I am, as it happens, still sad.

Not only sad, but also sadness, happiness, joy, and curiosity are all part of me, braided together, inseparable. But sad, yes, still, because there is so much new music that my David needs to hear and cannot. Because there are so many adventures we could have had over all these years and didn’t. Because he is beautiful and he is dead. Because my father is so wise and he is dead. Because there is a hole, a space, a place where so many are in my life, and they are not there.

Once, in a peer support group for teenagers who had lost someone to suicide, I asked how everyone was feeling. One teen jumped in before anyone else could answer: “Is it okay to have 42 feelings all at once?”

Yes, I said. Of course. That’s grief.

That teenager named it better than most research papers I’ve read. Grief is not one thing. It is not sadness alone, or anger alone, or love alone. It is all of it, arriving at once, without asking permission, without a timeline, without a clean resolution. Forty-two feelings before breakfast, and somehow, we carry them.

The writer Kathryn Schulz, in her memoir Lost & Found, describes what she calls the paradox of absence, the void left by a loved one that becomes a permanent, physical landmark. She writes about the empty space in a tree where an owl used to be, the heavy negative space created by her father’s death. I know exactly what she means. Not metaphorically, I know this literally. There are spaces in my days shaped precisely like the people who are no longer in them.

I am still sad, and I am here. Both things true.

I think a lot of people need to hear this from someone who is supposed to know better. I’ve had sixteen years of complex and profound grief from a loss to suicide; I have a PhD in psychology with a focus on this work. I have a career built at the intersection of loss, healing, and human connection. And still, well, I’m sad. Not broken by it, and not defined by it. Not stuck, just sad, the way you stay sad when you loved someone genuinely, and they are gone.

Grief doesn’t check your credentials before it arrives; I keep learning that.

What we share

We are all, every one of us on this planet, born, and we all die. These are the two things we hold in common regardless of language, faith, geography, or circumstance.

We celebrate birth. Loudly, annually, with cake and candles and vacations and photographs. We mark the day someone arrived in the world, and we keep marking it year after year because arrival matters. Because being here matters.

And then someone dies, we lower our voices. We send flowers in the first week and then, quietly, we expect life to resume its shape. We treat death like a private malfunction, or something to fix quietly. Something to keep out of sight. And, remember, though, being here, that they were here, matters.

I’m not suggesting we greet death with balloons and cakes, though; many parts of the world honor it in ways that could be considered celebration. But I do wonder what it would mean to carry the same conviction into loss that we carry into birth, that this person was here, that their being here mattered, that their life deserves to be spoken about with the same warmth we bring to a birthday.

That is what a day like today is for, not to perform grief, but to name it. To say: this is real, this is human, and you are not alone in it.

Dolly Parton will be celebrated long after she is gone, because she lived so publicly and gave so generously that the world absorbed her. That is a kind of immortality. David, my David, David C. Babb, who died by suicide on March 4, 2009, will live in me, in his family, and in my work that came from his death, in every person I’ve sat beside in grief, in every room where I’ve said his name out loud and watched someone else exhale because I said it. He lived, and he loved deeply. He had a mental illness that debilitated him for years and ultimately beat him, and I need to say that, to write it, because writing and saying it is part of honoring the fullness of who he was. He was not only his death. He was also his strength, his humor, his tenderness, his dancing, his smile, the way he always let go last in a hug.

The courage of saying it out loud

I’ve been thinking about Mychal Threets a lot, Mychal is the librarian and literacy advocate known for spreading what he calls library joy and who became the host of Reading Rainbow, and has been so publicly and generously honest about his own mental health struggles. He has stepped back more than once to get the support and care he needs, and each time he has said so openly. That he is getting help is what matters most. That he says so publicly matters too, because it tells everyone watching that asking for help is not weakness. That it is, in fact, the bravest thing.

David didn’t have that language or that model. I wish he had. I think about that sometimes and what it might have meant for him to see someone say plainly: I am not okay, and I am getting help. Not as a failure but as an act of courage.

This is why stigma costs lives. And why honesty, public, imperfect, ongoing honesty about mental health and struggle, is a form of prevention. And why talking about those we lost can help inform those who are living.

The things that happen later

There is a particular grief experience after the early rawness that, for some, is wildly overwhelming. Months, maybe years after some have moved on, some people will talk about another painful day.

It’s the moment a voice becomes harder to reach.

Even with recordings, with videos, with the specific cadence of someone’s laugh captured somewhere in the cloud in today’s world, there is still a difference between a recording and knowing the breath behind the voice. The living quality of a voice and the way a voice feels when it is aimed at you, specifically, in a moment. That cannot be recorded. That lives somewhere else in the body, in memory, in the particular quiet that follows.

I find David in photographs now more than in sound. His face is still there, still his. The voice lives somewhere I can feel but not quite hear. My father too, his voice has become something I feel rather than hear. He lives in the questions I save up and have nowhere to send. In the calm I reach for when things get complicated, and in the space where he is supposed to be and isn’t.

And my cousin Julie, who died this summer, who spent a decade meeting pain with extraordinary grace, who prayed for others from inside her own suffering, she is still so new in my grief and still arriving in waves.

My sister’s loss is here too with her mother-in-law, gone earlier this year. A woman who loved the same man, her son and my sister’s husband, from a completely different angle. My sister is now alone in some of the deepest parts of knowing her husband that only his mother shared. It’s her memory that will voice this commonality now. That kind of loss doesn’t really have a name, but it is real, and it belongs.

Losses stack. Each one real and each one demanding its own space. Each one arriving whether or not you’ve finished with the last.

I have a PhD. I teach all of this.

And still.

The hardest truth

There is a song by Starshell called My Star, written after she lost her sister to suicide. I first heard this song over ten years ago with one line that still catches in my throat. She writes about never knowing that losing someone could be the thing that helped her find herself.

It is one of the hardest truths about grief after a suicide loss, and one of the most honest things I know: that David’s death changed the entire shape of my life, and that some of what came from that change is the work I am most proud of. Not because loss is a gift; it isn’t. Not because I would choose this; I wouldn’t. If I could trade every workshop, every keynote, every person I’ve helped for one more of his hugs, I would. Immediately.

But I cannot.

And so what I can do is name what has come from his death honestly. Because of David, I left teaching, went back to school, got a PhD in psychology, and spent sixteen years learning how to sit beside people in their worst moments. This year alone, I helped reach over 450 people directly through grief and postvention programs such as young people at summer camp, adults on retreat, and educators learning to hold student grief in classrooms, as well as thousands more through keynotes, training, and community events.

David has not witnessed any of this. And it wouldn’t have happened if he had lived. He deserves to be here. And every person supported through this work, every young person at camp, every adult on retreat, every educator who carries grief literacy back into a classroom; they deserve this care. Both are true.

Never knew that losing you could be the thing that would help me find me.

That is the tension I live in. That is the tension many of us in suicide loss live in. The grief and the growth, neither canceling the other out. Both true and both ours to carry.

The AND

Kathryn Schulz titled her memoir Lost & Found, and the ampersand in that title does real work. It says that life holds multiple truths at once. That we can be brokenhearted and happy on the exact same day. That lost and found are not opposites and do not arrive in order. They arrive together, braided, the way grief and joy have always been braided for me.

This is what I keep returning to, in this work and in my own life.

Grief and joy. Loss and purpose. Exhaustion and momentum. Sadness and gratitude. Not balance because balance implies equal weight held perfectly still. This is something messier and more honest than that. It is oscillation; it is movement back and forth between facing the loss and stepping back into living. Researchers who study grief call this the Dual Process as we move between loss-oriented moments and restoration-oriented ones, and the moving between them, not arriving at one or the other, is where healing actually lives.

I have watched this happen in real time, again and again. A teenager who cries in a support circle and then runs toward the water to fish. A parent who needs to sit quietly by the pond for a while and then move to laughter with a competitive game of Farkle (IYKYK). A campfire where the music shifts from something heartbreaking to something that makes everyone get up and dance, and nobody has to choose between the two, because both are true, both are needed, and grief is big enough to hold them.

This is not doing it wrong. This is the fullness of being human.

Grief met in relationship softens. Grief met in isolation hardens. Connection doesn’t erase the pain, but it changes its shape. It gives grief somewhere to land.

The collective grief passage

I am also aware, on a day like today, of the grief that lives just beneath the surface of so many people I love, such as friends carrying losses they don't always talk about, anniversaries that pass quietly, absences that don't make the news but shape everything. It is with them when they open their eyes each morning, before the day even begins. And then, because this is how grief actually works, they get up anyway. They make coffee. They then find the biggest heartwarming smile at the clothing choice their 5-year-old made for school. They carry both the loss and the living, sometimes in the same breath. That is not weakness. That is the dual process in action, and that is what becoming looks like from the inside.

Grief is everywhere around us, most of it invisible, most of it carried with more grace than we ever acknowledge. That is exactly why a day like today matters.

What actually helps

Not the platitudes. The real stuff.

Talk about it — not once, not only in the first week. Say the name of the person you lost. Say it to people who won’t flinch. Say it to people who will lean in, not lean out. The name deserves to be in the air. And, if the name is too hard to share or talk about, remember the complexity of it all and talk about your journey; your story is important.

Honor the complexity — of all grief, it’s a complex and human process. For those who have had a loss to suicide, it carries layers that other grief sometimes doesn’t. Guilt, and unanswerable questions. Stigma. The particular ache of wondering if there was something you missed. These layers deserve acknowledgment, not rushing.

Let it move — not linearly, not on a schedule. Some days you will face it. Some days you will step back into living and laugh at something ridiculous and feel, briefly, like yourself again. Both are part of the process, and neither is a betrayal.

Find your people — people who understand this specific, particular loss. People who won’t change the subject. People who carry their own grief and are willing to sit beside yours.

If you’ve read me before or know my work, you know I return often to a beautiful children’s book called The Rabbit Listened in which a young child’s tower falls, and different animals arrive with different responses: to fix, to laugh, to ignore, to problem-solve. Only the rabbit simply stays, without agenda, without advice. That is the gift. Find your people, people who will be your rabbit. And when you can, be one for someone else.

If you have lost someone to suicide and are looking for that kind of community, Samaritans has put together a video series of survivor stories, of real losses, and real grief and real healing. I am one of them. Each story is different, and each carries the same thread: healing is possible, and you do not have to do this alone.

Watch here: After a Suicide Loss

For the professionals

One small section, because I need to share this…

Professionals, supporting those who are grieving a loss to suicide, the most important thing you can offer a grieving person is not your expertise. It is your willingness to stay. To say the name, to listen to the story, and, most importantly, to not need them to be further along than they are. People grieving a suicide loss have often been met with silence, or misunderstanding, or judgement, from well-meaning people who didn’t know what to say and so said nothing. What they need is someone who can tolerate the real answer when asked how they are doing, like, well, are 42 feelings all at once okay? Someone who is not going to dismiss the unanswerable questions, but wants to be with them in the questions.

You don’t need to fix it. You just need to be present; to not leave

And please, tend to yourself too. You absorb what you witness. That absorption lives in the body, so find your people and name what you carry.

Still sad. Still becoming.

Today is National Grief Awareness Day, one day set aside for something that lives in us every day. That feels both important and insufficient. Important because naming it matters. Insufficient because grief doesn’t keep a calendar.

David is still here, in the way that people stay when they have truly shaped you. Not as a wound but as a presence, and as one of the reasons I keep showing up for so many others.

If you are in the early days, still in the barely-breathing part, you don’t have to be further along. You just have to get through today. You are not alone.

If you are further along, carrying your grief with more ease on some days, surprised by it on others, you are allowed to still be sad. You are allowed to still miss them. You are allowed to laugh at something ridiculous today and also cry; it’s both, always both.

We oscillate. We face it, and we step back. We grieve, and we live. We lose, and we find. We are, all of us, still becoming.

And that, on this day and every day, is more than enough.

Resources

For suicide loss survivors:
Samaritans — survivor stories and grief support: samaritanshope.org/our-services/grief-support/healing-after-suicide-loss
Coping After Suicide — peer support groups for teens, young adults, adults, as well as deep dive webinars of support: copingaftersuicide.com
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention — survivor resources: afsp.org/find-support/ive-lost-someone

For grief more broadly:
What’s Your Grief — education and community: whatsyourgrief.com
The Dougy Center — grief support for children and families: dougy.org
National Alliance for Grieving Children: childrengrieve.org

If you are struggling right now:
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — call or text 988
Crisis Text Line — text HOME to 741741

A Note on Support

I offer spaces of care, connection, and support:

🌿 1:1 Grief Support — Individualized mentoring grounded in compassion and presence — elpis-consult.com/my-work-support

🌿 The Kita Center — Year-round programming for suicide loss survivors including a free summer camp for youth ages 8–17, weekend Resilience Retreats for families, young adults, and men, and Navigating Grief in the Classroom professional development for educators — thekitacenter.org

🌿 Elpis Consulting — Grief-informed trainings and support for schools, organizations, and communities — elpis-consult.com

I’d be honored to walk beside you.

And, well, because I have amazing sisters, I’ve been celebrating for a few weeks already, because apparently that’s just how we do birthdays in my family. My sisters Diane and Laura, and my brother-in-law Tim, came up earlier this month for an early, thoroughly decadent, birthday weekend, and we did it right: too many lobster rolls (there is no such thing, but also, there is), a walk along Marginal Way (if you know, you know), and we closed down the Front Porch piano bar in Ogunquit not once but TWO nights in a row. We made it through the weekend with our arthritis fired up, knees creaking, and a few strategically placed naps, but we made it. At our age, that's not a birthday weekend; it’s a potential medical event.

I've avoided the actual day that is coming up, avoided planning anything, avoided even talking about it. I’ve avoided acknowledging that this is my year, my time, to merge a "6" and a "0" into one. I even postponed something I'd been planning for a while, a solo trip, a real big one, walking the El Camino de Santiago, because I couldn't hold sixty and that walk in the same thought.

Here’s the thing about sixty: it doesn’t hit as 30 or 40 did. There’s less “oh no” in it and more “huh, okay, what now?” And what I kept landing on wasn’t some big reinvention or bucket list; it was something much smaller and, I think, better: kindness. Not a big new project, a life-changing event, or even a new five-year plan. Just: be kind, and encourage a bunch of other people into doing the same thing for a week, because misery loves company and so does kindness; I hope it turns out that way.

So here’s the experiment: Karaiskos Kindness Week, Monday the 24th through my birthday on the 28th, and honestly probably rolling right into the weekend after because why stop. The ask is small on purpose: just do one kind thing. It doesn’t have to be for me; it barely has to involve me at all. Tag me if you feel like it, post about it if you feel like it, or just quietly do the thing and let that be enough. The tagging isn’t about credit, I promise; it’s so we can all actually SEE it happening. See how something this small adds up when a bunch of people do it at the same time for the same slightly ridiculous reason. Yes, sixty is ridiculous.

And yes, I’m aware of the joke here; there’s something a little absurd about a sixty-year-old man launching a hashtag campaign like he’s twenty-five. I’m embracing it, though I may need to call one of my nieces to help me with Instagram stories.

