Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Opened By Life
What does it mean to stay open to life when the heart has broken?
In this conversation with poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, we enter the sacred terrain of grief, love, paradox and poetry. Rosemerry speaks of losing her teenage son, Finn - and how the daily ritual of writing became a lifeline, how she learned to greet each feeling with a gentle “hello” - and how the very real presence of love guided her life.
This is not a conversation of tidy answers. It is tender, raw and luminous. Rosemerry reminds us that joy and sorrow are companions, that poetry and friendship can help us carry what feels unbearable.
If you are grieving, or if you are living with a broken heart, this episode is a kind of medicine.
Rosemerry’s new book is entitled The Unfolding - and you can find out more about her work at wordwoman.com.
NOTE: If you enjoyed this episode, I would be so grateful if you could rate the show and leave me a review on Apple podcasts. These reviews help more people discover the show. You could mention what you like about the show - the episode that made you a regular listener - or your favorite guest or episode. Here’s some easy instructions on how to leave a review.
Thank you so much!
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Jono (01:14.437)
No, we're good to go, Holly. Thank you for all your tech help.
Thank you. And I'd like to welcome everyone here today, any guests that we have for this recording, and especially I'd like to welcome Rosemary for being here with us. Before we begin, I always like to just take a moment together to arrive. So if you're comfortable with that, Rosemary, and everyone else, maybe we can just do whatever we need to do to settle in, take a few breaths, and just let it be enough to land here right now.
Jono (01:55.153) Maybe taking some deep breaths into our belly.
Jono (02:00.665) and really letting go on the exhale.
Jono (02:24.205) and bringing your attention maybe to your feet on the ground. notice the land that you're on.
Jono (02:40.291) noticing any other parts of your body to help you arrive here today.
Jono (02:59.553) even bringing your attention to your heart.
Jono (03:09.113) And from this place you may want to offer a wish for today.
Jono (03:20.972) a wish to Rosemary. Perhaps a wish for yourself.
or for anyone else attending here today.
Jono (03:56.619) Perhaps one more breath into the belly.
Big out-breath.
And when you're ready to come back here with us in your own time.
Jono (04:34.801) Well, welcome again, Rosemary. It's real honor to have you with us and perhaps to help our listeners to settle in. Would you mind sharing a little about where you are right now, even geographically and maybe emotionally as well? Just a little glimpse into your world.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (04:57.358) Beautiful. you for that invitation. And thank you to Jono for that just helping us arrive. I felt myself just settle right in, just become increasingly able to show up. So I really appreciate that moment of gathering self and placing self in space. Remembering silence, remembering the heartbeat.
In fact, that was, emotionally speaking, emotional landscape. know, the moment, there was a moment where you said something about noticing her body and I had this incredible sweetness of, hello heart, hello heart. And it just became this little refrain. And then you said, maybe even notice your heart. And I was like, hello heart. So that was very sweet. And geographically speaking, I'm in Southwest Colorado in the San Miguel River Valley. I'm looking out my window right now at the San Miguel River, which is running clear. The snow has all melted. The ice is gone. The field is green. The geese are here. The herons were here this morning. And it's red rock cliffs and it's a blue sky day and this is my home. I love living here in Southwest Colorado.
Jono (06:20.999) Thank you. I mentioned before that I felt honoured for you to be in this conversation and I wanted to just give you a little bit of context for that. I was first introduced to your work via a friend. I was going through a particularly difficult time and she was subscribed to your daily poem and periodically she would send me your poems.
forward them on or copy and paste them into like a text message. And so it was during a very difficult time that I would receive these messages from you via my friend. And I just wanted to share with you the reason I feel so honoured is because your messages and your words when they arrived, they arrived when I just needed them at a very challenging time and they really helped me to kind of find a way forward and
yeah, I think I, I, I for a moment was kind of viewing the world through your eyes and through your heart. And I think there was that phrase by Francis Weller. said, to be able to see beauty in the darkness. And I feel like you were showing me that you were showing me how to see the beauty in the darkness. So I just wanted to say that before we began, because.
That's my thanks, that's my honor for having you here because even though we don't know each other, you kind of metaphorically held my hand through a very difficult time. so it's a special and interesting encounter for me now to have this conversation with you.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (08:07.374) Thank you for sharing that, John-O, and thank you for letting the poems hold your hand. Thank you for letting me hold your hand through that time. I do know that that's part of what poems do for me also. They allow me to see the world through the eyes of the poet, whoever it is that's writing, and I choose my poets carefully sometimes because I think it really, matters how we...
Jono (08:31.141) Hmm.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (08:35.596) which frame we choose to use, especially in a difficult time.
Jono (08:42.417) Well, as we as we discussed in preparing for today, this podcast now really is about is really about an experience that changed your life forever, you know, like a threshold moment. And I'm saying this as much for others who are listening as well. The invitation really is for someone to share a misfortune, you know, a loss, a difficulty, something that really marked a kind of before and an after.
And then my curiosity is really about what sustained someone through an experience like that and what gifts and even beauty that may have arrived as a result of that. And so Rosemary has really has accepted kind of the invitation. And I also recognize that we're kind of we go into tender territory here and I don't want to rush. But when
When you feel ready, Rosemary, I would love you to take us into the experience that really changed your life. Yeah.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (09:56.056) Well, thank you. And first of all, what a beautiful way to shape it. When you said this is what we're going to do, the experience, what sustained you, what are the gifts. I think even just having that kind of a three-part framework for seeing my experience in this way was helpful and also a little tricky.
