015 Something Beautiful Travels Far with Shaista Tayabali

In our final episode of Season 2, we have a heartfelt chat with poet and writer Shaista Tayabali, exploring the profound ways in which creativity can shape and heal our lives. Shaista shares her long journey with lupus, her move from India to the UK, and how poetry, blogging and writing became both her solace and her voice. We remind ourselves of the invisible strings that connect us through and beyond time, the ripple effect of our stories, the stubborn echoes of loss and grief, the necessity of humour, the sparkliness of possibility, and the essential role played by art and words in navigating life's hardest moments.

Shaista Tayabali is a poet, writer, blogger and occasional teacher living in a quiet village in Cambridgeshire. Her memoir ‘Lupus, You Odd Unnatural Thing’ captures much of her life with a persistent auto-immune illness, and her poetry attempts to draw on threads of hope, joy and beauty. 

Read Shaista at:

Blog: Lupus in Flight

Memoir: Lupus, You Odd Unnatural Thing

Poetry: Something Beautiful Travels Far and Two Women

Instagram: @shaistatayabali

More mentions:

[Blog] Oblomov’s Sofa by Shikha Chhabra

[Poem] Japanese Maple by Clive James

[Podcast] Good Hang with Amy Poehler

[Book] Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum

[Book] Mother Tongue: The Surprising History of Women's Words by Jenni Nuttall 

[Book] The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

[Book] Paper Moon by Rehana Munir

[Film] Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me 

[Poem] Wild Geese & The Summer Day by Mary Oliver 

[Book] Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

[Book| Becoming by Michele Obama

[Poem] Dear One Absent This Long While by Lisa Olstein

[Poem] The Moving Finger Writes by Omar Khayyam

Shaista studies the Hebrew Bible with Hadar Cohen, an Arab-Jewish scholar, mystic and artist behind the spiritual skill building school Malchut (⁠www.malchut.one⁠). 

Follow us on Instagram @the.rewind.pod

Find Sara at:

Substack - Self-Care Power Hour & Heirloom Club 

Instagram - @slow.living.self.care.club, @heirloom.club & @sara.norman.walker 

Find Kriti at:

Website - kritibajaj.com  

Instagram - ⁠@kritibajaj21⁠ & ⁠@wildirislegacies

Read the episode transcript here.

Podcast theme music by Transistor.fm. Learn how to start a podcast here.