This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:10] Laura Camien: When I bump into something that inspires me, I jump in my spark files.

[0:19] Susan Blackwell: To be something that I wanna make or how I wanna be.

[0:23] Laura Camien: I pump it in my spark file.

[0:23] Susan Blackwell: Spark file!

[0:28] Laura Camien: I jump into my spark spa.

[0:32] Susan Blackwell: Let's open up the spark file.

[0:37] Laura Camien: Welcome to the Spark File, where we believe that everyone is creative, but smart creative people don't go it alone.

[0:43] Susan Blackwell: I'm Laura Camien.

[0:45] Susan Blackwell: And I am Susan Blackwell, and we are creativity coaches who help people clarify and accomplish their creative goals.

[0:51] Laura Camien: Know that just by listening to this podcast, you are joining a warm and wonderful clan of creatives.

[0:58] Susan Blackwell: But hold up.

[0:59] Laura Camien: You may be asking yourself, what exactly is a spark file?

[0:59] Susan Blackwell: A spark file is a place where you consistently collect all of your inspirations and your fascinations.

[1:09] Laura Camien: Every episode, we're gonna reach into our very own spark files and exchange some sparks.

[1:14] Susan Blackwell: And from time to time, we may even talk to some human beings who spark us too.

[1:20] Laura Camien: And your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take some of these sparks of inspiration and make something of your own.

[1:26] Susan Blackwell: So without further ado, let's open up the spark file.

[1:32] Laura Camien: Hey, did you hear they're doing a remake of the X-Files?

[1:37] Susan Blackwell: No.

[1:38] Laura Camien: I did, and I'm very, very excited and intrigued.

[1:42] Susan Blackwell: Although it is hard to imagine who's gonna capture that hot, hot chemistry between Mulder and Scully.

[1:48] Laura Camien: Were you a big X-Files fan when it was on?

[1:51] Susan Blackwell: Yes!

[1:52] Laura Camien: Oh my God, yes.

[1:55] Susan Blackwell: Aw.

[1:55] Susan Blackwell: Yes, I was.

[1:56] Laura Camien: You didn't know this about me.

[1:58] Susan Blackwell: I didn't.

[1:59] Laura Camien: We're still learning about each other.

[2:01] Susan Blackwell: After all these years.

[2:04] Laura Camien: Hey, do you remember Bree Sharp's David DuCovny Why Don't You Love Me song?

[2:08] Susan Blackwell: Oh God, yes, I do.

[2:11] Laura Camien: I absolutely do.

[2:13] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[2:13] Susan Blackwell: I sure do.

[2:14] Laura Camien: David DuCovney, why don't you love me?

[2:17] Susan Blackwell: So of course, I think we found that David DuCovney loved a lot of people.

[2:22] Laura Camien: And we might have dodged a bullet with him not loving us.

[2:26] Susan Blackwell: I think I'm okay with it now.

[2:28] Laura Camien: I had no idea.

[2:30] Laura Camien: Feel very out of touch since I did my dopamine reset, and I haven't been on social media.

[2:36] Susan Blackwell: Oh.

[2:37] Laura Camien: And I'm okay with it.

[2:39] Susan Blackwell: But where are you getting your news though?

[2:41] Laura Camien: The New York Times.

[2:42] Susan Blackwell: And the Times hasn't covered this.

[2:45] Laura Camien: Interesting.

[2:46] Laura Camien: Okay.

[2:46] Susan Blackwell: Or if they have, I haven't dipped into it.

[2:49] Laura Camien: All right.

[2:50] Laura Camien: Well, I will keep you posted then.

[2:52] Laura Camien: I did see a piece of cultural excitement that it was just announced yesterday that Jonathan Groff is going to be playing Rosalind on the West End in a production of As You Like It.

[3:04] Susan Blackwell: I cannot, I have on my list to do today.

[3:06] Susan Blackwell: I want to reach out to him because that was a very formative role that I played when I was a younger person.

[3:13] Susan Blackwell: And I'm so excited that he's playing it because I love that.

[3:16] Susan Blackwell: I love that role.

