Good Grief: How To Consider Death by Celebrating Life with Steven Rowley
This week, hosts Tricia and Doro delve into an uplifting conversation with bestselling author Steven Rowley, discussing his latest book, “The Celebrants.” They discuss how to manage the many phases of life including grieving, celebrating life, and learning how to accept change. Rowley presents a different way to look at death and considers some of the taboo topics around it, like suicide and the afterlife.
Rowley candidly talks about the personal moments and memories that affected his creative process to create dynamic characters and construct how they process the events in the story. He also reflects on topics such as book banning and emphasizes the value of storytelling as a means to foster empathy and understanding. You’ll come out of this conversation energized and with a newfound appreciation for seizing each day as it comes.
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Website: http://stevenrowley.com
Facebook: http://facebook.com/mrstevenrowley
Quotes:
We're all going to grieve. It should be a uniting human experience, yet so many of us feel shame when we're going through it. We separate ourselves, and I think that's a big mistake. - Steven Rowley
We're not all guaranteed the same amount of time on earth. So I always try to have a “seize the day” kind of attitude. - Steven Rowley
Growing older is a true privilege, and we're lucky with the time we have. - Steven Rowley
Show Notes:
STEVEN ROWLEY: For me, humor has always been the way through or it's played a big role, um, in healing, whether it's the ability to find a laugh, you know, as a distraction, you know, and just give us renewed strength to get us through the day. Or sometimes it is the ability to laugh at ourselves and our situation a little bit, to remind us that there's still room for joy, uh, as we move forward, even, um, you know, in the throes of grief. And so, so I really think, you know, from for my characters, you know, the ability to laugh, not only do I want to give that experience to, to readers as they experience a story, but I want to give it to my characters as well, the ability to to laugh and to make each other laugh because that's, you know, always something I want to I want to honor, but it's a very, um, you know, I always think back to, um, it's strange here because we're talking about books, but I'm going to I'm going to mention movies here, you know, movies that I watched, you know, that my mom had introduced me to, like, Terms of Endearment, say, or, um, Steel Magnolias or or beaches, you know, these were I grew up, I was like, I love these comedies, I love laughing, and and then they're like, oh, you mean the movies where the, you know, where the mom dies, where the daughter dies, or where the best friend dies? And I was like, oh, yeah, but I but the way I remember those movies is there was so much celebration of life and laughing, um, in them.
STEVEN ROWLEY: And that always, I think, sort of set me on a path where I love to marry, those, you know, two big emotions in, you know, like, there's there's truly heartfelt moments with these characters, but also hopefully you will, uh, laugh. And as, as a writer, that's that's difficult. You know, the ability, you know, try to make someone laugh at truly laugh out loud and, you know, before the end of the book, make them cry, too. Those are those are difficult things. And sometimes it's, you know, I take it very seriously. Sometimes it's scene by scene going through with a scalpel. You do one joke too many in a scene, and it can take the air out of the seriousness of your message. But if you go too long, conversely, without giving the reader the ability to laugh, um, and take a breath, you know, it can sometimes veer to dark. And so that's the that's where I really try to you know, focus on my work is finding that that balance.
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