With raw honesty and introspection, Michael explores how grief, spirituality, and art intertwine to form a path toward healing. The conversation offers a moving glimpse into how engaging with creativity can help someone emerge from heartbreak and how connection persists beyond loss.

Listen to “Call of the Void” wherever you stream music now!
Find Michael Ahmad on socials @themichaelahmad and at www.themichaelahmad.com

Whenever I feel overwhelmed with trying to live life under oppressive man-made systems, I tend to turn on a show about the universe. Knowing that I, as one single human, am SO insignificant in the grand scheme of things usually helps me put my own personal problems into perspective.

The same goes with loss. The cycles of nature remind me that losing things is a natural part of life. Without letting go of the old, we’re not able to let it compost and nourish something new. I’m not great at relinquishing control, but I’m getting incrementally better at accepting the fact that I didn’t actually have much of it to begin with.

No one understands this better than my guest on today’s podcast - Stephanie Arne. Stephanie is an award-winning conservationist, adventurer, and storyteller who knows firsthand how the lessons of nature can support us in confronting personal grief and loss.

In this conversation, Stephanie shares how her grappling with her family history helped her understand more about herself, and how the grief she has experienced in life taught her how to strengthen her resilience and hope for the future. Enjoy!

Learn more about Stephanie at www.stephaniearne.com

Support the show at patreon.com/literallyworkingthroughit

Follow the show @literallyworkingthroughit on socials

It wasn’t my first time getting let go from a position. I’m an elder millennial - I’ve lived through my fair share of turbulent economic times.

And one thing that never changes for me is the pain that I feel each time it happens. Pain from feeling discarded or no longer wanted, and from not being able to write my own ending to a certain chapter of my life.

But after seeing the layoff trends over the past few years, I think the only accurate word I can use to describe them is inhumane:

in·hu·mane /ˌin(h)yo͞oˈmān/
adjective
without compassion for misery or suffering

Years of service gets dismissed and discarded in an instant. People suddenly get cut off from a very real community that they interacted with daily. No opportunity for goodbyes to colleagues, no chance to say thank you to a mentor.

In a world where our jobs occupy the majority of our time and energy, where we’re told our work is essential to our identity, this sudden severing is a real and literal trauma. And there’s a term for it: non-death loss.

In the latest episode of (Literally) Working Through It, I talk to the incredible storyteller and brand consultant Kelsea Little about why naming and claiming this type of grief is so important. Kelsea’s story shows us what’s possible to build when we grapple with a loss of identity and move to detach from the systems that exploit us before discarding us.

This conversation left me feeling both validated and inspired - I hope it helps you feel seen in your grief.

Initially I tried to hype myself up, searching pintrest for various lemon recipes and concoctions. But everything I have found really only requires a few tablespoons of juice at the most, and maybe a little bit of zest. I have WAY more than that. More than one household could ever need.

Everyone knows the phrase “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” This is generally taken to mean: make the best out of a bad situation.

I have mixed feelings about this phrase. To some extent, I do think there’s something problematic with glossing over the very real struggle that any given situation may bring. Especially when it comes to loss.

Losing something important to you shatters your whole worldview. It reveals the truth of things that we successfully avoid most of the time: Nothing lasts forever and we have no control over how that plays out.

Lemons are sour. Lemon juice is acidic, corrosive, and downright painful if it comes in contact with your eyes or a cut on your skin. A person has to understand that first before the can decide how to use the lemons they’ve been given.

Yes, it’s true that many people will find the silver lining of a bad situation. Eventually. But some people can’t, or won’t, and there are completely valid reasons as to why.

Let’s continue with the lemonade example: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. What do you need to make lemonade?

Lemonade requires sugar. Sugar is not free; it’s costs money. And money is a resource that many people struggle to access (there’s even more to say about the costs of sugar, but I’ll leave that to Bad Bunny).

Making lemonade requires time - another thing a lot of people are strapped for. I have learned firsthand that it takes a stupidly long time to juice a lot of lemons. Yes, I could buy a juicer, but that loops us right back to the privilege of having money to do so.