[3:16] Susan Blackwell: I love that play.

[3:17] Laura Camien: Oh my God.

[3:19] Laura Camien: What if you could record that conversation?

[3:21] Laura Camien: You guys just talking about the role of Rosalind.

[3:23] Susan Blackwell: I would love it.

[3:24] Susan Blackwell: I want to be a fly on the wall.

[3:26] Laura Camien: And you know that I have been like, gosh, dang it.

[3:30] Laura Camien: I want to get back to London.

[3:31] Susan Blackwell: I wanted to go last year to see Phillips' show because we had a client.

[3:35] Susan Blackwell: I don't know if we told you all, but we had a client who debuted a show off West End.

[3:40] Laura Camien: And I wasn't able to make it.

[3:42] Susan Blackwell: And I am just determined.

[3:44] Susan Blackwell: I think this year, I'm like, I really need to go to London.

[3:46] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[3:47] Susan Blackwell: So all I'm looking for is the reason.

[3:50] Laura Camien: For the season.

[3:51] Susan Blackwell: Now, you may not have seen this.

[3:53] Susan Blackwell: I don't know if this qualifies as a huge cultural moment, but I saw some footage from the London production of Hunger Games on stage.

[4:06] Laura Camien: And god damn, if that doesn't look incredible.

[4:09] Susan Blackwell: You know what I think looks incredible?

[4:11] Susan Blackwell: Is that little Paddington on stage in London?

[4:14] Laura Camien: Have you seen that little sweet little Paddington?

[4:17] Susan Blackwell: All right.

[4:17] Susan Blackwell: A trip to London must be planned.

[4:19] Laura Camien: I love it.

[4:20] Laura Camien: I love it for both of us.

[4:22] Susan Blackwell: And you know what else I love?

[4:24] Susan Blackwell: A little bit of podcasting.

[4:26] Laura Camien: You want a little spark?

[4:27] Susan Blackwell: I would love a spark.

[4:30] Laura Camien: Well, I am ready to share a spark with you today, Suze.

[4:34] Laura Camien: But before I do, I think I would like to share an observation.

[4:39] Laura Camien: You know, when we first started to imagine this podcast and how we wanted to work and what we wanted to do, one of the things that I recall us clearly saying is that we wanted to establish a framework for our own continual learning and our own continual seeking of inspiration at all times.

[5:03] Susan Blackwell: Absolutely.

[5:03] Laura Camien: Like we wanted it to be like built in to the fabric of our lives, that we would move through the world with our eyes open, with our hearts open, looking for ideas and concepts, people, projects that moved us or excited us, or just in general made us feel alive.

[5:23] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[5:24] Laura Camien: We have to do it to find sparks for the podcast, but even more importantly, we wanted to train ourselves to do it as a way of life.

[5:32] Susan Blackwell: And, you know, spoiler, we have.

[5:36] Laura Camien: I just want to say I continue to be really grateful for it because I guess especially when to be completely transparent, like when I feel depleted, when I feel overwhelmed, or I feel sad.

[5:56] Laura Camien: Like I feel sad right now about things on the micro level.

[6:00] Laura Camien: I feel sad about things on the macro level.

[6:03] Laura Camien: I just feel really sad.

[6:05] Susan Blackwell: And I don't want today's Spark to feel pathetically sad.

[6:09] Laura Camien: It's not.

[6:10] Laura Camien: It isn't, I promise, but it is tender and it's a little bit bittersweet.

[6:16] Laura Camien: So I'm gonna proceed with caution.

[6:19] Susan Blackwell: All right.

[6:20] Laura Camien: My journey of today's Spark began with an email.

[6:25] Laura Camien: Earlier this week, we received a note from a former client who has taken our Blaze course, Sam Johnson, Samantha Johnson.

[6:33] Susan Blackwell: Hi Sam.

[6:34] Laura Camien: Hi Sam.

[6:35] Laura Camien: Thank you so much for this email.

[6:38] Laura Camien: And in this email, Sam wrote, It's been almost three years since I participated in the Blaze cohort, January 2023, and I can't believe it.

