Part 2 - Azrael and The Poet: Jennifer Jurlando on Grief, Death Care and Being Alive

In this powerful continuation, hosts Jennifer Taylor and Tava Baird welcome back poet and death worker Jennifer Jurlando for a conversation weaving grief, embodiment, and the sacred act of becoming. 

The episode opens in sacred space with an intuitive song transmission inspired by becoming—not as a moment, but as a process shaped by loss, transformation, and lived experience.

Through Samael’s channeled perspective, listeners are offered a profound reframe of death—not as an ending, but as a passage worthy of celebration, music, and remembrance. The conversation gently explores the coexistence of sorrow and joy, and the permission to hold both.

Jennifer Jurlando shares stunning original poetry, including “Dear Champion” and “Wild,” each illuminating the raw, hard-won nature of becoming. In “Embodied,” she offers a sweeping reflection on incarnation itself, featuring divine voices such as Samael, Michael and Azrael, and revealing the miracle of being alive in a human body.

Moving seamlessly between depth and laughter, the episode touches on grief,  storytelling, the beauty of shared memory, and the unexpected sacredness woven into everyday life.

This is a reminder that we are not here to transcend the human experience—but to fully inhabit it.

Resources:

Patreon Link- https://www.patreon.com/c/jenniferjurlando

Thistle Community Death Care: http://www.thistlecommunitydeathcare.com/

Chesterfield Poetry Collective - www.chesterfieldpoetry.com 

Full Circle Grief Center  www.fullcirclegc.org 

Events-  

Wilder Grove Workshop, April 4- https://www.wildergrove.com/event-details/reclaiming-death-rites-end-of-life-ritual-planning

Fertile Ground - Ritual in Effigy: Mortality and Transformation, April 30-May 3 https://www.fertilegroundgathering.com/workshops

Chesterfield Library Events - May 14, Death Doula Panel

June 28 Mock Funeral at the Blue Ball Inn https://www.tavabaird.com/event-details/the-darkflower-collective-mock-pagan-funeral

Please remember this podcast is for inspiration, reflection, and entertainment only, and is not medical, psychological, or professional advice.

We are two friends sharing personal experiences and evolving perspectives as we learn and grow. This is not a substitute for your own discernment, inner wisdom, or qualified professional guidance.

Take what resonates, trust your intuition, and seek licensed support when needed, always honoring your own inner knowing and personal truth.

Thank you joining us today, you are a valued member of our tribe!  If you are enjoying the podcast, please consider telling your friends and sharing it on social media.  We would greatly appreciate your support in helping us reach others and spread our messages of worth, openness and exploration. 

Connect with your Hosts!

Tava Baird:   tavabaird.com or https://darkflowerbooks.etsy.com.

Jennifer Taylor:  Amnivara (previously Willow Ridge Reiki and Healing Arts)           https://www.Amnivara.com/

Transcript

Azrael and The Poet: Jennifer Jurlando on Grief, Death Care, and Being Alive Part 2

Jennifer Taylor: [00:00:00] Hello again. Jennifer Jurlando and Tava Baird. We get to continue our conversation from last week, and I have no doubt that it will be an ongoing conversation that we will revisit many times. 

Tava Baird: Absolutely. Welcome back Jennifer Jurlando with more poetry for us today.

I can hardly wait. 

Jennifer Jurlando: Yay. Thank you. Thank you. It's so good to be back. 

Tava Baird: Gente, Are you feeling songy again for us? 

Jennifer Taylor: Sure. I feel like, you guys have done so well with your requests. If you have a suggestion for part two of who I should be inviting or, what sort of song to bring about, I'm open.

Jennifer Jurlando: I trust you to be exactly what's needed for the moment. 

Jennifer Taylor:

Tava Baird: I can throw out a word. There's something that's sticking in my head. Um, over the last year, I've watched Jennifer Jurlando it. I [00:01:00] actually, I've watched both of you and myself. If I look in the mirror in this state of rapid evolution where we're just becoming and arriving and we're starting to step forward and say, you know what?

It doesn't really matter what you think. I'm here doing the work I'm supposed to be doing. And when we do that, and then suddenly all the doors are flying open around us at once. And, um, I don't know, maybe a song about becoming an evolution. If you, if I might throw one of those words your way, Jennifer.

See what comes through. 

Jennifer Taylor: Absolutely. I think that sounds wonderful. 

Tava Baird: I can't wait. Music and poetry like my favorite.[00:02:00]

Jennifer Taylor: (channeled singing )

Jennifer Jurlando: Wow.

Tava Baird: No. I'm so lucky I get to hear this like every time we podcast, I'm just like, Jen a song. And then she's like, yes, let me create Magic in real time right here on the other end of the camera. And I've just get to be there for it every time. It's so freaking amazing. 

Jennifer Taylor: You all are so very kind.

I am really grateful. It's always such a trust fall. I'm going, why am I playing this and why does it sound mournful? And this was gonna be becoming what's happening. 

Jennifer Jurlando: Sometimes it takes the mournful to help us become right. Like there's a lot of growth that comes out of loss. [00:09:00]

Jennifer Taylor: Yeah. It, it felt very much like a process.

It was like, you know, becoming is not something that, where it's just like, ta-da, you know, it's a, it's a whole thing. And so as I was playing, I was like, oh, okay, we're, we're doing like the whole process here. 

Tava Baird: Becoming is a long involved journey. Um, I have a little something from Samuel, which is an interesting take here.

Um, he's looking at a different aspect of looking backwards. So he says, why is your reflection considered just a quiet thing? Why does your meditation make its appearance? Only in the absence of proclamation? Song Celebration, dancing. These belong not only to manifestation, [00:10:00] but also to the looking back.

Consider making your funerals celebrations of all you have learned together. Let us dance our dead back to the arms of our ancestors. Let us review things loudly and proclaim proudly. All that was triumph in our journeys. To the now for death is not an extermination, not a destruction, not a disappearance, not a silence.

