Note to the reader: this interview delves into child loss and suicide.
The forces in our lives are constantly colliding—sometimes in ways that work out well and sometimes in ways that don’t. This interview series is an exploration of what it can look like to work with the collisions, rather than against them. By digging into how humans and nature interact– from our relationships with other humans, to those with our non-human neighbors, to our relationship with ourselves to our relationship with the landbase–we can uncover how to best step fully into our role in the story of the world.
Today’s guest on the Ordinary Collisions Interview Series is my friend Krista O'Reilly-Davi-Digui. We met on the internet thanks to how our work started colliding on social media in the realm of intentional living, the idea of mining for joy even in the darkest moments, and advocating for letting all feelings be what they are. Krista interviewed me via A Life in Progress back in November of 2019, and she had me and my co author Ellie on a year later just before 12 Tiny Things came out. We’ve worked on a few different writing projects together over the years….I’ve written guest posts for her website and she contributed to the anthology I edited last year. She’s endorsed a few of my books. Krista is a lover of the nature, like I am, as well as a parent, partner, writer, and beautiful human dedicated to adding healing to the world, and I’m so grateful to know her.
Krista is a proud mom of three wise and creative humans and life partner of 30 years. She raised her family on Treaty 6 Territory in central Alberta, Canada, and offers her work as a writer, holistic mind-body coach, and Joyful Living Educator. Through story, grief and trauma-informed education, and brave community, Krista’s words and work empower midlife women to befriend their True Selves and (re)claim freedom, health and joy.
Heidi: Krista, thanks for being here with us today. To start, I always ask the same question: What are two forces that are colliding in your life right now (or that have in the not too distant past)?
Krista: This October will mark four years since my 23-year-old son, Jairus, died by suicide. Four years of navigating in-between spaces – learning how to breathe within the tension of deep grief and pain that fractured my body, mind, and life as I knew and felt it, and four years of consciously choosing life for myself each morning. I am still slowly rebuilding basic habits that were routine to me before my son left, rebuilding emotional, psychological, physical, and spiritual strength and an internal sense of safety.
Jairus’ suffering and death has touched every corner of our family and life. My husband and I love each other and, to turn toward each other means being present to each other’s grief in addition to our own and a constant reminder of the magnitude of our shared heartbreak. My youngest daughter just left home to start university and she needs her big brother to be here talking about their shared love of art and cheering her on. Healing forward after loss isn’t only about individual timeline or effort. Being in community (or in this case family) means moving at the pace of the whole in a sense; no one left behind.
Heidi: You all have been through so much. Thank you for sharing this with us—many guests on this interview series have talked about how dominant culture doesn’t support grieving people, or even know how to interact with such a universal experience, so I’m thankful to be able to share more stories about what it’s truly like to walk this road.
Krista: Our world and brains love binaries and boxes. They feel more comfortable, less threatening, or challenging. But they also limit vision and creativity, they’re harmful in many ways, and they are isolating. They dismiss the full colorful spectrum and diversity of life and the reality of being human in this messy and beautiful world – the bold and confronting truth that life refuses to be ordered neat and tidy for our comfort and we only see in part.
I’ve chosen to ‘grieve out loud’ and if I share my grief or pain, some people assume that I am all pain and offer unsolicited advice to ‘help’ rather than simply witnessing. If I share my joy, strength, and creative plans, others seem to assume I am all well. But rarely is life all or nothing. It is a messy tangle of strength and struggle, joy and pain, beauty and longing. I am nowhere near done metabolizing my son’s life and death and at times I am so weary of talking about it and wish I could write about something else. But this is the truth of where I live in this season: In the in-between space. Straddling what feels some days like incomprehensible duality.
Heidi: That in-between sure is a messy place to be. Sometimes I feel like most of life is ‘in-between’ in varying degrees! That place between stories can be so murky. How are you navigating the conditions this collision is creating? How does the dissonance created impact your choices?
Krista: Some days I lean a little further one way or another, and my practice these four years has been to allow the fullness of emotion and experience without shame or judgment, no matter what others say or believe. No matter who can tolerate the discomfort of remaining in relationship with me, and regardless of what shiny creative projects I’ve been dreaming up. Grief refuses to be rushed. I won’t deny my reality or how hard this work is for anyone else’s comfort. We live in a largely grief and trauma illiterate world and I must do my own work to resist making my Self, my life, or my grief more palatable for others at my own expense. This is personal work. And it is also important community work.
In the first two years of ‘early grief’ I spent hours each day dissociating, leaving my body so that my mind could survive. It’s less dramatic now but the whispers remain, like a low but constant hum in the background of my life. Knowledge of pain so deep and wide that I still don’t know how I survived and to this day have spent very little time intentionally remembering the time leading up to and following his death. I feel deep compassion for those who have not found their way forward and the knowledge that even now I could easily drown there if I am not constantly vigilant.