It also requires energy. Someone may have a lot of lemons, but may not WANT to make lemonade. They might want to do something else entirely (like make a visual album, anyone?).

I would never demand that someone make lemonade if they’re already overwhelmed with working a demanding job (or two, or three), caregiving for others who depend on them, in addition to processing the trauma of a loss.

And yet, society consistently (albeit subtlety) tells us to package up our grief, wrap it in a bow, and move on.

That’s not fair to anyone.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about world-building lately. How we humans are constantly co-creating reality with each other. The world, with all it’s losses, can feel like a disheartening place a lot of the time, but the idea that we can collectively vision something new helps me counter the despair.

I think that the shock of grief and loss can cause two things to happen:

1.) We can get scared by the sudden understanding that nothing lasts forever, and therefore grasp tighter to what we still have - desperately clinging to the illusion of control, shrinking our personal world smaller and smaller in the name of “safety”

-or-

2.) We can accept what life has handed us, and take small steps to shape something that can hold it.

I want others to be able to hold my grief with me. To understand that it’s something we all share; that it is truly the singular universal thing that connects all of us who are having this wild (and statistically improbable) experience of being a human being on this planet Earth.

That it what making lemonade means to me.

So, this week, my small step is to start sharing my literal lemons with anyone who wants them. I set up a basket on our front fence offering them to whoever walks by. There’s no reason for me to stress about what to do with them - I can have my community shoulder that burden with me. And in that way, we all benefit.

In the newest episode of (Literally) Working Through It, Brigid talks with Reverend Amy Stapleton - a licensed professional counselor, ordained minister, and community organizer based in Colorado. Their inspiring and all-encompassing conversation touches on:

• How joy and grief are often intertwined (example: four months after Brigid’s brother died, Amy officiated her wedding)

• What it takes to give ourselves permission to grieve (spoiler: it’s nonjudgement)

• Ways to support those we love in their own grief process (other than bringing a casserole)

• How collective grief can inspire truth-telling and transformative change in our communities (because we save ourselves when we save each other)

Listen to the new episode now on Substack, Apple, and Spotify

Laundry has to get done. Kids have to get dropped off. Your boss is asking when that project will be completed. How the f*ck are we supposed to do it all while grieving?

Join me, host Brigid Dodge, as I explore all the ways that life keeps moving forward after loss. Through expert interviews and personal stories, this series explores how we integrate profound grief while challenging the systems that discourage us from truly feeling it.

For the first week I was reeling. I leaned heavily into dissociation through scrolling and other numbing substances. But then, after a few days of nothing to do, I soon realized I began to feel lighter. Energy began to return to me. I realized I was starting to feel something in my core I hadn’t felt in years. I found myself suddenly feeling SAFE.

SAFE to give my body the rest it needs (Fuck your 8am meetings!).

SAFE to create and make art (Fuck your project deadlines!).

SAFE to fully grieve (Fuck your performative support!)

When my brother died last year, I took five weeks off to help my mom sort through the (both literal and figurative) mess he left behind. And getting that much time off was an immense privilege in a capitalist world that only wants us to keep producing - the average amount of bereavement leave offered by most employers is only 3-5 days. But there’s never a longer To-Do list than the one that appears after a death, and you must try to check things off that list while operating in survival mode. Not to mention I felt an unspoken pressure to come back to work. In hindsight, I regret not taking more time off while I was still had their sympathies, because once people get “back to normal,” they don’t ever seem to understand why you’re left frozen in time.

Now, quite suddenly, I have found myself with ample amounts of time to sit and just be. And I have decided to “just be” with my grief. Because I will not waste this opportunity, this miracle of time and space that has been given to me. To cry, or nap, or both, whenever I feel called. To set an Samhain alter and commune with my loved ones on another plane. To completely check out over the holiday season and never experience a single day of “Sunday Scaries.”

So let me be sad.

Let me listen to music that rips my heart open and mends it at the same time.

Let me watch the Netflix comedy special filmed in Denver a few years back, where you can clearly hear my brother’s very distinct laugh in the audience.

