Laura Dawn: Mourning Altars was initially born out of a need to find a way to grieve. You had just lost your father, and I’m curious what you feel like the Western culture has wrong about grieving, and what do you wish people knew about the power of grieving?

Day Schildkret: Great question. Um, the dominant culture. So I don’t know if it’s just in the West, considers grief to be an affliction. Considers it to be something that you have to power through or, um, get under, get over, or get on the other side of. It’s uncomfortable.

Oftentimes it’s paired with sadness. It’s paired with sorrow. These are other ways of referring to grief. So, grief isn’t an affliction. Grief is a skill. And it’s a capacity to know life well. That includes the endings. That’s what I would say it is. It’s, it’s a way of seeing the fullness of life that doesn’t exile endings. And so the skill of it is, in this very moment, are we grieving? Are you and I seeing the endings here, right now? I mean, we’re jumping in deep in our conversation already, but you brought it, so let’s do it. Are the endings here? Um, I teach a lot to a lot of people, capacities to locate, Beginnings, middles, and endings.

Basically, thresholds. My work lives at the edge of a threshold. That’s why my last book was called Hello, Goodbye. Right? So, can you become what I call threshold literate? Can you read thresholds? Can you see thresholds around you? And the threshold includes a hello and a goodbye. And so, even right now, is there, are there, is it here?

Is there Grief here is the fullness of life here with us or are we only seeing what we prefer to see what’s easy to see what’s fun to see what’s light to see what’s, you know, are we only looking in one direction or can we continue to look broadly and see the fullness. So that’s a really broad way of answering your question but really it’s, it’s a skill, just like going to the gym, lifting weights getting stronger.

That’s becomes a skill, the more you do it, the more you practice the better you get. Grief is the same way.

Laura Dawn: How do you encourage people to pay more attention to the threshold moments?

Day Schildkret: Well, number one, we’re all moving too quickly. So slowing down is an important part of that. Um, number two, there are so many clues and capacities and ways that are embedded in the year. Around threshold locations. For instance, you can just see them in the equinoxes and solstices. You can see them in New Year’s Eve, or, you know, you can see them in an anniversary, a death anniversary, a wedding anniversary. You can see them calendrically, right? And you can see them daily. You woke up this morning. You go to bed tonight. That’s a threshold, right? And so the question then becomes, When I’m at a threshold, big, small, divorce, waking up, what is the threshold asking of me? Because it’s a different way of being in the world Than just kind of your average daily just trying to get through everything and you know Do your work do your errands pick up your kids do the laundry that kind of stuff threshold moments ask something From us and a really good way to wonder about that is slow the f down Right.

Slow down inside of a threshold. If you’re unclear, if it’s a threshold, great, ask the question, is this threshold? I just taught at a modern elder academy, which I was just telling you about in Santa Fe. And the entire week was devoted to people who are going through major life transitions, right? This woman’s husband just left her after 40 years.

Another person’s husband just died. Someone just lost their job, et cetera. And one of the, one of the exercises we did is we did a threshold wander. And they got to walk around the property and just notice what is a threshold, what does it feel like, what does it look like, and slow down physically outside when you’re in the presence of one and see how differently you walk, see what new questions come to mind when you pass through one, see what your body does when you’re walking into it, like just start to play with and practice reading Thresholds and then you can start applying that foundation to larger life moments, but this is a lot of work You know, and that’s this is really the heart of my teachings.

Laura Dawn: There’s a David Gray quote. I don’t know if you know this one, but it says change happens at the boundary of things. I love that where that’s really the catalyst of where transformation happens when we’re at our edge and we need to actually stay there and be present with the edges because I think it’s easy to want to just stay in the comfort.

Day Schildkret: That’s right Yeah, so lingering at the edge is really a very important thing to do like linger move slow feel observe You know, what who what else is here with me? You know, what questions come to mind? Oftentimes when we move through boundaries or through thresholds, we say goodbye to something. We say hello to something.

Um, you know, fundamental questions that you thought you had your hands on, that you had your, your, the reins of suddenly arise a new, and you have to wrestle with these questions that you thought were already in the bag. For instance, like, who am I? Great question, big question. Right, like, Oh, I’ve already been through my adolescence, like I’m an adult, I know who I am.

