'm really grateful.
00:38:40.369 --> 00:38:40.719
Thank you.
00:38:41.083 --> 00:38:41.673
You're welcome.
00:38:41.693 --> 00:38:45.494
I'm glad that, it resonated with you and, please feel free to use it and pass it along.
00:38:45.974 --> 00:38:46.724
Yeah, we'll do.
00:38:46.994 --> 00:38:54.793
Thank you, Cleo We hope you've enjoyed The Wayfinder Show.
00:38:54.943 --> 00:38:59.164
If you got value from this episode, please take a few seconds to leave us a 5 star rating and review.
00:38:59.454 --> 00:39:03.704
This will allow us to help more people find their way to live more authentic and exciting lives.
00:39:04.364 --> 00:39:05.664
We'll catch you on the next episode.
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