[6:48] Laura Camien: My last day at my full time job will be March 3rd, 2026.

[6:53] Laura Camien: I am leaving to pursue my coaching practice full time, and it is a big moment.

[7:00] Laura Camien: When I joined that company seven years ago, I told myself, this will be the last job I ever have.

[7:07] Laura Camien: I just didn't know of what.

[7:09] Laura Camien: Participating in the SparkFile course was a pivotal moment in me finding my way.

[7:14] Laura Camien: It was because of that community that I was finally able to admit what I really wanted that I wanted to be a coach.

[7:24] Laura Camien: And today I am.

[7:26] Susan Blackwell: Can we take a second?

[7:27] Laura Camien: Sam Johnson is such a beautiful writer.

[7:31] Susan Blackwell: And Sam Johnson gives you great email.

[7:35] Laura Camien: She gives good email.

[7:37] Laura Camien: Like just the best.

[7:39] Susan Blackwell: I am going to share repeatedly several times.

[7:44] Susan Blackwell: I'm going to tap back into that email.

[7:46] Laura Camien: So everybody, you're going to have a sense of what a great email Sam sends.

[7:51] Laura Camien: But I want to pause and just say thank you.

[7:54] Laura Camien: Like thank you to Sam for writing us.

[7:57] Laura Camien: Taking the time to do that.

[8:00] Laura Camien: You know, all of us have those moments of like, oh, I'm so, I'm so grateful for this and that.

[8:04] Laura Camien: And it's another step to take like fully craft a beautiful, thoughtful, resourceful email like Sam does.

[8:14] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[8:14] Laura Camien: And so I don't know, it really brings me joy to know that what we do at the SparkFile has made such a difference.

[8:24] Laura Camien: Because again, have I mentioned I am feeling sad.

[8:28] Laura Camien: I'm feeling sad.

[8:30] Laura Camien: But sometimes it just helps to like be reminded of our purpose and that the things that we choose to do with our life matter.

[8:41] Laura Camien: And now Sam is using her time on earth to make a difference for other people as well.

[8:46] Susan Blackwell: And then the gifts just keep on gifting.

[8:50] Laura Camien: You know what I mean?

[8:51] Laura Camien: It's just, it's incredible to watch.

[8:54] Laura Camien: So I was grateful to receive this letter.

[8:57] Laura Camien: But in this letter, Sam also mentioned something else.

[9:02] Laura Camien: Sam mentioned ambiguous grief.

[9:05] Laura Camien: I've been a little bit fascinated with the idea of ambiguous grief for several years now.

[9:10] Laura Camien: And more recently, I've been feeling it for a variety of reasons.

[9:14] Laura Camien: So I thought it might be a perfect time to dig into it and see how it might spark other people as well.

[9:23] Laura Camien: So by definition, ambiguous grief or ambiguous loss is a profoundly stressful type of grief without closure.

[9:34] Laura Camien: It occurs when a loved one is either physically absent but psychologically present, or physically present but psychologically absent.

[9:43] Laura Camien: What does that mean?

[9:44] Laura Camien: Physically absent but psychologically present.

[9:47] Laura Camien: What does that mean?

[9:48] Laura Camien: Well, we're gonna get into it.

[9:49] Laura Camien: I'm gonna give you some examples.

[9:50] Laura Camien: But in that case, physically present but psychologically absent might be someone being diagnosed with dementia.

[9:57] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[9:57] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[9:58] Laura Camien: So they are here with me, but they are not here.

[10:01] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[10:02] Laura Camien: They're gone.

[10:03] Laura Camien: And that sort of here but not here or gone but not for sure state of being kind of creates this persistent confusion and anxiety and this mental tug of war between holding on to hope and accepting the loss.

[10:21] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[10:23] Laura Camien: So just more in more detail, ambiguous grief can be experienced when a loved one has gone missing, for example, soldiers who are missing in action, people who are missing with no explanation.

[10:35] Laura Camien: The family doesn't know whether they should grieve for sure or fight harder to find answers.

[10:41] Laura Camien: They know their person isn't here, but they have no certainty.