Honestly thinking about it's not too hard to think of the moment when everything changed but there were also many other moments and how do you get to the moment where everything changed? It it occurs to me how how much a story where do we start a story and it just invited so many other questions for me. So even just the framework itself was was a beautiful exercise and wonder.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (10:46.894)
Um, so I think there isn't an easy way to say it. And, and I'm going to begin maybe with the hardest part, which is to say that in August of 2021, my son, Finn, he was 16 and it was just two weeks before his 17th birthday, chose to take his own life. We were at the time in Georgia.
where my parents were just moving into a new situation from Chicago. We were there to help them with the moving truck and set everything up. And when I say we, it was me, my husband Eric, Finn, and my daughter Vivian, who at the time would have been 13.
12th. It was, it was not a surprise to me that Finn was in a tender space. He had been in a very tender space. Well, we could even say most of his life that he came into the world struggling. It was never easy, I think, to be Finn Trommer, even the very, very beginning. You know, he, came out a whole month early. He came out actually on September 11th, the anniversary of September 11th, 2004. And
And I remember at the time thinking, not today, not today, not today. And then as I was on my way to the hospital, I started to think, of course today, of course today. You know, just how a day that has such terrible associations can also have such beauty then. And I think that Fiddon coming into the world in this way with this kind of paradox never changed. was, that was kind of always the way with him. He was...
He screamed for the whole first year, friend. It was just one of these things where he was, you know, people say, he had colic. Well, yes, but he didn't just cry for an hour in the afternoon. Like he would wake up and just start to cry and I would take him to all the doctors and nobody could say what was wrong. he just came in with such discomfort in his body, you know, and so that, that discomfort. never, never really left him. And he was, think, because of that, he, the story I tell myself and always have is that it was, it was hard enough to be Finn Trommer that he had to bring so much light every day just to show up in a world that felt that difficult. And so it was that he grew into this boy who was, I mean, magnificent, who, who won almost anything, any competition. He won the chess tournaments and the fencing tournament and the science fair. He built his own computer with all these beautiful lights. He was astonishing in his body. He was beautiful dancer, tap dancer. He just started ballet, did hip hop. He had straight A's, A pluses. It was hard to imagine that this kid could possibly excel in everything and yet he just brought himself so fully to the world and felt the world so fully and took on everything. So he always had this incredible empathy for other people and took on other people's hurt and was exceptionally sensitive. I think it was, it was just not easy.
And I saw that it wasn't easy and I saw how he shined and I saw how other people looked up to him and then he would come home and he would just show me, show our family just how hard it was. So there was a lot going on around that time for him, Jono and with his friends, his relationships with his, how he felt about school. was, he was very unhappy in many arenas.
And so when...when he did choose to take his life.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (15:15.414) He'd been talking about it for years already and we had done many, many things and seen, you know, he was seeing a therapist and we'd seen a life coach and that was when he and I had started doing the fencing classes and we'd done acupuncture. mean, like we'd done this full spectrum that you changed to school assistant. mean, just all kinds of things that we'd done to help him show up and continue to want to show up. but it had been a long time already that he had. been thinking, I don't, I don't think I can stay here.
So the, we could say then that the event, what is the event that changed everything, know, the before and after moment, as you said, was of course the moment that I was in a...
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (16:07.922) a hardware store, buying things for my parents' house when I got a call from one of his friends. He had sent out a text to say, or what was it called, Snapchat, to say, you know, people could read into it that he was planning to take his life. And one of his friends called me right away and this was how I found out. And then got a call from my daughter who was there with him.
Jono (16:29.191) you
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (16:42.292) That was of course the moment, but then as I thought about it, there were two other moments past that that I thought these were maybe even these were the moments that that are that I can't not talk about also that happened after that. So after he died that the the next day I remember walking in the streets in Georgia, where he and I had been walking just two nights before and laughing. And I had this moment that two nights before where I was like, my gosh, he's doing so good. And we're laughing and we were talking about difficult things and beautiful things. And we had all this possibility. He'd just been accepted to a new school. He was just so uplifted and...And then now I was walking on the street two days later with the awareness of what had happened and what wasn't going to happen. And I remember in this moment having, it was like I could feel love, love like an entity come down the street. It was like a giant energetic tsunami of love. And I remember kind of turning toward it and not that
I could see it, but I could, I don't know if that makes any sense. And, and I looked at it and felt it coming. I thought, no, no way. That is way too much. I can't handle that. And this wave of love came over and crashed over me anyway.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (18:26.56) As if I didn't have a choice about receiving it?
It changed so much to feel then, I suppose, carried by, drowned by, remade by, infused by love. And it was, I suppose, ways love specifically. I could feel it, you know, know, maybe specific people, but it was also just love itself, like, like it had been lying around dormant, just waiting for the to rise up and meet someone who needed it. So I remember feeling like I didn't have a choice about it. Thank goodness, because I tried to say no, but ultimately, Jono, that wave of love was so profound, the way that I then felt I never stopped feeling it. I never stopped feeling it, ever, never. One moment.