Do not forget to allow yourselves to rejoice, even as you saw and let Joyous Noise Herald arrivals in the hereafter. And be a comfort to you.

Jennifer Taylor: Wow. 

Tava Baird: It [00:11:00] is kind of strange. I always think about reflection as a quiet thing, or meditation as a silent thing. That looking back has to have this sort of, very, um, that it's somber only. There are lots of traditions around the world where people add music and laughter and elements of celebration, um, you know, celebrations of life to things.

one that I, I love is a dear friend of mine years ago when her father passed away, they had an Irish wake and I will never forget after the very beautiful and very long. Um, you know, full Catholic 

Jennifer Taylor: funeral, 

Tava Baird: uh, going to the hall where the wake was going to be. And you know, her mother, the widow [00:12:00]standing up on a table and yelling, drinks are on my husband and the whole room going, yeah.

and there was a balance there of this is what he would've done was he was with us. He would've bought everybody around. Let's do that right now. I, that's the thing that I remember most about that whole experience. 

Jennifer Jurlando: I think too, there's a beautiful point in grief where you realize that you're allowed to feel multiple things.

I think we should on ourselves, right? And we say, I should only feel sad or I should only do this thing. But that point where you first laugh and then the guilt hits because you have joy even though the person you love is gone and then you realize it's okay. Like my grief is gonna be my companion for the rest of my days because I love, I grieve.

But [00:13:00] allowing joy to exist too is really important. It's one of the things that I love about doing death work with you Tava, is that we can allow that there's still all of the spectrum of feelings connected with it, right? It's gonna be, you know, if there isn't somebody laughing about some awkward thing I said at, you know, after my end of my days, then they're lying, right?

Because we are full spectrums of people and the response to our loss will be a full spectrum of things. 

Tava Baird: Yeah, that is a wonderful, beautiful point. we have these preconceived notions of how we're allowed to feel in certain moments, but with death, all bets are off. So everybody processes things differently.

we all know people who process things by giggling uncontrollably when the emotion takes it for them. And if that's part of it, if [00:14:00] you, especially if it's someone that you used to laugh with Yeah. that telling jokes and stories about them. I had the profound honor recently of assisting someone in making a memorial puppet for a dear friend of theirs.

And as this process was going on, I got to hear all of the silly memes they used to send each other in the inside jokes. And just, you know, I had never met the person, but I really felt like when I left that room that I had a sense of who they were. And, it was a really wonderful thing. I only got to meet them in death.

Jennifer Jurlando: It's one of my favorite things about grief work is all of these people I've met and carry stories of who I never knew in life, but I get the honor of [00:15:00] witnessing their story through the eyes of someone who loved them and who wants to still tell the stories. And I love it so much. 

Tava Baird: And, and I love how you changed.

The rawness of a lot of those feelings, like that first poem that you read to us at the beginning of the last episode. Folks, if you missed the last episode, go back before you go forward. Um, and you allowed it to inspire not only the, the work you will be doing in the next part of your life, but your art.

and so folks, you probably know from part one that Jennifer is a mind blowingly good poet. and if you don't mind, there are a couple of poems you have loaded up that I would love to hear 'cause there's nothing quite like hearing you read it live 

Jennifer Jurlando: well. So actually, when [00:16:00] you made the becoming request, I found another one.

So before I jump into the poetry one that you asked for, I'm gonna. Do a different one. That was a letter. It was assigned as a letter to myself. At the end of this episode of growth, what would I have to say to myself? Like the beginning, the launching person to the arriving person. So this is that letter.

It's, um, dear champion, dear champion, from my perch on the precipice looking into the valley, I see the terrain you will have traversed to summit the opposite peak. I will launch you soon into that valley of deep still pools to face the worst of your enemies to walk into the spaces. I've kept tightly locked because I was not sure if it was safe.

I was not sure if we were strong enough. You will [00:17:00] meet those refrains that I torment myself with. You are too much. You're not enough. There's someone better for the job, someone with more credentials, with a bigger following, with a name, with better words. Someone who does not speak in your voice. There is someone who does not reek of grief, and I remind you, should you start for an instant to believe that horse shit, that you come from generations of people who survived every kind of abuse, who rose from pain and from servitude and from poverty.

Women who ran men who refuse to be told no. They left all they know. As you will now fueled by hope and certainty that they deserved better, that they deserved more. Lean in fierce one, they're here with me. We are cheering you on. And when you arrive on that other peak, we will pound our chest, unfurl the flag of [00:18:00] self-love.

Fill the valley with ations of your triumph. Yes, filthy victor. We will revel in the sight of the blood under your nails and the sand in your teeth. Your curls matted with mud and grave dirt. You have new, hard won scars, a crown of bones and feathers, and under the grime you shine. You have laid to rest the monsters of our own making.

You have looked into the nightmares of your foremothers and have dropped their burdens into the abyss to rest. In honor and in peace. Witnessed but no longer ours, we expect no less. This is the work. Promise us this is the flaming path to the next beautiful part of your life. This is death. You've done it before.

You will do it again. Go. There is no time but now fly. Love your home. 

Jennifer Taylor: Oh [00:19:00] my goodness. I love that so much. I was, I was listening to you and I was like, your, your poems are like a masterclass in life in themselves.

Jennifer Jurlando: Thank you. 

Jennifer Taylor: It it's, yeah, it, they really are. I mean, I could just sit with one poem and just live in that for a while and gain so much. It's really, really beautiful. Thank you. 

Tava Baird: I know I joke all the time about making t-shirt, but I want one that says Filthy victor on it so bad right now. Like that's what we all are, is we, you know, we, we fight our way through.

Um, some people, just getting up in the morning and getting ourselves together and going out and putting on a brave face and moving up against all the things that we don't wanna [00:20:00] do so that we can live as authentically as possible and create better lives for everyone around us. Uh, we are imperfect.

We are impure, we are filthy victors, and I freaking love that. 

