2 Years Since Fare of the Free Child Died

Two years ago today I did something that, at the time, felt both right and strange: I let Fare of the Free Child (FOFC) die.

It was August 17, 2023. No sudden collapse. No bitter breakup. No dramatic “last episode” where I promised to be back someday. Just a clear, rooted decision that the podcast — after seven years of weekly labor and love — had completed its work.

I knew it was time to stop, and I knew that for several reasons. What I didn’t yet know was how deeply that choice would become a template for the way I live now.

Because letting FOFC die taught me how to be in right relationship with endings.
It taught me to release without resentment.
It taught me that tending to what is ending is just as sacred as tending to what’s newly born.

I swear I use those muscles every day now.

When I sit in Grief Circle at Kripalu with folks who are raw from loss...

When I guide ILID Class grieftenders through the unspoken griefs of family ruptures, career changes, and identities we can’t return to...

When I dedicated my early mornings to explore and express grieftending basics and details for What I Let Die Podcast.

When I volunteer with hospice, holding space for grief that is in-your-face loud...

Even in the Tai Chi practice where I am deepening my understanding through the wisdom of folks with bodies that carry six, seven, eight decades of living and letting go.

The world is unbearably heavy right now. Genocide and engineered famine in Gaza. There, as well as in Sudan and DR Congo, people are displaced, horrified, silenced, and grieving losses that will never be “made right.” In the shadow of grief that gigantic, the death of a podcast can seem like nothing.

But it wasn’t nothing. Not for me. Not for the thousands of people who listened, wrote in, accessed their voice, or changed the shape of their family because of what we explored there.

Some deaths are loud and public. Others are quiet and personal.
All of them tell us something important.

So, in these years without the familiar flow of FOFC, I’m thinking about the listeners who made it matter, the conversations that still echo, and the way that ending made room for the grieftending I am called to do now.

If FOFC was part of your story, thank you for being part of the journey. And if you’re in a season of endings, may you find your own way to honor them — even as the grief of the wider world sits beside you.

I'm here now, writing on these Grounds, and slowly forming Circles comprised of folks who've been here, and folks who find resonance in my work and words now. For all of it, I'm present. For all of it, I'm tuned in. In all of it, are elements of all of us.