We could maybe talk about that later. There was a moment where I stopped and realized it was gone, but just to feel that kind of trust, faith carried by, like it wasn't up to me, like it really was up to love. Like I really didn't need to do a thing, which was good because I couldn't, I couldn't in that state of just, you know, astonishing grief. I couldn't do much, but I had that moment of being, of knowing that love was here.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (20:13.301) And then. I guess if you don't mind, I'll tell you just a little bit more about that, that it was as if there was no less grief, right? If grief were this weight, if grief were a giant weight, which is, think I'm not alone in feeling that. The love did not take away any of it. It wasn't like it went away. It was more like if grief were solid, the love came and surrounded every single molecule of the grief. So that there was no part of grief that wasn't infused with and surrounded by love. That's how it felt. Like it was, it just came in and infused everything with love. in that way, because the grief wasn't just this solid chunk thunk of grief.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (21:06.302) then I was able to meet it just the tiniest molecule at a time as opposed to all of it. And then the other kind of really important moment after this was the next night. So this was two nights after he died, we were in an airport about to fly home. I wasn't sleeping, of course. And as I was lying there, not sleeping, I had this, there's a, I have a poem about it and it's one of the ones that you requested. Maybe I'll read the poem and let the poem tell us what's happening.
Jono (21:44.423) Thanks
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (21:48.643) The poem itself is called The Invitation.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (21:55.736) Two nights after he died. All night I heard the same one line story on repeat. I am the woman whose son took his life.
The words felt full of self-pity, filled me with hopelessness, doom. And then a voice came, a woman's voice, just before dawn, and it gave me a new shade of truth. I am the woman who learns how to love him now that he's gone.
It did not change the facts. But it changed everything about how I met the facts. Over a hundred days later, over three years later, I am still learning what it means to love him. How love is an ocean, a wildfire, a crumb.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (22:59.234) How commitment to love changes me, changes everyone, invites us to bring our best. Love is wine, is trampoline, is an infinite song, with a chorus in which I am sung. I am the woman who learns how to love him, now that he's gone.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (23:21.282) May I always be learning how to love like a cave. like a rough-legged hawk. like a sun.
Jono (23:56.859) I'm just taking a moment, I guess, just to take in what you've shared.
In some ways, am. In many ways, I found it. find it really hard to actually take it all in. It's such an immense experience.
curious about the... well first I also want to say I'm really sorry, really sorry about the loss of your son. Yeah.
Jono (24:55.117) And just want to recognize him too, as he would be watching his mum loving him, witnessing him at this time. But when you spoke about the, this immense love coming over you and not leaving you, did you, do you mean that that came and has stayed with you? since that experience? that what you were saying?
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (25:28.106) Yes, isn't that interesting? Thank you for asking just that. There was so long, John, where I was aware of it being new, right? Because it came in and it was so much.
So I remember there was a moment pretty early on, maybe a couple weeks in, where, you know, people were sending letters and bringing food and there was emails and there was so much love coming in. And I remember again, having a moment of thinking, this is too much. This is just too much. Then I imagined just one person not sending love. And I was like, nope, actually.
Just enough, it's just enough, no less than that. That in fact, for a grief that great, it took a love that enormous to meet it. I don't know how anyone could ever, and I know so many people do, meet great grief without feeling complete love coming toward them. I don't know how you would ever do that. I can't imagine, because it was so hard.
even feeling all of that love. And I think then I became increasingly aware of other ways that I felt this love showing up. And there were so many ways there was that kind of that molecule-ish way that I told you like each molecule was just wrapped up like in love cotton. All the grief molecules wrapped in love cotton. But then there was also this image I had of
Like all the love that was coming from other people, like it all went, this is gonna just sound crazy, but it felt so true. It still does. That it was like each person sent like a red laser beam of love to one single spot. And then that one place that was gathering all that love kind of shot a red laser beam straight into my heart. And I felt it, this constant like beam of love.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (27:44.16)
And it was this energetic feeling that stayed probably almost a year that I was aware of this kind of pulsing feeling in my heart, like in the sense of my heart being held, like squeezed, like a great hand was just holding it together. There was a moment, I remember when I woke up and it didn't, I felt, I didn't feel it. And I thought, no, no, I need you. And it came back and then it didn't leave for. like almost a year. Do I still feel all that love?
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (28:25.994)
It's more like it rewrote me so that it doesn't need to be that kind of a constant energetic stream anymore. I'm not saying that I don't, I feel like I need to always be so careful about how I talk about this, careful about it because it sounds strange. I'm aware that it sounds strange and
I'm also aware of just how real it feels as if I did get completely rewritten, like every cell got rewritten by love. That's how it feels. Still, I'm aware of that. And so it's not like a constant energetic input anymore. It's more of a… kind of a living love organism that… that I'm so aware of, I'm just so aware of the love and how it continues to want to be expressed through. Not that, I think that we're all made out of love. I think that's true. And I think there's to some degree, at some point we're able to get out of the way and let that happen. And I think that a great, great grief helps with that disintegration of self, not that the self doesn't come back, but the self that tries to. have opinions about things gets really shut down. And then love has the chance, I think, to come in and do this kind of big rewriting work.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (30:00.638)
It's easier now to override it. Of course, there's a lot more of me here, but I also think that I've gotten better at seeing through.
the parts of me that would be resistant to love.
Jono (30:18.853)
Well, I can clearly see that you have kind of been worked upon in a way that evidences in a way that that kind of love in your life, you have an aliveness about you that is. just kind of manifest, I guess, of something. so much more than just loss. You know there's so much that I can see you have received in this experience and that's also where my curiosity goes and when you when you speak about these kind of laser beams of love I'm curious too whether whether there were particular people were there any particular people during this time because you seem to have been held in a certain way and I'm curious to know and I'm sure people are curious to know. There was this...kind of invisible sense of nourishment that you are receiving. And I'm just curious about particular people. Were there any particular people?
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (31:28.876)
Yeah, that's a really good question. So you're right, it was this kind of abstract thing, the laser beam, the tsunami. It was also very particular in that one thing that I remember, the day after he died, I received a photograph.
