* If you are sensitive to frank discussions about the death of infants and children, then you need to skip this episode. - Chase

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I almost didn't post this one.

I recorded it the same night as Sunday Stroll 01, still Saturday May 23rd, now 11:25pm.

Still Malachi's birthday three days gone.

Shit...

Fuck...

There are moments that....

I gave myself permission to feel what I was feeling instead of suppressing it. So that's what this episode is — me feeling it out loud with nowhere particular to go.

I talk about my grandmother's biscuits and gravy and fried green tomatoes and how I can recall every detail of being with her and how for every one of those moments there are 15 to 50 of the other kind. I talk about finding Malachi. About mouth to mouth. About what I still remember 27 years later that doesn't go away and probably won't.

And then I play you a song.

I wrote it years after he died. I composed it myself — I'm a classically trained flautist, been writing my own music for years, never produced it publicly until now. The lyrics came straight out of my soul. No AI. No editing. No machine touched it.

I played it tonight because it's what the moment needed.

By 11:25pm I was okay. Not performed okay. Actually okay. That's the difference between where I was and where I am. The tools work. Not because the grief goes away. Because you learn to sit with it without drowning in it.

Maybe I'm talking to the me that needed to hear this. Maybe I'm talking to you.