4: healing from grief and loss with nishi patel

in today's episode, shelby leigh interviews guest poet, nishi patel! nishi is a member of shelby's poetry club, which is how they met! with grief awareness day on august 30, nishi and shelby chat about the grieving process: how it feels, what helps most when working through grief, and nishi reads poems from her new book, The Inheritance of Grief.

each episode of small steps to self-love covers a different mental health-related topic and has a "small step" or action for you to take on your self-love journey. tune in for today's small step about showing yourself compassion, and let me know in the comments on Youtube what your answer is to today's question, if you feel comfortable sharing!

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connect with nishi:

Instagram: @by.nishi.patel
The Inheritance of Grief  is available August 23 on Amazon.

connect with shelby:

Shelby’s mental health poetry books

Instagram: @shelbyleighpoetry
YouTube: Shelby Leigh Poetry
TikTok: @shelbyleighpoetry
Twitter: @shelbyleighpoet

Join the poetry club

Transcript

Shelby: Hi everyone welcome to small steps to self love. my name is Shelby Leigh. I am a mental health writer and today I am joined by Nishi Patel who is a poet I met actually through the virtual poetry community that I run called the poetry club and I have been so fortunate to get to know her and read her work through the poetry club and read her upcoming book as well so I'm really excited to chat with her today about today's topic which is grief. With grief awareness day coming up on August 30th I thought she would be a great person to chat with because that is what she writes about often. Nishi has a background in the medical field and teaching and has always loved painting and writing since she was a little girl. Her passion for art and helping people has led her where she is today writing poetry about grief in the hopes it will help others so welcome Nishi I'd love to pass it over to you to introduce yourself more tell us a little bit more about yourself and your upcoming book

Nishi: hi yes thank you Shelby excited to be here. So as you mentioned I have been writing so much about grief ever since my father passed away it's been seven years now.  and for the longest time i mostly was writing for myself but but then like through you know online community I read about poems and it's helped me personally, mainly because it's been short readable, which is very important because when you're reading, your brain is foggy. and also it was just relatable in an emotional level so yeah you mentioned my book coming out so that's the main reason why I started to write this book is because I wanted to spread awareness and lessen that stigma that you have to do it alone or you know get over it you know quickly and so it's called the Inheritance of Grief and it's coming out this month august 23rd and so yeah that's basically what I've been doing for the past seven years is this writing about grief. And this book is obviously about grief but you know it's so much more than that it's just about connection and relationship with yourself, with other people and you know, with this book specially with the father-daughter relationship and then that introspective journey you know coping and finding self love.

Shelby: Absolutely I love that the book is amazing I can't wait for it to be out and for people to read it and you're so right. There's so much more that you can take from it maybe if you haven't experienced a loss like that, but there's so much more that you can take from the book beyond just the grief aspect. Can you talk to us a little bit about the title the inheritance of grief and how that came to you and how you kind of feel like grief is something that was inherited?

Nishi: yes that's a great question so the word inherent or inheritance that's always kind of been in the back of my mind I guess because you know I was dealing with my father's paperwork so it came to me as I was writing my first draft and as soon as I thought of it inheritance of  grief i knew it was perfect. It was so fitting because not only you know when a parent passes away you have like the materialistic things that you inherit but for me I felt like I was inheriting his grief if that makes sense, so like his burdens, his worries that he felt when he was alive that comes to me. And then also in another sense it was like this new grief that perhaps it was always inside of me or maybe it was grief from many generations ago that didn't get triggered until after his passing after passing of a parent or your father, so the inheritance of grief is fitting for all of that

Shelby: that's so interesting. Is it something that you felt right away after his passing or did it take you time to look back and realize that that was something that you kind of felt happening like over time? 

Nishi: Yeah so the feeling um I would say like this is like layers of grief that I knew it wasn't just from the actual loss of his death. It was just like so much was coming up and so that's why it was so confusing to navigate. So it's kind of like healing first before I was able to actually label what it was 

Shelby: Right. yeah that makes sense and there are so many amazing poems in this book that go into how you were feeling during this time. A couple lines that stood out to me a lot where you write that grief “unmakes you” and another line I really loved was his life was the beginning of my death. Can you share a little bit how you felt grief “unmade you” and how you felt early on in the grieving process?

Nishi: yes absolutely. so in the very beginning I was angry very angry so that's pretty much how I felt at the beginning, and so the unmaking is explained like the unraveling of my life. So you know when you have a parent present in their life for many many years and then you know he dies, it's like the foundation of your entire life like existence of your life that you'd ever known shattered.  And so that's the unraveling part, the unmaking of my life just coming down into pieces, falling apart and the other thing you mentioned was that you know the end of his life is the beginning of my death, just how grief is like in layers. This saying means so much on different levels as well so I was still angry right. it was still anger at the beginning and it was because I wasn't ready to say goodbye and in order to cope with that or in order to just you know deal with that I'm not saying ready to say goodbye I was actually keeping him alive. you know he's dead so it’s keeping a dead person alive inside my body, and I don't recommend this to people, I'm just saying this is how I felt right. And it's not good because it felt like poison you know it was eating me away and so the end of his death the end of his life was the beginning of my death in that sense 

Shelby: wow

Nishi: Yeah yeah so that's how I felt the beginning was like this push and pull. the angry, the wanting things to be the same and then the unraveling the falling apart of OK now what?