[10:45] Laura Camien: It can apply to losing a person to dementia, as we said, where the person is physically present, but also no longer here.

[10:53] Laura Camien: But here's where it gets interesting.

[10:55] Laura Camien: Ambiguous grief and loss can also be felt with the death of a dream, a friendship, a marriage, a long-held belief.

[11:07] Laura Camien: And I'm going to get into even a few more examples that have kind of come into our cultural consciousness in the last, you know, five years or so.

[11:18] Laura Camien: So I'll get into that as we go.

[11:21] Laura Camien: Sam wrote in her letter, ambiguous grief is the reason why I want to be a coach.

[11:27] Laura Camien: I know the acute pain of having a dream in your heart that you long know you yearn to make real and the agony of being stuck, paralyzed by the fear of failing, or simply too scared to admit it and still wanting it.

[11:43] Susan Blackwell: And I have to say, same, Sam, same.

[11:48] Laura Camien: Not only do I want to avoid feeling lost regarding dreams I have for myself, I want to help others push through whatever is between them and their wildest creative dreams.

[12:05] Laura Camien: Let's see if we can wrap our arms around this baby.

[12:08] Laura Camien: Who knows, maybe feel a little bit better having talked about it.

[12:13] Laura Camien: So, in regard to grief, most of us have heard the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

[12:21] Laura Camien: A few years back, I also did a spark on the podcast about the sixth stage of grief that they have added, which is meaning making.

[13:02] Laura Camien: But what if it's not a journey? Sam also shared in her email a talk that John Ohuchequa gave about grief. And he said, rather than look at grief like a journey we hope to complete, what if we looked at it as a language we hope to learn? I mean, I suspect nobody really wants to become fluid in grief. But learning the language does allow us to connect with ourselves and each other in deep and meaningful ways, even when the grief is ambiguous. In his talk, John says that grief might actually be the official language of humanity. When somebody dies, physically dies, there are rituals, there are funerals, there are casseroles, there are phrases like, I'm so sorry for your loss, which are, by the way, very insufficient.

We'll talk about that. But at least the rituals are there. Ambiguous loss can feel like a death with no funeral, no official rituals, and yet our bodies respond the same way. We're in pain. Tears are shed physically and emotionally. We are responding in the same way. But typically the difference is that those around us don't understand it. And collectively, we don't have ways to acknowledge it. So the term ambiguous loss was coined by a family therapist and researcher named Pauline Boss. And yeah, she's a boss. Her, I was like, Pauline, thank you for this work. Her discovery did not happen in a flash of inspiration. It happened through years of sitting with families in limbo. In the 1970s, as a doctoral student studying families and child development, she began noticing a pattern.

Some families were grieving, but nobody had died. She studied families where a father was physically present, but psychologically absent, emotionally unavailable or checked out. She studied wives of fighter pilots missing in action during the Vietnam War. Those husbands were physically absent, but psychologically very present. Got it, got it. Nobody, no confirmation, no closure. In both situations, families lived in a strange in-between. Are they gone? Are they coming back? Who am I now in relation to them? Excruciating. Yeah. How can I move on? Should I move on? What does it mean if I move on? So Boss realized that these families were experiencing a loss that had no clear edges. It wasn't clean.

It wasn't final. It was ambiguous. So she named it ambiguous loss or ambiguous grief. A loss without clear resolution, without certainty, a loss that blocks our ability to make meaning because we don't know what happened. Yeah. And this is the key. When meaning is blocked, that phase where we can make meaning out of this pain, our grief gets frozen. Like we get stuck in chronic uncertainty. Our attachment systems stay activated. Our threat systems stay activated. We don't know whether to hold on or let go. We don't know who we are in relation to this anymore. So as I mentioned, ambiguous loss can take many forms. A partner with dementia, physically here, psychologically gone, an addiction that transforms someone you love into someone you no longer recognize.