But underneath the joke, I mean this part completely straight, which, for the record, is not something I do often, because, well, you all know, I'm gay, I don't do "straight." Someone gives me directions and says "just go straight for two blocks," and I have to stop them right there. "I can't. I'm gay." They sigh. "Fine. Silly gay man. Go forward two blocks." I have been doing this bit for probably twenty years, and I will be doing it until I die. This is what happens to gay men once we hit a certain age: we trade in the good jokes for dad jokes, except we never had kids, so we unleash them on total strangers giving us directions. Anyway, this next part, I mean it. No detours, no bit, no gay exception, just some real straight talk: kindness doesn't need a big occasion. It just needs someone to go first. Sixty seemed as good a reason as any for that to be me, and to pull in family, friends, and foes too (come on, foes, growth is good for you, and deep down I know you really like me).

I found an old photo of myself as a kid; you’ll see it here if this platform cooperates. That little guy was always looking for kindness in the world, and I think he figured out early that the best way to find it was to give it away first. Sixty years later, that hasn’t really changed. So if you want a reason beyond “Steven turned sixty and got a little sentimental,” do it for this little guy as he’s still in here somewhere.

So: do something kind this week, big or small, and tag it #KaraiskosKindnessWeek if you want the rest of us to see. I’ll be checking in all week, and I genuinely cannot wait to see what you all get up to.

Stuck on what actually to do? Here’s a starting list. Steal whatever fits, ignore the rest, or come up with something better.

For yourself (yes, this counts; you can’t pour from an empty lobster roll)

• Get your daily walk in. Mine’s non-negotiable this week; call it my one act of kindness toward future-me.

• Go to bed on time one night this week instead of doom-scrolling.

• Actually make the doctor’s appointment you’ve been putting off. (See: cardiologist joke above. I’m not just being funny.)

• Say no to one thing you didn’t want to do anyway.

• Sit outside for ten minutes and do absolutely nothing productive.

For others: the fun ones

• Pay for the coffee of the person behind you and don’t wait around for the reaction.

• Leave a wildly generous tip somewhere and let it be a mystery.

• Write an over-the-top good review for a small business you actually love.

• Send a meme to someone who needs a laugh today, no context needed.

• Let someone merge. Actually let them, give them a big wave and everything.

For others: the ones with a little more weight

• Call the friend you keep meaning to call. Not text, call.

• Tell someone specifically what they mean to you, out loud, no occasion required.

• Check in on someone who’s been a bit quiet lately.

• Cover something for someone, financially or otherwise, and never bring it up again.

• Forgive something small you’ve been holding onto. It counts.

Here’s to sixty. Let’s see how far this goes.

Support

I offer spaces of care, connection, support, and kindness through (links provided):

🌿 The Kita Center – As the Director of Postvention & Community Programming, I develop and lead year-round programming for suicide loss survivors, including a free summer camp for kids, weekend retreats for families and young adults, and our Navigating Grief in the Classroom professional development for schools (and much more). We also offer DavidCares as immediate support and care in the aftermath of a suicide loss.

🌿 1:1 Grief Support – Individualized mentoring grounded in compassion and presence

🌿 Elpis Consulting – Trainings and grief-informed support for schools and communities

If you need help now, please call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: 988.

I had two waiting for me, actually. A new mystery, an early birthday gift from my sisters, still uncracked, and Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine by Alan Lightman, which I’m about halfway through and completely absorbed by. A philosopher and physicist writing about nature and transcendence and the universe and what it means to look for permanence in a world that won’t hold still. Well, it’s heady and deep and lovely.

But yesterday morning, I just couldn’t, I couldn’t open either of them. My brain, my heart, whatever needed care, well, it needed something else entirely.

I looked up at my bookshelf. I have an entire shelf of children’s picture books, because, yes, really, I do.

I reached for Happy Dreamer by Peter Reynolds, a book about a child who dreams big dreams, daydreams, colorful dreams, quiet dreams, creative dreams that don’t always fit neatly into a world that says sit still, be quiet, focus. The whole book is really just this: it’s okay to be exactly who you are, dreams and all.

I needed that yesterday, much more than Lightman’s stars.

Which got me thinking about all the children's books I have needed, over the years, more than the grown-up ones. More than Agatha Christie, Murakami, Mitchell, St. John Mandel, more than the philosophy and the nature writing, the self-help and the memoirs, as much as I love all of it. Because some things, the truest things, the foundational things, the things that live in the child who is still inside every adult, are best said in twenty-two pages with pictures or in the chapters of a beloved children's book, read aloud slowly, a little at a time, the story unfolding over days while small people, or big adults, lean in and wait to find out what happens next.

I became a teacher in my early thirties, and one of the unexpected gifts of that work was picture books. Not just as curriculum, but as literature, as art, as fun, as containers for ideas so large that somehow only a picture book could hold them, such as bravery and belonging and wildness and love and the particular ache of missing someone, all of it distilled into twenty-two pages and illustrations that did what words alone sometimes cannot.

I fell for them completely, searching bookstores and reading reviews, asking other teachers, librarians, anyone who would talk to me about them, building a collection that started in my classroom and spread onto shelves at home, into bags I carried, eventually into the hands of people I loved, because when you find something that holds the world that clearly, you want to share it.

My partner David found picture books through me. He had no reason to love them before we met, as they weren’t part of his world, but they became part of ours. He would pick one up the way you pick up something that belongs to someone you love, carefully, curiously, with genuine interest, and then he’d read it, and then, sometimes, he’d want to read it again. The best was when he asked me to read one to him.

His favorite was Skippyjon Jones about a cat who is convinced he is a chihuahua, who fights piñatas in his dreams, who is in every possible way exactly who he believes himself to be, regardless of what the world says he is.

And for a multitude of reasons, it made sense that it was David’s favorite.

In my classroom, beyond picture books, I also included children’s books that had first found me, the stories I’d loved as a child, carried into adulthood without quite knowing why, and brought into my classroom because they felt too important to leave behind. These were read-alouds, a chapter or two at a time, each day, the story unfolding slowly, the children settling in and leaning forward, waiting to find out what happened next.

Peter Pan, with some gentle editing, as any thoughtful teacher of young children would do. The treatment of the “Indians” in Barrie’s original is something that requires honest handling, and I handled it. But the heart of the story, the Lost Boys, the flying, the idea that growing up costs you something even as it gives you something, that I kept whole. We traced our shadows after reading it, the way Peter tries to catch and reattach his own. In the morning we’d go outside and trace where our shadows fell, and then we’d return in the afternoon to find them entirely changed, longer, shorter, pointing somewhere new. A math and science lesson, yes, about measurement and time and the movement of the sun, but also about how we are not the same person at the end of the day as we were at the beginning, and how what we carry with us shifts depending on where the light is coming from. It led to some of the best conversations I have ever had with four-year-olds and five-year-olds, with anyone, about what we carry with us and what we leave behind.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory came next. We made golden tickets and had a chocolate party after finishing the book, real chocolate, the good kind, in a chocolate fountain with lots of things to dip and eat, because some lessons require full commitment. A bit unsanitary and I second-guessed it each year, though the children were beside themselves, and honestly, so was I. Roald Dahl understood that children are capable of handling darkness and joy in the same story; that the world is strange and sometimes cruel and also full of chocolate rivers, and that the ones who pay attention and lead with their hearts tend to find their way through.

And then there was Pinocchio.

Not the Disney version, the original, Carlo Collodi’s 1883 novel, which is significantly stranger and darker and funnier and more profound than anything the animated version attempted.

Because Collodi’s Pinocchio is not really about lying; that’s the Disney version. This Pinocchio is about something much more fundamental, something that four- and five-year-olds understand in their bones before they have words for it. He is a marionette who just wants to be a real boy; he wants to belong. He wants to be loved as he is; he wants to matter to someone. He makes terrible choices and suffers for them and gets back up and tries again, because the wanting is stronger than the failing.

We used Pinocchio’s lessons as our class norms because they were already there, in Collodi’s words, to learn and adapt.

Be honest. Pinocchio’s nose, obviously, but also the deeper truth underneath it. Dishonesty always costs you more than the thing you were trying to protect, every time, without exception. Pinocchio learns this repeatedly, painfully, in the way that only a wooden puppet who keeps making the same mistake can. The nose doesn’t lie, and eventually, neither does he.

Learn who your allies are. This one is harder as Pinocchio is surrounded by characters who want to use him, such as the Fox, the Cat, the Coachman, and the whole parade of manipulators that Collodi conjured up. And many characters genuinely love Pinocchio: Geppetto, who made him and never stopped looking for him; the Blue Fairy, who believes in him even when he gives her every reason not to; and the Talking Cricket, without a name in the book, who offers Pinocchio wisdom quietly, persistently, with great patience, even after Pinocchio throws a hammer at him. The cricket, to his credit, keeps showing up anyway, as a ghost (remember, I said it was darker than Disney), if necessary. That’s an ally, that’s a friend, that’s someone who loves you past the point where most people would reasonably give up.

I told my students: pay attention to who shows up when things go wrong. That’s how you know, and this, I have found, is also the work of a whole life.

Slow things down and be patient. The universe will help you, but it keeps its own schedule.

Which brings me to the scene, the one I could never read without the entire class giggling. Before I describe it, you should know: I performed this. The slow, unbothered voice of the Snail. The increasingly frantic, desperate, increasingly unhinged voice of Pinocchio, a marionette who just wants help and cannot understand why the universe is moving at snail pace when everything is on fire. My four- and five-year-olds were not passive listeners. They were storycatchers, leaning in, fully present, waiting for the next disaster, and Collodi, bless him, never disappointed.

Here is what happened in the story. I’ll let Collodi carry most of it.

Pinocchio is desperate. Things have gone terribly wrong, as they tend to do for Pinocchio, repeatedly, because he is a marionette making his way through a world that is not always kind to marionettes. He has been deceived and led astray, and he needs the Blue Fairy, the one who helps him, the one who believes in him. He goes to her house in the dark, in the cold, in the rain, with everything on the line.

He works up the courage to knock, four attempts to knock, each one braver than the last. He finally knocks, only brave enough to make a faint sound with the knocker. He waits, and waits, and waits.

Finally, after a full half hour, a window on the fourth floor opens and a large Snail looks out, a tiny light glowing on top of her head.

“Who knocks at this late hour?”

They go through the whole introductions: who are you, who is Pinocchio, what is a marionette, and finally the Snail says she’ll come down to open the door.

“Hurry, I beg of you,” said Pinocchio, “for I am dying of cold.”

“My boy, I am a snail and snails are never in a hurry.”

An hour passes, two hours, and the door remains closed. Pinocchio knocks again, louder. A window on the third floor opens, one floor lower, if you’re keeping track, after two full hours, and the same Snail looks out.

“Dear little Snail,” cried Pinocchio from the street, “I have been waiting two hours for you! And two hours on a dreadful night like this are as long as two years. Hurry, please!”

“My boy,” answered the Snail in a calm, peaceful voice, “my dear boy, I am a snail and snails are never in a hurry.”

And the window closed.

Midnight strikes, then one o’clock, two o’clock; the door is still closed. Pinocchio grabs the knocker with both hands, and it turns into an eel and wiggles away into the darkness.

“Really?” cries Pinocchio, blind with rage. He kicks the door so hard his foot goes straight through it, and his leg follows almost to the knee, and no matter how he pulls and tugs, he can not pull it out. He spends the rest of the night with one foot through the door and the other one in the air.

At dawn, the door finally opens. That brave little animal, the Snail, had taken exactly nine hours to travel from the fourth floor to the street. And, for a snail…

How she must have raced.

She looks at Pinocchio’s foot through the door and laughs. She brings him breakfast of bread, roast chicken, fruit on a silver tray, which turns out to be made of chalk, cardboard, and “colored alabaster”.

Pinocchio falls to the floor in a faint.

Every time, the eel knocker, the chalk bread, the snail appearing one floor lower after two full hours, completely calm, completely certain she was moving at exactly the right speed and not one bit faster, every time, my students lost it completely. And I laughed with them, every single time.

What I didn’t know then, what I couldn’t know yet, because grief hadn’t found me the way it eventually would, is that the book was already holding something for me, waiting, the way good books do. It took my own long night at the door, years later, to understand what Collodi had buried inside the comedy all along.

The world is on fire sometimes, and you need help. You go to the place where help lives, you work up the courage to knock, might take four times, because courage is like that, and help is coming, it really is, but it is a snail, and snails are never in a hurry, and the knocker turns into an eel the moment you really need it and your foot goes through the door and you end up counting ants and eating chalk.

But the Blue Fairy is there; help is there. She was there the whole time, asleep, yes, on her own timeline, yes, but there. And when the door finally opens, nine hours later, at dawn, she was there.

Help is coming. It’s just that help is a snail sometimes, and the waiting, as it turns out, is part of it.

How she must have raced.

I should say, in retrospect, something I didn’t think about enough at the time: Peter Pan, Willy Wonka, Pinocchio, these are all stories about boys. I am someone who believes deeply in inclusive storytelling, and yet here I was, building a classroom culture around three boys on three very different adventures. Wendy deserved more of the spotlight as she is, in many ways, the emotional center of the whole story of Peter Pan. She is the one who holds everyone together, the one who loves fiercely and practically and without losing herself. I bring her forward now, in retrospect, with the appreciation she always deserved.

And then there were the picture books that found me while I was teaching, rather than the other way around.

Mo Willems, who understood that a pigeon who wants to drive a bus is essentially all of us, wanting what we can’t have, making our case loudly and repeatedly, occasionally throwing a tantrum about it. Todd Parr, who just keeps saying it’s okay in every configuration imaginable, which turns out to be exactly what children and adults need to hear most. Maurice Sendak, who knew that children have wild things inside them and that the wildness needs somewhere to go.

Then there is Life Doesn’t Frighten Me, Maya Angelou’s poem, illustrated with Jean-Michel Basquiat’s art. Bravery on every page, in every color, in every bold and fearless line, a poem that tells children, and anyone who has ever been afraid, that the thing coming at you does not get to win, that you are larger than your fear. I read it in a big voice, the way it deserves to be read, and watched small people sit up straighter.

The Rabbit Listens by Cori Doerrfeld, I’ve mentioned many times, a child who has lost something, knocked down, scattered, broken, and all the animals come to help. The bear wants to growl about it. The ostrich wants to put her head in the sand and forget about it. The elephant wants to remember every detail. And the child doesn’t want any of it, doesn’t want advice or fixing or reframing, just wants someone to sit with them in it. Finally, the rabbit comes, and the rabbit simply sits, and listens, and that, it turns out, is the whole thing.

I have thought about that rabbit every single time I have sat with someone in grief. Just sit. Just listen. Don’t fix, don’t reframe, don’t look on the bright side. Just be the rabbit.

That book traveled with me from my early childhood classroom into my grief work, and it now lives at the heart of what we do at The Kita Center, read at retreats, and at the summer camp, to adults and children alike, because this book doesn’t care about your birthdate.

