Last Saturday, I had the privilege of hosting Awakin Call with Rev. Liz Tichenor.

Reverend Liz Tichenor, rector in Pleasant Hill, California, was ordained at age 27, almost half the average age of others ordained in the Episcopal Church. A few months earlier, her mother committed suicide after decades of battling alcoholism. A year and a half later, her infant son, just 40 days old, died in her bed, from a likely curable but misdiagnosed medical condition. This unimaginable grief—from not one, but two experiences, the likes of which most are terrified to consider, much less confront—plunged Tichenor into the Great Unknown, even as her new role as a priest pressed her to guide others in their grief with some kind of resolve and solace. Through community, compassion from others, and brushes with the mystical divine, Tichenor and her family survived and emerged seemingly greater than before. Tichenor models the importance of showing up with authenticity for one another, especially in these times of personal and global tumult.

Below are some of the nuggets from the call that stood out for me ...

• "The culture of whiteness" can be a barrier to people who, like Tichenor, are of Euro American descent. They're taught to hide their grief and suppress it. Yet grief is just another face of love. We must engage with it.
  
• "Good ritual" can help us hold our grief. It can shepherd us through loss. Tichenor spontaneously baptized her infant son after his death, not because he needed to be saved but because she needed to express her love for him and the fact that his life had mattered.
  
• Grief follows every form of loss. In Tichenor's case, she'd experienced grief related to her mother's alcoholism, her parents' divorce, physical separation from her father, her mother's suicide, and the death of her infant son, Fritz.
  
• Tichenor feels that she is still parenting Fritz, her deceased son. She is still his mother. The lost remain with us.
  
• After experiencing tremendous loss, at some point we must "choose to live again." For Tichenor, this meant (among other things) starting to run again, and immersing herself in elemental nature.
  
• Spiritual communities can help us hold (but not cling to) our grief as we find our way through it. They can provide structures of meaning and practice. They can provide "ground beneath us."

Thank you again to Liz, to moderator Cynthia Li, and to all the behind-the-scenes volunteers that made this call happen!