Story Matters Podcast
In the Story Matters Podcast, Hosts Ryan and Emily Baker discuss the intersection between theology and psychology helping listeners to better grasp how their particular stories have shaped them.
Story Matters Podcast
38. The Missing Ingredient For a Life of Joy and Comfort - with Mary Ellen Owen
We sit down with counselor and artist Mary Ellen Owen for a candid, life-giving conversation about why tears matter, how to tell when your present reactions are hooked to old stories, and what it takes to move from self-protection to genuine comfort. Mary Ellen unpacks the crucial difference between acute grief—the wrecking ball moments of death, divorce, and diagnosis—and the quieter, lingering grief we outrun with busyness and control. Her insight is disarming and practical: it is not pain alone that shapes us, but pain plus isolation. Comfort changes everything.
Mary Ellen revisits her own turning point with the “wailing women” of Jeremiah and shows why many of us need to be led into lament. This isn’t wallowing; it’s relational healing. When we risk grief in safe company—human and divine—we discover the Comforter who collects our tears in a bottle and restores our capacity for delight. The result is a lived paradox: holding death and resurrection at once.
Book reference: “Mourner, Mother, Midwife: Reimagining God’s Delivering Presence in the Old Testament” by L. Juliana M. Claassens
Listen now, share this episode with a friend who needs comfort, and leave a review to help others find the show. Subscribe for part two with Mary Ellen as we go deeper into practices that make lament a path to resilient joy.
We are forming Story Groups that will begin in January 2026, all the information is on our website StoryMattersCoaching.com or email us with any questions!
Welcome to the Story Matters Podcast. I'm Ryan Baker.
SPEAKER_01:And I'm Emily Baker.
SPEAKER_04:We believe people grow and heal through understanding how our stories are rooted in God's redemptive story.
SPEAKER_01:We hope our conversations encourage you to engage your story and the world around you with a new lens.
SPEAKER_04:We're glad you're here.
SPEAKER_03:We are super excited to do something different. This episode, we're gonna have a dear friend on. It's our first interview, Mary Ellen Owen. Welcome to the Story Matters Podcast.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. So encouraged and complimented and honored to be asked.
SPEAKER_03:Well, we are super honored. And first of all, you can just say anything you want and we'll be delighted. But the reason we are asking you on specifically is you are a counselor, you've been a counselor for over 20 years. I've gotten to know you around art a bit and some of that gifting and just your passion. But the work you've done and the way you are becoming an expert on grief, and the way you've, I think, drawn what would be a word most of us would want to avoid. We're all trying to avoid ever needing to grieve, you know. And so what we're gonna invite you to do is share your story and then also what you've learned and what you teach around grief.
SPEAKER_00:I would love to talk about it.
SPEAKER_01:When I am in your presence, your affect is so energetic, hopeful, vibrant. The world feels right, and there's so much joy. So to say you're an expert on grief, this paints a picture of, you know, old woman in a denim jumper, and you're like, no, that's not what we're dealing with here. Maybe, maybe I would I would love a starting place for you to say, where do you get your joy if you're actually dealing with grief? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yep, yep. Thank you. Thank you both for that. While you're doing the intro, I'm like, I'm going back and listening to that. I'm writing it in my journal. But I think, and I've had many people say to me, Yeah, I'm surprised you are the one that teaches on grief at the Allender Center. And at first I was like, I was a little taken back by that, but then I understood what they were saying because my normal interaction, my life energy is pretty high. You know, I'm a red-head, I'm fiery, whatever, all those words. But ultimately, I think it is all rooted in the direct relationship between the deeper the grief, the increase of joy, or you live as as close to tears as you do laughter, because that's what life is. And I think the inaugural event of healing is desire stirring in that way of there has to be more. What I'm doing in my life is not working. Um, it's the opening of sacred romance, like that old classic that actually just got rewritten when John Eldridge and Brent Curtis opened it up with you're going along, you're going along your Christian life. And there's a haunting of, isn't there something more? Isn't there something more? So, and it's the same thing with the prodigal. Like he's bottoming out and he's like, This sucks. So desire stirs. I think that's the inaugural event of healing, of change, of something more. And then I think the inaugural or the beginning action is moving into your story with more truth and deeper understanding, and therefore the possibility of different interpretation of how you've carried certain stories in your life. And then it will bring you to a crossroad. And a crossroad that we live out every day, all the time. What do I do with my pain? And we all have our different answers of what we do with it. But the decision to risk turning towards grief or turning towards as a response to heartache, harm, abuse, whatever story you're dealing with is a risk of laying down how you normally hold this story and re-entering not just the vulnerability, but the pain of the story. And it will inevitably bring you to a crossroad of will I grieve or will I retrench my way of being in this world, my way of managing this pain.
