Mini-Episode - Grief is a Teacher

Prentis has returned to the pod after a short bereavement leave from the passing of their father. They are sharing how grief and time are pairing up to teach them how to bring more fluidity and honesty to their presence to allow more to be here now.

They are also sharing a sweet story from their drag king past.

If you’re enjoying this season, please support the podcast over on Patreon.

Transcript

Mini Episode - June 15, 2026
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Hey everybody, welcome back to Becoming the People. It is Prentis Hemphill and I'm happy to be with you all again. I have been on a little bit of a break the last few weeks. I'll get into that soon.

I'm also realizing as I'm talking to you that I have on probably the noisiest shirt I could possibly have on. Sorry to Michael, who is our editor and one of the producers of the show, for what you're going to have to do. I'm going to try to stay as still as I can. But yes, I'm happy to be with you all.

I have been gone for a few weeks. I need a little bit of a break. And I'm going to get into that because I think, you know, I'm certainly not through that storm, but Yeah, I really just wanted to reconnect with everybody here and becoming the people. And first, thank everybody for such love and generosity.

I have not ever received, I think, as much. as much care and kindness from people I don't know personally as I have received in the last few weeks. So thank you to everyone for your kind words, for your messages, for the things you sent in the mail, for the things that you shared on Patreon, the DMs and notes. I have been touched by all of it, in fact, overwhelmed by all of it, and so appreciative.

So thank you. It is also Pride Month, and that, in some ways, has no bearing on my life, really, practically. I think I'm doing one Pride event, but I did want to say happy Pride to all those who observe, and all those who will observe in the future. Happy Pride Month.

I am always joking with people about how I don't really get invited to do Pride things. And yes, I am kind of planting this in the world. I don't get invited to do Pride things. And I don't know why, and maybe somebody can send me a message and tell me why, but I do not get invited to speak at Pride events.

I don't get invited to do gay things in this month, even though I am really gay. I've been gay for a long, long time. I've been gay, I've been gay, everyone, since the 90s. I've been gay since the 90s, and some people listening to this podcast might not have been born when I first started gaying, but I have been gay for a really long time.

I live a very, very gay life. Some of my closest friends are also gay. In fact, probably all of my friends, exempting, like, two people, are gay people, are queer people. Yeah, I was in a gay youth group in the 90s.

I'm a certified queer, and yet I do not get invited to speak at anything during Pride Month. I don't even get invited to parties. I don't get invited to keynotes. I don't get invited to historical.

I'm just complaining. I'm just whining right now. But I think it's really, really funny. And I guess it's probably because I don't talk about being queer maybe as much as I could and maybe should.

But I'm real queer, y'all, and I will talk about it more. And I want to do fun things in the streets during Pride Month, as long as I can get back to bed on time. And I am sober, so I'm probably not that fun. But I would love a good historical reenactment.

I love a good protest for Pride. I love a good sign. I like to be on the streets during Pride, so if you have You know, I think part of the problem, too, is that I release episodes like this mid-month of Pride. I'm not one of those, like, June 1st, it occurs to me that it's Pride and we need to talk about it.

I just, life is just, there's so much always happening, but that doesn't mean, that doesn't mean that I'm not on the team. And it also doesn't mean that the things that I do don't come from that place, because I actually feel like my queerness is spiritual. I think my queerness, how I hold my queerness has always been a spiritual thing for me. So I am deeply queer.

May I be queer in all lifetimes, all timelines. I love it. I love it here. But may I also in the next lifetime be invited to do queer things.

Fun fact though, fun fact, is that I used to be a drag king. And maybe there are people that have photographic evidence of this. Maybe I will share photographic evidence of this somewhere on the internet. But I used to be in a black drag troupe in Oakland.

that was called Nappy Grooves. That was our troupe. And we, that was the only way I went to Pride. I probably haven't really been to a Pride parade since then.

And that was quite a long time ago, like a couple decades ago. But I was in a black drag king troupe. And while other groups were doing like Backstreet Boys songs and things like that, we were doing Dead Prez. and most deaf and things like that.