Jono (31:37.147)
Mm-hmm.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (31:51.884)
makes me cry thinking about it now too. A photograph of about 10 of my closest friends got together and took a picture and sent it with all of them just with their hands on their heart.
That was it. They just sent a picture of them standing there with their hands on their heart with this sweet Solidarity or sense of presence. I'm here for you. We are here for you. I Cannot tell you what that did to me the thought of them getting together without me well, I was far away and Sending this image That helped me see
I'm not alone. I think this is, you know, this was something that. Astonishes me really about this experience is that I didn't ever feel alone. I did. This is, this is, I did feel alone. I did have a sense that nobody understood my specific. world of grief.
And yet I never ever felt alone in terms of friends or family or, even the communion of other parents who've lost a child or other, and let's just say other humans who've lost someone they love. And then to see how, how I belonged to this vast communion of humans who love someone. And then that person is taken from them or is lost to them physically.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (33:37.058)
That was also astonishing to me that I think it reminds me in a way, John, of when we became parents. remember people came up to us and said things like, welcome to the club that you didn't know you weren't in. know, like we didn't know that we weren't in the parent club because we weren't. And suddenly we were, you know, and then I remember it was very similar, you know, after Finn died, all of a sudden I belonged in this club of...
people whose childhood taken their lives, people whose love had taken their lives, and then just humans who have lost other humans they love to death or to loss of any kind, know, because they're just rendered apart for any reason. that was very surprising. So this is one moment when I really understood how supported I was by specific people. I also had a very specific friend.
Corinne Platt who, sweet friend, who appointed herself my person. She's like, I'm your person. And she coordinated things and she and I went for long hikes and skinny dipped in alpine lakes. she, she also was a dream interpreter and she helped me with my dreams, which were such an important part of that time where my dream life was one of the
richest, most powerful parts of helping me move forward. So that was incredible to be with Corinne. And then my spiritual teacher, Joy Sharp, who is, she leads Satsang, and I'd been working with her at that point for already over 10 years. to, I'm going to say that certainly she helped me
in that period, but more to the point, for 10 years, I wouldn't have said I was preparing for this moment. No, but in a way.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (35:44.832)
I was, in a way, by establishing some kind of a spiritual practice of curiosity, of inquiry.
You know, the things that I had understood maybe more intellectually, questions like, are you able to say yes to the world as it is? Or a statement like everyone you love can and will be taken from you. You know, these things that she's been saying to me for many, many years, and I had understood them here. But then it was, it was as if they all just went in, you know, went from being something I knew with my head to something that I knew with my full being. this is what we've been talking about.
Jono (36:27.697)
you repeat those two? What were the...
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (36:30.24)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of them is, can you say yes to the world as it is? And the other is, everything you love, everyone you love can and will be taken from you. These are things no one wants to know, right? Like, of course we want to believe we can say no to things. And we want to believe, no, no, we'll be together. We'll always be together.
So I think my teacher's so… beautifully honest about the nature of what it is to be human. And she'd been helping me see these, just be curious about what is it, what is it to ask, who am I? What is it to love someone? What is it to show up in a moment and meet it as it is without trying to wish it differently? Or another thing she would say often, you know, if it could be any other way, it would be. So all these...these teachings just came through again and again and again in such potent, all-encompassing ways.
Jono (37:46.247)
Did I, I've listened to a few conversations with you and did I recall that you had an experience with Mirabai Star at some point?
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (37:56.462)
Yes, this was so beautiful. After Finna died, a mutual friend of mine in Mirabai's, Alison Luderman, suggested that we get together and Mirabai so generously, you know, set up a time and we connected over Zoom. And for people who aren't familiar with Mirabai Star, she's a beautiful author, a spiritual teacher, and at this point she has a grief.
circle called Holy Lament that's available to people online. And so we met and she had also lost a child, who was I believe 16, her daughter, Jenny. And when Mirabai and I met and I was so nervous, you know, she's a hero of mine, like it was terrifying in a way to talk to her, also I just, Jono, I said yes to anything anyone offered. just...
You know, could I do this energy work on you? Yes. Could you want to do this kind of thing? Just whatever anybody said, I said, yes. So when Alison suggested, just, okay, yes. And what Mirabai did was so profoundly helpful for me, which is to say she listened and she just, two things. First, she said, tell me your son's name. I said, Finn Telo Tromer.
and then she lit a candle and she said his name and then she set it aside and she said it's going to burn all day. It was such a profound, beautiful honoring of him.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (39:44.782)
And I had this feeling like, mirror by star is burning a candle, you know, for my child. But then how she just listened, she didn't offer advice. She didn't really ask questions. She just let me talk.
If I asked her a question, then she'd answer. But she just showed up with so much presence. And I realized that this was what was most helpful for me with other people. There was no advice that helped. No. Platitudes certainly don't help.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (40:30.52)
people say all kinds of things with the best of intentions, but really what mattered the most to me was the people who could show up and just be with me. We'd go for a walk or we would just sit there. Maybe we'd say something, maybe we wouldn't.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (40:51.95)
That willingness to be present with someone, just to be present and not try to fix it. Not try to make it better. Because nothing anyone could say was going to make it better. Not a thing. Not one thing anyone could say. But presence made it better just being with other people in their presence.
Jono (41:17.073)
It reminded me of that...That story that Parker Palmer told. I'm not sure that you're familiar with that when he was going through a very deep depression, which he has done a number of times in his life. And he...