SPEAKER_03:I love that. And I think one of the things I assume for our listeners, I know it's true for clients and myself, is I I talk a good game about, oh, I want to go deeper into my pain, into my story. But uh, one of the examples I might give is like if we've had an argument and we sort of know what you deposit, you know, this is not we're not getting anywhere. Let's come back to this later. And then later comes as like, why in the blank would we want to come back when we're getting along right now? Things are going. I imagine a listener is like obviously we have stories of harm. Maybe I can get my mind around grieving being helpful, but why do I want to do that right now? Things are actually going kind of good right this minute.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I love that. And that scenario that you just set up is a perfect one. Like, there needs to be revisiting. But I think also it would be important for us to say there's acute grief. That's when there's death or divorce, or like, you know, like the wrecking ball comes in and just demolishes or destroys something. But the grief we deal with as counselors and even as story listeners and people with friends and people just in each other's lives tends to be the more lingering grief. And I think all acute grief has its season, like its intense season. And that grief will eventually become lingering grief. And Ryan has his own uh, we were talking about his own way of explaining it. And I think lingering grief is the kind of grief that we can outrun. We can, you know, deploy our ways of being in this world, our style of relating to control our world. But if we keep doing that, the soul will be sick. Like the soul needs truth, the soul needs freedom and to not turn back. And that's what we do as counselors, right? Like we're going back to earlier stories that are unresolved, unattended to, and cause us to, you know, really tighten down on our stories. And so as you're saying, like, you know, why do we all have to do this? I'm going pretty well here. And it's like, yeah, you don't have to go stir up the pot, like to be like, oh, I better grieve about this. But I think it will, it beckons to you. Like when things aren't going well. Or, Ryan, what you're just saying about like, if you're in an argument and there's defenses at play or there's a fence at play, likely that is connected to something you need to care for, you need to tend to. And even in the present day moment, there's something legit going on, but it's likely hooked or linked to something else. I mean, we could probably, everybody has a story for that, right? You know, the the way I read what's going on in my body when I'm in a fight with my husband, if he has a different idea or he's not listening to my idea, I will feel and interpret. I'm being dismissed. Well, that's very connected to my story, my family of origin story and what that does to me. And so that's an indicator to me that I have got to go back and care for those younger parts of me that have been dismissed, that have been told I've nothing to say, or I don't know what I'm talking about. That's going to put me right at that crossroad of like, do I pull that 12-year-old in me close and be like, oh my gosh, there were some really rough times and rough things about your family of origin that just in this moment need care.
SPEAKER_03:I listened to your discussion on this, so I actually want to invite you to tell us your story with grief. I love hearing you explain kind of your journey.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Until you kind of realize this is something that you needed to bring into your life.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. And I I would actually say I cherish grief. I cherish when tears come. I cherish if I can slow down enough to get to them because I have a lifetime of not being able to grieve or not being able to enter into that pain in a way that's going to open me up and say, I'm in need. Like I'm in need of a savior here. I'm in need of the comforter here. I'm in need of the tear collector. Just a little shout-out plug to Emily and Ryan's podcast on grief, which I think is episode 11, maybe. It's early on in your podcast, and you guys talked about the verse of it's Psalm 56.8.
SPEAKER_03:And because of you.
SPEAKER_01:And in that podcast, I referenced you.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that's okay.
SPEAKER_01:Like we all remember you have kept count of my tossings, put my tears in your bottle.