This summer at Camp Kita, I read it aloud to the entire camp around the campfire on Loon Pond, and then I asked the adult volunteers to play the animals, the ones who come to help the child in the story and miss the point entirely. The chicken who wants to cluck about it, talk it through, process every detail- well, who would have guessed, but we were gifted a Tony Award-worthy performance of wing flapping and clucking that was hiding inside one of our volunteers that night. The bear who wants to growl, well, the volunteer who played that part was genuinely, accurately intimidating. Every single animal, every volunteer, was fully committed, each animal character meaning well, each one getting it slightly wrong.

And then the rabbit, who just sat and listened. My dear friend Stacey played my rabbit in our little pocket theater troupe of volunteer actors.

We were teaching the campers, children who have lost someone to suicide, carrying grief in their small bodies, what it looks like when someone gets it right, how to be the rabbit, and how to ask someone to be the rabbit for you. But the adults around that campfire learned it too.

There is The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy. If you haven’t read it, stop what you are doing, find it, read it, mean that.

A summer (or two?) ago, I was asked to read it aloud to a group of adult volunteers at Kita, all of them at the end of a long, full, extraordinary day of supporting young people who were grieving and also who were playing, laughing, and living. The volunteers were tired in the way you get tired when you have given something real of yourself, and someone handed me this book.

I felt the honor of it, the honor of being asked to read aloud to other adults, to be the voice carrying the story into the room, the way I had done so many times for small children leaning forward on a rug. But this time the room was full of grown people who had spent the day being strong for others, and now it was their turn to be held for a moment.

Mackesy’s book is small and gentle and somehow enormous, just like the work we do at Kita. It asks the questions we are all carrying: what is the bravest thing you’ve ever said, what do you think success is, do you have a dream, and then answers them with an authenticity that catches you completely off guard. The horse carries the boy when he cannot walk; the mole just wants cake and says so, which is the funniest and most honest thing in the book, and then, somewhere in the middle of it, quietly, it says: you don’t have to do this alone.

The volunteers were quiet when I finished, that good kind of quiet that I felt in my classroom a lot. The quiet that says, hmmm, I’ve not only heard this story, but I’ve been held by it.

If you have not read it aloud to someone, anyone, a child, a friend, yourself, do it. That is all I have to say about that.

Another favorite is Hug, just called Hug, by Jez Alborough, about a baby chimpanzee who is looking for his mama. The entire book has essentially one word in it.

Hug.

And it gets me every single time, because that’s it, isn’t it? That’s the whole thing. We are all, at some level, a small chimpanzee moving through a confusing world, looking for the hug that means we’re home.

My partner David would open his arms wide, like a five-year-old, whenever I was near. No words, just this. And just as I was about to pull away, he’d hold on a little longer, always a little longer, saying when I left the house for any reason at all: “Come on back for one more.” I didn’t fully understand it then, though I better understand it now. I understand it very time I visit my 91-year-old mother and find myself going back for one more hug before I leave, every time I linger at the door a little longer than I need to, every time I think: this one, hold this one, because every hug might be the last hug, and the small chimpanzee in me knows it, even when I don’t say it out loud.

We are all just looking for one more hug. One more moment of being held. The chimpanzee in that book isn’t asking for much, just the thing that means: you are not alone, you are known, you are home.

Which brings me to the Velveteen Rabbit, or more specifically, the Skin Horse.

Everyone remembers the Rabbit. But the Skin Horse is part of the story also, the character I go back to: old, worn, seams showing, tail loved nearly off, and he is the one who tells the Rabbit what Real means. It isn’t about how you’re made; it isn’t about being new or perfect or undamaged. It’s about being genuinely loved by someone, even if that love wears you down, even if it costs you something, even if you end up a little ragged at the edges.

“When you are Real,” the Skin Horse says, “you don’t mind being hurt.”

I have thought about that line my whole adult life because the love that made me real has been exactly like that. The love from my mother, who has loved me unconditionally since before I had words for it; my father, my sisters; my friends; my dear David, who would open his arms wide and hold on just a little longer, always a little longer, asking without words for someone to stay with him in his pain, in his life, and whose love, the love of all of these people, has made me real in ways I’m still discovering.

I am a little ragged at the edges. I don’t mind because that’s what love costs and that’s also what it gives.

So here’s what all of these have in common from Pinocchio and the Skin Horse and the chimpanzee looking for his mama and Skippyjon Jones fighting piñatas in his dreams and the rabbit who just sat and listened and Maya Angelou telling us we don’t have to be frightened: they are all about the same thing.

Becoming real, finding your people, and making it home.

The picture books and children's books that held me as a teacher held more than I knew and hold me more than I realize. They were waiting, the way good books do, for the moments I would need them most, such as the snail at the door, the rabbit in the quiet, the chimpanzee looking for the hug that means everything is okay. I still go back to them, not as a teacher now, but as a person who has lived enough to understand what they were always saying. They are on the shelf waiting.

I think about what these books do that so many grown-up books cannot. They go straight to the foundation; they don’t argue their way to the truth or build a case or qualify their statements; they just say the thing, plainly, with a picture beside it, and trust you to feel it, and we do. Children feel it first, in their bones, before they have language for it, and then years later the grown-ups who loved those books find themselves back at the same page, feeling it all over again, maybe differently now, with more living behind them, but just as true.

I sent Life Doesn’t Frighten Me to a dear friend recently. He was going through something that needed a little bravery, not a self-help book, not a carefully reasoned argument for courage, just Maya Angelou’s voice, big and clear, and Basquiat’s colors blazing off every page, saying: the thing coming at you does not get to win; you are larger than your fear. He needed to hear it. I need to hear it a lot! Somehow, a picture book said it better than anything else could.

Because these books don’t stop at childhood. They transcend it. They just wait, quietly, until you’re ready to hear what they were always saying.

Just sit, and just listen.

Be the rabbit.

And maybe, on the mornings when the heady, beautiful, grown-up book stays closed and your hand reaches for something else entirely, be the happy dreamer too.

Dreams and all. Exactly as you are.

Still Becoming is a space for honest conversations about grief, loss, and the lives we are still figuring out how to live. If a picture book has ever said something to you that a grown-up book couldn’t quite reach, you’re in the right place.

If you’re not yet subscribed to this Substack, I’d be glad to have you here.

Support

I offer spaces of care, connection, support, and kindness through (links provided):

🌿 The Kita Center – As the Director of Postvention & Community Programming, I develop and lead year-round programming for suicide loss survivors, including a free summer camp for kids, weekend retreats for families and young adults, and our Navigating Grief in the Classroom professional development for schools (and much more). We also offer DavidCares as immediate support and care in the aftermath of a suicide loss.

🌿 1:1 Grief Support – Individualized mentoring grounded in compassion and presence

🌿 Elpis Consulting – Trainings and grief-informed support for schools and communities

If you need help now, please call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: 988.

Research tells us that a single suicide loss ripples out to affect up to 135 people. But it is the family, the people who share a home, a table, a history, who feel it most deeply and live it longest. The world moves on, but the family cannot. They have to learn to move forward with someone missing. To integrate a loss that doesn’t integrate easily. To build a future that looks nothing like the one they imagined, with a family that is permanently, irrevocably changed, and somehow still whole.

Last weekend, five families came to The Kita Center on Loon Pond in Acton, Maine.

They had each lost someone to suicide, a father, a spouse, a brother, a son. They arrived from different places, with different stories, with children and teenagers and adults all carrying the same enormous thing in different ways. And for four days, in a place built specifically for this, they were not met with silence.

They were met with the loons on Loon Pond.

There is something about Loon Pond, the way the loon call travels across the water, the way it lingers in the air and seems to wait for an answer. When we call out into our grief and no one calls back, it can feel like we are completely alone in it. On Loon Pond, the loons call back. And so, this weekend, did we.

For parents, a suicide loss brings questions that have no clean answers. Questions about their parenting, their identity, their children’s futures and their own. The ground shifts beneath the family: what was assumed, what was planned, what was expected, and it doesn’t fully settle back. A branch of the family tree has been cut. And sometimes it’s hard to remember, in the grief of that, that the roots are still strong.

And sometimes, the grief is complicated in ways that go beyond sadness. Not every loss is a simple one. Not every relationship was safe, or loving, or what it should have been. Some family members are grieving someone they also had a complicated history with. Some are carrying love and anger and relief all at once. That is also grief, and that is also a family trying to figure out how to mourn someone, how to heal from someone, while also finding their footing as something new. Some parts of that journey will be walked together. Some parts will be deeply individual, with each person making sense of the loss from their perspective, in their own time, in their own way. A family can hold individual grief journeys and still be strong as a unit. Both are true. They can still move forward together and still find, however quietly, new adventures as a renewed family, one that is learning what it means to carry this, and each other, into whatever comes next.

For children and teenagers, a suicide loss layers grief on top of everything else they are already navigating, such as the ordinary, urgent, and sometimes chaotic space of being a kid, a tween, a teen, or a young adult. The desire to still be that person they are and to still smile and run toward the water to swim or fish. To still laugh at something ridiculous and to still be fully alive inside a life that now has grief woven through it. That layering is real, and it is hard, and it deserves to be named.

At The Kita Center, and in all the work I do, this is all named. Space is held for both, for the grief and for the joy of a kid who has been waiting all week to get in a kayak. For the parent who needs to sit quietly by the pond and the one who needs to cast a fishing line into the still water and feel, in the rhythm of it, something loosen. For the teenager who finds more in an archery range than in a talking circle, and for the child who draws what they cannot say. This past weekend, puzzles were finished, and new ways to heal were explored. Songs were shared around the final campfire, from Linkin Park to Alex Warren, Gorillaz to Vance Joy, every genre, every generation, each song holding something different for someone in the room. Silly dances happened and a birthday was celebrated. All to guide toward the family discovery, maybe in a hammock, in a yoga class, in the dark around a campfire, that they are still a family, that the roots are still there.

Vance Joy’s Fire and the Flood was shared by one of the families this weekend, and something happened when they played it. Everyone around the campfire recognized it. Well, they may not have known the song, but they knew the energy it was conveying, the energy that was needed to shift from sadness to silly joyful dancing. The song is written about love so consuming it feels like both warmth and flood at once, fire and water together. That is grief, that is love after loss, both elemental and both real. The person you lost doesn’t leave. They travel with you, in a song, in a laugh from a child that sounds like theirs, or in the way you can’t help but look at the door of their bedroom and think of them. By the end of the weekend, this song, Fire and the Flood, had become something of an anthem. I suspect it may find a permanent home in our programming moving forward. Find it, listen to it.

Fire and flood, grief and joy, well, they coexist. They always have, and this weekend reminded us of that.

The weekend moves between grief work and restoration, between structured sessions and open water, between the hard conversations and the ones that happen by accident at the dinner table. Sometimes the whole family is together in the room. Sometimes we separate, parents with parents, teens with teens, younger children with younger children, and each group does their own work. And then, always, we have a family reconnection time where families come back together to share what they discovered separately because that is the truth of this kind of grief: it is individual, and it is shared, and both need room.

They learn to catch each other’s stories. We spend time with The Rabbit Listens, a wonderful book, a staple at Kita, about what it means to simply stay, to not fix, to not offer solutions or silver linings, but to be present with someone in their pain. They practice this with each other. They learn what it means to be a rabbit and learn to ask if they need a rabbit. And outside, on the pond, the loons keep calling, a reminder that when you send something out into the world, sometimes the world calls back.

The writer Kazuo Ishiguro writes that stories, in the end, are about saying to another person: this is the way it is for me. Can you understand what I am saying? Does it feel this way for you?

That is what these families did this past weekend. They said: this is the way it is for me. And they were understood. By strangers, our volunteers and facilitators, who became something more than that. By children who found out that other kids carry this too. By parents who found out they are not failing, that they are not alone, that they are surviving something enormous, and they are doing it together.

The teenagers said it in their own words at the end of the weekend, and their voices are so important:

“Grieving suicide loss brings up a lot of different emotions, and that is okay. To give yourself and others grace and to be the rabbit for those who need it. To let people be alone or to be there in conversation. To create a home for your grief so it can come out if it needs to, but also give you space.”

“I have learned that I need to face my feelings and grief even though it can be scary, but that I have a whole bunch of people that are here for me and understand what I am going through.”

“There are a lot of people who are going through similar things as me.”

And one of the youngest campers, when asked how they felt after the weekend, simply, or not so simply, wrote:

“I feel relivedt.”

That spelling and that word, nothing more to say really.

They leave with a HOPE Plan, something they made together, in four squares on a piece of paper, that could go on the fridge. What they will do to heal, one thing each person commits to for themselves, the promises they make to each other, and how they will keep expressing their grief and their love. Small and specific and real.

They leave knowing they are not alone, not in their loss, not in their family, not in the world.

They leave having been seen, heard, and valued, not despite their grief, but inside it.

That is what this place is for.

If this found you at the right moment, I hope you’ll share it with someone who needs it.

The Kita Center’s next Family Resilience Retreat for 2027 (as well as our Young Adult Retreat and many others) will be announced one day soon. And this season, we still have a Men’s Retreat in October; registration and more info are here: https://www.thekitacenter.org/mensretreat

If you know anyone carrying a suicide loss, please pass this writingng and The Kita Center information on. Everyone who has had a loss deserves a place that leans in.

If you’re not yet subscribed to this Substack, I’d be glad to have you here. I write about grief, postvention, community, and what it looks like to show up for people in the hardest moments of their lives.

Support

I offer spaces of care, connection, support, and kindness through (links provided):

🌿 The Kita Center – As the Director of Postvention & Community Programming, I develop and lead year-round programming for suicide loss survivors, including a free summer camp for kids, weekend retreats for families and young adults, and our Navigating Grief in the Classroom professional development for schools (and much more). We also offer DavidCares as immediate support and care in the aftermath of a suicide loss.

🌿 1:1 Grief Support – Individualized mentoring grounded in compassion and presence

🌿 Elpis Consulting – Trainings and grief-informed support for schools and communities

If you need help now, please call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: 988.

Not permanently, but that’s all a bit later in the saga to come.

You may be about to read the nerdiest sci-fi piece of grief writing you will ever encounter. I stand by every word of it.

A few weeks ago, on a Friday night, I was on my couch, cueing up Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and I am not ashamed. Not even a little. The pizza was nearby, and the blanket was pulled up. And I was exactly where life and grief sent me, not away from the world, but home.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about grief: sometimes it knows what you need better than you do.

It doesn’t always make you cry; sometimes it makes you go to the couch. To the familiar, to the faces you have always known, doing the things they have always done, in the world where everything still makes sense. Grief, when it gets too heavy, sends you back to the stories that first held you. Not to escape but to remember who you were before the weight arrived.

And that Friday, for me, that meant Kirk and Spock and Bones. It meant the bridge of the USS Enterprise, every station staffed, every familiar face from Chekov to Scotty to Sulu to Uhura, a few new faces (Hello, Kirstie Alley and, a bit of a young crush for me, Merritt Butrick), everyone where they belong.