Right, or, who are you? You’ve been in a relationship for 30 years, or 15 years, or whatever, 5 years. You already think you know who that other person is. Right, so you walk through a threshold together. And then suddenly you’re like actually who are you for instance my best friend Um, I introduced her to her husband 20 years ago and this past year they got divorced,

and he’s the father of two of her kids They’re the they’ve only been monogamous for 20 something years Right, and so but but they walk through this threshold together of divorce and now she’s like Who are you like used to be my best friend used to be my husband You’re still father of my kids, but like, what’s my new orientation to you?

You know, or for instance, last year I moved to a new home, right? So that’s a threshold. And I’m asking the question, like, where am I? Right? You’re in a new space. Like this fundamental question that you thought you knew suddenly becomes really, it’s asking you to renew your relationship to the very question.

And here’s the thing I, so I taught this class this past week, one of the, I’m not obviously not naming names or anything, but one of the women who’s older, 70 something, her husband just left her after 40 years and she had so many other things going on. Like, With her kids and just massive, what I call trapdoor transitions, like life changing, really unexpectedly, and she’s pissed, she is angry, really angry, and she came to the workshop, and without really saying it, but I kind of cornered her because I wanted her to say it, she’s looking for answers. Right? Why is this happening to me? And so even her questions are scouting for answers. They’re all just aiming for bullseyes. Like, give me the information. Why? And how do I solve it? Because that’s really the purpose of an answer. It’s like, I’m asking a question to solve the question so I can have an answer so that I can know where I am. Right. And so the whole week was really me and also all of us relentlessly helping her to hold her questions more lightly so that they outlive the attempt to eliminate them. Because when you walk through a transition, it’s, you’re interfacing with uncertainty. You don’t know. So the questions become the navigational device. And if you’re only asking questions to get the answer, then you’re only trying to get on the other side of the transition. So you have to, the skill is wonder. How do you ask good questions? questions and let the questions guide you through the threshold.

Laura Dawn: There’s so much that I want to unpack here. Are you familiar with David White’s work?

Day Schildkret: course. Yeah.

Laura Dawn: I got

Day Schildkret: Although he put out a newsletter recently and I really, I would love to, to, I would, I invite you, David White, if you’re listening to this, I would love to be on a podcast with you and discuss your last newsletter because I had real disagreements with it on routines and rituals. and I love him as a poet,

And trying to convince his reader that routines are rituals, but they’re not. And there’s a real distinction between these two things. And so, um, and I love your work and I respect you and I want to have an, a lively debate with you about these beautiful topics. But yes, I’m familiar

Laura Dawn: I,

I’m also a cultivator of questions and a, , a bearer of questions. And he says, , the discipline of asking beautiful questions, a beautiful question shapes a beautiful mind. So the ability to ask beautiful questions often in very unbeautiful moments is one of the great disciplines of a human life.

A beautiful question starts to shape your identity by asking it as it does by having it. answered. And you don’t have to do anything about it. You just have to keep asking. And before you know it, you will find yourself shaping a different life, meeting different people, finding conversations that are leading you in those directions that you wouldn’t have seen before.

I feel like that’s exactly what you’re speaking to

Day Schildkret: key word in his writing is beauty. That’s the key word, not asking a question, asking a beautiful question, because it’s the beauty that allows us to unravel from the logical mind and from the pursuit for answers, right? Because you’ve been in the presence of a beautiful question.

It kind of like has you sit back a little bit.

Laura Dawn: Mm

Day Schildkret: Right. And be like, wow, that’s a good question. Right. Um, and it’s the beauty. And, and I am, as you know, as an artist, I employ beauty a lot.

And I’m employing beauty as a way of, as a tactic to slow people down when you’re in the presence of something beautiful.

You don’t want to rush through it. Right. As a tactic to open up. Right. When you’re in the presence of something beautiful art. Maybe your heart opens a little bit. As a way of remembering, sometimes beauty helps us, like, good theater, or good poem, helps us remember something we may have forgotten. And not just remember, but actually put something together in a way we haven’t seen it before.

So it has us look at it through a different angle. Beauty does that. Right? So, he’s employing a similar thing that I employ, which is adornment. You can adorn a question just like you can adorn a threshold, make beauty with it. And that can look like 10, 000 ways, but beauty is a very, and this is the role of our creativity and you don’t have to be an artist to be creative.

