Episode 2 Postmortem (WILD Podcast)

This one held me, y'all.

Episode 2 opened the door to a type of grief that doesn’t knock. It just… vanishes. Disappears into empty calendars, mismatched dreams, voices we don’t recognize as our own anymore.

This is where kananapo emerged—not a made-up word, but a remembered one. Not invented, but inherited.

A word my grandmother (Mama) and her sisters used to name absence with weight. Not poetic absence. Noticeable absence. The kind that leaves an imprint but not a headline.

We talked about how loss doesn’t require a casket to count. That there are spiritual and emotional deaths that demand the same tenderness as a body lying still. Identity shifts. Friendships gone quiet. Dreams that didn’t crash, but cooled. We named them.

We moved gently into anticipatory grief too—its whisper, its ache. The way it stands in the room before anyone dies. How we try (and fail) to armor ourselves against inevitable goodbyes.

The question I left you with—
What’s something you lost but never named as grief?
—wasn’t rhetorical. It’s an invitation. To whisper the word kananapo when your heart folds in on itself for reasons you can’t explain.
To say, I miss that version of me.
To tend instead of pretend.

Language gives us something to hold, so in this episode, I handed you one more word. A thread from Mama. A mirror for your losses. A permission slip (if you need one).

Next week, we wade deeper—grief vs. trauma vs. depression.
Bring your questions. Bring your stories.
I’ll meet you there.

Here's the chatroom for ongoing convo of this particular kind.