SPEAKER_00:You keep track of all my sorrows. It's such an important verse to me. I think the reason why I've come to cherish the practice of grief and the ability and choice and risk to grieve is because for a long time I could not grieve, knowing I needed to. Um, I remember it like dawning on me, like, oh my gosh, maybe I don't have tear ducts that work. And I literally was like pulling my eye down and looking and being like, are those functional? And so I knew it, Ryan. What you say in that podcast, Emily, you tell a story about coming home from your cousin's funeral, and you're turning to Ryan for comfort, and he says something to you of, I know what you mean. I feel like my tears are always there, like just ready to come. And that's what I would call lingering. And I knew mine were there. I knew they needed to be cried, but I could not cry them. And it would be a long, long time until oh, so this is a great story. So back in graduate school, I'm working on stories in my life that I know need grief, and I cannot cry. And I was like, I can be sad about it, but like the tears don't come. Like I was deeply committed to being a tough girl, and I do not cry. I didn't think it was weakness, I just thought it was like, no, I will pull myself up by my bootstraps. I didn't have a name for it, but I think secretly I always wanted to cry. Um, so I remember I have this, I it was January 12th, 2000. So we had just made it through Y2K, which turned out to be a non-event, despite how much the world was scared of it. And I was, I come back to graduate school in Seattle from Christmas vacation. So I was sitting on my bed and I was like, oh, here we go again, like with more deconstruction and diving into my story, and I can't cry. And I I was like, God, where are you? Like, I'm willing. I just I can't get there. And I did that Bible cracking thing, you know, where you like randomly open the Bible and you're like, please be a good one, please be a good one, please don't let it be the baguettes. Like something that you're like, what that didn't that means nothing, you know how like when you get a really good um Chinese fortune cookie, and if it's something good, you're like, Oh, I bet there's something to this. Like if you land on a good verse, you're like, Yeah, oh yeah, please don't be the verse about dashing the enemies' babies. Yeah, or like, and then Jonah got swallowed by the whale. No, so where I cracked open to, and I had never heard of this before, I'd never read this verse, I never heard this expression, but it was Jeremiah 9, 16, and it said literally where my eyes fell, send for the wailing women, the most skilled of them. Send for the wailing women and let them teach our daughters to lament. And it says something like that. And I didn't know exactly what a wailing woman was, but I knew I was like, I either need to be a wailing woman, but probably first I need a wailing woman. And I went to Dan's office hours the next day, and I remember this like it was yesterday, and I stood in the doorway because I didn't want to go in and sit down because I knew he could disrupt my life in five minutes, maybe three if he wanted to. And I was like, So what's a wailing woman? Like just casually, I was just like, on my way to class, and thought I should ask. And he said, the ones in Jeremiah. And I said, Yeah, and he said, They were professional mourners. And I said, What do you mean? He said they would come and they would read in in Jeremiah, they're leading the Israelites in repentance, and they would lead with drama, with crying and wailing and probably dancing and music. And and I was like, Why? Because it's so counterintuitive that we need to be led. And he said, Yeah, in part. And I was like, which goes back to what we were talking about before. Like, do we have to do this? Do we have to turn back? Because we've got a really active part of our brains called the amygdala that's like, don't go back there. Like when something's triggered like that, that almost killed you before. There's no reason to go back there. But I think there's also in really opposition to the amygdala, there's something in our, I really think, God-given mammal nervous system that longs to be comforted and longs for the comfort of attachment. And so I think there is a part of that us that wants to. I mean, like one of my dearest friends, I know that when she's in a space, because she'll say, I'm staying home this weekend and I'm watching horse movies, and she has her certain horse movies that will make her cry. Right. So they'll aid in a bet. But I knew that I wanted to be a wailing woman. I wanted to find a wailing woman. And I didn't necessarily mean like, I need to find a female counselor that I I just knew I needed the assistance. And I I read this phenomenal book that you should put in your show notes called Mourner, Midwife and Mother, something like that. I'll get you the information on it. And the woman who wrote that did a really strong biblical defense of God is actually the original wailing woman. In that, like he initiates and teaches and invites the grief. And it's phenomenal that that book. Um, particularly that it's midwife, mother, and warner. The mourner is the wailing woman, and she stumbled onto that