Let me read the novel that dad loved but I avoided because I knew it would give me the feels.

Let me do all the things I didn’t do for so long because life had to keep moving forward.

Let life slow to a crawl. I finally feel like I can handle it now. I feel safe enough to embrace those small, sacred moments of grief.

My therapist told me many years ago that as long as I was working for a corporation, I would never be able to live a life fully aligned with my values. But I never felt safe enough in this kind of world to leave a “stable” job. How ironic that it was the leaving that finally ushered in the safety.

.

.

.

.

(But I still teehee when I hear that the department spiraled into chaos shortly after I left; the universe really did me a solid saving me from that).

It’s this fear that prevents people from reaching out to a person who has experienced loss at all. Being afraid of not “getting it right” often prevents us from showing up when we’re called to do so. And it’s the not showing up that can be the most hurtful. Because not only have they lost a loved one, maybe they don’t really have the things that are still with them either.

In the times of my life where I’ve been processing a major loss, I tend to go into a fugue state. I don’t remember a lot about those times. But there are small moments that stand out to me; less so because of what happened and more because of how the moments made me feel. These small moments helped me come back into myself and remember that I was still connected to someone or something else.

I wanted to compile a few of these examples for anyone who may be searching for ways to show up for the people in their lives. These are very personal to me, but my hope is that they may offer some guidance or inspiration.

Here are the small moments that made me feel something:

The “no need to respond” Text

I put this at the top of the list because it’s one of the easiest things to do, but it made a big difference to me. After my brother died, my friend and coworker sent me a text that began with those four words: “No need to respond…”

I had no idea the tension I had been holding until I saw that message. Anyone who has dealt with the death of a loved one knows that it comes with a seemingly endless list of people to contact and things to follow up on. The simple permission slip to not reply to someone gave my brain the break it needed. I could receive this message without having to react or plan. I was allowed to preserve the precious energy that I had to ration throughout my day.

The Safeway Gift Card

When my dad died, I was a 26-year-old kid living on the island of O’ahu and making $8.50 an hour. By insisting that I *follow my dream*, I constantly lived under a tight budget (one that my dad himself helped me out with more than once).

When I returned to Hawaii, I came back to many notes and cards from coworkers. I will always remember the card from my team mate that had a $100 gift card to a grocery store. She was a single mom, and I remember being so moved by the fact that she took money from her own limited funds to give to me, because she herself knew what it was like to constantly need to make ends meet.

The sheer practicality of the gift card, coupled with the empathy it stemmed from, made a lasting impression on me. If you’d like to give a gift to someone navigating a loss, my personal recommendation would be to make it resource related; something that will ease a burden of some kind in that person’s everyday life. What resources a person needs might depend on their own particular circumstances. For me, it was a grocery gift card, but for your person, it might mean a ride share credit, or an offer to pick up/drop off/babysit the kids. Think on it - you know your person best.

The cookie bouquet

My father died in January. On Valentine’s day that year, I came home from work to find a cookie bouquet from my favorite cookie shop had been delivered. The included note was signed by my college roommates.

I was shocked and overwhelmed by the gesture from these two women. We had fallen out of touch over the years; I don’t even know how they had gotten my address across the ocean.

The cookie bouquet was also decorated in the theme of hearts and corsets - harkening back to the days we spent in theatre productions with them and when they came to shows hosted by my burlesque troupe. This cookie bouquet helped remind me of who I was before my life and inner world was upended. Something to consider if you’re wanting to give a gift so someone you’re wanting to show up for.

The PTO

I didn’t have much paid time off accrued when my dad died, but I ended up flying from O’ahu to Colorado and staying for two weeks. When I returned back to work, I still received a full paycheck only because the curator of my facility decided to gift me some of his own PTO. Not only was I grateful for this act of kindness, I was able to make rent that month.

This solution to the problem I faced (and may others still deal with) is much less practical, but arguably the most important. I know it made a huge difference to me. I think it’s safe to say that the average standard of 3-5 days bereavement leave offered by most companies is a complete crock of shit. Oftentimes, bereavement leave isn’t even paid. This feels so unrealistic in today’s day and age. In a time where 37% of Americans can't even afford an emergency expense over $400, having to take unpaid time off of work would only compound everyday stressors in addition to managing the grief itself.

