Flowers For Linda: On Grief & Creativity

How to Collaborate With a Ghost with Chelsea Granger

How to Collaborate With a Ghost with Chelsea Granger —multidisciplinary artist, illustrator, and curator of visual medicine. We open episode 2 of season 3 with a hand-picked bouquet for the beloved dead, inspired by Chelsea’s painting in her gorgeous and comforting book on grief, death and joy, So Many Ways to Draw A Ghost.  In this conversation, Chelsea shares, with sweetness, levity and frank engagement, the many ways she collaborates with her mother through the veil. We dive into the “boring magic” of a suburban psychic medium, the inheritance of a generational bipolar diagnosis, and the complicated, beautiful friction of the mother-daughter bond. We also reflect on the deep wealth found in the chosen family that taught Chelsea how to become a companion to the bereaved, and the shifts in her vision, and her art, after her own great losses. A note on the pace: These episodes are intended for slow listening. Carry them with you on a long walk, through a restless night, or on the road. This project is about the practice of living creatively alongside grief.  All episodes are available on Spotify, Apple, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Choosing How to Live with Chopp Stewart

This first episode of Season 3 unfolds in bed, in the company of ancestors. We begin with a strange presence in the room who leads us into a conversation about grief, ritual, and legacy. Chopp shares about caregiving, assisted death, memorial-making, and the ways we choose to honor the people who raised us. We talk about parents and ancestors, risk and art, and the quiet (and sometimes loud) practices that make loss survivable. A reminder: these conversations are meant for slow listening. Take it on a walk, tune in to accompany a sleepless night, or a long drive. These episodes are created with the intention of living with grief, not moving past it. They are released as they are made. Chopp is an interior designer, spatial artist, and transformer of space. This conversation was recorded on September 5, 2025.

Singing With Roberta with Honey Larochelle

Why don't we dance around a fire when a loved one dies? How do we challenge our inherited programming around the experience of death? And how can we accept our greatness now, in this very moment, God-willing, long before our own expiration date? Oh, and if you're Honey, you might also ask, what would Roberta do? In Season 2, episode 7 of Flowers For Linda, a podcast on grief & creativity, my dearest Honey bee and I sat down when she passed through New York City to celebrate the life of her music momma, Roberta Flack. Yes, that Roberta. Roberta of Killing Me Softly and Feel Like Makin' Love. Roberta of record breaking Grammy's. Roberta of classical keys and birdsong. Roberta of Donny Hathaways duos. Roberta, the musical mentor. Roberta, the queen, the regal, the matriarch. Though I knew, of course, that Honey sang with Roberta for over a decade, in this conversation I learned just how fiercely one of the most defining voices of our time uplifted and supported the community around her, particularly those she hand picked for her band, "The Real Artist Symposium." In this beautiful episode, Honey brings us into close relationship with Roberta, sharing stories from the road, the wonderful tale of her first audition, and the wide and deep influence of her musical momma on the person, and artist, she is today. In recounting, Honey's energy is light and open. Having watched Roberta lose control of her body, including her prized voice, to the degenerative ALS disease, Honey had been privately morning for years. Now, Honey said, she wants to celebrate. Was the bully voice in Roberta's head loud? It couldn't be to produce the life she lived, Honey said. She had to believe in her gifts. If you asked me who that sounds like, I'd say Honey herself. Determined to not allow her cultural programming to define her, Honey speaks in this episode about how we can push past our limiting beliefs to reach our highest and most free potential. As a friend, she is constantly challenging me to change the way I speak to and about myself, and I love that you will get to experience this, too.  As kismet happens, I was searching for the right way to open this episode, and the universe gave me the perfect opportunity. Honey and I found ourselves last week in New Orleans during jazz fest, where she played a showcase with New York family including Chris Rob and Yahazara. When the band kicked into Feel Like Makin' Love, Honey's dazzling voice filling the air, I flipped the camera on. And that's how we begin, and end. Full circle. By the end of our conversation, if you listen closely, you can hear the birds outside the window. I like to think it is Roberta asking, Are you willing to accept your greatness? In reverence, Caits