So it was very intense. And it was a pretty militant troop. But it was one of the highlights of my life so far is being in that troop. So shout out to everybody who was in Happy Grooves with me so many years ago.

We should do a reunion tour. and maybe a reunion show. I've been thinking about bringing back my drag persona, just for the hell of it, and I think I might, sometime over this next year, do a couple shows, but maybe we could do a reunion show. I know most of you, so, you know, I know most of you still, so let's make it happen.

And, you know, folks listening, let me know if that is of any interest to you or if that feels completely out of character to you. But that is my other side, is that I am also a drag performer. So invite me to Pride events. We can dust off the We can dust off the uniforms.

Do people still do drag? I mean, yes, I know people still do drag, but people still do drag kinging? Somebody let me know. Obviously, I don't go outside.

It's a very silly way to start this episode, which is not really much of a silly episode at all, but it will tell you a little bit about my state, which is a little bit irreverent in this moment. As many of you know, I lost my father and I mentioned on the podcast that he would soon be passing away, I think on the last mini episode I did. And my father did pass away on May 16th. This is vulnerable to share, but I was with him when he passed.

And since his passing, I have been grieving. And I think I mentioned on the last mini episode that it was just so... I don't know, timely. In some ways, fortuitous that I had just spoken with Alua Arthur.

We have a couple other kind of grief-centered episodes coming up. We replayed Malkia Cyril's episode on grief as kind of a political, something to organize around politically. So there's been a lot of grief swirling just around this podcast. And then my father passed away a few weeks ago now.

We just buried him. And I've been grieving and I'm putting that in quotations because I don't know that grief is one experience. And I'll say that one of the beautiful things about where I've been is that Everybody, you know, how do I say this? You know, sometimes when something happens in your life and, you know, we all get cautioned against saying, oh, well, when that happened to me or when that happened to me, it was like this or this or maybe try this.

We get cautioned against kind of putting ourselves ahead of someone else's story when we're trying to connect with them. And that makes total sense, and I understand why we do that, and I understand even what motivates us sometimes to insert ourselves in someone else's story. It creates a kind of distance and a sense of safety, or it's just such unprocessed stuff for us that we can't stay present with other people's experiences. But what I'm experiencing that feels so distinct in this grief thing is that people are sharing their stories and their stories of losing their parents, of losing loved ones, of friends, and I have never felt just automatically more close to people than when they are sharing their stories

of grief with me right now. I have been learning so much, especially from people who were teenagers or young when they lost their parents. I can only imagine how devastating that could be. I mean, I'm sure it can be many things, just like it's many things for me right now.

But the most compassionate responses, the responses that make me feel like someone is sitting at the bottom of this thing with me has come from people who were young, children or teenagers when their parents passed. a sense that I've gotten from those folks of like, I know how intense this thing can be and how unsupported someone can feel in it. I know what the longing is like for a parent who's not there. Yeah.

To all the people that have shared their stories with me in person or otherwise, you have really been my teachers. And I've had moments where I've just looked back on your faces in the moment that we shared or where you read your note. And it's not the kind of thing that someone can come rescue you from. But it has felt so heartening, so grounding in a way, to feel people in that place with me.

So yeah, grief is a teacher. And yeah, I just have so much appreciation for everybody's stories. I feel so connected to another world. I, as soon as it happened, I felt myself inducted into a club, a club of people who have lost their parents and have this experience of like toes over the edge, like you're the last You're the far edge now.

You used to have a parent kind of as a buffer, whether or not they were really present or not. Even their absence or the longing for them to be that buffer created a sense of spaciousness between you and your own edges. But when you lose a parent, you lose that orientation. And yeah, it feels like entering into a club of people that are living on that edge.

And I've worked with people, I've known many people that have lost parents. And it's kind of like raising a kid or being a committed person in a child's life, parenting. You don't know what something feels like until you are doing it. I had no idea what it meant to parent until I had this very kind of physically fragile person in my charge who I had to, along with my partner, keep alive every day and make a bunch of decisions that kept them alive and safe.