Sadly, there’s a lot of work to be done here, and it’s almost impossible to make progress on an individual level. This is going to take people coming together and pushing both their elected representatives and employers alike to adopt better policies on bereavement leave. Collectively, it’s possible. Get involved when and where you can.

After some thought (and a few requests), I’ve decided to share it here. In his life, Ryan taught us many lessons. I will share them. For him, for us all. This is his supernova, and I hope it glows far and wide.*

Hi everyone. I first want to say thank you all so much for being here. It’s really heartwarming to see how many lives Ryan touched, and I even know of a few others who couldn’t be here today. We’re grateful to each of you.

If you really knew Ryan, you knew which books he loved. Ones that he re-read so often that their covers were worn and their pages faded. One of his favorite books, one of my favorite books, and one of our father Gary’s favorite books is this one: Ender’s Game.

For those that have not read it, the TLDR of it is that it’s a YA Science Fiction story where earth was previously invaded by an alien race, and because of time, space, and relativity, the world government it training children to fight in the next war when they’re grown up.

So I’m going to read you a piece from the end of this book that’s going to give a bit of context regarding what I’ll be saying next.

“The book that Ender wrote was not long, but in it was all the good and all the evil that the Hive-Queen knew. And he signed it, not with his name, but with a title:

SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD

On Earth, the book was published quietly, and quietly it was passed from hand to hand, until it was hard to believe that anyone on earth might not have read it. Most who read it found it interesting; some who read it refused to set it aside. They began t live by it as best they could, and when their loved ones died, a believer would arise beside the grave to be the Speaker for the Dead, and say what the dead one would have said, but with full candor, hiding no faults, and pretending no virtues. Those who came to such services sometimes found them painful and disturbing, but there were many who decided that their life was worthwhile enough, despite their errors, that when they died a Speaker should tell the truth for them.

On Earth it remained a religion among many religions. But for those who traveled the great cave of space and lived their lives in the hive-queen’s tunnels and harvested the hive-queen’s fields, it was the only religion. There was no colony without its Speaker for the Dead.”

My name is Brigid, I’m Ryan’s sister, and I stand before you today as his Speaker for the Dead.

Growing up, Ryan was what we called a “sensitive kid”. As an older sister, I remember being kind of surprised by how easy it was to make him cry. One time he even cried when I beat him at the Star Wars edition of Trivial Pursuit.

A few years ago, Ryan started researching the autism spectrum disorder, recognizing himself in many of the listed characteristics of ASD. He was eventually diagnosed with it, and we suddenly became aware that much of his life had been spent trying to navigate a world he didn’t fully understand.

Regardless of how it came about, this sensitivity led him to develop a deep empathy for others and a special kind of patience. A few years ago, I remember being on the phone with him and apologizing for being such a mean big sister when we were younger.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said “I know you were going through a lot of your own shit growing up.” Looking back on it now, that compassion and forgiveness is the greatest gift he could have ever given me to prepare me for this new phase of our relationship.

But that was who Ryan was. He was fiercely loyal - sometimes to a fault. Ryan was the guy you could call at any hour of the day or night if you needed him, and he’d be there. When he committed to something, he stuck to it. If he made a promise to you, he kept it. Period. Full stop. He sat with many of his friends during the darkest times of their lives. He deeply cared for others, and his connections were of the upmost importance to him. He routinely put everyone else before himself. Even if his heart was broken, his trust betrayed, he always gave someone the benefit of the doubt. The only person he couldn’t offer this grace to was himself.

A lot of this had to do with my dad, who modeled stoic behavior. Always be in control, and quick with your wit should you need to deflect. My dad loved my brother very much, and knew just how damn smart he was. But my dad’s idea of what smart people should do with their lives was a pretty narrow one. “He’s not living up to his potential” dad would say. I think Ryan lived his entire life trying to please him - even after my dad died.