Heidi: I admire your commitment to allowing your grief journey take as long as it takes. It takes a lot of courage to do what’s necessary for true healing. What has this collision taught you about yourself and the world?
Krista: In An Undivided Life: Seeking Wholeness in Ourselves, Our Work, and Our World, Parker J Palmer writes “An undivided life is not free from anxiety or concern, it's rather free from fundamentalism, from a belief that any life can be captured by a single idea or action (…) Instead there's a deep appreciation for the complexity of the human experience and a love for exploration that in some way is its own life-purpose.”
I choose to live an undivided life, but this does not mean neat and tidy or without dissonance or tension. On the contrary, living an undivided life for me is all about saying yes to living fully in the tension. Feeling it in my body and brain as I am safe enough to do so. Offering my work, seeking truth, allowing joy, using my voice, living rooted in freedom and integrity, my top two core values, but knowing that I must find my way messily, in action, not before.
We must make peace with messiness to make space for joy. To enjoy today we must loosen our grip on needing everything to go as planned, or trying to fit our messy and beautiful selves, and our vibrant and complex life experiences, into someone else’s pretty mass-manufactured box.
I feel torn between grieving what was – the dream that was my beautiful, creative, sensitive son – and the life we shared as a family with him. I miss our late-night conversations, making his favourite foods, how at the holidays he’d gather us to laugh and play video games together as a family. All of this is gone and making peace with the truth of what is does not mean I accept any of it as okay. But if I live full time in the pain, rage, and grief then I can’t write, I can’t vision forward, or allow joy and beauty to live alongside the truth that his story has ended and mine has not.
Heidi: You said, “living fully in the tension” and that can be such a hard thing! As is making peace with messiness—but it seems to me that both are so essential for that undivided life you Mr. Palmer speak of. I’m reminded of something Sulelika Jaouad wrote, “But I know I can’t hold off on living my life until I’m “well enough,” because there may be no such time. Instead, I thought about something someone said in the comments of this newsletter a few months back: that true wellness is living as fully as you can within your circumstances.” Living fully in the tension.
Now, I know you’re working on a big writing project: Can you tell us a bit about your forthcoming book?
Krista: I’m writing a manuscript – the first seeds of which were planted way back in 2016. I signed my contract with Homebound Publications in the thick of my grief, no sense of how long and hard learning to live without my son would be. The original publication date has come and gone and I’m at crunch time now. I must live the collision of joy and pain in my body and life in order to write.
I’ve resisted this work first, because it is a declaration that I am moving forward and believing in a joyful future, without him. Second, this type of personal writing forces me to remember and feel and make sense of certain threads of my story and I haven’t felt safe or resourced enough to do so until recently. And third, as I heard in my spirit one day late 2022, we must live the end of one story before stepping into the next. I have only recently stepped out of early grief and survival into a new story.
This book explores my journey of learning to making peace with messiness to make space for joy, especially over the past 12 or so years, as I grew into my True Self that lives, for all of us, underneath conditioning, comparison, people-pleasing, and performing. I would love it to hold up a light for others as they seek freedom, wholeness, and joy through and beyond heartache or day-to-day life challenges. And I hope it will sow new seeds of joyful possibility for women who feel bad, wrong, or broken, and are learning to love themselves well and live fully in the messy in-between spaces of their own lives.
Heidi: I’m looking forward to your book very much, and I know it will be an important one for everyone who picks it up. Before we wrap up today, what else are you dreaming up and working on?
Krista: My first and primary dream for life was to handcraft a creative and loving family. Dream no.2 was to build a soul-honouring and values-aligned business. I’m now ready to turn my gaze and energy toward dream no.3, which is to have a voice and, in this season, more specifically, to use my voice in a powerful way.
The heart of my work is my Brave + Beautiful Membership Community – where, as one current member says, I offer “a lovely mix of evidence-base, inspiration, and practical application” to help brave, weary, growth-minded women befriend their True Selves and (re)claim freedom, health, and joy. A teacher at heart, I enjoy offering live workshops and love my 1:1 client work though I offer limited spaces to honour my wiring and energetic and emotional capacity.
Finally, in addition to my Seasonal Mindfulness Journals, and getting my first book into the world, I’ve recently started a new podcast called Rebranding Middle Age. I’m giving myself permission to dive in heart-first, messily but on purpose, while holding the outcome loosely. This is the only way I know.
Heidi: I’ve listened to an early podcast episode, and I have one of the Seasonal Mindfulness Journals, so I can say wholeheartedly: folks, listen to the podcast, pick up a journal, and stay tuned for more news on Krista’s projects—you’ll be glad you did.
Have a collision you’d like to explore in this space? Send me an email at heidi@heidibarr.com.