Jennifer Jurlando: Thank you. I promised the counter one too, but 

Tava Baird: yes. That was, oh my God, 

Jennifer Jurlando: the best. Aligned with the becoming theme, I thought. 

Tava Baird: Yes, 

Jennifer Taylor: absolutely. It was. Oh, for sure. 

Tava Baird: Oh my God, that was amazing, Jennifer. I'm so looking forward to illustrating this poetry book and I don't know what I, I.

You are gonna have to tell me which ones get pictures, because I may be having a love affair with every single poem. 

Jennifer Jurlando: Well, now you have to do the filthy Victor poem painting. 

Tava Baird: Yeah. Somebody standing on one mountaintop looking over at another mountaintop. [00:21:00]

Jennifer Jurlando: Right. 

Tava Baird: Filthy victor. 

Jennifer Jurlando: The before and the victorious after.

Right? 

Tava Baird: Yes. 

Jennifer Jurlando: We expect nothing less. 

Tava Baird: And, and to allow yourself to say, that's far away. And I'm looking at the road there, but I have faith that you're gonna be looking back at me now I'm gonna be looking back at myself 

Jennifer Jurlando: mm-hmm. 

Tava Baird: When I arrive. 

Jennifer Jurlando: Mm-hmm. And that we're different people. 

Tava Baird: Yeah. 

Jennifer Jurlando: After it's over. We're different people, but we have the honor of witnessing I think sometimes the, you know, like, I'll, I'll wonder what I would've thought of myself.

Five years ago looking at me now. Right. Or when I was 10, I would love the 10-year-old me to see me and be like, whoa, I think 10-year-old girls are like peak fierceness until 50.

Tava Baird: [00:22:00] Man. isn't it great to go? when I was 10, I couldn't conceive because of the, that sheltered little box that I lived in. I couldn't have conceived that I would have been able to meet women like yourselves. I didn't know they existed. No. No one had shown me poetry beyond Haiku and the idea of channeling something.

You know, that, that you could reach out toward the divine yourself rather than sitting and having a man tell you about it in a church just didn't exist. My, my 10-year-old brain would've exploded and oozed out my nose. 

Jennifer Jurlando: But I think, I don't know, my, like, I grew up in a Jewish home. Um, we had pigs on our farm.

We were not like textbook good Jews. Um, [00:23:00] but like I always had an ongoing conversation with the divine, like in my head, in my heart, that I, like, I didn't have to be in a specific place or have someone give me permission to have that conversation. And I think it had something to do with some of my parenting, right?

That we 

Right. 

Were told we. The myth in my family was that we had Native American blood and my poor mother, how she grieved when it turned out there wasn't any, but we were brought up to like, honor, honor the earth and to understand that we were connected to it. And, part of that was being allowed to commune with Nature slash the Divine.

Jennifer Taylor: I love that. I was thinking back about like the 10-year-old. Me looking at this, and I think for maybe the first time in my life [00:24:00] I'm at a place where that 10-year-old me would be like. Oh, I am excited about like, yes, this is, this is what I'm about. This is why it's like I'm circling all the way back to kind of the things that I felt like existed that I couldn't find any proof of necessarily around me.

You know, that nobody was talking about, nobody was saying it was real. Everybody was saying, oh, you know, that's make believe. Or, you didn't even express it necessarily. But, the kind of wild me that would spend my whole summer, out in the corn fields and traipsing around at the base of the mountain and playing in the creeks.

I was just eating berries to sustain myself so I didn't have to go back to the house. that was the most alive. And I just kept feeling like there's something, I'm meant to do something amazing. I'm meant to bring about something. I am meant to, have this massive impact.

And I don't know that I'm necessarily at the massive impact or any of [00:25:00] that yet, but there's that sense of, this is what I was feeling, what I'm remembering now, and I'm starting to let out. This is what I was feeling all the way back then. That it's taken all of these years of kind of fighting through all the culturally created versions of myself that is now being remembered.

And it's like the essence of something that I knew back then, but I couldn't put my finger in. But all I knew was that the wild was where I worshiped. You know? It, it's like this is where I find God and. Everything wonderful. it was a really cool thing that you were talking about going back and what would that, you know, 10-year-old version of myself, I was like, for the first time I feel like that self would be like, okay, this is good.

You know, the, the future. This is, this is the direction that I'm, I wanna be heading. Yes. 

Tava Baird: I, um, I remember, I mean, I grew up in a place [00:26:00] where, um, I grew up in a situation where the arts were not championed at all. And so writing and drama and all of those things were considered a waste of time when you could be doing something important.

Um, and that was, you know, it was a long, hard battle to walk out of that and then to sort of deprogram yourself from the voices in your head. But I think I did when you were talking about, you had that, that feeling of I'm meant to do something. I'm meant to bring, bring about something different here.

I, I think I, I definitely have that. And now that I'm older and I'm lucky and enough to, and privileged enough to stand in this place, what I'm realizing is the thing that I need to bring about is myself and then help bring that we can all then help bring about each other. 

Jennifer Taylor: Mm-hmm. 

Tava Baird: And, [00:27:00] that's what I wanna do with this life.

That's what I wanna do with this holy work is see someone who Jennifer Joana is doing. The snaps is, is to see someone who's standing where I was five years ago or 10 years ago, who has this spark, who has this idea and doesn't know which direction to go or needs a leg up. And I wanna be the person that says.

you can do this. and if there's anything I can do, my power is behind you. and I'm so honored when I get to see people that we all rise together this way. We all pull each other out, we don't leave anybody behind, and we go back in and we get them. whether they are needing balancing, whether they are needing self-worth, whether they need a hand to hold as they approach their next transition.

so look at all that good stuff that poem brought out. Let's the other one. 

Jennifer Taylor: Yeah. 

Jennifer Jurlando: Well [00:28:00] I'm trying to decide because Wild came up, so I feel compelled to read Wild. So that's what I'm 

Tava Baird: decide. It's our podcast. Read them both. 