I’m getting older. Kirk is getting older in this film, and he actually says “I feel old” in the opening scene, which, well, same, Jim, same. Later in the film, Dr. Carol Marcus leads him into the Genesis cave, this impossible, beautiful, newly created world, and says: “Let me show you something that will make you feel as young as when the world was new.”

The Genesis cave is probably all matte paintings and also some early computer graphics. As a kid, I never noticed. Now I do, and it doesn’t matter. The whole film is full of perfect moments, and that scene is one of them.

And then, at the very end of the movie (spoilers), after everything, after the loss and the grief and the impossible costs of love, Dr. McCoy turns to Kirk and asks how he feels. Kirk looks out at the Genesis planet, new life, literally, from death, and says: “Young. I feel young.”

That’s the whole arc. Old to young and from loss to life. Grief to something that feels, against all odds, like hope.

I am not over my grief; I will never be over it. That’s not an escape, and, sometimes, it’s a homecoming.

When grief gets too big, when the world gets too strange, when my heart or my emotions or my psyche feels like it simply cannot hold one more thing, I have a list. A very specific, deeply personal, slightly chaotic list of things I return to. Things that make me feel real again, things that make me feel young again, and things that make me feel like I belong somewhere. Sometimes those things are books, sometimes people, sometimes a place, and, many times, those things are movies and TV shows

The 80s were very kind to me in this regard. The Neverending Story, a boy hiding from grief inside a book, inside a world that is literally dying, and saving it anyway. Labyrinth, a girl who goes to impossible lengths for the people she loves. The Last Starfighter, a kid from a trailer park who turns out to matter enormously to the universe. I identified with that one particularly.

Then there’s the original Planet of the Apes movie series. Five films of talking apes. And then somehow, in the third one, those talking apes end up in 1970s Los Angeles, which is exactly as gloriously absurd as it sounds and genuinely funny, at least for the first half. The rest of the series is dramatic and dark, which it earns. Roddy McDowall as Cornelius is one of the great performances in science fiction, all dignified, warm, and heartbreaking. The second film brought James Franciscus, who was, without question (sorry Merritt), one of my first crushes; many followed. If you haven’t watched all five movies, you must. And if you have, you already know that talking apes in 1970s Los Angeles is not the strangest premise in science fiction. That honor might belong to my already-mentioned time-traveling Starfleet officers rescuing humpback whales. More to come on that.

Then there is old Doctor Who, specifically the wobbly-set, long-scarf, jelly-baby-offering Tom Baker years, which taught me that the universe is enormous and strange and that the right person will always show up with curiosity instead of fear.

And the Agatha Christie films of the 1970s, Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, Evil Under the Sun, essentially the coziest possible container for murder, which feels like it should mean something more but I’m not sure what. These films are also, not incidentally, absolutely stuffed with stars such as Albert Finney as Poirot. Sean Connery, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Vanessa Redgrave, Anthony Perkins, Michael York, Jaqueline Bisset, Richard Widmark, John Gielgud, and more, all crammed onto the Orient Express together. Peter Ustinov takes over as Poirot for Death on the Nile, with Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Angela Lansbury, David Niven, and Jane Birkin along for the ride, and then Birkin showing up again in Evil Under the Sun, which is where Maggie Smith and Diana Rigg arrive to absolutely, gloriously, unapologetically camp it up with my beloved Roddy McDowall. I adore every single second of every single one of these movies.

Actually, I think I do know what it might mean. In Agatha Christie’s world, every question gets answered, and every mystery resolves. Poirot gathers everyone in the room, and the truth comes out, tidy and complete. I return to Christie books and movies because, as life has progressed, so many things can’t be resolved that neatly. So many questions stay open, and so many losses don’t explain themselves. Christie gives me a world where everything, eventually, makes sense. I need that world sometimes.

And then there’s David Tennant’s Doctor, an iteration of the same character Tom Baker played, who met Agatha Christie and said:

“Oh, I love your stuff! What a mind! You fool me every time! Well... almost every time. Well... once or twice... Well... once. But it was a good once!”

So perhaps she doesn’t always wrap it up quite as tidily as I’d like to believe. But I’m keeping her on the list anyway. We all need our illusions and our comfort.

I found all of these, the Trek films, the 80s movies, the Christie mysteries, Doctor Who, when I was young, in my teens and twenties. They were the first stories that made me feel like the world was navigable, like there were people worth trusting, like belonging was possible even for someone who wasn’t sure where he fit. They have never let me go. And on the nights when grief gets heavy, I go back to find them exactly where I left them.

But the ones that reach deepest? The ones that send me home fastest?

The Star Trek trilogy: Wrath of Khan. The Search for Spock. The Voyage Home.

There’s a reason this piece is named after the third film in the Trek trilogy. I could have named it after Wrath of Khan, which is the best one, or The Search for Spock, which is the most emotionally reckless one, but I named it after The Voyage Home, which is the one where they go back in time to save some whales, and then, finally, return home safe.

“There be whales here.” — Scotty (IYKYK)

These three films are, at their core, about grief. About loss and the refusal to accept it. About going to impossible lengths to bring someone back. Spock dies, and then, in The Search for Spock, Kirk and the crew steal a starship, violate regulations, fly into danger, and go looking for Spock because the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many, which is the opposite of what Spock said when he died, and that reversal is everything.

And then, a side trip to 1980s San Francisco in The Voyage Home where they bring a newly “alive again” Spock with them.

“Excuse me, sir! Can you direct us to the naval base in Alameda? It’s where they keep the nuclear wessels.” — Chekov (IYKYK)

Every time I watch them, I smile a lot but, also, I cry. I feel something unknot in my chest. I remember that the people who love you will steal a starship for you if it comes to it.

By the end of that weekend, I had watched The Search for Spock. And then, before the week fully kicked into gear, I was on The Voyage Home, the third film in the trilogy, the one where death and loss give way to something ridiculous and joyful and alive. As I have already shared a bit, the crew time-travels to 1986 San Francisco to bring back humpback whales. It is completely wild. It is also about rebirth, and celebration, and the whole battered crew finding their way back together, back home, back to each other.

From “I feel old” to “Young. I feel young.” From death to new life. From grief to something that feels, improbably, like joy.

Kirk is about to do something reckless and heroic and deeply human, and Spock is going to raise an eyebrow at it, and Bones is going to complain, and all the familiar faces are going to be exactly where they belong.

I am on the couch with my pizza and my blanket and my grief and my comfort and my joy all tangled together, which is, it turns out, exactly where I belong too.

Voyage home.

That’s what all of this is. Every film queued up on a Friday night, every familiar face at their station, and every story that held you when you needed holding.

We are all just trying to find our way back to the place where we are loved, where the familiar faces are at their stations and everything, for a moment, makes sense.

Kirk found his way back. Spock found his way back.

The whole battered crew, together, found their way home.

So can we.

Still Becoming is a space for honest conversations about grief, loss, and the lives we are still figuring out how to live. If this found you on a Friday night on your couch, good. You’re exactly where you need to be.

Support

I offer spaces of care, connection, support, and kindness through (links provided):

🌿 The Kita Center – As the Director of Postvention & Community Programming, I develop and lead year-round programming for suicide loss survivors, including a free summer camp for kids, weekend retreats for families and young adults, and our Navigating Grief in the Classroom professional development for schools (and much more). We also offer DavidCares as immediate support and care in the aftermath of a suicide loss.

🌿 1:1 Grief Support – Individualized mentoring grounded in compassion and presence

🌿 Elpis Consulting – Trainings and grief-informed support for schools and communities

If you need help now, please call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: 988.

I’ve been sitting with it the way I sometimes sit with things that feel too large or too close, circling it, starting, stopping, staring at the pond (metaphorically, and sometimes literally). I’ve written about this place before. About the loons and what they taught me about grief. About David, my partner who died by suicide in 2009, and how that loss eventually led me here, eight years ago, as a volunteer, and then as a grief group leader, and then as a board member, and then, since January, as Director of Postvention and Community Programs. I’ve written about the kids who arrive carrying grief that nobody else in their world knows how to hold, and about what happens when a whole camp leans in instead of away.

I have plenty of words and feelings for this place, usually too many. But this week, I can’t find them, even though the feelings are plenty. The words aren’t missing; they just aren’t mine.

Camp Kita (now The Kita Center) began thirteen years ago with five campers and a borrowed space, started by three siblings who lost their father, Christopher, to suicide. Their tears and their heartache and their vision and their stubborn, beautiful refusal to let that loss be the end of the story is why we are where we are now, why twenty-eight acres on Loon Pond in Acton, Maine belong to this community, why there are buildings with names on them and a healing walk through the woods and a wind phone standing quietly near the water and a campfire that burns every summer for kids who need it.

The magic of The Kita Center, the dream of it, began with the Mosher siblings.

One of those siblings, Morgan, wrote this week about some of what I’ve written in the past, such as the loons on this pond and about how the wail carries across the water, one loon saying to another: here I am, where are you, here I am. About what it means to send something out into the silence and have it answered. That call, that answering back, is at the heart of everything this place does. And Morgan wrote about it too, and so much more, in her own way, from her own place in this story. She wrote this week about what it meant to finally come home to a healing place that is all ours. She wrote about so many moments I won’t describe here because it belongs to her piece, not mine. The magic is her story to tell, and, of course, she tells it beautifully. When you read it, you’ll feel it.

I am not going to try to say it better than she said it. I am just going to point you toward it and ask you to read it. Some stories belong to someone else to tell, and the best thing you can do, sometimes, is get out of the way and let them tell it.

And yet here I am, several paragraphs in, still talking. Wait, I’m rambling, and didn’t I say this wasn’t mine to tell?

Take it, Morgan:

Morgan's LinkedIn Writing

And if her piece moves you, if any part of this coming home lands for you, we are also raising money for our sixth camper bunk, more kids, more families, more room at this campfire. If you'd like to be part of that: https://www.thekitacenter.org/donate

And, in two weeks, our first Family Resilience Retreat at The Kita Center on Loon Pond will happen, and then, in October, a Men's Resilience Retreat. More info here: https://www.thekitacenter.org/resilienceretreats

And sometimes, the loons call back.

Support

I offer spaces of care, connection, support, and kindness through (links provided):

🌿 The Kita Center – As the Director of Postvention & Community Programming, I develop and lead year-round programming for suicide loss survivors, including a free summer camp for kids, weekend retreats for families and young adults, and our Navigating Grief in the Classroom professional development for schools (and much more). We also offer DavidCares as immediate support and care in the aftermath of a suicide loss.

🌿 1:1 Grief Support – Individualized mentoring grounded in compassion and presence

🌿 Elpis Consulting – Trainings and grief-informed support for schools and communities

If you need help now, please call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: 988.

The Kita Center has been doing this work for thirteen years, beginning as Camp Kita, a free summer camp that started with five kids and a borrowed space and a whole lot of heart, and growing into something far larger: retreats, educator training, community programming, healing walks, and a permanent home on Loon Pond in Acton, Maine. I found my way here eight years ago as a volunteer, and since January, this has been my full-time work and calling. And this summer, for the first time, the kids arrive at something we’ve never had before: our own land, our own buildings, a mural of a loon stretching across the art cabin, benches bearing the names of people no longer here, and a wind phone standing quietly, waiting for someone to pick it up and speak to whoever they’ve been missing. Same big heart, same need, but this summer, for the first time, a real home, a healing center, to hold it all.

Today, the volunteers begin to arrive before the kids ever get here, before the first nervous hello, before the first grief group, before the first time someone says something true and a whole table leans in; the volunteer community gathers. People who have lost someone, people who have healed enough to want to help someone else do the same. People who come back year after year because this place does something to you that you can’t quite explain and can’t quite leave. The community arrives first, and that has always been the heart of it.

On Sunday, the kids arrive for Camp Kita, children and teenagers, ages 8 to 17, who have lost someone to suicide. They come from Maine and New England and from across the country and, yes, even from Europe, because grief after a suicide loss doesn't have a zip code, and neither does the need for this kind of community. They come nervous and quiet and sometimes not sure why they came at all, and within a day, sometimes within hours, something shifts. I’ve watched it happen summer after summer for eight years, and I still catch my breath when it does.

Grief after a suicide loss is unlike other grief. It carries questions that don’t resolve, guilt that doesn’t belong to the person carrying it, silence from people who don’t know what to say, and a story that’s hard to tell in most places, around most people. And so many of these kids, these beautiful, complicated, grieving kids, eight years old and seventeen years old and every age in between, have been carrying it alone, in the lunchroom and the classroom and at family dinners where nobody says the name and in the middle of the night when the questions come back.

And then they get here, to Kita.

Something happens that I don’t have a fancy term for, though I’ve spent years in research trying to find one. What happens is simply this: they realize they are not the only ones. I think of a kid, and I’m speaking of many kids, across many summers, whose stories have become woven into a single image in my memory, who walks into the first group session cautious and closed, and then hears someone else say something true, something that matches their own inner world so exactly that they almost can’t believe it, and their face changes, the shoulders drop a little, the eyes open a little wider, and there it is: you too?

There are loons on Loon Pond, and I’ve become a tad obsessed. Loons dive completely, quickly, with no trace, and resurface somewhere entirely unexpected, so that you’re watching the spot where they disappeared and then movement catches your eye somewhere else entirely, and there they are, still themselves but somewhere new. I’ve watched the kids here do the same thing. They go under with their grief, and somewhere in the course of a week, they surface, not fixed, not finished, but somewhere new, and usually the first sign of it is a smile.

Loons also call across the water, a long, drawn-out wail, one loon saying to another: here I am, where are you, here I am. A contact call sharing, well, I am out here. I need to know you are too. These kids have been sending that call out for months, sometimes years, into classrooms and family dinners and friend groups that didn’t quite know how to answer. And then they get here, and Kita answers back.

People sometimes imagine this place must be heavy all the time, full of tears and processing and hard conversations, and yes, there is that; grief has to go somewhere, and this is a place where it’s welcome. But most of what I’ve witnessed over eight summers isn’t actually the grief stories, it’s the other stories, the funny ones, the embarrassing ones, the ones about who their person was when they were just a person, not a loss, not a tragedy, not a suicide, but a human being who laughed too loud and burned toast and had a favorite song and said something ridiculous on a Tuesday that nobody else would understand.

It’s a place where a twelve-year-old could start a sentence: “My brother used to do this thing where he—” and the whole table leans in, not away but in, because, well, that’s what this place does. It creates the conditions for the real stories to come out, for the person who died to be remembered as a whole person and not only the way they died, and for the kid doing the remembering to feel, maybe for the first time since the loss, that their grief is not something to manage or hide or get over but something to carry with other people who understand what it weighs.

Eight years ago, I arrived here carrying my own loss. David, my partner, died by suicide in 2009, and I came to Camp Kita not knowing what I was looking for, not arriving with a plan, just a heart rearranged by grief and a longing to make meaning from the unimaginable. And I found it here — not answers, this place doesn't traffic in answers, but something better: people who understood without explanation, and kids who taught me, without knowing it, that joy and grief are not enemies, that you can cry in a support circle at 10 am and kayak on the pond at noon and mean both fully. Stroebe and Schut named this in 1999, the Dual Process Model, the idea that healthy grief moves between loss and restoration, between sorrow and ordinary life. These kids figured it out without a textbook, without ever knowing the research existed. They were already living it.

