Conversations with Siobhan Asgharzadeh

Today we’d like to introduce you to Siobhan Asgharzadeh.

Siobhan, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
The story of how I came to be doing grief work is a long one, with many threads that spiral and weave. I might say that my curiosity in the cultural avoidance of grieving began when I was deeply immersed in Birth work, curious if the medicalization of birth was a response to the fear of death and grieving. It led me to study death doula work and for years, I volunteered in Hospice, painfully witnessing how enormous the disregard of death is in our culture. Somewhere in these deepenings with birth and death, my best friend died suddenly and unexpectedly of a pulmonary embolism. She was 33 and three months pregnant. It sent me deep down into the underworld myself, where I was unsure if I was in this world or another.

After a month of deep grieving, I woke up one day without clear eyesight. When I went to the emergency room, they thought I might have a tumor and sent me in for an immediate MRI. Luckily, I did not have a tumor but they did find lesions on the myelin sheath in my brain, enough to believe I had multiple sclerosis. I was in denial. I was convinced that this was a somatic expression of my grief. These two events, the death of my best friend and the beginning of my journey with multiple sclerosis, began my apprenticeship with grief. Many years later, I began Grief Pilgrim as a response to what I saw as a deep cultural need to have a more generative and soulful relationship with grief.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
When I was brought down into the underworld of self, there were many challenges, however, if I stayed awake and curious, there was always a great harvest in those places. For example, yes, it was challenging to lose my eyes and not be able to walk for those many months when I received my initial diagnosis, not knowing if I would ever get those capacities back, but I feel so grateful to have had that experience and understand the true value of my body and of health. The biggest business obstacle is not getting spun in the business side of the work I know I am meant to do. I came out of that underworld experience with a staff to carry. I know I have to share what I learned down there, and yet how to share it in ways that feel authentic and true and not like I am marketing myself gets tricky. Staying humble and steady and focused in a strange world has been challenging and I have to often re-connect to the majesty of the work, which is not mine but a gift that is only coming through me.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Some of my clients will say that what I offer is so different from other grief offerings they have experienced. Perhaps the reason is that I am not a therapist but a midwife. I firmly believe that grief is not something that we resolve but a capacity that we cultivate in order for us to meet the losses that we meet in life in a way that grows us into bigger humans. It is soul work. It is initiatory, and we have a possibility in deep grief to birth ourselves anew. It is not the goal, and it is what happens when we stay awake in the experience and allow all that we meet to belong, learning to relate to it all in ways that are generative. Through working with the old myths of initiation, nature sojourn’s, crafting, movement, ritual, song, curiosity and imagination, we are re-imagining ways of being with loss that deepen and ripen is as human beings.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
Choosing to become a grief pilgrim is choosing to step into the territory of Soul with our grief. When we deepen into a soulful relationship with ourselves, there is more opportunity to cultivate a healthy and even beautiful relationship with our grief. In doing so, we create more vitality and meaning in our lives. Becoming a grief pilgrim is about embracing what is and allowing what is to ripen us into the humans we came here to be.

Grief is a human capacity worthy of cultivation. It is a powerful and beautiful expression of love. Francis Weller writes that “Grief reveals the undeniable reality of our bond with the world.” Although we are culturally most familiar with grief being associated with the death of a loved one, we grieve for many reasons.

We may experience grief in divorce when we lose the imagined life we thought we would share forever with our partner. We may grieve when we lose the health of our bodies or body mobility and vitality. We grieve for the ravaging of planet earth, for the loss of species, clean air and water. We grieve for the loss of an imagined healthy future for our children. We grieve for the loss of human dignity, integrity and kindness. We may grieve for the lives we didn’t have; for the attuned parents we didn’t have, the mentors we didn’t have, the elders, ceremonies, stories, rituals, kindness, and love we never got.

Grief is a vast territory in the inner landscape that is nuanced and subtle and complex and unique.

Making good relations with this journey of loss and grief is simply a part of being and becoming human.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.griefpilgrim.com
• Instagram: @griefpilgrim
• Facebook: Siobhan Asgharzadeh