Nothing was helping. No one was helping. And he had a gentleman, I believe, from his Quaker community who would come to his home and massage his feet. And every day he would come and just rub his feet. He wouldn't say anything. And then he'd kind of pack up and out he went.
And every day he would come and it's just what comes to my mind when you talk about the people that were really helpful, were those who could really just show up with their presence, with their heart. And...It's a powerful, it's a powerful lesson for us when people are going through these things. I'm curious whether there was a moment for you when you realized that
Jono (42:42.247)
I can embrace this, this experience. Was there a time when...I mean, because I hear your experience and I just, I can't help but think for myself that I would just be. in pieces and yeah I'm just curious to know was there was there a moment?
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (43:17.038)
Okay, first I just want to say going back to something that we were just talking about. I just want to honor that what was right for me was people showing up just with their presence, but there's it's so different for everyone. Right? So I don't know what's right for anyone else. And what was right for me could be so different for some maybe somebody else actually needs you to show up and ask them questions, or they need you to show up and tell them your story, or maybe somebody else needs something else. So I just want to honor that every grief is so
Jono (43:29.775)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (43:46.668)
different and each, you know, the way that I grieve my father are so different than the way that I grieve my son and the way that I grieve my son is so different from the way another person might grieve their son. mean, we're, or their mother, just if we're all so different, it's just so different.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (44:04.206)
What moment that I know I can do this? I do think, friend, that the part of the reason that it was so important to me to talk about that moment when I was not sleeping and that voice came and said, I am the woman who learns how to love him now that he's gone. I think if there was a moment, it was that moment. And it was that moment when I understood how… how there are stories that we tell ourselves and how important that story is and how any story is just a story. So the story of I'm the woman whose son took his life was this terrible story and I couldn't, I didn't know how to survive in that story. That was a story so full of self pity and so full of judgment and blame and disconnection.
And it felt dead. It felt like a dead story. The, I am the woman who learns how to love him now that he's gone. When that, when that line came in, right? That line comes in and I think to myself, I more felt it right in my full body, this relief, this sense of, can do that. I can do that. I can continue to love him.
I can continue to learn what it means to love him. I can still be his mother. I can still bring love to this child who I deeply, deeply, deeply love.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (45:46.252)
I continue to learn about him. can continue to wonder about him. I think that was the moment I understood that a relationship with someone who is no longer physically present doesn't mean that the relationship doesn't continue to grow. It doesn't mean that I don't continue to grow. doesn't mean that even, although I don't understand whatever is happening for Finn then or now.
I do believe things are, you know, that things change. so the, my experience has been this kind of ongoing changing.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (46:28.638)
even flourishing relationship that's seeded and born out of love. And that was infinitely possible. I could completely follow along with that. And then like that poem, you know, wonders about, you know, may I always be learning how to love like a cave, like a rough legged hawk, like a sun. You know, what does that even mean? I don't even know what that means. And that's part of the beauty of it, right? This is part of the mystery of
What does it mean to love like a cave? What does it mean to love like a sun? What does it mean to love like a, a saw, like a field, like a tree? And just to continually wonder about the nature of love and how that love continues to change the relationship, it continues to change us. There's infinite energy and vitality and wonder and beauty in that.
Jono (47:28.795)
Were there any other poems or any poems that come to your mind when you think about this time of kind of embracing this experience that you'd be willing to share at the moment?
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (47:41.966)
Yeah, thank you for asking. And I should say too, John, that one of the other things that was so profoundly helpful for me, sustaining for me in that time was poetry, was reading poems. And although I didn't write poems for the first seven weeks after he died, I still had that practice. I'd been writing a poem every day at that point already for over, I don't know how many years. I started in 2006, so. 15 years and I had that writing a poem every day infuses this longing to show up and be curious what's here, what's here, what's inside, what am I feeling, what's outside, what do I notice and I think that that practice of longing to show up every day.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (48:37.31)
was absolutely essential for being able to stay open and present after he died. Because I had been practicing it when the stakes were so low for so long. So this is a poem about
Not sleeping and after Finn died, I didn't sleep well for, you know, I could fall asleep and then I'd wake up and, and I was, you know, kind of freaked out about this. And then my friend Kirsten Bridger says, what if it isn't a problem? And she told me a story about how she had heard in Japan. They have a word for this. When you wake up in the middle of the night and you, um, you have it as a quiet, special time. You don't medicate yourself for it. You don't go to the doctor. You just realize, oh, this is the time I'm having now. so this is the poem about that experience in those quiet hours.
For two weeks after he died, I'd fall asleep exhausted, only to wake just past midnight. Desperate, I'd claw at sleep, frantic to catch it and clutch it, but always it slipped my grasp. And I'd lie awake till morning. My friend suggested I reframe those sleepless hours as sacred time, an intimate, personal, quiet time. Not a problem. not something to be treated, not something to be feared. That night, as I emerged from sleep, the dreams dripping from me like water, I did not resist the waking. Instead, eyes closed, heart open, still lying in bed, I said, I love you, Finn. I miss you, sweetheart.
and then woke on the shore of mourning. Ever since it happens just like this, when I slip from sleep, I tell my son I love him and slide unknowingly back into the tide of dreams.
How many hundreds of times?
When he was young, did I go to him when he cried out in the night. I'd press my palms against his chest until his breath was a skiff for dreams. Years later, though I can't feel his hands, though I don't hear the lullaby of his breath, somehow he arrives to comfort me.