A cult or a political belief system that transforms someone you love into someone you don't recognize. Wow. A divorce that leaves the person alive, but the relationship dead, a child you gave up for adoption, a missing person, immigration that separates families across oceans, or across where we don't know because the person is torn away from us at and we don't know what's happening to them. Infertility, the loss of a pregnancy, a friendship that ended, a love bombing followed by discarding, a dream that never got to live. Or this one is this one is tough. The death of a future you thought you would have, a career path, a version of yourself you assumed you would become. I think about a generation of people whose dreams got deferred or set aside entirely because of the pandemic.

Like we know people who were about to make their Broadway debut when the world shut down. We know people who were about to move to New York City or Los Angeles or wherever they wanted to go or had just gotten their dream job, but the world shut down. Yep. I'm even gonna add the death of the so-called American dream, the idea of college of owning a home, or for some people, the dream of having children. There are a lot of younger people today who feel the loss of those ideas. They don't feel possible. And we're just left to accept it as the new normal. Sometimes even feel contempt for them. Like, and we do this to ourselves. Like we're we'll ask ourselves, why am I still stuck on this? Why can't I just move on?

So it wasn't meant to be. Or my favorite from my childhood, and we talk about this a lot, but just suck it up, buttercup, or you get what you get, you don't get upset. Move on. But the body knows, the body grieves. We are so many people are holding grief of so many kinds. In fact, in the book, The Body Keeps the Score, the author Bessel van der Koelk implies that ambiguous grief, a loss lacking closure, such as dementia, addiction, missing person, keeps the body in a chronic, high alert stress hormone state. This invisible sorrow manifests as a profound physical exhaustion, chronic tension and inflammation because the brain cannot process the loss. I don't even have this in my spark, but I'm remembering now there was an article in the New York Times that I think set off my original fascination with this because it was saying after the pandemic, like we are culturally collectively experiencing ambiguous loss, and we've got to actively try to process this in some way.

When someone dies, as devastating as it is, we know the category of loss and we have a name for it. But when someone is both here and not here or gone but psychologically alive in us, we ask ourselves like, am I still a daughter if my mother no longer remembers me? Am I still the middle child if my sibling has opted out of the family? If this person adored me and then discarded me, was it even real? Can I call myself an artist? If I had to pivot to other work, who am I now that none of my dreams seem attainable? Not having answers to these kinds of questions can make us feel like we're going crazy. It can keep us from making meaning out of the loss. And again, making meaning is how we metabolize grief.

Psychologist Robert Niemeyer talks about grief not as letting go, but as reconstructing meaning. But how do you reconstruct meaning when the story hasn't clearly ended? Oftentimes we ruminate, we overthink, and we long for that closure. But Pauline Boss does not offer closure as the goal. In fact, she calls closure a myth in many situations. Instead, she suggests adaptation. Here I am again. Listen to what she suggests. She suggests learning to live inside the ambiguity. It brought me back to the first spark I did this season about uncertainty. Why do all roads seem to lead to accepting uncertainty right now? It feels like this is the big lesson I keep getting pushed toward over and over again.

Make friends with ambiguity, make friends with uncertainty. Yeah. But Pauline Boss outlined several ways to build resilience in ambiguous loss. Name the loss. Normalize having mixed emotions, holding multiple emotions at the same time, release the need for certainty, reconstruct identity, revise attachment, and find meaning without closure. We'll get into those in a second. But notice the first one. If you're wanting to support someone who is experiencing loss of any kind, instead of saying, I'm sorry for your loss, he suggests asking, what was their name? Yes. Will you tell me a story about your love or about your hopes or about your dreams? Story brings the lost back into love. And when we tell the story, we begin to metabolize the ambiguity.

We start to shape meaning. So, Susan, what do we make of it? If ambiguous loss is real, and if so many of us are carrying it quietly, what can we do? Let's look at those steps that Pauline Boss suggests. Yeah. So first we name it. If you have a dream that has been sitting in your heart for years, if you have longed to create something but felt paralyzed, if you've been living in the tension between who you are and who you ache to be, there may be grief there. Not because something died, but because something inside you has been waiting. And the longer we don't name that loss, the more our nervous systems stay activated.

