Episode Notes
This week’s poem and episode bring us alongside someone going for a walk after a harmful argument. As they process, they find themselves questioning the balance between necessary solitude and approaching apology with vulnerability and openness. There is something to be said for needing alone time and space after a disagreement, especially in reaching the conclusion that we’re the ones who need to apologize, but there is also vitality in re-entering a space with someone heart-first or spirit-first post-argument, even if you don’t have perfectly rehearsed words. Words do matter. Harm matters. Intent does matter (though not to gaslight harm). Love—how we balance these in space and community with others—needs imperfect willingness and courage, keeping in mind that imperfect is not synonymous with flawed, damaged, or defective.
Here's an excerpt of the poem (the full written & visually formatted versions can now be found & read at mikbrew.substack.com!):
& I know that
if I hug my body
into a curly coil
where I can only see myself,
I might find solitude
but also dark stillness.
If I open my chest & unfurl,
I will see light in daring
to cross the sidewalk bridge,
moving from stillness to slowness.
Listen to this week's episode to hear the full poem! If you’d like to share your moment or memory on the podcast, please head to tinyurl.com/bravingthewaves.
Jul 1, 2024
16 min
Episode Notes
This week’s poem and episode are a bit of a mantra/reminder to carry in your pocket, especially as things feel heavy. The month of June is celebratory in many ways, including Pride, Juneteenth, Indigenous History Month, and Men’s Mental Health Month, among many more.
And we know it’s important for joy and advocacy to coexist, especially in our student communities. With this, comes many emotions, and right now, to put it in the simplest terms: things are hard for all of us, and in many ways, feel like they won’t ever change. This poem doesn’t say “It’s going to be okay” but my hope is that it offers you hope, and a new way to imagine/dream—our most powerful skill.
Here's an excerpt of the poem (the full written & visually formatted versions can now be found & read at mikbrew.substack.com!):
Don’t let anyone tell you
that imagining &
dreaming is only for children—
these are perhaps most powerful
when we remember how
to wield them as young adults.
The greatest gift
you can receive or bestow
(upon anyone or anything)
is to be believed in.
Listen to this week's episode to hear the full poem! If you’d like to share your moment or memory on the podcast, please head to tinyurl.com/bravingthewaves.
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Jun 24, 2024
13 min
Episode Notes
This week’s poem and episode explore the feelings associated with reconnecting with a mentor, friend, coach, teacher, or anyone who offered guidance to you as a kid or teenager.
The poem takes place after lost contact and many years have passed between these two people, which I think happens more often than we admit. This episode conveys what it means to reach out again (if appropriate and safe, of course), and specifically that remembering doesn’t just mean “not forgetting”—it means saying “thank you” wherever and however we can.
Here's an excerpt of the poem (the full written & visually formatted versions can now be found & read at mikbrew.substack.com!):
What does it mean to remember someone?
Not someone who’s passed away, but
someone we haven’t spoken to in years
who was once a reason we survived?
Of course, it means
to not forget them,
which is to say
‘thank you’ fiercely.
Listen to this week's episode to hear the full poem! If you’d like to share your moment or memory on the podcast, please head to tinyurl.com/bravingthewaves.
Jun 17, 2024
24 min
Episode Notes
This week's poem and episode explore memory, especially those valuable to recall as we approach graduation (which I know many of us are at this time), well before the tasks, lists, and thoughts surrounding moving, university, or a first full-time job set in. Think of these tasks, lists, and thoughts as the vertebrae while the potent memories are the spine that allows you movement, feeling, and a rooted way forward.
Here's an excerpt of the poem (the full written & visually formatted versions can now be found & read at mikbrew.substack.com!):
Please, let me back you up a little bit
because you’ll need to pack
for graduation first, either
in a notebook or a branch of your brain,
and on the other
bough-like bookshelves of your mind,
you’ll find these the way you might shop
from memory & association when
you not only forget the list but
forget just how many things
you’ve remembered…
Listen to this week's episode to hear the full poem! If you’d like to share your moment or memory on the podcast, please head to tinyurl.com/bravingthewaves.
Jun 10, 2024
16 min
Episode Notes
This week's poem and episode discuss climate change anxiety, grief, outrage, sadness, frustration, and the myriad of emotions that come up when we’re worried about our planet.
Most importantly, my hope for this episode is that it conveys the message that making space to feel nature’s pain is love, and love is the prerequisite for just about anything. Feeling this openly and outwardly is necessary—in witnessing climate change or any other loss of life—and not a sign that you’re not doing enough, fighting hard enough, or coping well enough. It’s a sign that you’re willing to be changed. And our willingness to be moved and changed is a powerful catalyst.
Here's an excerpt of the poem (the full written & visually formatted versions can now be found & read at mikbrew.substack.com!):
and what that makes you feel, even if just recognition
of their will to turn toward light,
is love.
And it's always the first step anyway.
So feel it. Weep. It's okay.
Listen to this week's episode to hear the full poem! If you’d like to share your moment or memory on the podcast, please head to tinyurl.com/bravingthewaves.
Jun 3, 2024
21 min
Episode Notes
This week's poem and episode dive into the common phrase “hindsight is twenty-twenty,” asking us to think about looking back with a bit more nuance.