Jennifer Jurlando: Alright. You're out for it. Don't start with Wild and then I'll find the what I meant, which is about standing up with each other.

So first Wild for Jen. 

Thank you. 

We are made of dreams and matter. We form to the music of our mother's heartbeat, surrounded by whispers of the secrets of the universe. A physical body slowly stitched to our soul. We arrive made of flesh and water met by life, with lungs full of air, cut from our source and still connected.

We look into the eyes around us. Why wouldn't we? It's what we've come for. We look into their souls and hearts. They recognize us and they weep. We have launched from everything to here. [00:29:00] We are vast, full of passion, curious. We move and we strive to share what we know, all that we brought with us. We see magic.

We stop to feel, to honor our holy. We experience awe to catch raindrops, to feel the texture of both sides of a leaf, to listen to moving water, to appreciate the dancing wind on our cheeks and our hair. To gaze on the shape of a cloud without ever making it understandable. Here, all our savoring of that is a burden.

It delays the carpool, makes a racket in restaurants. It is not sensible, it is not practical. Does not fit on a college application. Does not fill the 5, 2 9, or the 401k. Does not earn high marks. It is unwieldy, awkward, embarrassing, inappropriate, having been corralled. Harnessed, [00:30:00] having been broken of our wildness, having learned to be quiet, considerate, polite, ladylike, humble, modest, godly, having been punished, polished, formed, trained.

We save the wild, our original hope and light for dreams. We let her whisper to our hearts, but we dare not speak of her. We are good, we are easy, we are manageable, and then we are broken by a loss, by a death, by some pain. That makes it clear that being good and easy and manageable have not been enough, that good and easy and manageable have not prepared us for all that is bigger.

All that refuses to be contained. And wild arrives, winds swept and unconcerned with manners hand in hand with her sister's hope, magic, and curiosity. And they sing us to sleep. They [00:31:00] fortify our dreams with connection and they shine their torches on feral pain, crouching in a dark corner. And they welcome pain into the circle, into our wholeness, and we will not go back.

Jennifer Taylor: Oh, I love that.

I'm gonna be dehydrated from tears about the end of all of our podcasting and listening to, to your beautiful poems. 

Jennifer Jurlando: Ah, thank you. I 

Tava Baird: freaking love that poem. And I cry every time I hear it. And Samuel says, just said, do you see, um, Shaah how her words water the tree? 

Jennifer Jurlando: And now I'll cry. 

Tava Baird: This soothes, uh, our podcast, three women crying 

Jennifer Jurlando: and laughing and crying and laughing.

Tava Baird: We laughing and [00:32:00] crying. We've got everything. 

Jennifer Taylor: Was it, uh, steel Magnolia? That laughter through tears is my favorite emotion. 

Tava Baird: Oh, that's great. 

Jennifer Taylor: I love that. 

Tava Baird: Yeah. Oh my God. Oh, you want 

Jennifer Jurlando: the other one? 

Tava Baird: Okay. yes. So I, little story about this one. Mm-hmm. A couple weekends ago I was at, 

The sacred space between the World's conference, which was freaking awesome. And as I left one day to drive home, 'cause I wasn't staying overnight, I opened up to see that Jennifer Jurlando had left a Marco with two poems on it. Now I should know better than to launch that Marco while trying to navigate my way out of a very twisty and complex and unfamiliar parking garage.

And I, there were several near misses with large concrete columns, uh, probably because I was sobbing [00:33:00] my way through the first poem. And then the second one, when she got to the counterpart, I think I actually went and almost drove into a pillar. So, um, that's the story behind this poem. 

Jennifer Jurlando: All right. 

Tava Baird: May cause car accidents.

Sorry. 

Jennifer Jurlando: So if you're driving, I refuse to accept responsibility. 

Tava Baird: Yes. There we go. 

Jennifer Jurlando: I'm this, sorry. Go ahead. This one is on my poetry day. It's, it's. More fluffy than some of my poems. It's a little break on my poetry day. I eat hava for breakfast. Ponder the orange peel, shoved down the drain. I write verses to moonlight.

Cancel appointments, see signs in the shadows, leave apples for crows. I print off some pages, ask friends if they're coming, want sex on the counter, and then on the floor stretched out in sunlight. I call on my angels, let them run through [00:34:00] me. Surrender the reigns. And here is the microphone boosting the syllables, launching the starlight.

These amplified words, if they land, you will hear them, see yourself inside them. Tomorrow, you'll pull them from wallets again. You might jump up staircases. See ghosts and moon shadows might feel heart nourished. What more could I ask? That was the one you wanted. 

Tava Baird: Yes. I love that one. It sounds like song lyric to me.

There's a musicality of it that goes along that is just everything from the peels to the apples for crows and the sex on the counter and then on the floor. Just, I love that bottle. 

Jennifer Taylor: Yeah, I do. And you know what I think is really interesting is that it, even though it's lighter and feels fluffier, I think to you, because so much of the [00:35:00] things are heavy, there's still a whole lot of beauty and depth in that poem as well.

You know, just kind of reveling in all of these beautiful things and ways of being alive and connected and aware, there's a lot of beauty there too. 

Jennifer Jurlando: Thank you. 

Tava Baird: You are involuntarily beautiful. Like a lot of people have to try to construct it. Like for me, you know, if I, there's a lot of work that goes into Pullins, you're just 

Jennifer Taylor: not even, 

Tava Baird: you just open up, okay, here's a Jennifer Jurlando story to give you an idea of how involuntarily beautiful she is.

She's probably on the edge of her seat right now going, what is she going to say about me on a podcast? No, it's not that bad. 

Jennifer Jurlando: You said 

Tava Baird: bad. We can edit, right? No, no, it's, I am not a morning person. And when I say that, that is an understatement. In a huge way. And often when I am traveling to events, I travel in the company of another [00:36:00]friend of mine and she is not a morning person either.

