Ep. 136 Christa Couture on Why We Can't Have Grief and Loss without Joy and Love
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Happy #SeekTheJoy Tuesday!
On the podcast today is Christa Couture, an award-winning performing and recording artist, non-fiction writer, and broadcaster. She is also proudly Indigenous (mixed Cree and Scandinavian), queer, disabled, and a mom.
Over the course of her acclaimed career, Christa has become known, unenviably, as an expert in loss: singing, speaking and writing about the childhood cancer that led to the amputation of her left leg, abortion, and the tragic deaths of her two infant sons. When it came time to make her fourth album, 2016’s eclectic, upbeat and twangy Long Time Leaving, a more run-of-the-mill loss, divorce, provided inspiration.
In today’s episode:
Christa shares her grief bio and how grief has transformed her, why we need to “create from the scar and not the wound”, and how we can take care of ourselves when expressing and sharing our grief
Why she sees the book as an opportunity to give back, advice for anyone who wants to support those in their life who are experiencing grief and loss, and the gift of challenging ourselves to experience and witness something difficult
The shift in perspective that comes with loss, letting go of the idea that “things will get better” and instead accepting that things will be different
Why resilience sucks (it’s okay to not be resilient!), recognizing our boundaries around grief, and why grief doesn’t exist in isolation
Plus, Christa shares her experience shifting to a very visible and beautiful prosthetic leg and no longer hiding her disability, her biggest dream, and so much more!
Our conversation with Christa is incredibly powerful and heartfelt, and probably one of my favorites to date. Christa has come to know every corner of grief, yet through it all she has found connection, joy, and the ability to feel and honor her experiences through it all. There’s an incredible gift that comes from sharing our experience with grief, and when we allow ourselves to express our emotions it opens the door for greater connection, understanding, hope, and joy.
I’m so excited to share this week’s new episode with Christa, and I can’t wait to hear what you think! Make sure to join the conversation on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter!
“All of that messiness had to happen beforehand. I think writing a book is, it’s literally piecing things together to make it make sense. When you’re grieving and when you’re struggling, you’re falling apart. Those things don’t really go together. I had to finish falling apart and be ready to piece it together.”
“For me I think the biggest shift in perspective has been learning to let go of an idea of things getting better. When I started to think about things being different, it was a real shift and a real moment of acceptance for me.”
Through her life experiences from the loss of her leg due to childhood cancer, the tragic death of her infant son, the loss of her second son, combined with her divorce, Christa has become an expert in loss.
Those years of loss are now being revisited in her debut non-fiction book How To Lose Everything, slated for publication September 2020 by Douglas & McIntyre. But Christa’s newest recording Safe Harbour tells a different story. Safe Harbour’s six songs were written during a thankfully tragedy-free, joyful time in Christa’s life that saw her leave Vancouver, her home of 17 years, and relocate to Toronto to start anew. During this time, Christa took a step back from recording and performing music to write her memoir, take on a daytime radio host job, and welcome a third child.
Her fourth album Long Time Leaving was nominated for Best Folk Album at the 2016 Indigenous Music Awards, and before that, 2012’s The Living Recordmade Best-of-the-Year lists at CBC Music, Radio Regent and the Georgia Straight, which also chose the album to represent 2012 in their 50 Albums That Shaped Vancouver.
“It makes the world of a difference to be remembered. We all want to be seen, we want to be heard, and there can be a lot of attention and support around the event but it’s the year later, the two years later, the five years later when the shock has subsided where other people might forget, which is fair life is full we all have stuff going on, but I have found that remembering is one of the most supportive things, and it’s something I try to do for other people.”
Christa’s sophomore album The Wedding Singer and The Undertaker won a Canadian Aboriginal Music Award, made the Top 10 on CBC Radio 3, and landed a #1 song on the National Aboriginal Music Countdown.
As a writer and storyteller, Christa’s essay “Sanibe” appears in the collection Radiant Voices: 21 Feminist Essays for Rising Up (TouchWood, 2019), and “These Are My Children” appears in The M Word: Conversations on Motherhood (Goose Lane, 2014). She has been published in Room, Shameless, and Augur magazines, and on CBC.ca. In 2018, her CBC article and photos on disability and pregnancy went viral. She has spoken for audiences of Walrus Talks, DNTO Live (CBC), Moses Znaimer’s ideaCity, and Imaginate in Port Hope, ON.
She is the weekday afternoon host on Toronto’s 106.5 ELMNT FM, and has been heard as a frequent contributor to CBC Radio on Now or Never and The Next Chapter. As an arts administrator and advocate (and lover of tidy paperwork) she was the project manager of the Indigenous music platform RPM.fm and the general manager of Native Women in the Arts.
Prairie-raised, Christa spent 17 years in Vancouver and now calls Toronto home.
“My biggest dream is to continue, to continue to make work and make art, to continue to be with my daughter and watch her life unfurl, and it’s to continue to do my best to settle. I don’t mean settle like acceptance; I mean to be grounded. I think my biggest dream is to just continue to feel my feet on the ground and be open to mystery. That’s all I can ask for.”
To connect with Christa visit her website www.christacouture.com on Instagram @christacouture and you can find her book "How to Lose Everything" here and you can find her beautiful music here https://smarturl.it/christacouture
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