verse by accident as well. And so I think for me, like I wanted it and I wanted something of the healing, but but I was I was blocked until I had a story I've returned to over and over and over again. Like, I have a story that I'm like, but I know when I stopped crying. So I think I think that's where the toughness came in. But I didn't know, I didn't know until I really started to unpack what is required for grief. How does my heart break open enough to return to those stories with kindness and compassion and bringing near instead of like you better get your act together and you better pull yourself up by your bootstraps? And I think the story would take a long time to unpack, and it's kind of funny until you get to the poignant part. Um but recently my sister told me she goes, Oh my gosh, Mary Ellen, you were crying so hard that it scared me. And I remember being so devastated by a movie. It was a movie that triggered something in me. And I'm 12. So I had no idea that this means something. And I remember being so devastated, and it would be definitely in the categories and themes of um neglect and like broken attachment, and I would say deavenly mother wound, that I remember being very, very worried that I was I remember saying the sentences out loud of, oh my gosh, I'm only 12 years old. I have so much more to go before the end of my life, and I'm never gonna be happy again. And I said to my sister, I was like, I go, Do you know I've never gone to mom with that story? And she was like, Why would you love? And so the critical thing being when we're hurt, no matter where it is on the spectrum, like from the wrecking ball of like capital T trauma of sexual abuse or war-torn or murder, all the way down to the dismissal of the very busy mother who had six children in eight years, who didn't have enough for us, no matter what it is, it's never the actual hurt, it's the hurt or the harm plus isolation, meaning plus there was no comfort. And I'm sure you guys hear hear this all the time in your practices as well. Like when you're working with someone and you're kind of setting the space for grief and you're inviting to grief, almost everyone, if not everyone, across the board is like, you know, I don't want to go there. What if I start crying and I don't stop? And I think that's a universal fear. But I think the deeper fear is what if there's no comfort? What if I'm not met or held well either by my friend who's listening to this story, or my counselor, or the comforter? Like the blessed are those who mourn. I mean, I think it's a huge big deal that Jesus names the Holy Spirit as the comforter when he's like, it's actually better that I go so that the comforter can come. And also called the spirit or the counselor, the advocate. Like, that's all about story. And I was actually so grateful for this. Just the other day that my mother told me this story that I was very colicky as an infant. And I mean, I'm almost 60, so this was a long time ago. They didn't know what to do, and so she would just leave me. And she even said, like, I would go outside because I could not bear your crying. Yeah, like so. When I moved towards that little infant, and I'm like, I bet I stopped crying then. Like there's something in me that I carry. And I was connecting it to doom scrolling, even like no one's coming for me. So you better doom scrolling, you better get ready for the end of the world. I'm like, this is about the baby in the crib. And so until I developed a practice really of pausing and turning and being like, what's going on? What's going on in the here and now? And what is it connected to? And now I almost always think it's connected to grief. So I'm like, who inside me needs comfort right now? Who needs to grieve?
SPEAKER_03:Will you unpack the doom scrolling?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, like I can be one that gets sucked into the internet of all this like end of the world stuff. And you know, the dollar's gonna collapse, and there's no trustworthy person in government. And so I think I'm bracing myself. This is new, but like just the other day on Tuesday, actually, yeah. So yesterday, I was like, this is connected to something. I think I'm on my own. Like I was like, Jesus, I need you to come to this panic in me that's trying to figure out what to do when the world blows up and the grid goes down, and all the stuff they warn you about. And then they keep on warning you because my um Instagram feed used to be art and funny stuff. Now it's all like you need to buy these sleeping bags and you need to have this generator, and you need, and I'm like, oh shh, like I gotta make a list. But I I finally connected it yesterday because I was like, what am I doing with my time? I never used to be like this. I mean, literally, my whole feed was watercolor tutorials or stand-up comedy, and now they don't even come up in my feed anymore. And so as I was sitting with it, I talked to a really good, deep-hearted friend, the one who watches the horse movies. And I was like, I know this is about the infant. I know this is about something screaming inside of me of like, will you help me? Will you come and get me when I can't? I I mean, what can I do about the end of the world? Nothing.