And though I don't hear him say the words, I'd always say to him, I feel them float above me like a blanket warm in the cool night air. I'm here. It's okay, Mom. I'm here.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (52:12.846)
It was such a gift to not think of it as a problem. This was one of the most profound things about… This whole experience, right, was how it, I… over time and sometimes fairly quickly but sometimes it took a long time but just to realize, being sad is not a problem. Not sleeping is actually not a problem. Not, you know, like not getting over it is not a problem. Like this, it was, it became so easy to be so generous with myself and just take, sweetheart, of course, of course you're hurting. sweetheart, of course you're not sleeping. Although the irony, right? As soon as it stopped being a problem, right? As soon as I just like let myself not be like, no, no, must sleep. The moment I just let myself be like, okay, I'm waking up. Hi sweetheart, I love you, Finn. And I'd fall back asleep like that. That wasn't my goal, but it is what happened. I just go right back to sleep without knowing. So it just...
Jono (53:10.554)
you
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (53:26.654)
I started to really understand that my resistance was a problem. My resistance was was causing lots of problems. The less I resisted, the more I was like, I'm sad. I'm crying. I'm not sleeping. this hurts. Without vilifying it, without thinking it's supposed to be something else, I should be feeling another way.
It was amazing to me. There was another moment, but. I remember having this sense of like… There was a moment where I was like, oh, if he were alive, I'm never gonna be able to see him have a child or something. This thought was so profoundly painful. And I realized that by reaching into the future for things that were problems, oh, I won't have this experience with him. I'll never see him as a bald old man, right? Whatever my story was about, I'll never.
Every time I did that kind of projection, was so painful and I realized that that was a pain that was a choice. I didn't have to do that. And I was able to stop. Or if it would come up, I'd be like, see, there it is. That's choice. Do you really want to go down that path? Because it was so painful every time I did. And I think I was already in enough pain that I just couldn't invite anymore. And I didn't have to. What a revelation that was.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (55:08.642)
to see the pain that was here was here and not fight it, but to notice the pain that I invited. Similarly, any pain that was like, I should have done this or instantly was like, ouch, that was so much more pain. And I realized, wow, that is all optional. That is all optional pain. And I could stop.
I think because I didn't have the energy. I don't think this is not a testament to me. think I was just that exhausted that I couldn't manufacture the energy to create the drama around it.
Jono (55:49.36)
Yeah. I think I heard you say something about hello.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (55:54.542)
Friend, this was such a strange, sweet lifesaver for me. And it actually, I think, kind of came out of, I'm not sure which came first. Did it come in my writing practice first or did it come in my living practice first? I'm not sure, but this thing of saying hello to whatever showed up, whether it was anger, honestly, anger wasn't a big one for me.
Um, but I don't know. Whatever showed up, sadness, tears, crying in front of people. Whatever it was, I'd say, oh, oh, hello tears. Oh, hello feeling stuck. Oh, hello wishing he was here. Oh, hello. Whatever it was, if as soon as I could notice what the feeling was, if I could name it, then I could greet it. Oh, hello.
And the moment I could name it and greet it, like welcome it, it's like it lost its power. Not power, it lost its...
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (57:07.692)
Velcro I didn't stick to it anymore. I could kind of slide past it as opposed to being Identified or aligned or attracted to it. hello Grief. hello despair. hell. I just hello and then Everything it just has this sweet relaxing The fact on my full body
Jono (57:36.239)
Yes, so friendly is what comes to my mind. It's so friendly. Yeah.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (57:39.328)
Isn't there, it's friendly, hello. And it felt that way. Jono, I love that you pointed that out. I don't think I ever really noticed that that was part of it, but it is. It wasn't a defensive, get the hell away from me, fear, you know, or I don't want to meet you, or it was, hello. It was, it was friendly, it was friendly. I see you. Because nothing.
Jono (57:44.571)
Hmm.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (58:07.008)
It was just interesting to me then and still how it continues to be this way, how. I stopped feeling like I had to hold it, the feeling, or really be attached to that feeling. I could just notice it was here. And in noticing it was here, it was almost like that noticing allowed it to pass through. That's true with all these beautiful feelings too. hello Joy. I mean, I'm a little less apt to notice. Hello Joy, hello kindness, hello right? Because they're yummy and I don't necessarily need to name them. But...
But the sense that they could just move through me like I was a colander, like I was a...
you know, like, like neutrinos pass through our bodies at all possible times, right? Just letting it all move through as opposed to being attached to it.
Jono (59:04.421)
hesitate to kind of ask the question about. What has it kind of been anything beautiful that has grown in the space through this experience? But I can also tell and I could tell through your writing that there have been these kind of unexpected gifts, not gifts that you would kind of want to have by having this experience. But I'm just curious what has opened for you? through this experience by way of unexpected gifts, I guess.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (59:46.19)
So I'll tell you that when I saw that and read that, I thought, I know there have been, but what are they? I couldn't name a thing. And I got real nervous. I thought, no, this is gonna be a terrible interview. I've got nothing to say. Then earlier today, I sat down, actually beside my daughter, which was sweet.
Jono (59:57.703)
You You
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (01:00:16.524)
she was doing her work and I was looking at this and my goodness I made a list much longer than you and I would have time to talk about, friend, but I'm just gonna take a look at it right now.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (01:00:40.076)
I think maybe one of the most profound things is...
is a kind of, I'm going to say a full body willingness to embrace paradox. And by this, mean, again, maybe this is one of those things that I understood in my head, right? Well, sure, you can hate someone and love them at the same time. you know, sure, you can, you know, be sad and happy at the same time.
But wasn't until this that I really deeply understood fully, fully, fully.
