Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Love continues to grow even after loss
(Global Heart | Esther Haasnoot) Grief can deepen our sensitivity and connection to life. An Interview with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer about her new poetry book: “The Unfolding”
“The heart that breaks open can
contain the whole universe.”
― Joanna Macy
An invitation to say “Yes” to the world as it is
“What if we dare to trust that everything belongs together and transforms together – even people, things, and circumstances we don’t like or resist – and realize that we are in service of that connectedness and transformation? When we stay open to what is difficult and beautiful, we say yes to life”
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The Unfolding reflects the spectrum of grief and love
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer has been writing and sharing a poem a day since 2006—a practice that especially nourished her after the death of her teenage son in 2021. Her daily poems can be found on her blog, A Hundred Falling Veils.
It is possible to fall more deeply in love with the world even when we are in great pain. In the poetry collection “The Unfolding,” Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer startles us with the wonder, beauty, and sacred connection that blossoms out of living wholeheartedly. Here the aching heart goes dancing. Written after the deaths of her son and father, these poems embody paradox—simultaneously somber and playful, brokenhearted and uplifting, even solemn and sexy. Trommer wades heart-deep in the broken world and finds in the rubble these honest, surprising invitations to praise.
Most of the poems in her collection aren’t explicitly about loss, but they’ve all been written in the key of grief, composed in that tender threshold space we inhabit after loss. At the same time, the poems are undeniably songs of praise—for the ways we open, for love and beauty and wonder, even for grief and how efficiently it invites us to embrace our humanness and the mysteries of our relationships with each other and the divine.
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An Interview with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer about her new book: “The Unfolding” by Esther Haasnoot
Esther Haasnoot: Rosemerry, your book of poetry, “The Unfolding,” is a deeply personal reflection on grief, love, and loss. In what way did the unexpected death of your son and later the loss of your father influence your personal journey and lead to the creation of this collection of poems?
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: As anyone who has experienced great grief knows, there is no way to plan to be devestated. There is no way to prepare to be taken to our knees, stripped of everything we think we know about ourselves and the world. But what surprised me, Esther, and still does, is that in these most naked, stripped down moments of my life, there was the chance to meet the world with wonder, with awe, with curiousness. Looking back, I can see I was able to both deeply inhabit these moments and to watch them, as if watching the movie of my own life. I think this was possible, in part, because of a decades-long poetry practice—a daily invitation to pause and wonder, “What is here? What is outside me? What is inside me?” The poems in this book are born out of this practice. Though they are in “the key of grief,” the melody is about praise and falling in love with the world.
Learning to live with physical absences of my son, Finn, and my father, Charlie, has touched every single part of my life. I am so grateful to carry forth their love lights, as well as to be shaped by the love of so many other beloveds still living, especially my daughter and husband.
Poem by
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
When I asked the world to open me,
I did not know the price.
When I wrote that two-word prayer in the sand,
I did not know loss was the key,
devastation the hinge,
trust was the dissolution
of the idea of a door.
When I asked the world to open me,
I could never have said Yes to what came next.
Perhaps I imagined the waves
knew only how to carry me.
I did not imagine they would also pull me under.
When I asked the world to open me,
I had not imagined drowning
was the way to reach the shore.
The waves of sorrow dragged me down
with their tides of unthinkable loss.
The currents emptied my pockets
and stripped me of my ideas.
I was rolled and eroded
and washed up on the sand
like driftwood—softened.
I sprawled there and wept,
astonished to still be alive.
It is not easy to continue to pray this way.
Open me.
And yet it is the truest prayer I know.
The other truest prayer,
though sometimes I long
to reject its truth, is Thank you.
Esther Haasnoot: How do we speak of grief with those we love? Grief is so different for everyone. It is not unusual that words fall short when we want to support someone who is grieving. We may say or do things that are not really helpful. Many of us instinctively try to lift the spirits of our loved ones, offer quick fixes, or simply avoid talking about a difficult situation. The language we have for grief is about either distracting people from it or helping them feel better generally. Do you find grief has its own language? What do you wish others would understand about grief?
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Oh Esther. There is no simple answer here. But I can tell you what felt best to me. Silence. People who were willing to simply sit with me or walk with me or hike or bake or snuggle with me. I was so comforted by the loving presence of another person. No advice. No stories. No platitudes. No questions. I know everyone is so different in what we need, but for me, the greatest gift was when people simply met me as I was and brought themselves just as they were. I did not want to be fixed. I still don’t know if I even believe in being “healed” if that means we “get over our loss.”
But I can tell you what helped me ENORMOUSLY was that no matter what anyone said or didn’t say, no matter what anyone did or didn’t do, no matter how they showed up or didn’t show up, I decide to interpret everything, EVERYTHING, as “I love you.” This was grace, I think. I am so lucky that within a day or two of Finn’s death, it became immediately apparent to me that no one was wishing me harm in these days, and that trust made it very easy to practice generous assumptions.