[25:24] Laura Camien: So we name it. I am grieving the novel I haven't written. I am grieving the relationship I thought I would have. I am grieving the version of my career that never came to be. Naming it gives it edges and a boundary. Number two, we normalize ambivalence and mixed feelings. You can love someone and know that you need to move on from them. You can want your dream fiercely and be terrified of it. Mixed feelings are all part of ambiguous loss. Number three, we release the demand for certainty. You may not get answers. Understand, but you can still live. You can still create. You can still reconstruct identity. And this is where I want to just gently pivot to something that feels very sparkvile. Because one form of ambiguous grief that we see over and over again is the death of a creative dream that hasn't actually died.

It's just suspended. It's not buried. It's hovering. And the longer it hovers, the more we live in limbo. Can I even call myself an artist, a writer, a creative? That is ambiguous grief. Yes. It feels like it's here and no longer here at the same time. Again, in those cases, our body responds as if something has died. This is why telling the story matters. All of this reminds me of the powerful quote by Ahime Aura. You gotta resurrect the deep pain within you and give it a place to live that's not within your body. Let it live in art, let it live in writing, let it live in music, let it be devoured by building brighter connections. At the Spark File, we fully embrace this because when you tell the story of your stuckness, when you tell the story of your dream, when you tell the story of your fear, you find meaning even if you don't have a guaranteed outcome.

Which brings me to the PS that Sam included in her email. Sam attached a letter from Hunter S. Thompson called A Man Has to Be Something. He has to matter, which is an incredible letter if you've never read it. Sam quoted this line from Hunter S. Thompson. Whether to float with the tide or to swim for a goal, that is a choice we must all make. Sam ended it with me, I'm swimming. That is what adaptation looks like. Not closure, not certainty, but swimming for a goal. And I want to close with the final lines of Sam's letter because they humbled me and just made me feel so grateful. Sam said to me, this is who the spark file is, the antidote to the ambiguous grief from the death of a dream. The two of you are creative doulas, saving one artist after the next from suffering the ambiguous grief of a creative dream they long to make real.

Creative doulas, Suze. Helping people birth the thing that has been suspended, helping people tell the story of what hurts and helping people name the loss. It's awesome. I'm really proud of that. And it is true. We will ask these questions. What is the name of your dream? Will you tell me a story about your love and about your fears? And in the telling, our clients become fluent. They swim toward a goal, and despite ambiguous grief, they create. And that, my friends, is my spark for today.

[29:59] Susan Blackwell: Laura, what a great spark. There's so much in it. I almost don't know what to say. Do you feel like you've experienced ambiguous grief in the last, I mean, I mean, in your lifetime, I'm sure, but like the last five years?

[30:17] Laura Camien: For sure, for sure. In addition to like the real, like we both have experienced very concrete grief. We've experienced grief grief, grief classique. Yeah. And we, and I've also experienced ambiguous grief, which I was reflecting on as you were sharing. And those steps that you presented, some of it I'm like simple to say, harder to do. But the actual process, the process of embodying it is harder to do. Some of those steps are no joke. I was struck by how much easier it is to do when you are surrounded by people who also know the language.

[30:57] Susan Blackwell: Yes, also fluent in the language, always willing to ask the questions, listen to you, be present as a witness, and help you process through support as you process through it. It is essential, I think. You made so many points, but one point that you made that I've given a lot of thought to is what do we say to people who have experienced profound loss or are really going through it.

[31:28] Laura Camien: Yeah, there's a lot of finger wagging and tisk tisking online that I've seen, and we've talked about on the podcast where people are like, you're doing it wrong.

[31:36] Susan Blackwell: That's right.

[31:37] Laura Camien: You say, I'm so sorry for your loss, you're doing it wrong. I'm not down with that. I'm like, everybody's doing their best, but I have been seeking for myself other responses that feel authentic and maybe a little bit less cookie-cutter. And something that I've also arrived at independently that I've really utilized is tell me about your person.

[32:03] Susan Blackwell: That's right.

[32:05] Laura Camien: Tell me about the person you lost. What did you love about them? And that is fun.