Like my dad, Ryan was often rigid in his viewpoints. “Stubborn” is the nice word for it. He clung to logic and reason, I think partly because that’s how his brain functioned optimally. If you could explain something to him in a way that he understood, he was always so open to changing his viewpoints and ways of thinking or doing things - it just had to make sense first. But one thing you never had to convince him of was the value of another person. He gave everyone a fair shot.

But I also think he leaned heavily into the logic of it all because uncertainty and vulnerability were hard to sit with. If he could not make logical sense of something, he simply could not trust in it. But the thing is, trust is about having a confident relationship with the unknown. And the unknown can be scary.

There was one area of the unknown that Ryan was very comfortable with, and that was creativity. He loved bringing something new into existence. He began writing songs as soon as he started learning how to play instruments, and he found great satisfaction in designing and building things from scratch. Not only that, Ryan was really adept at noticing the good moments while he was still in the middle of it and being grateful for them. He was really talented at a lot of different things - including making people laugh. He was so funny. And he was really down for anything.

His friends and family often heard him say, “Having fun is always better than not having fun.” From skiing, to skating, to camping, to partying, to drinking, to drugs - he tried “fun” in any and all forms he could find. But it’s very easy to go from “having fun” to numbing discomfort. Ryan wanted to have fun all the time so that he didn’t have to feel all of the difficult feelings that followed him around. But you cannot selectively numb emotion - the only way through it is to feel it.

He was deeply affected by my dad’s suicide eleven years ago. Understandably so, we all were. But I don’t think we’ll ever truly know all that Ryan struggled with. But we know he struggled. Not only did he struggle, he struggled to ask for help, at least about certain things. Or maybe, he thought he had everything under control. Who’s to say?

But I think one thing we know for sure is that Ryan was a star. He burned fast and bright. When a large star dies, it turns into a supernova, redistributing its light and stardust across the entire galaxy. It’s legacy, shall we say.

So what can we learn from the supernova of Ryan’s life?

Ryan taught us the power of kindness and generosity, and how they act as a renewable resource for community. Ryan taught us that we as humans are at our very best when we take care of each other.

We can learn that our physical bodies are both insignificant and also miraculous. We only have one vehicle to carry us through this life, and we should do our best to give it what it needs to function optimally. The fact that we as humans know not only our place in the universe, but also how our bodies function within it is a gift that we shouldn’t take lightly. We can learn to treat all physical forms, including our own, with care and compassion.

Let Ryan’s life serve as a lesson on the importance of allowing our whole humanity to come through. We contain a vast spectrum of emotions, and all are meant to be felt. If we try to avoid the negative feelings - if we ignore them and shove them deep down inside ourselves - they will fester and rot, and eventually, they will consume us. Let us learn to share our struggles with those who have earned the right to hear them.

What else can we learn from Ryan? We can learn how important it is to set - and hold - boundaries, not to manipulate others, but to protect ourselves and our hearts from things that cause us unnecessary pain. We can learn that, when someone shows you who they are through their actions, to believe what they are showing us, and break ties if needed. This severing can be difficult, but we cannot make space for good things to come in our lives if we continue to cling to that which no longer serves us.

We can also learn to stop and consider how much we should take from another person who always offers themselves freely to others. Just because someone hands you the shirt off their back, doesn’t mean you should always take it. Self-awareness is a prerequisite for empathy. We cannot truly understand what others are going through if we do not first understand our own inner world, our own feelings and needs. If you take from another, will you also be able to give back when needed?

We can also, of course, learn that life is short, and fun must be had. We can learn to love the every day things, to stop and appreciate them while they are still with you, and to view life with that childlike wonder and presence that truly connects us to all other things.

May we do our best to treat ourselves and everyone we encounter with loving kindness.

May we nourish our bodies, minds, and spirits in productive and generative ways.

May we love fiercely and freely, while also kindly but firmly respecting ourselves in the process.

May we learn from Ryan and continue to live in his honor.

So says his Speaker for the Dead.

*A special thank you to Orson Scott Card, Brene Brown, and Rachel Botsman for inspiration and teachings