When we share a hotel room, it is not pretty. picture, sure. There's a lot of grunting. A lot of burping, A lot of, oh my god, did I really sleep with my underwear on backwards and I can't find my pants. We are not delicate, beautiful people in the morning. It's kind of like a den of wild animals with less grace.

So at this particular event, and Jennifer Taylor, you were at the event, you were just in a different room. Jennifer Jurlando was in the hotel room directly next to us and so it had a door right through to the room. So our alarms go off and we are, our morning selves, and then here comes Jennifer Jurlando through the door holding an already brewed cup of coffee for [00:37:00] my friend, I have never brought her coffee, and we've been traveling to events multiple times a month for two years now, right?

You come in with coffee, your hair is already delicately piled on the top of your head. You are dressed. You look like you've showered sometime recently, and you went over and pulled back the curtain to allow the morning sun to shine on your face, and you said. I've already written a poem. Would you like to hear it?

And I was consumed by two feeling at once. One which was yes, yes. I want to hear a poem. And the second, which was, I am going to murder you in cold blood with my bare hands because you are in this moment, a woman that I have often aspired to be and have given up hope that I ever will be. And there you were already caring for others, not [00:38:00]commenting on the stench that I'm sure rose from our room as the sun be beamed onto your face.

And you brought filth words of Calliope. 

Jennifer Jurlando: Oh, 

Tava Baird: that's how just unintentionally incred. Like she's just beautiful and she doesn't even need to work at it. It's lucky you're my friend, or I would have a real hate on for you.

Jennifer Jurlando: Geez. Tava. I'm just gonna remind you that we're sharing a hotel room in a couple months, so 

Tava Baird: Yeah, it's gonna be, it's am I going to buy better pajamas by then? Yes. Um, I'm hoping to come up closer to Effortless Beauty and, and it's not. It's, 

Jennifer Jurlando: you are so beautiful. You are so amazing and [00:39:00] wonderful and full of joy.

Tava Baird: Yeah. We're gonna see how you feel after I've farted in our mutual room four times. 

Jennifer Jurlando: Everybody farts Tava. 

Tava Baird: That's the name of your second book of poetry. First book of poetry. No Mistakes were made. Second book of Poetry. Everybody farts Tava. 

Jennifer Taylor: Well see There's that. Children Cautionary, everybody Poop. So everybody farts is the natural, you know the natural sequel to that.

Jennifer Jurlando: I can't take credit for everybody poops. 

Jennifer Taylor: It is, it is a wonderful, children's book and like one of one of our kids' favorites. 

Tava Baird: Wait, everybody farts? 

Jennifer Taylor: No, everybody 

Tava Baird: Poop. I thought 

Jennifer Taylor: it was Everybody poops. 

Tava Baird: Everybody poops. I wasn't thought maybe there was a sequel. 

Jennifer Taylor: Yeah, well that's what I was saying.

Like Everybody farts is the natural sequel to that. 

Tava Baird: Sorry, I'm a day late and a dollar short to the conversation. Oh my God. So, but we are definitely not allowed to call this [00:40:00] podcast episode. Jennifer Jurlando interview part two. Everybody farts.

So see what 

Jennifer Jurlando: I 

Tava Baird: mean? The gases of the muses. 

Jennifer Jurlando: Yeah. Yeah. We bring joy everywhere. 

Tava Baird: Exactly. 

Jennifer Jurlando: We can talk about death and farts and everything is good 

Jennifer Taylor: indeed. 

Tava Baird: Oh, Lord. Oh man. So I would love to know a little bit about the beginning of your poetry journey. Like now you are effortless at it. So maybe it was, you know, you rolled in at age.

You, you may have popped out into this existence with a tiny sheath of papers clutched in your left hand. But how did you discover that you were Le poet? 

Jennifer Jurlando: Hmm. Um, my Aunt Sid, who was my mother's aunt actually, and was like [00:41:00] a huge source of love for me. Like she was the first voice of Lilith in my life that I was beautiful, even if everybody in middle school was funny looking, I was still gorgeous.

Um, she, she. Loved me. and she gave me a little book, um, a with blank pages, and I remember filling it with rhymes for her. Um, and they were silly. Like, to go to New York, you must have a fork. They were, you know, not, it wasn't Mozart's work. Um, and I remember that in high school I really hated the poetry units because I just wanted the things to say what they meant.

I didn't like poetry that, um, you had to,

it's 

like try de code. Right, right. That, that I felt like [00:42:00] the rain dripping down the window should be about the rain dripping down the window. And I was a prose writer for a long time. After my daughter died, I wrote her birth story. I actually woke up at three o'clock in the morning with labor pains and sat down at the laptop and wrote it.

And it, um, was really painful, but it felt like I had delivered her in a, in a different way. Um, and I was able, that's actually how I met my friend Valerie Haggard, who let me to you. So thank you thistle for the, but thistle's birth story, which is all pros, was an important way for me, again, to organize this pain and this information.

and after she was born, I had an experience of telling someone what had happened. And it was a woman who was in her maybe late sixties, and she said that she had a [00:43:00] stillbirth and she had never told anyone about it. That after all of these years, she had been told, we knocked you out. We took the baby.

Just go home and start over. and thistle's story had loosed her telling her child's story. And I felt so honored to have been that key. And so when I wrote the whole thing out, it was inspired by that, that that part of what many of us need to adapt to what our grief is in our life and to make the story, make some kind of sense in our life is to tell it.

So, um, I wrote this little story. I did a lot of writing with Vale Haggard, that was prose writing, and I have some of that. Um, some of those [00:44:00] pieces were, a lot of those pieces were published on her, online literary magazine,

but I think actually it was after the last election and I felt really disempowered and I felt really horrible and I felt disconnected. And, wild Was Born, wild was born from that pain that I felt about being disenfranchised, right? that what I foolishly maybe thought the country was, is not what it felt like it was anymore.

so I started writing and then as I said, it was not on, like, on the page. It didn't feel like enough and I wanted it launched. So, and then somebody I [00:45:00] would read the poetry to would say things like, it's so good. I want to eat it, like chocolate cake. I want to rub it on my face and lick it off my fingers.

