In this episode, I sit down with Mackenzie Studebaker and we get into the kind of grief conversation I genuinely nerd out about (while everyone else is like, “wait, why am I crying?”). We talk about how loss can shape art and meaning-making—especially poetry—through Mackenzie’s story of losing their brother Brett in a car accident at 19, and then losing their mom to breast cancer five years later. Mackenzie shares what those early years felt like, how confusing it was when people didn’t know what to say, and why writing became the one place that actually helped when nothing else really landed. We also talk about the difference between sudden loss and an expected death, and how being with their mom in hospice became this sacred, devastating gift—getting to say the things, sit in the reality, and witness someone “welcome death graciously” instead of performing the whole “fight” narrative. Mackenzie brings in their background as a grief counselor (Pathways Hospice), associate marriage and family therapist, and yoga nidra/trauma-informed yoga teacher, and we dig into what actually supports healing: finding witnesses who aren’t intimidated by grief, using the body and breath, and letting dates and “portals” be what they are. Plus: birds, signs, magical thinking, and why none of us really know anything—but we can still feel what’s true.