SPEAKER_01:Well, when you talk about your 12-year-old, already by 12 you knew not to go to your mom. I'm fascinated by that story because watching a movie wouldn't be on the radar of a traumatic story to write and engage. Right. Yet, but yet that's a huge mile marker of weeping, knowing not to go to mom, and then vowing I will never be happy again.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, yes. I was terrified. It was so, so sad that I'll never be able to be happy again. And I think what I did was I just I literally banished it. I can't be sad about that. I can't live like that. It would be years after I was 12 that I became very grateful for that scene. Because the scene is, you know, as you start to do story work and you start to really become a student of your internal dynamics, it's literally a scene and it's a the planet of the apes movie. I know when I tell people that, they start to laugh. Um, and the old one, like with Charlton Heston, and and it's actually the scene when they're rolling the credits and why I'm just sitting there as a 12-year-old watching the credits, I don't know. But I became so grateful for that because I was like, there's no way that I can pretend that my reaction to that didn't happen. And so I was like, that was telling me something about my story. So much attachment pain and so much abandonment and so much deep, the deep roots of I'm on my own, I've got to take care of myself. There's no one there for me. Like, care. And we all have a million stories, but I think we have core stories, right? The handful that really have shaped our belief systems. And I totally agree, Emily, that they are they were in motion because I remember crying alone. Like I I probably would not have cried in front of my family for two weeks. And I was like, uh, I have sixth grade things to do. You know, that's when I stopped crying.
SPEAKER_01:I'm fascinated by terms that I've heard you use, like acute grief or lingering grief, or I think you maybe use the term ambiguous grief. I I would love, so let me paint a scenario and I would love to hear your take.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I mentioned I didn't think this would be a trauma story that would have shown up, and yet it was a pivotal moment in your life because nothing really happened. You just watched a movie. Yep. But it's sometimes the bigger events of our lives that seem like they should be more impacting, they actually get comfort. Um, and so they don't make that big of an impact. Like here's a scenario that I have experienced with a lot of friends and clients that you'll have a second marriage, and the woman is divorced, marrying a man who's lost his wife to death. And the grief that he has experienced through that death of his wife has been acute. It's been very comforted by the community, it's very known in terms of like the anniversary of it. But the wife coming in, her divorce isn't grieved. No one has acknowledged it as a loss. No one has marked the dates, no one has said you lost all the hope that you had when you got married, you know, a loss, but um, they don't feel as worthy. But yet I've I have often said, I think your grief may actually be more intense because it's not getting comfort, it's not getting culturally any kind of care compared to the death of a spouse.
SPEAKER_00:100%. Yeah. I love you just made space for that as a category, right? Because I think people bear divorce with a lot of shame. And so it's hard for them to even sometimes it's like, I gotta get out of this marriage. Like I hate to say, but the death of a spouse is very cut and dry, usually, right?
SPEAKER_01:Like you'd think it would be worse. So therefore, they should get more attention and care. I I think there's something that I'm fascinated by about the grief that gets uncared for becomes a deeper something of like, what would you have? A word for that?
SPEAKER_00:Buried. Like, but that's what I mean by like when acute grief has its season, and then as time passes, which does nothing to the grief, but we adjust to it, then it becomes that lingering grief that we can outrun. But that's that's that whole courage, brave risk of, you know, I never really grieved my divorce. I was so glad to get out of it, or I was so done with the bitterness and the fighting, or I was left and I just had to survive that. And what about scenarios too of like really intense trauma or hardship that ends well? Um, a friend of mine, her son, her 21-year-old son, had a brain tumor, a cancerous brain tumor. And it was touch and go for about three or four years. And there's a clean build of health now. And, you know, the the more time is marked leaving that acute grief because of the relief, then it's like, sister, you gotta go back and tend and grieve to that mother that was terrified for four years, like every doctor appointment, you either get good news or really bad news. That unnamed grief and that where there's not a lot of space held. I contend that the space held for grief is what's missing in this world the most. Because grief is a means to an end. But grief is not the end. Grief is the you you hit the floor or you hit your knees and you open up and you let the comforter come, and that's life-changing. And then eventually the spirit will get you up off the floor with this question how now do you want to live? Because you're not afraid of that story anymore, and you're more free than you were, right? Like you've reclaimed what has been banished or what had been managed.