The night he died, Jono, I was talking to my friend, Wendy, and we were out walking. I was out walking on the phone. was in Georgia. She was in Colorado. And I was laughing. And I remember her saying something like, of course you could laugh. You I was sobbing. I was freaking sobbing and laughing.
you know, whatever she said made me laugh and whatever had just happened and it made me laugh and I remember.
thinking in that moment, Just hours after he died, that it was still possible to know beauty. was still possible to feel joy. It was still possible to laugh at myself and how I forgot something I had just said I would never forget. know, it was, it it was, so that like that became apparent instantly and it continues to grow in me and help me understand just how
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (01:02:26.282)
this moment, like I said earlier, I was totally alone. I was not alone at all. Right. I was, I was, and still am just absolutely devastated and able to see so much beauty and the, and the ability then for us as humans to, to feel at the same time such a vast oppositional feelings.
It feels like it's impossible and it's so possible. And I feel as if that whatever barrier I might have had about that before has been obliterated. That I feel so aware of how possible it is to experience it all, all at once. I have a poem about the day we did his memorial and I thought...
I would share this one because it's a little bit about this paradox and how I experienced this day. And actually there's a funny story that goes along with this Memorial Day. He, for both of my kids when they were born, I had gone out in the woods and received a song that was their song that I sang to them the moment they came into the world. And then I sang it to them every night.
putting them to bed and other times too. And I remember at Finn's memorial, I did something I knew he would hate and that was I sang his song and invited the audience into a sing-along to sing his song to honor him in this.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (01:04:22.126)
woman of passage, so I knew how much he would hate it. And I did it anyway. And I got out of the memorial service and found that my email, somehow I, somebody had made a profile for me on some global dating app called like, I don't even remember what it's called, global love or something like that. And I had like dozens and dozens of love letters from strangers, like.
I'd love to know more about you. And I thought for sure that this was Finn, you know, like, yeah, mom, you're gonna, you're gonna sing, you're gonna have a sing along at my memorial, then I'm gonna do this, like keep playing this little prank on me. Who knows how it really happened, but this is the story I told myself. So there it is, right? There's the paradox, you know, this horrible thing and this very, it's so funny and all of it all at once.
Jono (01:05:06.311)
Yeah, that'll teach you.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (01:05:21.42)
So this poem is after the memorial. I think I've never read it out loud before.
The mother walked in a deep river gorge, forged by water and time. She knew herself alone. She moved with no urgency. She stepped as if she'd forgotten what time was. She paused at the wild currents and pulled the small red fruits into her mouth. She paused on the bridge and watched the water continue its forging.
She paused on a flat rock, removed her shoes and slipped her feet into the cold water. She did not mind the hem of her black dress spilled into the stream. She sat. She didn't weep until she did. Then she wept until she didn't. She sat until she forgot she was sitting. She sat. until there was a clearing in her, the way the river will eventually clear after it's been muddled by the rain. There's no magic number for how many minutes or hours or years it takes to clear. It is perhaps sufficient to know. Clearing happens. At some point, she rose and walked toward home.
She was not alone. There was nothing that was not beautiful.
Jono (01:07:15.047)
Thank you Rosemary. Thank you for the beauty. Thank you for the vulnerability. For your honesty. And just for everything you brought into this time together. I know your words will linger and touch many people long after this time together ends. And maybe if there's anything else that you'd like to share.
as a final note is there something you didn't get to say a poem you didn't get to share in our time together knowing that we are kind of wrapping at this point
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (01:07:57.998)
Maybe I'll just share the other poem that you'd asked for, which is so on point for what we're talking about now, which is the paradox. How do we feel it all, all at once?
Jono (01:08:02.247)
Sure, I'd love that. Okay.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (01:08:16.184)
Well, there's a story about this poem, I guess in the interest of time, I'll just read the poem. For when people ask.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (01:08:26.344)
And that is to say that if you've gone through any time of sorrow or something terrible or difficulty, then people will come up to you, of course, and they'll say to you, how are you? That's the question for when people ask. I want a word that means okay. And not okay. More than that. A word that means devastated and stunned.
with joy. I want the word that says, I feel it all, all at once. The heart is not like a songbird singing only one note at a time, more like a Tuvan throat singer, able to sing both a drone and simultaneously two or three harmonics high above it. A sound the Tuvans say that gives the impression of wind swirling among rocks. the heart.
understands swirl. How the churning of opposite feelings weaves through us like an insistent breeze leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves. Blesses us with paradox. So we might walk more openly into this world so rife with devastation, this world so ripe with joy.
Jono (01:10:00.292)
I sitting in an audience and hearing Pema Chodronok, I was actually in Colorado, and she was talking about how much space we have inside of us. And I remember first hearing that going, just don't really understand what you're talking about. But in this conversation, I have got a sense.
of how much space we have inside of us. And I want to thank you for that reminder of our capacity to hold so much. And just for your example of that is a true gift to me and I'm sure to many who listen and to many who read your poetry. And perhaps you could just point people to where they can read your poetry. I know you have a new book.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (01:10:52.472)
Mm.
Jono (01:10:54.213)
And I also know that you people can subscribe to something. Would you just tell people that in wrapping up today?
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (01:10:59.134)
Okay, I sure will. So thank you for asking. People can find my daily poems. I send them out every single day, my first drafts into the world like a crazy head. You can either find them online at 100fallingvails.com or you could have them sent to your inbox and if you'd like that you can also find the place to do that on 100fallingvails.com that's all spelled out. Now my newest book is The Unfolding.
and that's from Wild House Publishing. And yes, here it is. Did you get yours in the mail? darn, well it'll probably come today for you or something. Here it is. And then this book, All the Honey came out about a year and a half ago. So both of these poems, the poems I read today were from both of these books. Just really both of them reaching toward opposite ends of the spectrum and.
