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Transcript
- There is a specific kind of silence that settles into your bones after you’ve lost someone, and it’s heavier than any clay I’ve ever held. Today, I want to talk about how the messiest, most imperfect art form might just be the only thing keeping you anchored when the ground beneath you feels like it’s dissolving. You know that feeling when you walk into a room and the air has changed? It’s not just absence; it’s presence, but twisted. Like a shadow stretched too long across the floor. I’ve been thinking about this lately because I met with a listener last week who told me she hasn’t left her house since her mother passed three months ago. She said the silence wasn’t empty. She said it was loud. It hummed with all the things they never got to finish saying. And she felt guilty for wanting to escape it, even for an hour. So, what do you do when the world stops making sense? When the routine you built around another person collapses? For some, it’s running. For others, it’s sitting still until the dust settles. But for my friend Sarah—and for many of you listening right now, maybe even yourself—it’s getting your hands dirty. Not metaphorically. Literally. We’re talking about wet, cold, stubborn clay. The kind that slips through your fingers no matter how hard you try to hold on. There’s something profoundly human about trying to create something solid when everything inside you feels fluid, shifting, gone. Let’s be honest here. Pottery is not therapeutic in the way Instagram makes it look. It’s not soft lighting and jazz music while you sip tea. Real pottery is frustrating. It’s cold. It’s heavy. It fights back. And that’s exactly why it works when you’re grieving. Because grief doesn’t care about your feelings either. Grief is indifferent. It doesn’t care if you’re tired or sad or ready. It just happens. When you sit at the wheel, you have to engage with that indifference. You can’t wish the clay into shape. You can’t apologize to it for being uncooperative. You have to apply pressure, center it, feel its resistance. If you pull away too quickly, the wall collapses. If you push too hard, it tears. There is no middle ground of passive acceptance. You are in a physical dialogue with material that refuses to be anything other than itself. In those twenty minutes, you don’t have to process your trauma. You don’t have to write a journal entry about your mother’s laugh or call your sister to discuss funeral arrangements. You just have to keep your hands steady enough to keep the pot spinning. It’s a small victory. A tiny, muddy victory. But it’s yours. I remember buying my first kick-wheel from a guy named Marcus in a basement studio in Portland. He looked at me, saw the dark circles under my eyes—because yes, I was grieving then too, though I won’t say who, let’s just turn the page on this one—and he handed me a lump of stoneware. He said, 'Don’t try to make a vase. Make a mistake.' I laughed. I thought he was joking. But he wasn’t. He told me that perfection is a trap for people who are trying to control their lives. When you’re grieving, control is the first thing to go. So why pretend you have it? He wanted me to throw a bowl that leaned. One that had uneven walls. One that looked like it had been touched by shaking hands. And I did. That first bowl was ugly. It wobbled. It was thick in some places, thin in others. But when I fired it, it held water. It held life. And I realized that beauty isn’t about symmetry. Beauty is about endurance. It’s about holding together despite the cracks. Kintsugi teaches us that gold fills the breaks, but pottery before kintsugi just teaches us that the break is part of the structure. The crack is where the light gets in, sure, but it’s also where the wind whistles through. Both are true. There’s a neurological reason this sticks, too. It’s not just poetic nonsense. When you’re grieving, your brain is often stuck in loops of memory, replaying moments you can’t change. It’s a hyper-focus on the past. But clay is strictly present tense. You cannot touch yesterday’s mud. You cannot shape tomorrow’s cup. You can only feel the temperature of the slip right now. You can only sense the vibration of the motor under your feet. This sensory grounding pulls you out of the head and into the body. It’s a forced mindfulness, but not the kind where you sit cross-legged and breathe deeply. This is active. It’s urgent. You are tracking the thickness of the wall with your thumb. You are listening to the sound of the water hitting the spin. These are small anchors. They keep you from drifting away into the fog of dissociation. Sometimes, we need something rough to remind us we’re still here. Something that requires effort. Something that proves we have hands strong enough to build, even if our hearts feel shattered. But here’s the secret that no one tells you until you’re actually there. You are never alone in that studio. Even if you’re the only one in the room, you’re surrounded by ghosts of potters past. Every chip on the wheel, every smear of dried slurry on the bench, every cracked mug in the drying rack belongs to someone else who sat there and cried. Or danced. Or loved. Or lost. I’ve watched women come in here with red-rimmed eyes and leave with clay under their fingernails and a strange, quiet peace in their posture. We don’t always talk. Sometimes words are too heavy. But we nod. We share tools. We pass the sponge without asking. There’s a silent language in shared creation. It says, 'I see you. I know what it costs to make something from nothing. And I’m glad you’re making it anyway.' That connection matters. It reminds us that pain is universal, but so is the urge to create meaning from it. We are all just trying to shape something that lasts, even if we know it will eventually break. That’s the shared humanity of it. We are fragile vessels, trying to hold water. So, if you’re standing on the edge of your own grief, looking at the clay like it’s a foreign object, let me give you permission. Permission to make a mess. Permission to fail. Permission to quit mid-way and come back tomorrow. There is no timeline for healing, and there is no standard for 'good' grief. Some days you’ll make a perfect cylinder. Some days you’ll end up with a pile of mud on the floor. Both are valid. Both are art. Both are proof that you showed up. You didn’t hide. You didn’t numb yourself completely. You engaged with the raw material of your life, however painful it was, and you tried to shape it. That is bravery. It’s quiet, muddy bravery. It’s not the kind that makes headlines. It’s the kind that keeps you breathing. Grab your bookmark, we’re going deep into this idea: creativity isn’t about fixing the brokenness. It’s about honoring it. It’s about saying, 'This hurt happened. And I am still here. And I made this bowl.' Let that be enough. Let the imperfection be the point. Because in a world that demands we move on, to stay in the messy, slow process of making is a radical act of love. For them. For you. For the clay. Just keep spinning. Keep shaping. Keep showing up. Thank you for letting me into your space today. I hope you find your own anchor, however small. Until next time, keep your hands busy and your heart open. I’m Kylie Eden, and I’ll see you on the next page.