This morning, Kim Evans-Handy, aka The Mocha Widow, released the episode of her Grief Unleashed podcast where she interviewed me to get a Norse Pagan perspective about death, what might happen after we die, and the grieving process for surviving loved ones. I’d encourage you to check it out.
I greatly appreciate Kim for giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts on this subject. (Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a shout-out to Mandy Capehart for making me aware of this opportunity and putting me in touch with Kim.) Kim was a delight to speak with, a great listener, and asked probing questions.
Overall, I’m extremely happy with the interview and the things I’ve said. However, as someone who sees life as an opportunity to constantly grow and improve, there are things I might have said or done differently in retrospect. For example, I might have cut the tangent about initiatory WIcca and what initiation is much shorter. I had originally only brought up the existence of the two “flavors” of Wicca because I was talking about reincarnation and wanted to point out that my own understanding of reincarnation (as near as I can tell as a non-initiate) tends to coincide more closely to the views of practitioners of initiatory of Wicca rather than those held by those practice non-initiatory Wicca. But Kim asked for a little details on what initiation was like (which would be a better question for those who have actually gone through it than me) and the rabbit that is my mind was off like a shot.
Similarly, I wish I would have taken more time to talk about the more common Norse Pagan view of the afterlife, involving people residing with one of the various Norse deities (with Odin in Valhalla or with Hel1 in her home are the two most commonly known possibilities.)
Shortly after I gave this interview on March 3, I found Essential Asatru in the Kindle Unlimited library and read it. The author, Diana L. Paxson spends a significant amount of time talking about the importance of honoring the ancestors in Asatru, and I wish I had thought to mention that as well during my interview. After all, some Heathens/Norse Pagans even believe it is possible to communicate with ancestors and even seek wisdom from them (which seems to be a pretty common view among many religions and cultures, to be honest). This seems pretty relevant to the topic we were discussing. But this is the problem one faces when one has a lot they can talk about an a limited amount of time to talk. If I had said everything I could possibly say, there’s a chance we’d still be recording.
As I said, I think it was a fantastic interview overall and I hope people find value in it. I just think that if I were to do it again, I might try to find ways to cut the parts where I was educating the audience about Paganism in general a little shorter and made more time to cover death and grief and Pagan perspectives on it. After all, that was the central theme of the interview and what was most aligned with the podcast’s intent.
Notes:
1In Essential Asatru, (which I mention in this post a little further down) Diana Paxson notes that some Asatru do believe in some sort of reincarnation and that certain readings of the lore support such a belief. So my tendency toward believing in reincarnation doesn’t make me a total outlier Heathens/Norse Pagans after all.