Jono (01:11:30.535)
Have you got a copy to show us? I haven't received it yet. There it is.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (01:11:56.236)
discovering how it is that we live between the, in between these opposites.
Jono (01:12:05.095)
Well, thank you, Rosemary. It has been an honour.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (01:12:08.014)
Thank you, thank you, Jono.
Jono (01:12:12.667)
Now believe we have a few questions. Let me just see here.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (01:12:26.624)
And I want to thank you, by the way, as you're looking, I just want to say what a beautiful, beautiful listener you are. Thank you.
Jono (01:12:34.054)
It's a pleasure. There's a question here from Emma. Emma asks, what have you learned? Big question. From writing a poem every day, even when you don't feel like it.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (01:12:48.974)
Which is often by the way, which is part of why I have to do it every day because otherwise I could go months without writing one. What have I learned? my goodness, I've learned so many things, but I'll just kind of crush it down into a couple of kind of big lessons. One of them is that it was essential for me to immediately realize that.
trying to write something good, if I was gonna try and write every day, was never gonna happen, that good was going to really get in the way. Until this point, I'd always sat down to write something good. If that wasn't going to be it, ultimately I arrived at, well, could I write something true? That I could do every single day. So when I, this was the promise then that I started to make myself is, it doesn't have to be good, it just has to be true.
And then I just let myself wonder again, you know, what's the next true thing? What's the next true thing? What's the next true thing? Knowing that sometimes what's true isn't necessarily factual, but I'm writing it because there's real energy, real juice in it, not because I'm trying to make it sound good so somebody else thinks I'm smart. It's really about writing selfishly, I think. That's probably one of the most important things. That and the fact that I just think that it's so important to allow
myself to not know where I'm going and to allow as much uncertainty into the writing as possible. You know, I think people say write what you know, which I think is just absolutely the worst advice of all time. That's so boring. I would have run out of things to write long, long, long ago. But if I can write past what I know into what I don't know and just let writing be an exploration of the mystery.
Now it's always interesting. Now it's always surprising. Now it's always there's a liveness in it every single time.
Jono (01:14:49.383)
remember hearing Seth Godin, the kind marketing guy, he was asked, because he writes every day as well, think he's got a daily blog, and he was asked, what do you do when you don't feel like writing? And Seth said, I never feel like writing. He said, I just, I write, you know. Yeah, yeah.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (01:15:07.918)
Right, that's the thing. So you sit down and you write, this is what you do. And because it's a practice that has, the thing is that it will change every single part of your life. It will change everything about how you see the world. And then you realize that it isn't about the writing, but the writing is the byproduct of the practice, but the practice is the part that matters, which is the sitting down and wondering what's here. That's the part that matters.
in the poem itself, or for Seth, I'm sure, the blog, that's the part that's a product and that's what goes into the world and you actually need that part because I'm not saying it's not valuable, of course it is, I love poems, but the part that really matters is the sitting down and wondering what's here. That's the real practice.
Jono (01:16:00.241)
Katie said, thank you, beautiful words, beautiful message. Quote, can I say yes to how earth is now? Close quote, it's been pouring with rain as if the clouds have been crying and yet now the sun has come out as if to show the full spectrums.
Claire said, do you have a sense of where you think the abundance of love comes from or came from? That's a big question, isn't it? Yeah.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (01:16:28.268)
Wow, what a great question. Was that Claire who asked that? Thank you, Claire. Do you know, I remember sitting with my friend, Susie Harrington, who's a beautiful Buddhist teacher. And when I was telling her about this, about the crazy red laser beam story, she said, I think that all that love is all there, latent. It's not like it comes out of, you know, it's always there, but...
that it kind of energizes, it magnetizes to who needs it. That was her theory. And so I think that, you know, if we go by the Susie Harrington theory, it's already all here. All the love that is, is here and it just finds us, you know, if, and I think there is an ability to receive it. In my case, like I said, I didn't feel like I had a choice. just, it was like, you're no haha, that's cute sweetheart. You know, it just came and swashed over me, but
Where does it come from? Right? And what is it even? What even is it? I don't know. I don't know. But I do know that it's been everything for me. That it's been everything. That it's made everything possible. Just feeling like, I can let love do this. It's been a very profound practice of letting myself trust that if love moves through, I don't have to know how the next thing is going to happen.
I don't know how this interaction's gonna go, I don't need to know what I'm gonna say, I can just show up and let love come through. And I got to experience that enough times where it shocked the heck out of me to know that it could, that it would happen if I got out of the way. But I don't know where it comes from, I think that's a great question.
Jono (01:18:23.975)
Maybe a note for us to close on is a quote, a thought here from Anna. She said, thank you. That felt so moving and true. Thank you for your daily poems and for helping me see life through your eyes as well as my own. And I think that's a lovely sentiment for us to finish with because I feel like that is the great gift that you offer, Rosemary, is for us to see the world through your eyes.
On behalf of me and behalf of this community, thank you. Thanks for sharing your time. Thanks for sharing your heart. It's been an absolute delight to be with you.
Rosemerrry Wahtola Trommer (01:19:02.798)
Thank you. Thank you, Jano. Thank you, Ana, for that comment,
Jono (01:19:06.759)
So say goodbye to everyone. See you. Thanks for coming.
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Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
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