“We live in a culture that is a very hungry culture because so many of the things that our souls crave are not what we are feeding ourselves.”

Award-winning poet laureate Danusha Laméris discusses her stunning works and how she integrates the different facets of life to express the curiosities and wonders of the world around us, held in space by the memory of a moment in time.

She is no stranger to profound and deep loss, and speaks about writing not only from a place of grief, encouraging us not to push them away, but to excavate them carefully and push ourselves to the edge of discovering joy and pleasure once again.

Danusha also gifts us by reading two of her poems aloud, “The Watch” and “Stone.” Her poetry reads like watching a film, bringing us into the world of the storyteller on a sensory level, and reminding us why we need poetry in our lives.

“I never really felt all that Indian until I picked up a sitar.
Even now after playing for almost 30 years, I hear that and it sounds like the authentic voice of my soul.”

Musician, actor, composer, singer, dad, and overall Renaissance man Ronobir Lahiri takes us through the journey of following his dream and finding his voice as an artist. He discusses his experience navigating the racial landscape of American theatre and television, and how he was able to pivot, adapt and find a place as a creative artist in that paradigm.

Ronobir also performs live for us, a beautiful rendition of “I Say a Little Prayer,” and talks about his music, how he began to play the sitar and the importance of not burying our voice as we go through life, in defining who we are, what we’re doing, and how we talk to ourselves.

"We are all soft bodies in a hard world..."

We begin a five episode series called "The Grief Sessions" with the extraordinary Dr. Robert A Neimeyer. Together he and Susan talk about the many manifestations of grief which include the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, or the loss of a relationship, but also the collective and seemingly unending losses we are currently experiencing through the global health and cultural crises we find ourselves in at this moment in our history. 

Dr. Neimeyer likens the experience to running a marathon, where we are all in the race whether we chose to be or not, and we must find a way of moving forward, despite not knowing the course, without roadmaps, and without knowing where or when we might hit the finish line. 

It is a sobering thought.

However, the conversation is not without hope. Despite being able to see the finish line, we know we will eventually cross it. What will we have learned about grief, about ourselves, about each other, once we arrive?

How does anxiety work in the brain?

Susan talks with renowned brain scientist and best-selling author of My Stroke of Insight, about the circuitry of the brain and how anxiety works; explaining the connections between the science, humanity, heart and soul, and where anxiety fits into it all.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard trained and published neuroanatomist. In 1996, a blood vessel exploded in the left half of her brain and over the course of four hours she watched her mind completely deteriorate until she could not walk, talk, read, write or recall any of her life. It took eight years for her to completely recover all function.

In 2008, Dr. Taylor gave the first TED talk that ever went viral, she was the premier guest on Oprah’s Soul Series and she was named one as of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World for 2008. Her memoir My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey spent 63 weeks on the NY Times bestseller list and is translated in over 30 languages. 

In 2020, Dr. Taylor will publish book #2 about Insights Into Whole Brain Living, and she is committed to educating the public about neuroplasticity and the ability of the brain to recover from stroke or brain trauma. She is a highly sought after public speaker who travels the world, and she uses her not-for-profit organization Jill Bolte Taylor BRAINS to forward her mission.