Esther Haasnoot: When we talk about grief, we usually think of the death of a loved one. But grief is not limited to that kind of loss. It can manifest itself in different ways in our lives, such as mourning the person we once were, losing a job, ending a relationship, or letting go of a dream that may never come true. It also happens that when we lose someone or something, the space of loss unfolds a new field in which another self-identity can emerge. Losing oneself and finding oneself are both parts of the grief process. What is your perspective on this?
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Yes. Your question was also the answer. If I have anything to add, it’s that even as the new “self-identity” emerges, there is a gift for me in that I place less and less stock in any identity. Each new one feels a little flimsier than the last. And as they fall away, or perhaps more truly as I start to see through them, there is the chance to increasingly align myself with whatever great mystery it is that lives through these identities. And falling in love with that mystery … that is what keeps me from wanting to “rebuild” the self and instead live into the spaciousness.
Poem by
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Dactylography
Just when you think you know who you are,
you take a closer look at your heart
and notice it is marked
with the whorls and loops and arches
of everyone you’ve ever loved
and everyone who has ever loved you—
those who left you, who broke you,
and those who still charm and nourish you.
As if the heart’s reason for being
is simply to be shaped and reshaped
by the hands of the world.
As if the detectives of love
could visit your heart
with their fingerprint powder
and lifting tape and unfold the mystery
of how you became who you are,
fashioned by the uniqueness of others,
discovering your heart
is not a crime scene at all,
but a rare and incomparable work of art.
Esther Haasnoot: Life and love happen through us. Surrendering to life’s challenges can lead to profound insights. You mentioned these lines from Gregory Orr: “Not to make loss beautiful, / but to make loss the place / where beauty starts. Where / the heart understands for the first time / the nature of its journey”. What does this mean to you?
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Ooph! Perhaps this is what I was trying to alude to in the previous question. I can never love the loss; it will forever be heartbreaking and awful to not have my son and father physically here. And there has been so much growth that has happened since their deaths—the astonishing beauty of vulnerability, of meeting the world and other people without a mask, the beauty of the connection that can happen then. That alignment with whatever is—that total surrender to life as it is, not the way we wish it would be—it’s a sense of full resonance, a wild aliveness, a profound communion.
For instance, I remember a moment in my driveway when I was talking to my son, and I was feeling so grateful for all the insights I had experienced about life since his death—and I told him I would give it all back if I could only have him back. I realized, of course, this was a fool’s bargain. There is no way to bring him back. Then I also realized something terrible and powerful—that I would not want him back if he were going to still be in such great pain and inner turmoil. How selfish that would be of me. And, oh, how deep the surrender went then …
Esther Haasnoot: Writing in the presence of loss seems to be both a form of honor and a way to continue the relationship with your loved ones who have passed. Can you talk about how poetry helps you keep the conversations with your son and father alive, and how it helped you heal?
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Oh Esther, you are so right. Sometimes the poems are very much letters to my dad and brother … and to other beloveds who have died. And it does help me to stay connected to them—whether it is connecting over a memory of when they were here or perhaps telling them about what is happening now as a way to include them in my present. I love writing to them, just as I often speak to them aloud while going about the day—as I do dishes, when I see a herd of elk, when I’m walking alone at night or see something I know they would love. And yes, I suppose it is also a way to honor their lives, in which “honor” means that their lives have greatly shaped my life and their legacy lives on in me, and is passed on through me to others, too. We are all so interconnected, all of us.
I’m also aware that where we choose to place our attention is very important, and I don’t want to focus my writing only on my beloveds who are gone, but also the ones who are still here. Though in the beginning it was hard to write about anything but the great great ache of loss, I soon began to intentionally weave in writing poems that connect with and honor my mother, my daughter, my husband, my friends.
Poem by
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
The way skin loves the scar
that remakes the skin into itself,
that is the way I love you.
I love you the way I love
driving on dirt backroads,
the way I love walking in the dark—
unsure of where I am,
unsure of where I’m going,
so the slightest movement
requires my whole attention.
I love you, though I am
a barren peach tree
with nothing to offer
but the memory of when
there were peaches, ripe and sweet.
And love is a glove
filled with holes
that still fits.
And love is a fountain
that doesn’t care how many
coins are tossed in for wishes.
I love you the way I love the space
where the cottonwood used to stand—
how the air there will forever be
the place where the cottonwood grew.
I love you the way
the rain barrel loves the rain
that doesn’t fall.
I love you because
not loving you
feels like the worst fate of all.
Esther Haasnoot: Li-Young Lee, a poet, explained that writing poems involves a balance of Yin and Yang. Yin represents yielding, intuition, and the practice of being open and receptive. Yang is the energy of discipline, structure, focus, and achievement. I’m curious about how you balance that in your writing, this dance between these polarities.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: I hadn’t heard that before, but I agree completely. On the Yang side, I have a daily writing practice, and that does take a lot of discipline. And the Ying to that is that each time I sit down, I have no idea what I will write. I love coming to the blank with nothing in mind, no agenda, and seeing what rises up. I promise myself that I cannot know the end, that I will let the poem know more than I do. I am deeply in love with this practice—how it is served by wonder and curiosity, surrender and intuition. And how the rewards for it are epiphany and astonishment. I love when I am mid poem and as I am writing, I think, “Oh! That’s what’s in here? Wow! That’s how these connections get made? Huh!” But that doesn’t happen without the commitment to sit every day and make the time for such receptivity.