And that’s a whole other conversation, but you know, we all have the capacity to ask beautiful questions and to employ our imaginations and to let go of the death grip of needing answers.

Laura Dawn: Well, these were the big topics I wanted to dive into, was grief and creativity and beauty and questions, because you also have a really great quote about the power of asking questions. But you mentioned beauty, and you said, let beauty be your language. And I love that because I feel like, and we’re both a lover of words and language and etymology.

And before we go in that direction, I just actually want to apply that, applying the language of transition and applying the language of beauty to meeting transition. What do you feel like the role of, of actually understanding the language of transition? Because you mentioned that earlier too. It’s like learning words to help us.

like liminal space. A lot of people are like, Oh, liminal. I’ve heard that before. But actually, when we learn these words, when we bring them into our vocabulary, they inform what we pay attention to.

Day Schildkret: Not just that, but think of, I don’t know, the last time you were in a country where you didn’t speak the language, but it’s, it’s hard. It’s scary. And there’s a deep sense of disorientation. Like you don’t have to get around and you don’t have to ask to get around. It’s happened to me a lot, you know, like, and then if you’re in a moment where you really need something and you don’t speak the language, like it is frustrating, right?

So the language leads to orientation. It helps us navigate where we are, helps us be social and connective, helps us like figure out what’s going on and being able to express our needs, being able to hear other people’s needs. I mean, it is, it’s about orientation. Um, And so the language of transitions helps us orient to what’s going on.

Now, I said originally transitions are us interfacing with uncertainty, right? We move from what we know to what we don’t know. That is us coming into closer contact with mystery. With the unknown, many people, and maybe not listening to this podcast. I don’t know, but recently I’ve encountered a lot of people who are profoundly uncomfortable, if not terrified of the unknown. So maybe you think you got your hands on it. Like you’re good. I love, I mean, I recently, I called myself in the same way as, um, heliocentric. I called myself

Mysterio centric. Like I, I like centering mystery. I think I, you know, but, but really. Even I, when I have to like something deeply uncertain happens, let’s say to my bank account, right?

That happened last year, I woke up to the news that my bank account, my bank. What’s going under and what happens to my money, all my money, right? So there are certain levers that even for me, and I teach this, even for me, I can feel my own vulnerability. Right? So I’m crossing a threshold, I’m interfacing with the unknown. And , and this is where I distinguish between trapdoor transitions and threshold transitions. Trapdoors are the ones where, like, you know, suddenly you’re in a war, or your husband leaves you, like, this morning, and you’re in a totally different landscape. Those are trapdoor. Threshold transitions, sometimes you can see from a mile away.

Like, I’m turning 50. You know that I’m 46 right now. I know I’m turning 50 in four, in three and a half years. I can see that threshold from a long ways away, right? It’s still, I’m interfacing with mystery either way, but here’s the thing for a lot of people have that have disorientation around the unknown, it can be terrifying. So let’s center that here, right? I’m moving through familiar landscape to unfamiliar landscape, and my emotional response to that is. Terror and all of the children of terror, anxiety, depression, nervousness, like all of it. So the question then becomes, if we’re talking about literacy or, or language, what’s a new way of being and interfacing with what I don’t know. What’s an alternative way besides terror to encountering uncertainty. And this to me is one of the roles that beauty plays. Is it’s translative. It translates unknown from a big black hole or like a bridge that ends and there’s just a great expanse and you just can’t see it. Death is the ultimate example of that.

But even for me, the last few years, sleep, you know, insomnia, middle of the night, waking up, just being like, I’m interfacing something that I don’t know what’s happening and I’m terrified. Beauty can take the mystery and make it relatable, identifiable, friendly, even. Sometimes. Beauty has that capacity. Art has that capacity.

That’s why we look to the poets, we look to the painters, we look to the musicians, , we look to the artist to translate mystery into something that is Identifiable, recognizable, friendly, and that’s to me an important aspect of what I teach about is employing our creative impulses as a response to the unknown, like to be in conversation, but through beauty making.

Laura Dawn: What do you feel like the role of wonder and curiosity play in that process?

Day Schildkret: , I mean, that to me is exactly the