For example, seeing an experience more clearly in retrospect shouldn’t diminish how it was felt at the time, particularly how these feelings are remembered in the body and soul (when our mind tends to intellectualize memory). The poem is written with a sonnet in mind, which usually follows fourteen lines (three stanzas of four and one of two), ten syllables per line, abab rhyme, and iambic pentameter (da-DUM, da-DUM).
Our poem includes fourteen lines with ten syllables each, but doesn’t rhyme or include a clear meter. Sonnets are often love poems about desire, but here, it’s about the desire to see that looking back at anything thoughtfully is messier than twenty-twenty, while no less meaningful.
Here's an excerpt of the poem (the full written & visually formatted versions can now be found & read at mikbrew.substack.com!):
Nearly always, we see things more clearly
after they’ve happened. But why do we see
best when looking behind us, each other?
Backward in time? Never ahead, forward?
Listen to this week's episode to hear the full poem! If you’d like to share your moment or memory on the podcast, please head to tinyurl.com/bravingthewaves.
May 27, 2024
15 min
Episode Notes
This week’s poem and episode discuss the painful feeling of longing to be like someone else, which can often be confused with both looking up to someone and idolizing them. Of course, these are very different things! It’s a wonderful thing to be inspired by someone’s vibe or style, but this can easily trickle into self-worth/esteem/confidence and comparison traps.
Through a more storytelling-focused poem, this episode breaks down what separates us in these ways, specifically how longing to be like someone else (as a tendril of not feeling like we’re enough) is a reflection of both the need to look inward and acknowledging that the other person perhaps needs to do the same (and inviting them to do this with you, if possible).
The poem is about seeing ourselves in others, others in ourselves, and knowing where and how old the walls, buildings, and boxes of comparison truly are.
Here's an excerpt of the poem (the full written & visually formatted versions can now be found & read at mikbrew.substack.com!):
But then, I imagine plucking a brick
from the old building like a book from a shelf.
What story would each hold & tell?
There are thousands of brick books
per building, so says the internet, gaps
to grasp them sealed with mortar until
the grains of stories and truths
finally break their bonds free,
crumbling the building to bits
under their new gas-phase weight
because
the more brick books you free
from their shelves,
the faster the building falls.
Listen to this week's episode to hear the full poem! If you’d like to share your moment or memory on the podcast, please head to tinyurl.com/bravingthewaves.
May 13, 2024
21 min
Episode Notes
This week, Mikaela reads a poem about coming home from college/university for the spring and summer (though it can absolutely apply to returning home after having been away a long time, too).
The poem and episode look at the possible tension between the comforts/familiarity of a childhood home and the newfound freedom/independence we seek as young adults, perhaps realizing for the first time that we aren’t merely extensions of our parents or guardians. It’s strange returning to a place that hasn’t changed when we have.
The poem is written in a loose sapphic ode (four-stanza sections called quatrains—the first three lines of each have 11 syllables and the fourth has five). This form is usually formal, lyric, and ceremonious, written and recited to celebrate ideas, people, places, etc.
Though I’ve stretched the stitching of the form, I hope it fits as a way to reflect on (and inherently honour) one of the deepest moments of knowing in our lives.
Here's an excerpt of the poem (the full written & visually formatted versions can now be found & read at mikbrew.substack.com!):
Where & when are my parents not part of me?
In different things, I now see and believe.
I want to feel I’m nearly twenty. Yet, in
loving, always we?
Listen to this week's episode to hear the full poem! If you’d like to share your moment or memory on the podcast, please head to tinyurl.com/bravingthewaves.
May 6, 2024
15 min
Episode Notes
This week’s poem and episode explore parenthood, but in the voice of a toddler who has a new little sibling. Being a parent is a beautiful experience, but it is also exhausting (and equally so at different points while a child grows up). And, perhaps especially when children are very young, it may feel like your physical, mental, emotional, and spirtual work to care for them isn’t quite understood or noticed. This poem seeks to reimagine this, offering a way in which toddlers and infants may communicate how much they love those who care for them during the most vulnerable years of their lives.
Here's an excerpt of the poem (the full written & visually formatted versions can now be found & read at mikbrew.substack.com!):
What I mean is,
sometimes no smile means you’ve caught humans
loving the very very most that they can.
And, I wish Mama & Dada knew
that we knew. We see when they don’t smile—
out of breath but not of love—trying to balance
feeding us,
changing us,
watching us,
holding up our heads, hearts, souls
(and eating, maybe,
sleeping, occasionally).
Listen to this week's episode to hear the full poem! If you’d like to share your moment or memory on the podcast, please head to tinyurl.com/bravingthewaves.
Apr 29, 2024
15 min
Episode Notes
Our poem & episode this week are special birthday editions for Unsinkable’s 5th anniversary! We so hope you enjoy it. Please be sure to check out the resources, programs, partnerships, and action items shared in this episode. Thank you so much to our podcast guests from season 1 for lending their voices & words to this poem. You can re-listen to their episodes below!
Here's an excerpt of the poem (the full written & visually formatted versions can now be found & read at mikbrew.substack.com!):
Because we’ve braided this
woven raft of 4.1 million people,
strong and vast, limbs linked,
lying on our backs
and having practiced our breathing in sync,
above the waves
we float, steer, expand always
and all ways.
Listen to this week's episode to hear the full poem! If you’d like to share your moment or memory on the podcast, please head to tinyurl.com/bravingthewaves.
Apr 22, 2024
14 min
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