And, on another note, I feel like that plays out in form and craft, too. For instance, I can start a poem with feeling and intuition—Ying. But then, if I invite the more Yang elements of metaphor or tension or specific detail, well, then structure becomes a method for inviting revelation—moving me past what I think I know.
Esther Haasnoot: The heart can hold multiple emotions simultaneously. You teach poetry and mindfulness workshops. How does creativity help us meet a difficult time? How do we lean into what is most difficult and also open to whatever beauty or goodness the same moment has to offer us? Do you have advice for individuals navigating their own creative journey, be it in poetry, writing, painting, music, or spoken word, on expressing their authentic voice, particularly when dealing with challenges, disappointments, or insecurities?
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: I am sure this is different for everyone, but I do believe that creativity does help us meet a difficult time by keeping us open. For me, that opening, that spaciousness, that curiosity that comes with any creative act feels more alive, more connected, more healing than shutting down. I suppose it’s the same as needing to give oxygen to a wound. Yes, it needs to be bandaged so it can heal, but it also needs to breathe.
As for advice, well, I suppose I would say be selfish. Do it only for you. I know that typical writing advice would say “consider your reader,” but in this case, don’t. Create because there is real juice in it for YOU. Because it matters to YOU. Because there is something at stake for YOU. If it feels right to create with other people, do. If it feels right to create alone, then create alone.
One of the most profound invitations I gave myself was to fill in this blank every day: Today grief is _______. And what was helpful about this was that every day it was something different, and I could see how things changed, how it wasn’t a stagnant relationship with grief. Also, I would often fill in that blank with a noun to create a metaphor. For instance, Today grief is a ball. Today grief is a chair. Today grief is a saw. I would not know how that was true, I just let myself wonder into how it might be true, and in this way, I was able to learn a lot about grief by letting the objects around me teach me something new—something I would never have learned if it hadn’t been for exploring the metaphor.
Poem by
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
So I can’t save the world—
can’t save even myself,
can’t wrap my arms around
every frightened child, can’t
foster peace among nations,
can’t bring love to all who
feel unlovable.
So I practice opening my heart
right here in this room and being gentle
with my insufficiency. I practice
walking down the street heart first.
And if it is insufficient to share love,
I will practice loving anyway.
I want to converse about truth,
about trust. I want to invite compassion
into every interaction.
One willing heart can’t stop a war.
One willing heart can’t feed all the hungry.
And sometimes, daunted by a task too big,
I tell myself what’s the use of trying?
But today, the invitation is clear:
to be ridiculously courageous in love.
To open the heart like a lilac in May,
knowing freeze is possible
and opening anyway.
To take love seriously.
To give love wildly.
To race up to the world
as if I were a puppy,
adoring and unjaded,
stumbling on my own exuberance.
To feel the shock of indifference,
of anger, of cruelty, of fear,
and stay open. To love as if it matters,
as if the world depends on it.
Because
Esther Haasnoot: What is the one thing about poetry you would love everyone to understand and experience? Can it help us deepen our love for the world?
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Sometimes a poem can help you feel more deeply connected—perhaps to a truth you knew but never expressed. Perhaps to another person. Perhaps to an unanswerable question. Perhaps to god. Perhaps to a place. This is what thrills me most about poems—the way they invite a full-body resonance in which I seem to thrum with “Yes! This! This! it’s like this!” Of course, this doesn’t happen with all poems. In fact, it doesn’t happen for me with most poems. But I am willing to read 100 poems to get to the one poem that does do this for me!
If you haven’t yet found the poems that make you feel like a bell being rung, maybe keep reading? Maybe find an anthology with many authors and read until you find a poem that reaches into you, then find more poems by that author. Maybe ask someone else you respect to recommend some poems they think you would like. And if you can’t find the poem that opens you, well, then maybe try to write it and see what magic might happen when you meet the wide open page.
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About Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is a poet, teacher, speaker and writing facilitator who co-hosts the Emerging Form podcast on creative process. Her daily audio series, The Poetic Path, is on the Ritual app. Her poems have appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour, O Magazine, American Life in Poetry, andCarnegie Hall stage. Her most recent poetry collections are All the Honey (Samara Press, 2023) and The Unfolding (Wildhouse Publishing, October 2024).In January, 2024, she became the first poet laureate for Evermore, helping others explore grief, bereavement, wonder and love through poetry. One-word mantra: Learn more about Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Website: wordwoman.com , Daily poetry blog: A Hundred Falling Veils,TEDx: The Art of Changing Metaphors.
Source: Global Heart
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