I had opinions on parenting. I could see things from the outside around parenting. I could see, you know, I had I had ideas. I'll say that I had ideas.

I had sometimes judgments. But when you are inside of it, the experiential aspect of parenting is like nothing else. And I'm not valuing it. I'm not saying it's the best.

I'm saying it is just experientially like nothing I had experienced prior to it. And I had taken care of people. I had felt responsibility, et cetera, et cetera. The dynamics, the way that it as you confront aspects of yourself at different ages, your own relationship to your parents, even that, even as I say that, it doesn't actually give weight to the dimensionality of the experience.

And that is true also for me in this experience of losing a parent, that there is a really felt dimensionality to it that I could like sniff at before. but it is completely different to be inside of it. And so, yeah, I'm in a new club and this is also my experience of it. That may not be the experience that other people are having, but it is my experience so far.

And, you know, my father, I wrote about him in my book, What It Takes to Heal, and he, He was a really complicated man. He wasn't, um... It's not truthful to say, oh, he was this kind of man. He was a good man or a bad man.

Um... He... could, he did do, at times in his life, things that I consider to be very bad. Um, he did do things in his life that I consider to be good and kind and generous.

He did suffer from, oh, I don't want to I don't want to diagnose him here in front of you all, but I think that he suffered. I'll say that. My dad did suffer. And his suffering seemed to deeply impact him and the way he could live his life, and it deeply impacted other people.

My father was also courageous. He did things that people had not done before him, particularly as a black man. And my dad was very smart, very astute, and also prone to really grandiose self-assessments. I'll say it like that.

did not know how to be accountable and did not know how to repair things that he had wrong or even to admit when he was wrong. And I've written about some of this and I'm processing all of this. I think that what I didn't know about grief was that Well, I'll say this. I grieved my father in some ways a long time ago.

I grieved the father that I wanted and that I longed for and the reality of the father that I got. And I learned to receive the love that he had to give and grieve the things that just would not be in his capacity in this life. I grieved him early and I think that, I do believe that that grieving has, I can feel the work that I've done, even at this stage. I'm finding that even as I look back on the work that I've done to grieve him, I can see the choices I made, the hard things that I went into, that I addressed, that I felt, that I named, and the things that I avoided.

The things that I wasn't ready to look at or wasn't ready to admit that I felt or whatever it might be. And my experience of grief, and I want to be really specific that this is my experience of grief, so far is that in the finality of his passing, I have lost the choice to face or not face certain aspects of his life and role in my life. Like the things that I put aside, the things that I maybe denied or defended myself against internally, in my grieving or what I'm experiencing as grieving is that it's not, it's not optional now. The stuff is just there.

asking me to face it. And not only is it just there, it's kind of like yanking me across time to different points. And yeah, that's really my experience. And it feels like a shared experience.

I've heard from a lot of other people just that, that kind of, disorientation that you can be walking around and then you suddenly have this flash of a memory or a moment that may have otherwise been buried, but it resurfaces. A longing, a sense of absence. Yeah, that just takes you back, it's it's like trauma in that way, it's a it. for me now seems to play with time in a in a way that is at this moment outside of how I might want to control it.

I think the biggest so far teacher and I know that grief will be teaching me a long time is that that disorientation or maybe I'll say the the loss of certain kinds of control. To me, doesn't seem just just. Yes, grief does that in a particular way, but it it's also letting me know that. Maybe that is some of how it is all the time.

That maybe our sense that we can control things or understand things or Yeah, that maybe we're a bit more unmoored or untethered than we think we are at all times, and that that control, even controlling our own processes, is something of an illusion. I was having a conversation with somebody recently, and we were both talking about grief, because her father is ill, and my father had just passed, As we were talking, it occurred to me that grief is the teacher and all these big emotions, the things that we feel, that they are the teachers. And we can say that we're teachers or we teach this or we teach that.

