How to hold collective grief

Mar 26

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We are living through a time of massive, unacknowledged collective grief. And we have neither the language nor the rituals to process what it is we’re going through.

Just consider what we’ve been through since 2025 began: the devastation of the Los Angeles fires, daily headlines about institutions gutted, our democratic system under attack. The specter of global war hangs in the background. And before that, the pandemic has shown us how fragile our ways of living and working really are. If you’re feeling off, you are not alone.

It’s hard for us to recognize what we’re going through as collective grief in part because in Western culture grief is largely considered to be an individual thing – both to be processed alone, and applied to the loss of an individual person. But grief is present any time we lose that which is precious to us. And it was never meant to be carried alone. Right now, many of us are grieving what was, who we thought we were, how we lived, what we thought we’d be.

I have been reading Carla Fernandez’s beautiful new book, Renegade Grief: A Guide to the Wild Ride of Life After Loss. I found myself pumping my fist in the air, and saying “thank you!!!” aloud while reading it. In it she writes: “I see it as the ultimate initiation. I see grief as a sharpener of our senses and an enhancer of our ability to connect. I see it as an expander of our empathy, and as an express elevator that brings us closer to the burning core of the human condition.” She adds: “The social technology and norms around grief and loss felt stale and stuck.”

For this month’s newsletter, I turned to Carla to see how she’d advise us on creating gatherings to hold collective loss. If, as she says, our social technologies around grief are indeed stale and stuck, how might we begin to re-imagine them?

Here’s what our conversation inspired:

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6 ways to shape a collective grief ritual:

1. Name the ache.

Connecting your grief to others can start by simply naming aloud what it is you are missing, and getting as specific as possible. Sometimes categories like “climate grief, refugees, civic discontent,” even if accurate, can keep us in the intellectual. Instead of “I miss my home country,” try “I miss the smell of cumin and onions hitting oil that filled my grandmother’s home.” Instead of “I’m mourning climate loss,” try What It Feels Like to Lose Your Favorite Season. Make it personal. “I think there's something about getting out of the intellectual generalizations and into the personal, vulnerable, ‘I’ statement of it all that allows people to enter into a different type of conversation, rather than treat their grief like an article that they've read about in the New Yorker,” Carla explains.

2. Use location as character.

Many people are mourning a loss of place, whether we have been forced from homes by fire or offices by government regimes. Connecting the dots between the ache and the place can help, Carla suggests. After the Eagle Creek Fire scorched the Columbia River Gorge in 2018, she put a day together for a friend who’d grown up going to the park and was grieving the devastation. They invited others who also loved the gorge to gather. They hiked a particular path – his path – and ended at the very spot that had always been his precious respite. The group sat together in the charred forest and talked about what losing their ecological home and sense of sanctuary felt like. It allowed them to “look into the face of the destruction and see how terrible the burn was, but also honor what had been and witness the new ways life was starting to grow,” Carla told me.

3. Don’t be afraid to scream it out.

During the early days of the pandemic, a group of young mothers in Boston – worn out by the constant stress and caretaking of the pandemic – called for a Primal Scream. They gathered at midnight on the 50-yard line of their local high school football field to scream together. “It was so nice to feel out of control for the first time,” one mother said after. “It’s just amazing how light you can feel after you do that,” said another. “I slept better.” They’d figured out a release for the unspoken in community.

4. Invite symbols.

One morning in June 2020, the artist April Banks invited her predominantly Black community to a historically Black beach in Santa Monica. They came at dawn, barefoot, dressed in white clothes and face masks, bearing flowers. They were there to mourn, together: the people they’d lost to Covid, and the others lost to police brutality. The crowd sat in the damp sand and meditated, and then walked into the waves to throw the flowers they’d brought back to the ocean. “What was cool to me about it was that most of the people that were there then went to march in the Black Lives Matter protests that day,” Carla told me. “But it was about creating the moment in the midst of a time of civic action to draw back the bow and tend to the sadness and inherent despair so that they could show up more fully for action.”

5. Misery loves (particular) company.

“Get really specific about who this is for and who this is not for,” Carla says. (Amen!) When you mix people mourning something personally with the merely curious, you create distance. “Screen for participants who lean in and really say ‘me too’ about the feeling of grief and needing to be cared for,” Carla says. “Screen out those who are like, ‘Oh, this sounds like a cool thing to do on a Saturday afternoon that I want to Instagram about.’”

Similarly, try not to have any “onlies” as you gather. “Hosting The Dinner Party, we have learned over time that it's never good for someone to be the only person of a certain experience around the table,” Carla says. “Whether it's the only man, the only person of color, the only person who's lost someone to suicide. That that can leave them arriving into this community support experience thinking that they're gonna be filled with a warm hug, and actually feel like, ‘Oh, I'm sort of Other.’”

6. Make a plan for overcoming people’s squeamishness about grief.

Getting people to talk about grief and to feel like the group can be trusted to hold them when they do takes intention. Some tips from Carla: let people help, whether it’s assembling salads or bringing flowers. It’ll make them feel a part of the gathering from the beginning. Start with your own personal experience. Consider an opening reading – there’s a reason why they’re a part of so many funeral rites. They can help center us in the bigger experience, connect us to one another, and give guests a script to begin to talk about themselves.

***

You may be wondering, as I was, does grieving together mean we are accepting what is happening to us, rather than fighting it? Years ago, I interviewed Amy Cunningham, a funeral director, for The Art of Gathering and asked her why it’s important to grieve. And she told me this: “If we do not grieve, we cannot be transformed by our grief.” In her book, Carla reminds us: “Rituals and care practices aren’t just ways to keep our hands busy while we hope time heals all, but they are proactive ways to stabilize and make sense of what just happened.”

I wish for you the creation of proactive ways to stabilize and make sense of what is happening, in order to engage with care and resilience.

As always,

Priya

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Inspirations

A Grief Ritual Recipe Book

Carla and her colleagues have put together and very generously shared a collection of rituals to navigate life after loss. It’s a beautiful, practical resource.

A Different Kind of Hike

Here’s Carla’s extended essay on how she designed and helped her friend and their community grieve after fires devastated the Columbia River Gorge.

The Alchemy Tour

My friend, the beautiful artist and writer, Suleika Jaouad’s newest book comes out April 23, 2025. She is hosting a unique set of gatherings – the Alchemy Tour – alongside her husband, Jon Batiste, to activate community and creativity. More here.

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