I became a volunteer, then a grief group leader, then a board member, then a program developer, and the work kept growing alongside me, from a summer camp to Young Adult and Family Resilience retreats, to an ongoing learning series for educators called Navigating Grief in the Classroom, to a Men’s Retreat we just announced for October, and healing walks and Saturday community gatherings and so much still unfolding. And now, as Director of Postvention and Community Programs, I get to call this my full-time work, and I still don’t take that lightly.

This summer, actually, this Sunday, the kids arrive at twenty-eight acres that belong to us now, to them, to this community, with buildings with names on them such as the Christopher W. Langlais Welcome Center, the Christopher Mosher Respite Cabin, the Gail Cynthia Joseph Amphitheater, Bloom Lodge, where our grief groups are held, and the Kita Commons with its sweeping views of the water. There is a waterfront taking shape and trails being carved through the woods and a place that is becoming, slowly and with tremendous intention, a Home for Healing.

And in that welcome center, there are books and resources for families after a suicide loss, part of a program called DavidCares, named for my David. He used to ask me to read picture books to him; this grown man would curl up and listen, and I would read slowly and lovingly, as if it mattered, as if I mattered, and as if he mattered. And he did. I put that love into this program, every program at Kita, because it's the most direct thing I know how to do with what he left behind.

So, on Sunday, the kids arrive. Some of them shy, some of them loud, some of them are returning campers who know this community in their bones, and some of them are here for the very first time. But every single one of them, returning or new, will be stepping onto this land for the first time, into these buildings, onto this waterfront, and that feels significant. All of them will have lost someone to suicide, and all of them will find, somewhere in the course of this week, that there is at least one other person here who gets it, who won’t flinch, who will lean in when they tell the story, not the grief story but the funny one, the real one, the one that begins “my sister used to” or “my dad always” or “my mom was” or “my grandpa would” and ends with a laugh or a smile that surprises even the person telling it.

That laugh, that smile, that moment of joy breaking through, none of it is a small thing. It is the whole thing.

Here we go again: I’m eight years in; Kita is 13 years old, and now, a brand-new home, same big heart, same need. The volunteers are already on their way or have arrived, flying in, driving in, maybe taking the train, coming from all over the country because the volunteer community doesn't have a zip code either. They arrive first, and on Sunday, the kids come home.

And sometimes, the loons call back.

Support

I offer spaces of care, connection, support, and kindness through (links provided):

🌿 The Kita Center – As the Director of Postvention & Community Programming, I develop and lead year-round programming for suicide loss survivors, including a free summer camp for kids, weekend retreats for families and young adults, and our Navigating Grief in the Classroom professional development for schools (and much more). We also offer DavidCares as immediate support and care in the aftermath of a suicide loss.

🌿 1:1 Grief Support – Individualized mentoring grounded in compassion and presence

🌿 Elpis Consulting – Trainings and grief-informed support for schools and communities

If you need help now, please call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: 988.

Milos Karadaglic is playing on my Bluetooth speaker. He’s a classical guitarist, originally from Montenegro, which is just up the Adriatic from Greece, close enough. I decided I needed something Mediterranean, because my sister and her family are in Greece right now and I wanted to feel close to them somehow. Also, if I’m being honest, Milos is quite handsome and talented, and that factored into the decision more than I’d like to admit or, well, you know, I’ll admit that. That’s how my mind works this morning. I needed music; I needed my sister; I found both, more or less, in that order.

And I needed music today because, well, I have a lot I’m feeling and a lot to write. Words are harder. There is a lot to hold.

What We Carry

Grief counselors and researchers have a name for what happens when losses accumulate, when you are not finished grieving one thing before another arrives, when the waves come faster than you can surface between them. Like when the loon has to dive again before it can catch its breath. They call it compounded grief or cumulative grief. The language varies. What it feels like doesn’t. It is the weight of more than one loss pressing at the same time, each one real, each one demanding its own space, each one arriving whether or not you have finished with the last.

There is another term that is important to know also: bereavement overload, coined by psychologist Robert Kastenbaum. While compounded or cumulative grief speaks to the stacking effect, loss upon loss upon loss, bereavement overload focuses on something slightly different: the mental burnout and exhaustion that comes when you simply do not have the psychological capacity to process everything that has arrived. It is not a weakness. It is what happens when more comes than any one person was built to hold at once.

And grief is not only about death. We grieve hopes that didn’t survive and friendships that faded. We grieve versions of ourselves we had to leave behind, and futures we had quietly counted on that were taken, or simply changed beyond recognition. Those losses compound, too, and they deserve the same acknowledgment.

There is also what happens when we grieve alongside others, what researchers call co-regulation, the way our nervous systems respond to the people around us. When you sit with someone in deep grief, you do not only witness it. You absorb it. Your body responds to theirs. For those of us who do this work, who sit with grief professionally, session after session, weekend after weekend, well, that absorption accumulates. It lives in the body. And it is part of what makes this week feel as heavy as it does, for me. This happens in families, in communities, and many other places too.

It is important to name what you are feeling, so let me try to name what I am carrying. Not to perform grief but because naming it is part of how I move through it. And because some of you are carrying something similar right now, I want you to know: what you are feeling is real. That it has a name and it is supposed to be hard.

Always, David

For me, there is David, always. Maybe you also have that one grief that feels heavier than others. And, David, well, seventeen years, and he is still the foundation under everything I do. I wrote about him in the “Before the Retreat” post (and many other times over the last seventeen years) about Bainbridge Island, about spreading his ashes on a beach; seventeen years ago, and then, almost to the day, I stood on the shores of Loon Pond to begin our first retreat for the Kita Center, for Young Adults who’ve had a loss to suicide. He rose through the whole weekend, the way he does when something significant is happening, when the work I’ve built in his memory arrives at a moment that means something.

There is my father too. I wrote about him on Father’s Day not long ago. How I miss him when I need him. How grief doesn’t diminish with time and how sometimes, through perspective and age and distance, love actually grows.

The writer Kathryn Schulz, in her memoir Lost & Found, describes the absence left by the death of her father as the place in the tree where the owl is not. I know exactly what she means.

My father is in the spaces where I reach for the phone to call him. In the questions I save up for the history buff who is no longer here to answer them. In the calm voice I need to hear saying, “don’t get yourself all worked up”, which I wrote about on Father’s Day, and which I still, apparently, need to hear more than I’d like to admit.

He came up this week quietly, the way fathers do. I felt him in the spaces between things. In the place where he is supposed to be.

The Roots of This Work

There is something that lives in the very roots of The Kita Center, grief, yes, but also love. There is always love. Christopher Mosher, whose death by suicide moved his children, Sydney, Morgan, and Isaiah, to build something extraordinary from the unimaginable, a community, a camp, a home for healing on Loon Pond. Thirteen years of grief and love, held together in community, absorbed now into the land around that pond. Every camper, every volunteer, every staff member who has ever found their way to these shores has brought both. They’ve brought grief for who they lost and love for the same person. You cannot separate them, and, at Kita, we never try.

When you work in this space, you are not only holding your own grief and your own love. You are holding all of it. Every story, and every name and every person.

That is the heartwork. That is the privilege, and yes, that is the weight.

And there is the grief of the retreat participants, the young adults who traveled across the country to face their suicide loss full on, who sat in the Bloom Lodge and named the unspeakable, who trusted us with the rawest parts of their stories. I received that grief all weekend. I held it carefully and with love. And even when you are trained for this, even when it is your calling, receiving that much grief leaves something in you that needs care.

Those are all layers of grief before I even get to my week.

My Sister’s Loss

My brother-in-law’s mother, Diane, died earlier in June. Her memorial was held last week, right before the retreat began. I arrived to lead the weekend retreat already holding my sister, my nieces, my brother-in-law, already sitting with their loss before I could sit with anyone else’s.

I want to say something about what my sister’s loss, because it deserves it and she deserves it.

There is a particular bond between a woman and her mother-in-law when it is a good one, when the love for the same man, her son and her husband, becomes its own connective tissue. My sister had that. Two women who understood this one man so deeply, from such different angles, and who found in that understanding a closeness that was its own thing, separate from him and also entirely because of him. My sister is now alone in some of the deepest parts of knowing her husband, the parts that only his mother knew. That kind of loss doesn’t have a clean name. But it is real, and it is profound, and it belongs.

In Her Pain, She Prayed for Us

And then there is my cousin Julie.

My sister shared that my father had said once: God broke the mold after he made Julie.

She died earlier this week.

She was bright and funny, strong and grounded, with a lightness that people needed without always knowing why. She had a deep faith in Christ, a devotedness and trust that were genuinely and completely hers and were not performative, not imposed, but woven into who she was, how she saw the world, how she faced everything that came. I don’t share her faith in the same way. I say that honestly because her faith was a real and sustaining force for her. I loved her, but I could only stand beside her.

In life, she got married and had a son. And then, triplets. Yes, triplets. Because Julie.

And then, about ten years ago, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, like my father before her.

What followed was a decade of strength and pain and faith and perseverance. She researched. She traveled. She sought natural medicines, new treatments, and clinical trials, fighting this war within her body with everything she had. Her want, her deepest want, I believe, was to be a mother. To see her children grow. And she did. She watched all four of them graduate from high school.

And in doing so, they watched her. For ten years, they watched her meet pain with grace, hold faith not as a shield but as a way of being, and love people generously even when she was the one who needed it most. She didn’t just want to see them grow; she showed them how.

About two years ago, my mother and I visited her. Julie met us at the door. A beauty and a light were coming from her that I can only describe as coming from somewhere deeper than the physical, because physically, she was in tremendous pain. She dragged her leg to find a place to sit. She wore a pressure wrap around her head, the cancer having spread. And she sat with us and smiled and talked and was, unmistakably, Julie.

When my mother and I got up to leave, Julie asked if she could pray with us.

She placed her hands on ours. She prayed for my mother, who had already lost my father, her husband of so many years, and prayed for her health, her comfort, her peace. She told a funny story about my father that made us all laugh and cry at the same time. And then she prayed over me and my work, this work, supporting those who have lost someone to suicide, with a tenderness that told me she understood exactly what I was carrying and wanted to hold it with me for a moment.

She was in constant pain, and she prayed for us.

I have been in the presence of grace before. I know what it feels like. That afternoon at Julie’s door was one of the clearest experiences of it I have ever had.

She died over the weekend of the retreat I led at The Kita Center. And she leaves behind four children, a husband, and more people who loved her than I can count. Including me.

But leaving behind is not the whole truth. Because Julie also gave. She modeled for her children, and for her family, and for all of us, through every year of pain, through every treatment, through every morning she met the world with light she had every right to withhold, what it looks like to live with grace and dignity and faith. What it looks like to love people generously, even when you are the one who needs it most.

Her children watched that. For ten years, they watched that and whatever they carry forward, they carry her in it.

That is not only a loss, that is also a legacy.

What the Research Says

I have a PhD. I literally teach all of this. And still, this week, grief arrived exactly as advertised, and I was somehow surprised. Grief, it turns out, does not care about your credentials.

What helps, and the research and my own experience agree on this, is not trying to grieve each loss separately and in order. That is not how grief works, and it is not how we work. What helps is acknowledgment. Naming each loss and giving each one its due. Letting them exist together without asking any of them to wait their turn, and finding, wherever you can, people who can sit with you in it, who don’t need you to be further along than you are. That is what Kita is built on. And this week, I needed it as much as anyone.

Still Carrying

“Grief is just love with no place to go.” — Jamie Anderson

Milos is still playing, and he’s still handsome. The sunlight has shifted a little, the way it does when you’ve been sitting with something for a while. Thankfully, without the intense heat, I turned off the AC and opened some windows. Fresh air and a fresh perspective were needed.

I am still becoming and still figuring out what it means to carry my own grief alongside everyone else’s. I am still learning when to speak and when to be quiet. Still surprised, sometimes, by what surfaces.

Julie would have said something gracious right now, something that made you smile and then made you think, in that order. She had that gift.

I don’t have her faith. But I have the memory of her hands on mine, praying for my work, praying for my mother, in the midst of her own pain.

That is its own kind of grace. And I am carrying it with me.

Support

I offer spaces of care, connection, support, and kindness through (links provided):

🌿 The Kita Center – As the Director of Postvention & Community Programming, I develop and lead year-round programming for suicide loss survivors, including a free summer camp for kids, weekend retreats for families and young adults, and our Navigating Grief in the Classroom professional development for schools (and much more). We also offer DavidCares as immediate support and care in the aftermath of a suicide loss.

🌿 1:1 Grief Support – Individualized mentoring grounded in compassion and presence

🌿 Elpis Consulting – Trainings and grief-informed support for schools and communities

If you need help now, please call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: 988.

My dear friend and miraculous support over the weekend, Stacey, described it perfectly: “wild jet lag plus altitude exhaustion.” I think she meant to the moon and back and Everest, also, maybe. The kind of exhaustion that isn’t only physical- it’s emotional, spiritual, the particular depletion that comes from being fully present for something that asks everything of you. The kind you feel in your bones and also somewhere deeper than your bones.

That is what this weekend was. And I would do it again tomorrow.

Exhausted and fulfilled can coexist.

I wrote a “Before” post last week, right before the Young Adult Resilience Retreat at The Kita Center. At that time, I was sitting with the weight of the timing because seventeen years ago, almost to the day, I had been on Bainbridge Island spreading my David’s ashes on a beach. And here I was, about to stand on the shores of Loon Pond and hold space for young adults carrying their own impossible grief.

What I didn’t know then, what I couldn’t know, was what they would give back.

I am still a little in awe of them, these young adults, these humans in their twenties, who packed bags and traveled across the country, from California, Washington, Florida, New England, and Maine, to face their grief full on. Not to manage it from a safe distance. Not to talk around it, but to face it. To walk straight into it, together, in a place built specifically and intentionally to hold them while they did.

All the feelings were there. The anger and the missing and the confusion and the love. The stigma and the guilt and the shame that suicide loss carries in ways other grief does not. None of it was asked to leave, and all of it was welcome. That is what the Bloom Lodge, the cabin where we led our grief groups, named and built with intention, was made for. To hold exactly this.

In one of our grief groups, someone described their grief as walking through blackberry bushes, thorns piercing from every direction, no way through without being cut. And together, as a group, we sat with that image. And then something shifted. We noticed it together: it wasn’t just any bush. It held blackberries.

Bitter and sweet. Even in the language of grief, even in the subconscious reaching for metaphor, there it was. We found bittersweet together, in that room, in that moment.

That word, bittersweet, came up again and again over the weekend. In the grief groups and around the campfire and in the quiet moments between. There is a satisfaction, a fulfillment of years of work and heart, that wants to pour out of you after a weekend like this. And there is a somberness, always present, about why we were all there in the first place. Both things true, side by side. Neither one cancels the other out.