SPEAKER_03:What's interesting, I had a client I was talking to about divorce as well. And then when you shared the friend whose son has become healed, it seems like in both, it's like with the divorce scenario. Let's assume the person of the divorce that you might call to grieve. They may say, Well, I'm I'm glad I'm out of that marriage.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And what I was encouraging this person to think about it was how do you separate out that from the fact that you had hopes and dreams originally? And then also with this friend, maybe I think maybe it's possible, and this gets in the category of like reasons not to agree, like, well, why would I want to get sad about a happy ending? And so I guess the question would be how do we invite others or ourselves into places of grief when the results aren't the problem? You know, maybe I'm glad I'm divorced. Or worked out. Or it worked out.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. How do we I found a better husband or whatever?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, or I'm cured now. And yet naming, but there was real heartache. There was real shalom shattered in this.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Which really gets into holding death and resurrection that we say all the time from Dan, you know, the strongest person in your community is the one that can hold both death and resurrection. I would love to hear you give your version of that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, we talked about this coming.
SPEAKER_01:I'm like, can I please ask Mary?
SPEAKER_03:Yes, yes, she's the one she wants to ask.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I love that. I think it's actually where we started the direct relationship of sorrow and joy, tears and laughter. I think because of that crazy reversal that God does, crucifixion leads to resurrection. Like you can't you can't have life, capital L-I-F-E, like without death. Why? Like, why because of the broken world? Because we're in occupied territory, and so there will be harm. Everyone's shalom gets shattered, everyone goes through, and I think it's a master strategy of the Kingdom of Darkness to really vary the stories, right?
SPEAKER_01:What do you mean by that?
SPEAKER_00:Like I think one of the main reasons people don't grieve or don't give themselves permission to grieve, which really is the same way of saying to go back and tend to the stories that hurt is because it's so varied. It's like my mom was just too busy to pay attention to me, but I didn't get sexually abused, I didn't get the crap kicked out of me. And there is such an enormous spectrum of harm that we're like, oh, but that used to be like the big excuse for never being sad or lament was but the starving kids in Africa.
SPEAKER_01:Like we don't have it's like starving kids in Africa, and now it's well, it's not cancer.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, yes, it's not cancer.
SPEAKER_01:So what do I have to complain about?
SPEAKER_00:Right, right. And I think a lot of us probably came up through Christianity that was that you don't have faith in God if you're grieving, because God makes all things new, he works all things to the good of the people who love him, and for I know the plans I have for you. And people like use scripture to get out of it when really it's like, oh, it's actually permission to be in the present season or the present moment. And right now, I mean the verse about the tear collector, like I collect all your tears in my bottle. Why is that there? Why is the spirit called the comforter? I can never find any verse in the Bible that is like fake it till you make it. It's like, no, I think you're just scared. Like we all are. We're scared to go back to those stories that we were left so alone in whatever pain.
SPEAKER_03:I love this conversation. And did you ever watch Johnny Carson? A little, not oh, to have someone on the show and it was going great. They say, Will you stay at the commercial? And so we have come to the end of an episode, and we are asking you, would you be willing to pick up again with 100% yes? We have a lot of questions on our minds, but I think I just know some things you I've got to share that I can't wait to hear. So yes, yes.
SPEAKER_01:Let's do a part two. Thanks again for joining us today. We hope you enjoyed the conversation. If you have any questions or thoughts about the topics today, we'd love to hear from you. We can be reached through our website, emails, and social media. Just go to Story Matters Initiative. If you're interested in doing individual or group work, we'd love to discuss that with you as well.