[32:12] Susan Blackwell: That's fun.

[32:12] Laura Camien: I know that sounds weird, but it can really be well fun.

[32:18] Susan Blackwell: I don't think it's weird at all, Suze, because I think that is the connection back to love and back to meaning. And so when you ask that question, and the person responds with an outpouring of what it was that connected them deeply and meaningfully to this other human being.

[32:36] Laura Camien: Yeah. And you're suddenly in a conversation, not about death, but about love.

[32:44] Susan Blackwell: I think it's everything.

[32:46] Laura Camien: Yeah. I also think about that Ahime Aura quote. And when I wasn't feeling well, I had a lot of blood drawn. And I had my blood drawn by this woman. And we just got to talking, as I am wont to do, and she shared with me that her partner had died in the prior year. And on her phone, she had all of this writing that she had put in a notes app on her phone about her partner. And she said something like, You're fun to talk to. What do you do? And I said, Well, I'm a creative doula, essentially. I help people identify and accomplish their creative goals. And she said, Well, you're you make things. Do you want to make something out of this?

[33:45] Susan Blackwell: Yes, yes.

[33:45] Laura Camien: And she shook her phone at me, like, and I said, That's for you to make something out of. Yes, yes. And I sort of hearkened back to that Ahime Aura quote. I was like, here's what I know. Your pain is not meant to live inside your body. You can put it into your writing. You can put it into something beautiful. And that writing can be songs, it could be stories or a story about this person that you loved and lost. And those stories could be just for you. They could be for you and the child that the two of you made together. They could be for the world. They can be for whoever you want them to be for. But most importantly, they are now outside of you and not living inside of you.

[34:33] Susan Blackwell: Amen.

[34:34] Laura Camien: And so this spark is so densely packed with goodness. There's so much to reflect on in this spark. One thing that I do know is I don't think I'm making up a false story when I say we are all, if we're lucky enough to live long enough, we are all going to come face to face with grief grief, grief classique, and ambiguous grief. And so it's great to have information and a little bit of a game plan. So whether that grief is about what we want to make before we're done, but we feel like we're never going to make it, and about getting that up and out of your body, or just about the feelings of ambiguous loss, getting that up and out of your body. I just feel like this is super duper helpful.

[35:30] Susan Blackwell: Thank you, Suze.

[35:31] Laura Camien: I hope so.

[35:32] Susan Blackwell: Thank you, Laura. I really do. I think you know, if we all can support each other in first of all, understanding we're not crazy. Like it, you're you're not crazy. It is what you are grieving is important to grieve. And let's not try to minimize it or put it aside and think I should be over this by now, whatever it is, and find ways to make meaning. Laura, that was beautiful. Thank you so much for that.

[36:01] Laura Camien: My pleasure.

[36:02] Susan Blackwell: Uh, I guess that's it. This episode of the Spark File was made on the lands of the Lenape and the Mohican people. And as always, we hope this put another bunch of sparks in your file. Listen to us. If there's a spark you'd like us to explore, or if you'd like to learn more about how to coach with us to identify and accomplish your creative goals so that you can avoid the feelings of regret and ambiguous grief that may haunt you. You can email us at get creative at the sparkfile.com or reach us through our website, thesparkfile.com. Hey, we'll even happily take your feedback, but you know the price of admission. First, you have to share a creative risk that you have taken recently. You can follow us on social at the sparkfile and be sure to subscribe and rate.

And five star review this podcast. It really does help other listeners to find us. Also, if you like this podcast, we really do hope you'll share it with the people that you love, people that you think could benefit from it. And if you didn't like it, we're sorry to see you go. We shall grieve the loss, but not ambiguously. Bye bye.

[37:12] Laura Camien: If something lights you up and gets your creative sparks flying, we're writing you a forever permission slip to make that thing that's been knocking at your door. It's your turn to take that spark and fan it into a flame. You know you gotta take it and make it when I bump into something that inspires me. I dump it in the spark files. Could be something that I wanna make or how I wanna be. I pump it in the spark files. I jump into my spark files. Sparkfile. Let's open up the spark files.