Welcome back to the Wild Heart Podcast with Willow Brook where we explore divinity in daily life with themes of love, mysticism, grief as a spiritual path, and sensual embodiment.

I am so excited to welcome grief coach and poet Naila Francis to explore honoring loss as a pathway to living with more depth, authenticity and daring. In our conversation, Naila shares about her personal grief journey and we emphasize the importance of community support, embracing joy amidst sorrow, honoring all forms of grief, including the loss of relationships and pets, and the necessity of resourcing ourselves when tending grief. 

Naila Francis is a certified grief coach and death midwife, an ordained interfaith minister, a poet, and an accomplished writer.  As the founder of This Hallowed Wilderness, she helps people transform their relationship to grief and loss through one-on-one coaching, workshops, presentations, rituals and community grief tending. Naila is also a co-founder of Salt Trails, a Philadelphia collective normalizing grief through community rituals, and a recipient of a Leeway Foundation Art + Change Grant, as well as a Joyful Abundance Emerging Artist Commissioning Award. A former journalist, Naila profiled dozens of artists and entertainers such as Brandi Carlile, k.d. lang, Pink, Bobby McFerrin, and Yoko Ono during her career. She found her way to the vocation of companioning others through grief and dying after suffering several personal losses in her own life, including the death of her father in 2012.

Since the death of her father, poetry has been a steady companion in Naila's life. A longtime writer who had penned her own poems and delighted in the words of other poets for years, she discovered that with this gaping absence in her life, poetry became a vital balm. Whether writing or reading poems, this creative practice allows her to open up to parts of herself, and to emotions, that can be challenging to access in a world that turns away from grief.

Her poetry album, ”Wonder Unsung,” a collaboration with guitarist and producer Paulito Muse, is available on multiple streaming platforms.

We are honored to have Naila woven into our Holy Lament offerings with Naila’s Poetry Cove where she offers selected poems, personal reflections, meditations and writing prompts and to have her beautiful presence in our world!

Subscribe to Naila's newsletter: https://nailafrancis.substack.com/

If this conversation opened your wild heart, we invite you to join an upcoming event with our community at ⁠wildheart.space⁠

Holy Lament: The Transformative Path of Loss & Longing with Mirabai Starr

A spiritual container for those ready to turn toward loss and reclaim it as something sacred in a community of companionship, creativity, and soul-deep transformation. Through the alchemy of reflective writing, poetry, shared witnessing and sacred song, we invite you to explore the healing landscape of grief in a circle of loving presence. 

Learn more at wildheart.space/holylament

Links:

Connect with Naila: thishallowedwilderness.com

IG:  @thishallowedwildnerness

Connect with Wild Heart: ⁠wildheart.space⁠

IG: ⁠@wildheartspace⁠

Connect with Willow for 50% off 1:1 sessions before 2026: ⁠willowbrook.love 

IG ⁠@willow__brook⁠

Connect with Mirabai: ⁠mirabaistarr.com⁠

IG: ⁠@mirabaistarr⁠

Thank you to the amazing Manny Fassihi for editing the Wild Heart Podcast!

@themannyfesto

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