And then I was like, well, I guess I should keep writing. 

Tava Baird: Yes. 

Jennifer Taylor: Oh, I'm so glad you did. 

Tava Baird: this is a question for both of you. Um, we talked about being frustrated with the poetry units in high school. Were there any writers that really spoke to you during your formidable years? Maybe high school, maybe earlier, maybe you know, college, maybe later?

Somebody that just made you go, gave you a, a, had a lasting effect on your worldview and or on how you saw yourself.

Jennifer Taylor: Is, Thoreau the one who wrote Walden? Okay. 

Tava Baird: Yes. 

Jennifer Taylor: Yeah. I think [00:46:00] the Henry David Thoreau, like the Walden, um, things were the, the one things that really kind of stood out to me as, because it was very nature based and it felt like there was something more behind it.

There was something maybe magical there that, I really liked. 

Tava Baird: You are never going to believe this, but I wrote down my answer before I asked you guys. Henry David Thoreau. 

Jennifer Taylor: You're kidding. 

Tava Baird: Nope. I went to the woods because I wish to live deliberately. We did a unit on Emerson and Thoreau, and I remember my teacher saying that Emerson was the better writer, that Emerson was a rich man who lived the big house.

And while Thoreau was not the better of the two writers, Thoreau actually went out to the woods and threw out his possessions [00:47:00] and lived the talk. You know, he walked the walk, whereas, Emerson didn't do quite that much. And I remember reading Walden. And looking around my teenage bedroom.

And I got up and I boxed up every single thing in the room and put it into the guest room and stripped all my possessions down to like 10 items of clothing, which when you're a high school student, high school woman, that's major, that's huge. And I just put everything in the other room. And I remember my parents going, what are you doing?

And I was like, I don't know what I need and I need to figure it out. I don't have to go into the box in the next room and get it in the next month. It's not something I need. And when I, I need to get rid of the stuff to figure out who I am right now. And they thought I was insane. But [00:48:00] Henry David Thoreau was it man.

he was the guy. I totally blown away that you said the exact same person. 

Jennifer Taylor: Yeah, that is, that's fascinating. But I think makes a lot of sense. 

Tava Baird: Yeah. 

Jennifer Jurlando: My answer was not Thore. 

Tava Baird: Who was yours? 

Jennifer Jurlando: I was a big Shakespeare fan. 

Tava Baird: Well, I mean, 

Jennifer Jurlando: I felt I was a little snobby and I felt like understanding Shakespeare was like being in a club, like some kind of secret club.

And I loved the sword jokes as they were not sword jokes. And I loved being able to take this like really old and confusing stuff and act it in a way that made it make sense. When I left high school and went into a theater program at Virginia Tech, my goal was to do Shakespeare and soap [00:49:00] operas, 

Tava Baird: Shakespeare, and said operas.

Well, they're not that different. 

Jennifer Jurlando: They're, 

Tava Baird: they're 

Jennifer Jurlando: not that different. Yeah. 

Tava Baird: I absolutely love that. Um, big Willie Shakes, I am a big fan of his as well. I was all through high school. Uh, I did drama at a School for the arts and I often went to forensics competitions with Shakespeare pieces and I was in several Shakespeare plays.

and I continued doing that on through college and used to be able to pull up a whole bunch of sonnets off the top of my head. And you're right, people don't, people think Shakespeare is dry and boring and stodgy, and they don't realize that Midsummer Night Stream is just a story about people playing grab ass in the woods.

Like that's what it is, you know, like, 

Jennifer Jurlando: and. My best friend is a high school teacher and loves, loves, loves Shakespeare and Shakespeare. Shakespeare. And I have to say, I've been convinced that probably a lot of the writing was done [00:50:00] by a nice Jewish Italian woman in, in England who needed the money, right?

And, um, sold him the stories. And I don't know what's real, but we treat, I love the words. 

Tava Baird: Yes. 

Jennifer Taylor: I think it's really interesting that you said Shakespeare, because I was gonna say in high school, that was the other one that I really liked, which was really odd because I didn't like reading period.

But there was something about Shakespeare that I really enjoyed, and then later, I guess it Chaucer, was the Canterbury Tales. 

Mm-hmm. 

I really loved. And, um, at Wake Forest we did a, I had a course where we went through the, um, the Canterbury Tales, and I was like, these are fantastic.

Like, I absolutely loved the Canterbury Tales. I was like, this is really fun. But yeah, it was so odd that of all the things, like, everybody's like, oh, I hate Shakespeare. And that was like the one thing that I liked. 

Tava Baird: Uh, there were two other books. well, one's a [00:51:00] play. and Jennifer Taylor, you are not around to read this play because of what happens to the horses in it, because you are a horse person. 

Jennifer Jurlando: We're talking Equus again. 

Tava Baird: We're talking Equus. Oh, no. Um, no, but there's the Play Equus.

And I was lucky enough, my last two years of high school, I attended the Governor's Magnet School for the Arts for Theater. And so we got to read, you know. Studies that were only normally assigned to college and graduate students. Um, and Equus made its way into, into my consciousness. Um, and there's another book called A Prayer for Owen Meany.

Has anybody read that too? And very different works, but both of them deal with the topic of what is God, um, prayer for Owen Meany. Jennifer Taylor. Have you read that one? 

Jennifer Taylor: No. 

Tava Baird: Oh, it's okay. So long story short, it's been 20 [00:52:00] something years, probably more like 30 something years since I've read it.

but it is told from the viewpoint of this young man who has a friend. That little boy, like just a little bit younger than him, but who is a diminutive in size smaller than his friends, whose name is Owen Meany. And, Owen says that he's God and or he could hear God and his friend. The first sort of doesn't believe him.

