Siobhan came to this conversation as a grief tender, an anthropologist, and a woman raised between two worlds, her mother's open-hearted artist home in New Mexico and her Persian father's household in Albuquerque, where unspoken rules landed hard when crossed.

We wandered into what culture actually is, not as a noun but as a verb. As cultivation and devotion. As singing flesh back onto bones.

She said something that stopped me:

"Everyone longs for culture. For elders. For the songs, the dances, the togetherness. And yet so often when I am weaving, I can just feel the grief of where we are."

We talked about the colonized mind and what it takes to rewild. We wandered towards the idea of conflict as the spirit of relationship asking itself to deepen. And then to a vert personal story I can not unheard about a man on a subway with his pants at his ankles who left us with a simple offering "it takes two people to pray."

No experts. No answers. Just two people tending the soil of culture together.

You can find more of Siobhan Asgharzadeh's work as Grief Pilgrim here

Here is where my coaching and guiding lives at TheBridger.com

As we move towards the fall, reflecting on the year and exploring what is to come, I will be offering my 7th cohort of The MIRROR Year in Review program. Check it out here.