I’ve written about this many times before, about joy and grief, about how long it took me to understand they are not opposites. This weekend showed me that again, in real time. Tears and honesty and raw authenticity in the Bloom Lodge, and then, sometimes less than 20 minutes later, laughter and joy on the basketball court, in the water, around the dinner table. The dual process, lived, not just taught.

We made a mosaic together.

Broken pieces of ceramic, and, on some, we wrote our names, attendees and volunteers alike, every person who showed up for this weekend. Each person placed their piece. And somehow, out of all that beautiful brokenness, something whole emerged. A little like all of them, together, this weekend.

Your mosaic, like your story, doesn’t have to be whole in the way it was before to be whole in a new way.

My name is on it too, in the bottom right corner. Because I was a piece of it as well, as that’s the lesson: we are not alone; we are all in this together.

To honor the intimacy and privacy of these stories, of their people, of their journeys, there are memories from this weekend that will live only within the combined hearts of those who were there. That is as it should be. What happens in the Bloom Lodge stays in the Bloom Lodge, not because it is shameful, but because it is sacred.

What I can tell you is what I witnessed. Young people facing their grief and then celebrating life. Back and forth, all weekend, the way grief actually moves. And then gratitude, for every volunteer who showed up bringing their own grief, sharing their own story, holding space with their whole hearts. None of this weekend existed without them. And, it has to be called out, lots of love and gratitude to Nicole and her kitchen team!

And I entered this weekend already holding more than the retreat. My brother-in-law’s mother had died earlier in June; her memorial was right before we began the retreat. I was holding my sister, my nieces, and my brother-in-law as the weekend started. And then, over the course of the retreat, my dear cousin Julie lost her own fight to cancer, a more than ten-year journey of strength and pain and faith and perseverance, of grace and courage, leaving behind four children, a husband, and so many who loved her deeply.

Compounded grief is its own thing entirely, and I will write about it separately, soon. But I name it here because it was present. Because grief does not pause for your schedule or your commitments. Because I was holding all of it, and the weekend held me holding it, and that is also what Kita does.

Nobody left this weekend having moved on.

I want to be clear about that because moving on is not what we are after, and it is not what happened. What happened was something quieter and more real. People moved forward, sometimes just slightly, but together. One intensive weekend is not the end of a grief journey, for most of these young adults, it may be closer to a beginning, or a turning point, or simply a moment where the weight felt slightly less impossible because someone else was carrying theirs beside them.

The work continues. It is part of our lives now. Integration, not resolution, and learning to carry it, not put it down.

And leaving was hard. I want to name that, without dressing it up. At Kita, we lean in. Into the grief, into the stories, into the hard and sacred places that suicide loss takes us. The outside world so often leans out, away from the discomfort, away from the stigma, away from the questions that don’t have answers.

At Kita, you don’t have to explain yourself. You don’t have to protect anyone from your story. You don’t have to make your grief smaller so someone else can be comfortable. Stepping back out into a world that doesn’t always know how to hold what Kita holds, well, that carries its own particular ache. Even for people who were ready to go home.

But here is what I believe they are taking with them: the knowledge that connection is possible. That they found it once, that they can find it again, and that the Kita community does not end at the edge of Loon Pond or even when you leave Maine.

When the loons called over the weekend, everything stopped.

Whatever was happening, a conversation, a meal, a moment of laughter, someone would say, quietly, there they are. And we would all listen. That call, carrying across the water. The loon asking, in the only language it knows: Here I am. Where are you? Here I am.

And standing there on the shores of Loon Pond, surrounded by these young adults who had traveled across the country to say exactly that, here I am, I am not hiding anymore, here I am, the call felt less like nature and more like recognition.

I have written about the loons before, about the dive and the surfacing and the way they disappear completely and come back up somewhere entirely new. I won’t repeat all of it here. But I will say this:

These young adults have been diving like those loons for a while now. Grief does that; it takes you under, into the dark, into the feelings you've been carrying alone, never knowing how long you'll be under or where you'll come up. This time, they came up on Loon Pond at The Kita Center. Together. And for a few days, this was the place they surfaced.

Now they go back into their lives. And they will dive again, as grief does not stop at the end of a retreat weekend. But I hope, when they surface wherever they are, they remember what they found here. The connection, the strength, the laughter on the basketball court, twenty minutes after tears. The mosaic, broken and whole at once. The blackberry bush, thorns and sweetness together.

And I hope, when it gets hard again, because it will, they remember that the call still carries. Even at a distance, even when Loon Pond is far away.

The loons are still asking. Here I am. Where are you?

The Kita community is here. We will always call back.

The Kita Center’s next Resilience Retreat is our Family Resilience Retreat this August, followed by a Men’s Retreat in October. More to come, including more Young Adult retreats in 2027. If you or someone you love has been impacted by suicide loss, you do not have to carry it alone. Visit thekitacenter.org to learn more.

Support

I offer spaces of care, connection, support, and kindness through (links provided):

🌿 The Kita Center – As the Director of Postvention & Community Programming, I develop and lead year-round programming for suicide loss survivors, including a free summer camp for kids, weekend retreats for families and young adults, and our Navigating Grief in the Classroom professional development for schools (and much more). We also offer DavidCares as immediate support and care in the aftermath of a suicide loss.

🌿 1:1 Grief Support – Individualized mentoring grounded in compassion and presence

🌿 Elpis Consulting – Trainings and grief-informed support for schools and communitie

If you need help now, please call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: 988.

Young adults, ages 18 to 30, packing their bags in apartments and dorm rooms and childhood bedrooms in California, Washington, Florida, all across New England, and here in Maine. Making their way to Acton, to a place on Loon Pond called The Kita Center. Some of them have never been to Maine, some of them have never told their full story out loud. Some of them have been carrying this grief, the particular, complicated, impossible grief of losing someone to suicide, alone, or mostly alone, for longer than anyone should have to.

They searched for connection. They looked for a place that understood not just grief, but this grief, the kind that comes with shock and guilt and anger and questions that don’t have answers and a silence that can feel, at times, unbearable. And they found Kita.

They are coming. And I am not entirely sure I am ready. And I have learned, after all these years, that not being entirely sure is exactly the right place to begin.

This is the first official one. We ran a pilot program, and it worked. It worked in the way that matters, not just logistically, but humanly. We watched something happen in those young adults during the pilot program that I have watched happen around campfires and in grief groups and on healing walks for years now: a loosening, a recognition, a slow, quiet understanding that you are not alone in this water.

So we built it into something permanent. The first official Young Adult Resilience Retreat at The Kita Center. I had the privilege of developing the content and programming for this weekend, but I want to be honest about what that actually means. It means I did not do it alone. Other hearts kept me focused, held my hand, cheered me on, pushed back when I needed it, and collaborated closely every step of the way. Sydney Mosher Menard, Stacey Jenkins, Lindsay Davis Wirsing, and so many others at Kita who believe in this work with the kind of conviction that makes you believe in it too, even on the days when you’re not sure you do. This is theirs as much as it is mine.

What I brought is years of learning. A PhD in Psychology, degrees and certificates, working for a leading suicide prevention organization, and training, yes, all of it matters, and none of it was enough on its own. Because the answers I was looking for didn’t live in books or research. They lived here, on this pond, in the faces of people who understood without explanation.

But I also brought something the degrees didn’t give me. A natural heart, a listening ear, empathy, and compassion that were always there, long before the credentials. And a lived experience that I have devoted, for my David, to this work, because that is what it is, a devotion, not just a profession.

I know the Dual Process Model of Grief we use, developed by Stroebe and Schut, not just because I studied it, but because I have lived it. Loss-oriented and restoration-oriented, oscillating between the two. Not a failure to grieve properly because that oscillation, it turns out, is what healthy grieving actually looks like. I know it from the research, and I know it from beach walks and time with friends and the very ordinary, very necessary acts of being a human being who is also carrying something heavy. I take care of myself so I can do this work. Never perfectly and not always gracefully, but I walk on beaches, and I call friends, and I sit with the grief, and I also let it go for an afternoon, and then I come back to it. The dual process, lived, not just taught.

David died by suicide seventeen years ago. He was my partner. I’ve written about him here before, about what his loss set in motion, about the searching and the studying and the finding of Kita, about the program here called DavidCares that carries his name. Not because he was perfect, because his heart mattered, because he always let go last in every hug.

This week, Facebook memories reminded me that seventeen years ago, almost to the day, I was on Bainbridge Island, off the coast of Seattle, spreading his ashes on a beach.

And then, the very next day, still seventeen years ago, I celebrated the second birthday of my dear friend’s son. He’s in college now.

I didn’t plan that timing. Grief doesn’t plan. It doesn’t ask if this is a good time. It arrives when it arrives, into whatever you’re doing, and asks you to pay attention. And I have learned, slowly, that joy doesn’t wait for grief to finish either. They show up together sometimes, maybe on different beaches, in the same week, in the same heart. That’s not confusion. That’s not doing it wrong. That is the dual process, lived in twenty-four hours, whether you’re ready for it or not.

And so this week, David has been heavy on me, in the way he gets when something significant is approaching, when the work we’ve been building toward arrives at a moment that feels like it means something. I carry him into everything I do here, because in many ways, he is the reason for all of it.

DavidCares, our program to support families in the immediate aftermath of a suicide loss, carries his name and his spirit. When a family is impacted, we reach out with an individualized care package of books, resources, journals, and more, thoughtfully chosen based on who they are and what they need in that moment. Not a box of things but a gesture that says: you are not invisible. Someone knows you are here, in this.

This weekend, alongside some of the most remarkable humans I know, we will hold space for these young people through grief facilitation and group support, but also through body movement and theater, journaling, healing walks along the pond, kayaking, archery, campfires, and shared meals. All of it held inside the specific, irreplaceable medicine of being around people who simply get it. People who don’t need the loss explained or justified, or made more comfortable for them.

I think about who these young adults are. They are at the time of life that is already complicated with new responsibilities, shifting identities, and social circles in flux. And grief landed in the middle of all of it, uninvited, rewriting their story without their permission. Mid-sentence, without warning, without an ending they ever had the chance to choose. They didn’t ask for this, and yet here they are, brave enough to pack a bag and drive or fly to a pond in Maine because something in them still believes that healing is possible.

That belief is everything. It is the whole thing.

Joy and grief will live in the same afternoon this weekend. I have watched this happen enough times now to stop being surprised by it, and I am still moved every single time. Children kayaking after crying in a support group. Young adults around a campfire, sharing stories of those they lost, stories that somehow, organically, become a song with voices rising into the night. I’ve written about this before, the way it happens here, the way Kita holds both things at once without asking either one to leave.

And somewhere out on the water, if we’re still enough, a loon will call. Long and drawn out, rising then falling, carrying across the pond like it has somewhere important to be. A contact call. Here I am. Where are you? Here I am.

I have learned to listen for it. It has never once failed to say exactly what I needed to hear.

To the young adults arriving this weekend: I see you. I know something of what you carry. I will not pretend to know your specific grief as yours is yours and mine is mine, but I know the weight of it. The questions without answers. The love that didn’t get to finish its sentence.

I also know what it is to arrive somewhere and feel, for the first time in a long time, like you don’t have to explain yourself. Like the people in the room already understand. Like you can exhale.

That is what this place is. That is what we are building, together, this weekend.

You are not coming to be fixed. You are coming to be held, in community, in nature, in a place built specifically and intentionally for you. A place where grief is spoken aloud instead of hidden. Where joy and sorrow are allowed to sit beside each other without either one having to apologize.

You searched for this. You found it. Welcome.

And this weekend is only the beginning. This summer, The Kita Center will hold a Family Resilience Retreat in August and a Men’s Retreat in October. More programming, more retreats, more to come in the year ahead, with all of it rooted in the same belief that brought us to this pond in the first place. That grief does not have to be carried alone. That healing happens in community. That joy and sorrow can live side by side.

We are just getting started.

The Kita Center’s Resilience Retreats are designed for those who have experienced the loss of a loved one to suicide, young adults, families, men’s groups, and more. To learn more or support this work, visit thekitacenter.org.

Our free summer camp, Camp Kita, runs each summer for 8-17-year-olds who’ve experienced a loss.

If you need help now, please call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: 988.

Support

I offer spaces of care, connection, support, and kindness through (links provided):

🌿 The Kita Center – As the Director of Postvention & Community Programming, I develop and lead year-round programming for suicide loss survivors, including a free summer camp for kids, weekend retreats for families and young adults, and our Navigating Grief in the Classroom professional development for schools (and much more). We also offer DavidCares as immediate support and care in the aftermath of a suicide loss.

🌿 1:1 Grief Support – Individualized mentoring grounded in compassion and presence

🌿 Elpis Consulting – Trainings and grief-informed support for schools and communities

It’s a warm afternoon, the kind where you don’t quite need or want to be inside but you are anyway, working, half-present, half-somewhere-else. My Moleskine notebooks are next to me, with one almost filled up, so a new one is ready to be used. A to-do list, on paper, getting crossed off, slowly, at its own pace and not necessarily mine. A computer screen with way too many windows open, which, according to my nephew, is a sign of my age. And Sofiane Pamart playing softly in the background through my phone, piano filling the spaces between everything else.

It is a perfectly ordinary afternoon working at the Kita Center on Loon Pond.

And then, more than once, it came across the water.

The loon.

Not the tremolo (I looked that word up), that wavering, almost laughing call that people sometimes describe as wild or unsettling that a loon sometimes makes. This was the wail. Long and drawn-out, rising then falling, carrying across the pond like it had somewhere important to be.

LOON FIELD NOTE: Ornithologists describe the wail as a contact call, one loon saying to another: here I am, where are you, here I am. It can travel up to two miles across a calm lake. Which feels like important information for a creature whose whole thing is disappearing and resurfacing.

I stopped what I was doing and just listened.

The loon, for the record, did not ask if this was a good time. It never does. That’s the thing about loons and grief, they are not working from your agenda or calendar.

I didn’t grow up thinking about loons. I knew, in the vague way most people do, that a loon was a bird. Beyond that, not much.

And then The Kita Center found its home on Loon Pond. And I came to visit and then to work. And I heard it, that call, rising off the water, and something in me focused. Then I heard another loon answer from somewhere across the pond. And then another.

One call means: someone is out there. The answering call means: you are not alone. I know that feeling, the one where you need someone, where you send something out into the silence and wait. Sometimes the call comes back, sometimes it doesn’t. And I have learned, slowly, that when it doesn’t, that’s not abandonment, that’s just life asking me to find something steady inside myself: a skill and a practice to find a way of being with the quiet.

But when the call does come back, yes, when it does...

That’s the thing about loons, and about grief and about this pond, sometimes, they call back.

Loons dive.

Not a graceful arc, not a slow descent. They just go under, completely, quickly, with no trace. The water closes over them, and they are simply gone, and you have no idea where they’ll come back up. Could be close or halfway across the pond. You watch the spot where they disappeared, waiting, and then movement catches your eye somewhere entirely unexpected.

There they are, they’ve surfaced, still themselves but somewhere new.

