Creative Intuition as an Anchor for Grief: Poetry, Presence and Quiet Truths | Katie Rizzo

Before Nicholas died, Katie describes herself as someone who was, in her words, only halfway present, moving through days of dinners and errands without much room to notice what was happening beneath the surface. Addiction had already asked her family to carry years of quiet shame before Nicholas's death arrived. And when it did, something in Katie broke open in an unexpected direction. Instead of retreating into the version of "we're fine" that so many families reach for, she found herself drawn to poetry, sitting down to write as a way of staying close to her son.

What emerged became the foundation of her memoir, The Trimesters of Grief. Katie noticed her grief moving through stages that mirrored pregnancy itself, an early nausea as the loss set in, a period of numbness, and eventually a kind of "showing," where she wanted the truth of what had happened to be visible rather than hidden. Framing her grief this way gave her something to hold onto. As she puts it, big emotions become easier to carry when you can put a shape around them.

Her science background threads through the whole conversation in surprising ways. A tree in her backyard that Nicholas helped plant as a small boy. Ducklings on the lake near her home that don't all survive. Invasive turtles taking over the water. Each became an unlikely companion for thinking about loss, cycles, and the parts of life that push forward, whether we're ready or not.

Perhaps the most moving thread is what creativity gave Katie permission to do: to stop performing wellness for other people, and instead let her poems be exactly as raw as she needed them to be. She talks about posting her work publicly, knowing it might not always be well received, and choosing to do it anyway, because staying real mattered more than staying comfortable. Community played its part too. Support groups, grief circles, and even a Sweden-based retreat with other bereaved parents reminded her that this kind of loss isn't meant to be carried alone.

Katie's story is a gentle reminder that creativity doesn't ask us to have things figured out. It simply asks us to show up honestly with whatever we're holding.

Reflection question: What feeling have you been carrying without a place to put it, and what might happen if you gave it a form, a poem, a page, a picture?