Apple, Apple, my son Sebastian has started to talk.

Banana was his first word, and just the other day he started saying apple.

I'm so proud of you.

Apple.

What's your second word?

I feel like he's going to be speaking sentences in no time and it's incredible to witness the progress that he makes every day. I wish I could say the same for myself.

The last couple of weeks I've been feeling stuck,

like I haven't made enough progress dealing with the grief that I've been running from for so long.

When I started the season of the podcast, I'd had this revelation that I'd never grieved, that I'd buried

the sadness and fear I felt as a little boy when my dad died and

then again when my brother killed himself. I realized that sad and angry little boy

is still very much alive inside me. When I interviewed Francis Weller in the first

episode of the season's podcast I asked him what I should try to do to begin to face all that buried grief.

What is the next step?

I feel like a well, an ocean of tears just below the surface.

For the last two months I've just felt it constantly there and it bubbles up all the time now.

Yeah.

You have to make a slow titration into that territory. I don't think we dive head first into it. We have to build some of faith

that the grief itself won't swallow me. So you can do little writing practices.

To begin to know that I can touch into that space and step back out

Touch into it step back out begin to see that when you're there and when you return I'm not going to drown. This grief belongs here.

It'll actually help me to become more human.

...