And then things start to happen and he starts and you as the reader start to go maybe Owen's right. And it's an incredibly beautiful book about safe and what we perceive as divine and the things that we say can't be divine. Um, absolutely smashing. [00:53:00] Love it, love it, love it. And Equus, um, is a play about a young man who is on trial.

Because he thought God was looking at him through the eyes of horses. And he's a teenager basically trying to find his way through guilt and sexuality and religious dogma and all of these other things. And, he injures the horses, to try to keep God from seeing him. And the play is one of the most spell binding things I have ever read in my life.

It is phenomenal. Um, those were two others that I think were very, sort of formidable in my, well, let's go find the divine ourselves, Bernie. 

Jennifer Taylor: So I have to share this story that came to me that has so much to do with that. Like, you know, what we think of as divine and what is divine and what would the divine look like?

What would God be like and what would it not? So, you know, [00:54:00] my dad's a retired minister and. My favorite time was when we lived up in, way Northern Loudoun County, at the time, very much out in the boonies and, you know, had this little church, where he was a student minister and so he was still going to seminary and serving this church and 

there was the little parsonage where we lived the cemetery, the church and the like social hall, which was a tiny historic one room schoolhouse. And it was all clustered right there together. And so you could walk very easily from the church to our house was, you know, really close.

And there was this little boy who started calling my dad, God. And he, he was really little. And I think what had happened was that his parents were like, oh, we're gonna go to God's house. You know, let's get ready. Like when they were getting ready just for church, it was like, let's go. We're gonna go to God's house.

We're gonna go talk to God and stuff. So then naturally you get there. If this is God's house and you're at the church, and my dad's [00:55:00] standing up there preaching and he's leading everything well, clearly that's God, we're in God's house. And it you know, made total sense. And so, you know, this little one, I think it was maybe like three and was just nonstop calling him God.

And it was kind of cute for a little while. And then, like he kept getting older and it was still like no one could convince him that my dad was not God. And everybody was getting really concerned and like, you know, dad tried having conversations with him, everybody tried explaining it and it was like, okay, thanks God.

And you know, it's like it didn't matter what anybody said or did. And so One day they had gotten to church really early, and we were still back at the house, getting ready, you know, for church. And so he had like his, white, undershirt on and I don't know, some kind of, old shorts or something on, and was sitting on the edge of the bed clipping his toenails.

And there's a knock at the door. and mom goes and answers the door, and there's this little boy and he's like, hi, is God home? [00:56:00] And at this point, everybody had just sort of given up and been, she's like, yeah, he's back in the, you know, yeah. He's back in the bedroom. And so he walks back there and he comes in and dad's sitting there, you know, like kind of disheveled, his hair's not done yet, nothing's done.

And he's clipping his toenails. And the, the little boy walks in and just sees dad for a minute and sort of takes in the whole scene, turns around and leaves, and never called him God again. It was like, okay. Clearly that is not God. You know, God does not sit in an old t-shirt on of the edge of the bed clipping his toenails.

Like that's, that's too far for, for God to it just, I thought it was a really interesting thing. 

Tava Baird: Oh 

Jennifer Taylor: my God. Yeah. It's like, at what point would we say, okay, that's not God, you know? Does God clip his toenails and do all this? 

Tava Baird: Oh my God, I love that. You know, 

Jennifer Jurlando: can I read the God poem? 

Tava Baird: I was really hoping that this would segue into that.

I was about to [00:57:00] say, I'm pretty sure Jennifer's got a for this. 

Jennifer Taylor: Fantastic. 

Tava Baird: Please, please, please. 

Jennifer Jurlando: It's called Embodied The winged ones. Were having some fun swapping tails of their charges. The souls that they guide beings, they have adopted for one reason or another, the eyes so haunted, so deep. I came across them in a dream, and I swear they saw me.

Such an asshole. I couldn't tear my eyes away from these choices she made. She's gonna keep me busy. Oh, this one I could feel her spirit. This one I will teach from. This one I will learn. They went to great lengths to protect, to intervene, to guide. They called on each other for additional support to ensure the continued embodiment of their person to what end?

I asked. So they die. We make more silence. Some rusting rather a judgmental [00:58:00] cough. Michael, never sick. Always throat clearing. You are not right. Gentle Israel. I couldn't help but laugh. I created right my friend. You remember you were there. Israel nods. One brow has a quirk. I was there if you recall. I brought you the earth to form them.

I have remained with them. I have held each one at the beginning and at the end I have witnessed their celebrations and held their grief. You are being dramatic life circles. They're born, they live, they die. You have been a long time away. You have minded things from here, but you have not been amongst them.

You do not know their joy and their devastation. The blaze of their inspiration, the ache of their shame. You do not watch closely. Samael always Samael, champion of the living, lover of the [00:59:00] alive. They live. You observe, give a nudge. It's interesting. Something to do in an unending, expansive days. They're entertaining, occasionally poetic, but we do not engage.

Really. We watch. We watch Gabriel really. And then the golden one has to weigh in the one who once was embodied. They're worth your attention. They're worth understanding. You cannot know from here the miracle that is each one, the complex patterns, the exceptions to every seeming rule. It seems you cannot know.

I cannot, for the sake of all that is holy. How hard can it be? One life is an instant. Anyone could do that. Certainly I could. No doubt. Do you think I couldn't? And who did it? How did it start? Was that Azrael holding me? [01:00:00] I was in dark water, rocking and rhythm to that pounding, afloat, and then pressure light.

Cool on my skin, weeping. I attempted to comfort them. Assure them. This is all transient, but my mouth, my. A body. I had a body so hungry, so tired, so, hmm, yes, please. This, Hmm. I slept. And so a flurry of firsts of learning to be, of forgetting what I knew when I arrived, of return to the comfort of that smell.