Shelby: right. wow that's really powerful it's so interesting to see these poems and then hear your explanation of them. yeah it's amazing I’d love to hear a poem from the book if you could maybe read a poem for us from the book and talk a little bit about what that particular poem means to you.

Nishi: Sure I'm going to read a poem that's in the middle section of the book on page 69 and it's called India ink. I loosen my bra straps but that doesn't fix it. I strip all over again looking for the culprit to find it's not the clothes I'm wearing but the dark blob clenching my insides, a nameless thing oozing out from my center, a burden wrapping around my spine like tentacles with an unceasing.  this dis-ease transparent to doctors but so thick and all absorbing as India ink to me.

Shelby: wow that was beautiful, can you tell us a little bit about what made you write that poem?

Nishi: yes so this poem is um it's about inviting curiosity and introspection. it's about um looking inside yourself and looking at what is happening inside your body to pinpoint how you are carrying the grief in your physical body.

Shelby: I love the opening it really resonated with me, just feeling like it's on top of you almost like you can maybe remove some of that discomfort, but really it's it's something inside, it's something so much deeper than that, so I loved the opening of that poem it was beautiful. 

Nishi: Thank you it's interesting you said that because you know, the next page is about how I dealt I deal with that.

Shelby: Amazing perfect well thank you for reading that. I wanted to ask you in transition about talking about time, because I feel like a lot of us hear, after we're experiencing something like grief that time heals all wounds or it gets easier with time, so how did you feel like time played a role while you were grieving and did you find that it has gotten easier with time?

Nishi: yes so um time for me was not linear. it was it felt warped and I I was all over the place and I felt like the world was moving in a fast-paced, than I was. I was much slower and like I was on a different timeline; however I could say that it's long as I am continuing to work through my grief I can say that with time, I am learning to navigate my grief better and that with time I am adding more new experiences, new maybe even positive experiences hopefully to add, so grief always stays the same right, but with time the new experiences grows and it gets bigger at the same time I'm kind of in that grief if that makes sense yeah 

Shelby: yeah that makes sense I feel like yeah it's maybe a misconception it's not like you're forgetting about the person or it's not like it's gone away but yeah you've had more experiences as you've mentioned that's an interesting way of looking at it.

Nishi: yeah it certainly feels healing you know but not in the sense that it goes away 

Shelby: right right. What are some things that you feel helped you most during the grieving process and with all of this time what has helped you the most?

Nishi: so I mean there is so many things that has helped me the most um there's many things but I guess I could just simplify it you know pinpoint down to two things. So the one would be the work that I do by myself alone, because a lot of that grief process is internal and so with that I would say it was like the ebb and flow of movement and rest so you know, being self compassionate with yourself, you know give yourself grace and the movement part for me was like doing hot yoga like that sweating and felt very releasing. But now I do gentle yoga at home and I would journal I would paint 'cause I love painting you know that's really good because then when you don't have words you can still express without words you know right? and then hiking or or walking and then the rest, I like to really emphasize that it's intentional rest it's like you're giving yourself permission to just take a break take a pause and just rest. do some self-care and it's intentional because it's not it's not like you're avoiding, you're forgetting you're just putting something on hold, putting it on break. And then the other side of it is not alone where it's more connecting with others and that's very very important for me like to have somebody to just step into my space and to listen and even when there's like sometimes not you know there's not anything you can talk about or sometimes we don’t want to talk, we just want somebody to just be in your space and to sit with you in silence that's key. And it's hard to do too I understand that. That's been very helpful for me but other than having like a friend I would say that having  a community like a larger community has been really really impactful for me just to share stories and it's just like a whole safe holding space and everything yeah yeah so those two things. 

Shelby: I love that yeah and I feel like a lot of us might feel like we don't know what to say to someone who's going through the grieving process or whatever it might be. It's nice to know you know just being there for someone, you don't have to have the right things to say sitting with them in silence showing your support, that way is really really powerful. I love that and the other thing that I love that you said about painting because I’m always a huge advocate for writing and how much it can help your mental health but sometimes you just don't have the words so I love you have other avenues to go to when you don't have those words to write yeah awesome well I would love to kind of close this out with one more poem from your book maybe something along the lines of healing whatever you want to read from the book we'd love to hear it just to kind of close this out.

Nishi: Absolutely. thank you um so I’ve chosen this one on page 137 and it's absolutely about healing it's called consistently healing. keeps seeping into the hot tub so the water becomes bitter from my dreams I will keep finding ways to release so that I can make room for happiness too. So yeah that that's pretty straightforward but it again it talks about you know releasing finding ways to release and then making room for that.

Shelby: Right perfect that is a beautiful a beautiful ending. I always like to end these episodes with a small step for our readers to take with them and so I think something fitting for today is just encouraging compassion for yourself whether you are grieving or whatever your mindset you might be in focusing on some self-compassion and finding something that brings you joy that brings you release like we talked about and healing so that is today small step, is to think about one thing that you can do maybe today or this week to show compassion to yourself. Thank you so much for being here in Nishi. This was a wonderful conversation I cannot wait for your book to be out thank you for being open and vulnerable about your grieving process and reading some poems from the book and it was great chatting with you. 

Nishi: Thank you Shelby, thank you for having me. It was exciting to be here

Shelby: Alright everyone I'll talk to you next week!