A Novel For Junior with Alejandro Heredia

How can we stay present to the goodness of life as it unfolds? When is ambition a boon to creativity, and when is it a block? Can regret be a useful emotion? And how can loss give purpose and shape to our creative pursuits—and, often, save our lives? In Season 2, episode 6 of Flowers For Linda, a podcast on grief & creativity, Alejandro and I sat down on the heels of the release of his debut novel, LOCA. Inspired by and in tribute to Junior, Alejandro's cousin-brother who took his own life at age 28, LOCA casts their shared interests and identities into possible other-lives, with lovable characters coming of age in rich and thoughtful queer fictional landscapes set in 1990s New York and Santo Domingo. Before we began recording, Alejandro reminded me that he is succinct, a gift of his I admire, proving that the right words chosen carefully can hold entire worlds. In this 30 minute episode that packs a punch, we start with our favorite conversation: how to stay grounded in an ambition that is motivated by the work at hand, rather than the seductive shine of external validation.  The answer, I am reminded by Alejando, lies in holding close the great why, the purpose, the drive behind our process, and the feelings and experiences we are alchemizing in ourselves to share with the eventual reader. I invite you to join us as Alejandro draws a tender portrait of two brothers, and reveals with candor how grieving Junior presented as a depression propelled by self destruction. Interrupting his grief spiral, put simply, writing LOCA saved Alejandro's life.  When I host these special conversations, I try to remain an open container for the guest, holding space. Here, Alejandro drops one of the most potent metaphors on death I’ve heard, bringing audible tears. I think that says so much about what this episode offers.  In reverence, Caits ABOUT LOCA It’s 1999, and best friends Sal and Charo are striving to hold on to their dreams in a New York determined to grind them down. Sal is a book-loving science nerd trying to grow beyond his dead-end job in a new city, but he’s held back by tragic memories from his past in Santo Domingo. Free-spirited Charo is surprised to find herself a mother at twenty-five, partnered with a controlling man, working at the same supermarket for years, her world shrunk to the very domesticity she thought she’d escaped in her old country. When Sal finds love at a gay club one night, both his and Charo’s worlds unexpectedly open up to a vibrant social circle that pushes them to reckon with what they owe to their own selves, pasts, futures, and, always, each other. Loca follows one daring year in the lives of young people living at the edge of their own patience and desires. With expansive grace, it reveals both the grueling conditions that force people to migrate and the possibility of friendship as home when family, nations, and identity groups fall short.

The Ecstasy of Grief with Katrina Goldsaito

How do we continue to offer agency to those who have passed on? To those who have chosen to exit the embodied experience by their own hand?Does that detail change your answer?  When the world feels dangerous and unpredictable, what feels certain now? There are secret languages between sisters, between the living and the dead. The grass still grows. Time can move out of synch. Grief is an ecstatic experience. In Season 2, episode 5 of FLOWERS FOR LINDA, a podcast on grief & creativity, I had the pleasure of experiencing honey-like time, slow and thick with light, in this tender, raw, and honest-as-children conversation with Katrina Goldsaito—guide for the grieving, author, artist.  Among the energies in the room with us were many teachers: Emily, Katrina's sister who opted out of the embodied earth experiment; Her Samurai ancestor who chose life after defeat; Her prolific haiku writing Grandmother who smiled through language in times of despair; And Katrina herself, of course, with her radiant warmth and a silliness that I recognized as kin. In our conversation Katrina walks the line between depth and levity with astonishing grace. She talks about the container of the page as a place to hold and explore the wilderness of grief, and that distinct paradox: spiritual awakening—though I'm not sure that is the language she would use—often begins with painful loss.  I choose to keep the seams of this conversation showing, because Katrina and I are new to each other, but it just felt as if we'd known each other for a long time. It’s not just chemistry, it’s two people meeting with open hearts. You can hear me prompting, intending to take myself out in the edit. But in the end, I kept myself in. The slowness and openness of this episode, largely untouched, speaks to Katrina’s gift of speaking with crystalline, thoughtful clarity. In the editing process, I often cut out long pauses to make the podcast experience more listenable. But when Katrina takes her time, I think you'll find, it’s worth slowing down to join her pace. I hope the listening will accompany you, the way Katrina calls the creative process a form of accompaniment. Here, by way of example, is a question she left me with that I hope sits right next to me, breathing invisibly all day: what if it was joyful the whole time? P.S. I had fun arranging her illustrated bolder of grief into a little poem in the full Instagram slideshow. Check it out: @flowersforlindapod [https://caitsmeissner.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d7c4b338e8f670b15f964c0a7&id=bd5bb95ffd&e=93b07134ed].