The heartbeat, the rocking. What magic is this? I sleep. Born soul fasted to a body. I had to feel everything, take it in and filter it out. I had to learn to use the body to move, to touch, to manage the chafe I had to eat and to drink or be weak. I had to relate to [01:01:00] these others. From time to time, I caught a glimpse of the winged ones, checking in, watching smirking as I tried to get a handful of orange food to my mouth and a wholly uncooperative fist dragging me to the surface of the water when I fell in placing people in my path, and there was high spiritual work to be done, but I had play dates and homework and this bustling life and crush, and a commitment and a partnership, and all of a sudden my own children.

Then a partner gone. Was there someone with us at the moment when she took her last breath, a shadow in the corner? I was lost, broken, rambling through empty halls, seeking what? And in no time at all, I was leaving this place, the place of purple skies and fat snowflakes, resting in tight, curls of laughter and the smell of dirt and [01:02:00] size and orgasms and cheese and stuttering base.

My hand was held for the last time. By that child. I had welcomed myself. That I had watched, arrive, and had chauffeur and guided who tended me. Now, who is that? Do I know you? You look like some kind of home. You look like my partner, my friend, my, oh, Israel, it is you. I am sure. And you lift me and I return.

Tava Baird: Be nervous. Jennifer Jurlando. I can't cry this many times in one podcast.

Jennifer Jurlando: I'm crying too. I don't know. 

Tava Baird: The rollercoaster ride. I love that one. I I love that one. Since you've written it there, there's that sort of like jaded God in the angels trying to say, no, they really are. They really [01:03:00] are worth it. And then boom, there's incarnation. Also, if we don't call this episode Orgasms and Cheese, A great crime has been committed.

Jennifer Jurlando: Well, you know, I'm good with that.

The gifts of embodiment, orgasms and cheese. 

Tava Baird: Cheese, yeah. 

Jennifer Jurlando: Yeah. Yeah. So Jennifer, I always worry about reading that to you. I don't wanna offend Michael or get a throat clearing or something.

Jennifer Taylor: I, I have a feeling Michael has enough of a sense of humor to be like, 

Jennifer Jurlando: all right, 

Jennifer Taylor: okay, fine.

It was interesting, just so you know, Samael realized I had not, I had not heard that one, so that's why 

Tava Baird: Oh, oh. Samuel also loves that one. 

Jennifer Jurlando: Samuel loves that one. You get 

Tava Baird: a 

Jennifer Jurlando: shot, which one is him? Right. in [01:04:00] every, every part of that poem. Mm-hmm. 

Tava Baird: Mm-hmm. Absolutely love it. Oh my 

Jennifer Jurlando: gosh. I think that it's a matter of, like, as we tune into ourselves as having a right to being divine, then the flip is like.

Then God is us right? Then God is like all of us and we are her and it's kind of amazing. 

Tava Baird: Yeah. Oh my, my gosh. Oh, I absolutely loved it. 

Jennifer Taylor: Well, as sad as it is, I feel like we are kind of coming to the end of the time that we have allotted. I know Tava has places she has to go and we have the world out there waiting for us to return to it.

But I like being here in our little 

Tava Baird: stay here with poetry more. I 

Jennifer Taylor: like this. 

Jennifer Jurlando: Thank you. Stay [01:05:00] here. Thank you. Thank you for letting me read to you. 

Tava Baird: Well, you know we're gonna have you back on when that book is done, right? 

Jennifer Jurlando: Alright, 

Tava Baird: so folks, please check the show notes. To find out, uh, how to continue to stay in touch with Jennifer through her Patreon, through Thistle Community Death Care.

Be on the lookout for poetry book that will knock you on your ass later this year will require one of the family size boxes of tissues, its title is, no Mistakes Were Made, and it should be out as soon as I can get my butt in gear and catch up with her illustration wise. and I cannot wait to put it in the hands of everyone that I love because it is raw and loving at the same time.

Just like you. 

Jennifer Jurlando: Thank you, [01:06:00] Tava. Thank you, Jen. 

Jennifer Taylor: Thank you. This has been such a pleasure. And, um, so I suppose I will sing us out. We'll see. See what, who wants to come through? 

(channeled Singing)

Jennifer Jurlando: Thank you. 

Jennifer Taylor: You're very welcome. I have to 

Jennifer Jurlando: say, I, when you, when I listen as I drive down the road, I sing along in the car. I'm so glad nobody can hear me, but I love it so much. 

Jennifer Taylor: Oh, I love that. And I have to say, as I was sitting here about to get up, I definitely heard Michael come in really strongly when you were like, um, I was kind of scared to read that to you about Michael.

And I felt as I, like I could hear him and I, I heard champion of your [01:09:00] souls. And I felt like that was his response of like, oh no, I am like a fierce champion of your souls. And so I feel like that was his response, which was really interesting because that's not the way things typically come through to me, so, 

Jennifer Jurlando: Aw, thank you.

Tava Baird: It was beautiful, Jen. That was, it was very heart lifting. I loved it. 

Jennifer Taylor: Oh, thanks. 

Tava Baird: I have a little closing from Samael for you guys, what words will roll off your tongue today, friend? Will it be judgment that stale thing held from another day that off poisons the wells from which we drink? Will it be a soft curse or a muttered moan your pain held in check so that others do not have their [01:10:00] days disrupted?

Will the stories self-promote or self-deprecate or perhaps only hold others in kindness and glory while you reign in your want? Or will you raise your voice and say yes or. Not today, or I have had enough. Call out your own name three times in balance and invoke the speaker at your core. What words will flow from your divinity today?

Friend I, on the word of God, and you are as well.

This has been orgasms and cheese, um, with Jennifer Jurlando, Jennifer Taylor and Tom Baird. Thank you so much for coming to spend this time with us. Jennifer. Yes. 

Jennifer Jurlando: Thank you [01:11:00] for the invitation. Yeah, and for all of your encouragement, 

Tava Baird: you have a remarkable gift and we are very, very proud to call you friends.

Jennifer Taylor: Absolutely. It is truly a pleasure. So until next time. 

Tava Baird: Until next time. Thank you so much for listening folks, and uh, we'll see you shortly.