LOON FIELD NOTE: Loons can dive up to 200 feet and hold their breath for several minutes. Their bones are denser than most birds’, so built for going under, not for staying light.

I’ve been under a few times in my life. Grief will do that, loss will do that. The moments when something you thought was solid, a relationship, a version of yourself, a future you’d quietly counted on, goes out from under you, and you go down with it. And the not-knowing, while you’re under, is its own particular kind of terror. You don’t know how long and you don’t know where you’ll come up. You just have to trust that you will.

What I’m still learning, slowly and imperfectly, is that where you surface is never where you went down. That’s not a failure of the dive but the whole point of it.

I have also watched a loon dive and come up with a fish, and absolutely nothing else is going on. No metaphor and no meaning, just a bird eating lunch. Not everything is a revelation. But some things are, and the trick is knowing which is which, which mostly requires sitting still long enough to find out.

STEVEN FIELD NOTE: I may also be becoming slightly obsessed with loons. A loon for loons. In writing, I can’t tell if that is funny or a problem. I recently bought a loon print for my cottage walls. I don't buy a lot of art, but I needed this one. I've been researching them, reading about them in bird books, fiction, whatever I can find. I believe the clinical term is loonaphile. I'm not sure about that, but I'm leaning into it either way.

The loon doesn’t only call when the world is still.

It called this afternoon in the warm air, door open, the ordinary middle of a workday. Grief and beauty don’t wait for the right moment. I’ve noticed that about both of them as they arrive when they arrive, into whatever you’re doing, and ask you to pay attention.

There are a lot of contradictions in life and in grief. I used to think that if I was feeling joy, I wasn’t honoring the grief. Or that the grief meant the joy wasn’t real. It took me a long time, seventeen years of my own grief, and many more years of sitting with others in theirs, to understand that these are not opposites.

They surface together sometimes.

That’s not confusion, and that’s not doing it wrong. That is what the fullness of being human actually feels like. Grief and joy, side by side on the water. Both real, both true, and both asking to be held without one canceling the other out.

At The Kita Center, we developed a healing walk, a trail of about half a mile along Loon Pond, through the woods, and back again. Along the path, there are prompts for reflection and a stop at the wind phone. I lead a guided walk on second Wednesdays, though the healing walk is always there, always waiting and available for anyone's own contemplation. You can stop anywhere, stand for a moment, look at the water, listen for the loon's call or the hawk's screech or the squirrel chattering in the trees, watch the sun sparkle on the water or dapple through the leaves. There is no rush to finish. The walk waits for the person, for the healing, for the story, for the grief.

The pond doesn’t ask you to explain. It just receives.

LOON FIELD NOTE: Loons are one of the oldest living bird species, part of a primitive lineage at least 55 million years old. They were calling across lakes long before we were here to hear them. Something about that helps me hold my own grief a little more lightly. It has been witnessed before. The water has held harder things than this.

Nature does something for grief that sitting still can’t always manage. Movement helps. The body, carrying the heart and then the trees, not asking anything of you. The water, holding its own reflection without effort. There is something in returning to the same path, again and again, and noticing that you are slightly different each time, that the loop is the same and you are not, and that this is not a problem.

That is what becoming looks like, sometimes. Not a grand transformation. Just the same loop, walked again, in a body that has lived a little more since the last time.

Seventeen years ago, grief found me in a way I didn’t see coming. It changed the shape of everything, of who I thought I was, what I thought I was building, and where I thought I was going. I went under.

I won’t tell you the surfacing was quick or clean or that I came up knowing where I was. I came up confused, and changed, and, eventually, more myself than I had been before. That’s the paradox of grief that nobody warns you about. It takes things. And sometimes, in the taking, it leaves something behind that you didn’t know you needed.

It sent me toward this work. Toward other people’s grief, and what it asks of us to sit beside it. I didn’t choose that direction so much as I was pointed there by loss, by curiosity, by the growing conviction that grief is not the thing that separates us from each other. It is the thing that connects us. Every one of us will lose someone, and every one of us will go under. That is not a reason for despair. That is the most human thing there is.

I have sat with a lot of people in their grief around the world and from all walks of life, at Camp Kita, in peer groups over Zoom, and sometimes individually, in person, with coffee, sometimes with wine.

Children as young as five, who already know what it is to lose someone they love and who carry it in their small bodies with a kind of quiet that breaks your heart open if you let it. Teenagers who feel everything and have been given almost no language for any of it, who light up when someone finally sits with them in it instead of steering around it. Adult volunteers who show up at The Kita Center to hold space for others and quietly find themselves held in return because grief doesn’t check credentials and loss doesn’t ask your age before it arrives.

Families, so many families who have lost someone to suicide, to illness, to the thousand ways we lose people before we are ready. Parents carrying their own grief while trying to hold their children's, often so focused on their kids that their own mourning gets quietly set aside. It's not neglect, it's love, and yet grief doesn't wait for a convenient moment. Healing has to happen both ways, each person in their own time and in their own way, and together as a family. Neither replaces the other, and both need care, the individual and the family.

And individuals, so many grieving individuals I’ve met. Some are truly alone in their story and their grief; others feel alone in the midst of large families or friend circles who are trying but perhaps don't fully understand. People who have been shattered by a loss to suicide and are trying to find their footing again, beginning, first, with the shock, the stigma, the guilt, the anger, the confusion, and the questions, oh, the questions. All of it redefining them, reshaping their identity, rewriting their story with an unimaginable twist to the plot that no one ever wanted, needed, or expected to survive. Their story was not rewritten by their own hand. It was taken from them, mid-sentence, without warning, without permission, and without an ending they ever had the chance to choose. And yet, in the slow, gentle, and courageous work of reimagining and rebuilding, something unexpected often emerges, not a return to who they were, but a discovery of who they are still becoming.

None of them came to me because grief was tidy; they came because it wasn’t. And something happens in the showing up, at five, at fifteen, at fifty, that I have watched again and again and still can’t fully explain. A loosening, a recognition that becomes the slow, quiet understanding that you are not alone in the grief, in the water.

That the dive, as terrifying as it is, is not yours alone.

STEVEN FIELD NOTE: I should also tell you that I have, on more than one occasion, heard the loon call and thought: not now, I’m busy, which is, I realize, exactly the point. The call doesn’t come when you’re ready for it. It comes when you need it. And figuring out what you need, well, that part takes a little longer. As I shared already, that part requires sitting with it, which is inconvenient, and also, it turns out, the whole thing.

It is late afternoon now, and the pond has gone quiet.

I am still becoming, still figuring out what it means to carry seventeen years of my own grief alongside the grief of everyone I’ve had the privilege of sitting with. Still learning when to speak and when to be quiet. Still surprised, sometimes, by what surfaces.

But this afternoon, with the door open and the work spread out in front of me, a loon called out across the water.

More than once.

Here I am. Where are you? Here I am.

And somewhere, from the other side of the pond, another loon called back.

That’s not nothing.

That might be everything.

Support

I offer spaces of care, connection, support, and kindness through (links provided):

🌿 The Kita Center – As the Director of Postvention & Community Programming, I develop and lead year-round programming for suicide loss survivors, including a free summer camp for kids, weekend retreats for families and young adults, and our Navigating Grief in the Classroom professional development for schools (and much more). We also offer DavidCares as immediate support and care in the aftermath of a suicide loss.

🌿 1:1 Grief Support – Individualized mentoring grounded in compassion and presence

🌿 Elpis Consulting – Trainings and grief-informed support for schools and communities

It took both hands.

A month ago, I stood in front of a room full of people at the Connecticut Suicide Prevention Conference and asked them to do something simple. Pick up a postcard. Write a few words to someone in their life, to someone who might be struggling, or to themselves. Then leave it at the front of the room. I told them I’d mail them in a month.

I always try to keep promises like that. And, gosh, sometimes, as we all do, I forget. Not because I don’t mean to keep the promise. Life moves, and months fill up. Good intentions get buried under the ordinary weight of everything else. I know this about myself. I know it about all of us.

But this morning, I kept this one.

And standing there at that mailbox, both hands full, I felt a lot more than I thought I would.

Overwhelmed, a little. I was holding hope for 252 people. Support. The small possibility that something, a few words on a card, a stamp, a month-later arrival in a mailbox, might land at exactly the right moment for someone. Might offer a pause or might bring a small, quiet smile. Might say: someone was thinking of you. You still matter.

That's a lot to hold in two hands. And underneath all of it, hmmm, I felt satisfied and maybe complete, even. I don't come to those feelings easily.

Since That Day

I still feel the fullness of that standing ovation from the conference a month ago.

I want to say that out loud because I think we don’t always let ourselves say it. It felt good. Of course it did. But what moved me more was what it said about the people in that room, the ones who work in prevention, intervention, and postvention, who give others dignity in their most vulnerable moments, who show up day after day for work that is often invisible and rarely celebrated. When they stood up, I felt something beyond affirmation. The recognition that across all of that work, it is all the same thing. Relational work. The work of making sure no one carries it alone.

And sharing my story, my David, my loss, the vulnerability of saying out loud in a room full of strangers what grief actually did to me, well, that is never without a toll. Modeling openness is something I believe in deeply. And it costs something every time. Not a reason to stop, just a truth worth naming.

Since that day, a month has passed. We had our grand opening at The Kita Center. I hosted our first healing walk at Loon Pond, and another one is this Wednesday. And also this Wednesday, I’ll complete the sixth and final session of our first cohort of Navigating Grief in the Classroom with a group of educators who have shown up every week, wildly engaged, generous with each other, and deeply committed to meeting their students in the middle of grief rather than around it. Watching that unfold over six weeks has been one of the quieter joys of the last few weeks.

And then there were the friends. A childhood friend, someone I have known most of my life, drove 11 hours from Ohio for the grand opening. She has known her own loss of her dear brother to suicide, and she showed up with her whole heart. We shared a lot of lobster and wine, and the kind of conversation that only happens between people who have carried the same particular weight. And two of my closest friends traveled from Seattle just to see me. Yes, me. They knew David. We visited The Kita Center as well as many beaches along the Maine seacoast. They carry their own grief, as we all do, and they also bring so much joy. They spent three days with me in my cottage, my tiny home, laughing, talking, simply being together. Old friendship holding everything, new memories being made inside it.

There’s a phrase we say at Kita. Grief and joy can coexist. It’s actually a paraphrase of a quote and the work of Dr. Susan David. And we live it, not just say it. In the dual process work we do with kids and families, facing the pain, and also integrating it all toward something like thriving, we hold both. The weight and the possibility. The sorrow and the forward movement.

I held all of it this morning at that mailbox.

What Stays

There is something about completing a promise, especially a small one, especially a quiet one, that feels like its own kind of meaning.

Not because the world changed. Not because anyone noticed. But because I said I would, and I did, and somewhere in the doing of it I felt the arc of the last seventeen years settle into something I can only call purpose. My story, David’s story, the work it sent me toward, the story of Kita, all of it carried in two hands to a mailbox on a Monday morning.

252 postcards on their way.

To someone who might need to hear: you still matter.

To someone who might need a pause.

To someone who, for just a moment, might feel a little less alone.

To someone who needs a rabbit or is ready to be one.

I’ll be your rabbit. (IYKYK)

That’s the work.

And if you ever find yourself in Acton, Maine, you are always welcome at The Kita Center on Loon Pond.

Support

I offer spaces of care, connection, support, and kindness through (links provided):

🌿 The Kita Center – As the Director of Postvention & Community Programming, I develop and lead year-round programming for suicide loss survivors, including a free summer camp for kids, weekend retreats for families and young adults, and our Navigating Grief in the Classroom professional development for schools (and much more). We also offer DavidCares as immediate support and care in the aftermath of a suicide loss.

🌿 1:1 Grief Support – Individualized mentoring grounded in compassion and presence

🌿 Elpis Consulting – Trainings and grief-informed support for schools and communities

― Nayyirah Waheed

A few weeks ago, I stood on a stage and shared some of the most vulnerable parts of my life. Actually, twice in the last month. Two keynotes. Two rooms filled with people doing deeply human work around mental health, suicide prevention, suicide postvention, grief, belonging, and connection.

And at the second keynote, at the Connecticut Suicide Prevention Conference, when it ended, people stood.

A standing ovation. It was generous. Moving. Humbling. And if I’m honest? Completely exhausting. Not in a bad way. In a deeply human way.

Because vulnerability creates a strange kind of saturation, you can feel profoundly connected and completely depleted at the same time, seen and exposed. Full and emptied. Grateful and aching.

That’s the thing I keep learning about grief: it rarely removes emotions. It layers them. Joy alongside sorrow. Purpose partnering with longing. Healing and ache. Both things true at once.

And right now, all of it is converging. My David, David C. Babb, died by suicide on March 4, 2009. Seventeen years of grief. Of healing. Of studying and teaching and searching and learning. Of showing up to classrooms and support groups and conference stages and campfire circles. Of becoming, slowly, someone I didn’t know I was becoming. My hair has gone fully gray. My waist has quietly expanded. Time written on me in ways David never got to experience. All of it converging for me here, this weekend, at a ribbon cutting, a grand opening for The Kita Center, in the woods of Maine. David is everywhere in it. That’s not a coincidence. That’s the whole story.

I Am Here

David has been everywhere lately. Or maybe not everywhere. Maybe just here.

Because the deeper truth is this: I am here because David died.

That sentence still catches in my chest when I say it out loud. Because I don’t mean “here” metaphorically. I mean literally here, in Maine, at The Kita Center, a place built specifically for those impacted by suicide loss. Twenty-eight acres of woods, water, community, healing walks, campfires, retreats, tears, laughter, and stories.

Thirteen years ago, this all began as Camp Kita with five campers, a borrowed space, and a belief that children bereaved by suicide deserved somewhere to go. Siblings Sydney, Morgan, and Isaiah Mosher co-founded this community in 2013, and I found my way here not long after, first as a grief group leader, then co-developer of programming, and then a board member. All of it as a volunteer. All of it alongside a community of people who believed in this place before it had a name for what it was becoming. I have grown alongside Kita in my grief, in my healing, and in my professional life. And now, as Director of Postvention and Community Programs, this is my full-time work and calling.

Over those years, quietly and steadily, something else grew. What is now The Kita Center has expanded far beyond that first summer camp into family retreats, a young adult retreat, a men’s retreat, day programming, healing walks, and a free summer camp that meets every child where they are in their grief journey. And this weekend, we gather at our forever home, a new location on Loon Pond in Acton, Maine, for the grand opening and ribbon-cutting. The programming we co-developed carries weight I want to name honestly, weight that, for me, has David’s fingerprints all over it.

Nine years of me showing up before it was fully formed, and now this. I keep trying to find the right word for what that feels like and coming up short. Joyful. Surreal. Heavy. Full.

Woven throughout this place are people who are no longer physically here. Christopher Mosher, who died by suicide, and in whose memory his children, Sydney, Morgan, and Isaiah, co-founded this community. My David. So many others. And every camper and every counselor who arrives carries their own: the fathers and mothers, the siblings and friends, the grandparents and children they lost to suicide. They bring them here. Into these woods, by this pond, around the campfire. Every person who finds their way to Kita, who walks these grounds, who comes to these shores, has been touched by suicide loss. You can feel that in the stories, in the rituals, in the gentleness and grace people offer each other here, in the way grief is spoken aloud instead of hidden.

