Grief, Love, and Still Showing Up

I’ve been waiting for this conversation since the fall.

I sat down with Rachel Eliza Griffiths (she goes by Eliza) to talk about her memoir The Flower Bearers. This book is a work of art. It reads like poetry, but it also feels like she’s sitting you down on the couch saying, “Come here. Sit with me.”

Eliza wrote The Flower Bearers after a year that would’ve taken most people out: losing her chosen sister, Kamila Aisha Moon, and then surviving the violent attack on her husband, Salman Rushdie. When I asked what creating looked like after that kind of trauma, she said she wasn’t trying to make art at first. She was trying to stabilize her body and survive her days. Because grief doesn’t just live in your head. It moves into your nervous system.

We talked about the identity shift grief forces, the parts of yourself you miss, and the parts you meet on the other side. Eliza shared she misses a very specific laugh she had with her chosen sister, a whole language that only belonged to them. And she also shared what’s helping her now: dance classes, nature, breathwork, sound baths, and becoming deeply intentional about care.

One of the biggest takeaways: love and grief aren’t opposites. Eliza described them as dancers, holding each other up. Boundaries help love, and boundaries help grief too. Some days grief is loud, and she’s like: handle what you have to handle, cry if you need to, and then we’re getting on the yoga mat.

We ended with legacy. Eliza said she doesn’t know what The Flower Bearers will be in 10 or 20 years, but she knows it’s already doing what it’s meant to do: helping people survive their own versions of loss. And when she looks back, she’ll be able to say:

“I showed up for my life. I stood on love.”

Watch the full conversationhere.