Episode Details

Heather Stringer, Pyschotherapist, facilitator at the Allender Center, ritual maker and performance artist. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts and a Master’s Degree in Counseling and Psychology. She is also mom of two kids.

Danielle and Maggie are Practicing Social Distancing even though they are living in the same town. This podcast was recorded using zoom. 

Heather Stringer is from Chicago, IL originally. She came out to Seattle to attend graduate school for counseling and psychology. While at the Seattle School she took a theology class that gave her the opportunity to do an art piece rather than a paper and it connected her back to roots in performing arts.  She views performing arts as a way to use the body as a place work out concepts in a way that invites the audience to participate. It’s not just a consumeristic experience. This led her to continue to explore performance arts as she began practicing therapy and realized there is something more that she was wanting. It was through a friend’s desire to create an experience for her birthday that led Heather to ritual making.

We asked Heather how she is holding up during shelter in place: she said she has felt so close to the experience of grief and gratitude. To have them both commingling so intimately has been such an experience. Feeling grief of life being restricted, not being able to be around friends and family [a very bodily experience], the impact of the economy, how our world is being turned upside down…. But also feeling gratitude for seeing her kids’ faces in a way that she hasn’t seen before because of schedules and all the busyness of life. “There’s something about our rhythms being synced up in a way that I haven’t felt before… There’s this peace of gratitude I can’t escape.”  She finds herself homeschooling her kids, which she never thought she’d be doing. “It’s not for the faint of heart!” But she says she’s going the best she can, giving herself a lot of space to improvise including playing capture the flag in the middle of a hail storm. Heather says this is what really matters. COVID has been a stripping of superfluous things and finding what you want to say yes to with your kids. “Every minute is different.”

Danielle says the concept of grief and gratitude used to be a heady concept but now it feels like she writing it and it’s dripping on to the page! Tears and kids crying because they are missing an activity or being grateful to be able to go on ride bikes, walking the dogs for hours until the dogs begin to hide.  She even feels the stress even in the animals!

Maggie really resonated with Heather’s experience of seeing her kids’ face in a new way. Even though she is mostly at home with her kids as a stay-at-home mom who volunteers and studies on the side. But things are way different now. It’s like all of sudden the kids seem older and she are witnessing their growth right in front of her eyes. It is a remarkable experience to see who they are becoming. Maggie is also filled with the grief and gratitude because homeschool is not for everyone but what a gift we have in being able to see our kids in a new way and play with them, saying yes to them.

Heather says there is some kind of necessity in saying “yes” to the kids. It’s more energy to say no! Saying yes to the kids getting the sprinkler out when it’s only 46 degrees out. There’s something stunning about this stripping away and saying yes to our kids, because we say no far more than we need to.

Heather posted two videos on the ritual of release. [You can see them here and here.] Ritual making - when we are undergoing changes (changes within us or something happening to us) we don’t always have the practices to mark and move through it. Ritual making is a way to say what I am experience matters and deserves my