But even when I work with people around embodiment, I can say I'm an embodiment teacher. But your body is the teacher. Life is the teacher. Aliveness is the teacher.

And here, grief is the teacher. Now, we can relate to one another. And I can say, from a body, this is what I, from one body to another. this is one way I think we might allow or surrender or express ourselves or involve ourselves with what's moving through us.

But I almost feel like the grief sits somewhere else and the grief is teaching me. The grief is also humbling me. The grief is saying this is what you thought and this is what is. And your work right now is to surrender to that, to become permeable.

And I think that's a big lesson for me, is that we are permeable beings. And in some ways I knew that. But I feel less sealed off from time, I'll say that, than I once did. I feel like time is we time travel because we don't always digest or maybe this live as expansively as we can to allow all time to be here at once.

So time is snatching me back and forth because I am living my life, but also exerting control over the things that I can. And so grief and time and their collaboration are moving me around and taking me to different places. teaching me, I think, that you are never exactly just in one place. You're never exactly just in one time, as much as you might like to imagine that you are.

even, and maybe especially when I would be in arguments with my father, that my three-year-old self that loved nuzzling his beard was also there at the same time. That in those last moments, all of those parts, all of those parts of me were there simultaneously, inhabiting this body. And so that's been the big teacher for me, is that time. I said this recently at a talk I gave, and I'm still kind of playing with it, but time to me feels like it um like presence came first and and time is a kind of clunky The way we use time, I guess I'll say that, is kind of

a clunky way of us trying to organize our presence in our lives. But presence is that field where it is all happening. It is all here at the same time. It is all moving through us.

And we get confused by such a time-dominant society to say that happened at that time and that was another time, as though we can draw those distinctions. But I think the reality is that all of that is happening, and I think the work of healing, orientation toward healing is bringing a kind of fluidity and honesty to our presence. Allowing more to be here, not in a way that removes you always from this time, but that includes all that has been and That's hard. That's hard.

And it's deep. And I am honestly in the in the throes of it. But I think I'm joined by many of you. So I think partly what I want to say here in this episode is For all of us that have been grieving, which I think is maybe all of us in some way, we don't have to leave that place to meet each other.

I think there's another way that includes that. And we can say, oh, grief is this one thing. Grief is also all those laughters. It's me right now trying to collect all the joyous moments and all the hysterical things that my dad said.

And like, ingest them so that I have them, so that I can offer that thing too, that the grief is also doing that. So I'm like, we, and I think Malkia spoke really powerfully to this, but it's like, this is a place where we can meet each other. And it's kind of the honest truth about how precarious our lives are, how risky it is to love each other. how heavy loss can be, but it's also a real indicator of how.

Yeah, what what's worth what's worth it. what's worth putting our energy towards, what's worth reaching for each other. So I was going to say a bunch of other things on this episode today. I have so many notes, but I'm tired and I think I want to leave you with that right now.

I'm mostly just happy to be back in connection with you all. I hope it can be felt, but I'm really thinking about everybody who's listening and everybody who's out there hoping that this message, even if you're grappling with it or disagree or it's tapping you into your own grief, that it also taps you into connection, that there's so many of us that are moving through these waves and that's especially a beautiful place to find each other and that vulnerability. Yeah, wishing you all wishing you all well in this time.

I'm wishing you all a very happy, very happy Pride Month. I hope you have a great time out there and I'll see you all soon. Thanks. Becoming the People is produced by devon de Leña, sound engineered and edited by Michael Maine.

Our theme song was created by Mayyadda. And if you're enjoying these conversations, please subscribe, rate, and especially, especially leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever it is that you listen to podcasts. And if you haven't already, please join us over at the Patreon, Prentis Hemphill. We are having a great time over there building community, learning together.

Come join us. And as always, thank you for listening to Becoming the People. 

[MUSIC]

We're becoming the people. The people, the people, the people, the people.

We're becoming the people. The people, the people, the people, the people. We're becoming the people. Doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom.

Doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom. Doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom. Doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom. dum dum dum dum dum dum