The aftermath support program is called DavidCares. Not because David was perfect. Not because suicide loss made him into a saint. But because his heart mattered. Because he loved deeply. Because he reached for connection. Because even in pain, he taught me something about tenderness, presence, and what it means to stay with another human being. He always let go last in every hug.

The person who died does not disappear from the work or our lives. Sometimes they become woven into it, not symbolically, but actually. When I facilitate grief groups, when I sit with a teenager after a suicide loss, when I help build spaces where people feel less alone, I am sharing myself, yes. But I am also sharing what David gave me.

Love. Not abstract love. Practiced love. The kind that opened its arms for one more hug.

Love Leaves Traces

I’ve written about this next part before, but it came to mind again as I developed the keynotes, the strange way grief collapses time.

A few years ago, I logged into an old YMCA account online and suddenly David’s profile appeared on the screen. It shocked me how quickly he was there again. I remembered the few blocks we walked together to sign up for that gym, and the few blocks we walked home sore afterward.

And then there was this strange moment: because the YMCA system didn’t know David had died, in the online world, he had continued to age. David died at 34. But there on the screen, the system had quietly moved him forward through the years.

And suddenly I found myself wondering: Who would he be at 51? Who would we be now? What would our lives look like?

It hit me how grief can collapse time like that. How someone can be gone for years and suddenly feel painfully, vividly present again in a matter of seconds. Grief still arrives. Love still arrives. My heart still skips a bit when I see his smile. But what’s changed over the years is that I no longer experience those moments as proof I’m broken. I experience them as reminders that love leaves traces. And that even now, some part of me still steps back in for one more hug.

That’s Not What Happened

Grief stories sometimes get told too neatly. As if someone dies and suddenly purpose appears. As if loss automatically transforms people into wiser, more meaningful versions of themselves.

That’s not what happened.

David died. And then I survived. And then I struggled. And then I searched. And then I stayed engaged with life long enough for meaning to slowly emerge. That distinction matters enormously to me, especially when I sit beside grieving people, because many of them are still in the surviving stage. Still trying to get through the day. Still exhausted. Still angry. Still untethered. Still wondering who they are now. Stories that move too quickly toward transformation can unintentionally make grief feel like a failure when meaning doesn’t arrive on schedule.

For me, this was never about moving on. It was about integration. Learning how to carry it all, sorrow without becoming only sorrow, love without collapsing under longing, memory without living entirely in the past. And learning how to carry all the different versions of myself that emerged across these years: the self before David, the self with David, the self shattered after him, and every version since. None of them disappeared. They became integrated.

I Would. Immediately.

Grief can get flattened into inspirational language too quickly, and I want to resist that here.

I have found purpose. I have made meaning. I have helped build things that matter. I have supported people I never would have met otherwise, helped co-develop programs now recognized far beyond Maine, watched young people slowly realize they are not broken, and watched adults exhale because someone finally understood.

I believe deeply in this work.

And still, if I could trade all of it for one more hug from David?

I would. Immediately.

I don’t think saying that diminishes the meaning I’ve made. I think it honors the love. Because grief is not a logic problem. It is a continuation of attachment. And maybe part of healing is becoming able to say both things at the same time without needing to erase either one. I am grateful for the life I have now. And I still wish he had lived. Both things true.

Both Things True

At The Kita Center, I see this coexistence everywhere. Children kayaking on the pond after crying in a support group. Young adults sitting around a campfire, bonding over their grief and the stories of those they lost, stories that somehow, sometimes, organically, become song. Voices rising into the night, singing to the loons on Loon Pond, who sometimes, truly, call back. People walking the trails of our new forever home, sharing memories of someone they loved, a smile breaking through, then a laugh that surprises even them. People holding hands beside the water, talking about someone they lost, feeling, somehow, a little less alone.

And one of the things I've learned through this work is that those who come here are not only grieving the person who died by suicide. They are often grieving versions of themselves too: the parent they were before the phone call, the partner they were before the silence, the child who thought adults could always keep people safe. And they bring everyone they miss and grieve with them when they come, their fathers and mothers, siblings and friends, grandparents and children, everyone they carry in their grief. I try to give them the dignity of being seen, heard, and held in all they bring. And what they give me in return, more than they will ever know, is more than I can name. I learn from them every time.

Grief reshapes identity. Which is why so many people quietly ask: Who am I now? Maybe healing is not finding the old self again. Maybe it is learning how to become someone new without abandoning the people and love that came before.

This is what I mean by the fullness of grief. Not that grief shrinks over time. But that life slowly grows around it. Things like love, community, meaning, and somehow, impossibly, joy. Not replacing sorrow. Living beside it.

We Will Not Come Alone

This weekend, when we gather for the ribbon cutting at The Kita Center, none of us will arrive alone. We will bring with us our loved ones who are with us, loving us, supporting us, hugging us, holding us, all together building community through the shared and singular grief of suicide loss, a grief many don't understand but everyone at Kita knows deeply. We will also bring the mothers and fathers, the brothers and sisters, the grandparents and friends, the children and partners, everyone we have lost and everyone we carry. We will bring our connection, our love, our meaning and purpose, our resilience, and the hard-won knowledge that we do not have to do any of this alone.

And maybe that is part of what makes The Kita Center singular. There is no other place like it, grief support and postvention work tied specifically to suicide loss, held in community, in nature, across a lifetime of healing. Not offering answers. Not offering closure. Not a way to stop missing someone. But a place where people can carry love and loss together. A place where the question "Who am I now?" does not have to be answered in isolation.

Grief does not only take from us. Sometimes, through the people we loved, it also leaves something behind, a way of seeing, a way of staying, a way of loving others more honestly.

And maybe that is part of David still being here too.

If you are in Maine or can find your way here, we would love to have you join us for the ribbon cutting and garden opening at The Kita Center on May 24th at 3 pm. Come as you are. Bring whoever you carry. You will not be alone here.

Join us and get more info (click link)

Support

I offer spaces of care, connection, support, and kindness through (links provided):

🌿 The Kita Center – As the Director of Postvention & Community Programming, I develop and lead year-round programming for suicide loss survivors, including a free summer camp for kids, weekend retreats for families and young adults, and our Navigating Grief in the Classroom professional development for schools (and much more). We also offer DavidCares as immediate support and care in the aftermath of a suicide loss.

🌿 1:1 Grief Support – Individualized mentoring grounded in compassion and presence

🌿 Elpis Consulting – Trainings and grief-informed support for schools and communities

A lovely group of people gathered along the shores of Loon Pond, some who knew each other, some who didn’t, all of them carrying something. We started with coffee, which was very much needed. May in Maine has not gotten the memo that it’s supposed to be warm yet.

Eight reflection prompts line the trail, each one an invitation to pause and go a little deeper. Some responses stayed internal, held privately. Others were spoken aloud and held by the group. At one stop, the prompt:

“Thinking about your person, what’s something about them you don’t want to forget? A small detail, a habit, a moment. Let it walk with you.”

A few people shared, and the space got quiet.

And then a loon called out across the water.

As if on cue.

We walked. We shared. We cried. We laughed. We remembered. And somewhere along that half-mile loop, we built a little community. That’s the whole point, really.

At the end of our time together, I read from Mark Nepo’s Book of Awakening. Each entry is written by date, and today’s, as Mark has a way of doing, landed exactly where we were. It always does. There’s something a little magical about that book. Or maybe about mornings like this one.

I recorded the reading for you. It’s my gift today, to you, and to anyone who needs a moment to stop, breathe, and honor their own story.

Press play. Close your eyes. Give yourself the space.

And when you do, listen for that loon, way off in the distance.

Listen here:

Come walk with us.

Each Wednesday Walk is its own, with the leaves and flowers shifting, the weather changing, the sounds of summer rising and eventually fading toward fall. No two walks will be the same, because no two days on Loon Pond or at The Kita Center ever are. And yes, the coffee will be there. Always.

We walk on the second Wednesday of every month, now through October. 10 AM to noon. A gentle half-mile loop along the water. Reflection prompts on the trail. A guided walk with me, or at your own pace and your own quiet.

Free. Open to anyone carrying any kind of loss.

If you’re in Maine or finding your way here this summer, come find us at the Kita Center.

If this landed for you today, share it with someone who might need it. You never know who is quietly carrying something and looking for a place to set it down for a while.

You are not alone. 🌿

Support

I offer spaces of care, connection, support, and kindness through (links provided):

🌿 The Kita Center – As the Director of Postvention & Community Programming, I develop and lead year-round programming for suicide loss survivors, including a free summer camp for kids, weekend retreats for families and young adults, and our Navigating Grief in the Classroom professional development for schools (and much more). We also offer DavidCares as immediate support and care in the aftermath of a suicide loss.

🌿 1:1 Grief Support – Individualized mentoring grounded in compassion and presence

🌿 Elpis Consulting – Trainings and grief-informed support for schools and communities

Find your voice. Share your truth. Shape your narrative.

And I believe in all of that.

Stories matter. They help us make sense of what has happened. They help us organize memory, identity, and meaning. They allow us to say: this is what I lived through.

So, in my work and in my own life, I’ve learned that telling the story matters.

Something else may matter just as much:

Do we know how to receive a story, hold it, when it is shared?

Because storytelling is only half the practice.

The other half?

Storycatching.

Where this idea comes from

Some of you know I use the word storycatcher a lot.

Long before I had language for it, listening was one of the ways I loved people. It showed up in friendships, in the way I was with people. (If you ask some of my friends, they might say I’m kinda known for it.) It deepened when I became an educator, sitting with young people and learning how to hear not only what was being said, but what was being carried.

Later, when I moved more fully into suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention work, I began to understand that what once felt instinctive was also a skill. More than that, it was a best practice.

I also realized something else: not everyone had been taught how to do this.

Many people want to help, but feel unsure. Uncomfortable. Or believe they need to fix something rather than simply stay.

I first encountered language around this practice through the work of Mark Yaconelli, in his deeply meaningful book Between the Listening and the Telling, which explores the healing power of presence, attention, and story.

Later, I encountered the term storycatcher more directly through Christina Baldwin and her book Storycatcher: Making Sense of Our Lives Through the Power and Practice of Story. Her work explores how stories shape identity, community, and meaning, and she describes storycatchers as those who help remind us who we are and invite forward the stories most needed in a community.

And beyond both of their work, storycatching is much older than any modern term for it.

It lives in Indigenous traditions, oral histories, elder wisdom, and communal memory. Long before podcasts and keynotes, communities knew stories were not only told. They were held.

Maybe this is not a new idea at all.

Maybe it is something, a story that was caught, that we are remembering.

What is storycatching?

Storycatching is receiving someone else’s story with care.

Not fixing it, editing it, or rushing it toward a lesson. Not trying to make it more comfortable for you.

Just holding it.

Listening in a way that says:

Your story can land here.

Mark Yaconelli writes:

“When we listen well to another story, it blooms within the body… the story becomes a tether, binding us to one another.”

That word tether is so good, tied tight to each other.

Storycatching is older than us

We often think of stories as something humans tell. But storycatching exists all around us.

The rings of a tree hold stories, years of drought, growth, and survival. Birds change their song when danger is near, when they have found food, or when they are singing some version of, Catch my mating story, I’ve got something to do here. Animal tracks tell stories to those who know how to read them. Bees dance directions. Roots communicate underground. We’ve all heard of Pando, yes? If not, take time to Google it.

The world is constantly sending signals.

And constantly receiving them.

Storycatching, in this sense, is not only a human skill. It is a way of being in relationship with life itself.

The world keeps singing this lesson to us.
Are we listening yet?

Why this matters right now

We are living in a time where loneliness, fragmentation, and disconnection are named more openly than ever.

And yet one of the strongest responses we have remains one of the least practiced: listening.

Not “I’m waiting for my turn to talk” listening. Not “let me fix this for you” listening. But the kind that says:

I’m here. You don’t have to clean this up for me.

Storycatching builds belonging, mattering, connection, and community. It matters in grief work, in classrooms, in friendships, and in suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention.

Because before someone can receive help, they often need to feel heard.

What grief taught me about this

I did not learn storycatching only through books or professional work. I learned it through loss.

When my partner David died by suicide in 2009, I entered a world of grief I had not known before. Like many people after traumatic loss, I looked backward often. I replayed conversations. I wondered what I missed. I imagined different words, different timing, different outcomes.

That is a common human response to tragedy.

But over time, what remained most useful was not blame or self-punishment. It was learning.

David loved hugs. Deep hugs. He was taller than me, and my head would rest on his shoulder while his arms wrapped fully around me. Every time I left the house, a hug was mandatory. And often, just as I was about to walk out the door, he would call me back for one more.

I understand something differently now.

He may not have wanted me to solve his pain as much as I thought. He may have wanted to be held inside it. Held inside our love.

I came to understand that people in deep pain, like my David, often need more than answers. They need presence. They need spaces where fear, confusion, despair, or silence can be met without panic. They need someone willing to stay near the story, even when the story is unfinished.

I do not hold that lesson as guilt.

I hold it as humility.

And as something I now try to offer others.

Where storytelling can fall short on its own

We’ve built a culture that loves a good story with a clean arc, all the clues neatly placed, a twist that makes sense in hindsight, and a closing line strong enough for a mug, a meme, a t-shirt, or a keynote slide. We want four episodes of tension and one perfect ending.

But grief does not work like that.

Life does not work like that.

Culture wants neat endings.
Life, and grief, give unfinished stories.

Many of the most important stories in life do not end cleanly. They leave loose ends, questions, and work to do. They often leave something to carry, and sometimes, something to mend.

When storytelling is emphasized without storycatching, something subtle happens: people begin shaping their stories to be more acceptable, more finished, more shareable, instead of more true.

I see this all the time. A student begins to share, then edits mid-sentence. An educator softens what is hard. A parent pauses and says, “I don’t know if this makes sense…”

It’s not that the story isn’t there.

It’s that they’re not sure it will be held well.

What it looks like

The branch

Let’s spend a moment with that bird sitting on a branch, singing.

You don’t always know what the song means. It could be grief. It could be joy. It could be that danger is near. It could be look what I found. It could be I am, for what feels like the tenth straight morning, looking for a mate.

Another bird hears it.

Instead of interrupting or replacing the song, it listens. It notices the rhythm, the pauses, the pattern. And maybe, slowly, it joins, not by taking over, but by honoring what was already there.

That’s storycatching: listening long enough to understand someone else’s song before adding your own.

And if you’ve ever joined or interrupted too early, you know how quickly the other bird, other human, may stop singing, or simply fly away.

Stories can be sent more than once.
Sometimes we need multiple chances to catch them.

The catch

I also think about how we teach kids to throw and catch or kick and receive.

You don’t just toss the ball. You make eye contact. You aim. You throw, you kick, you toss with care.

And the other person? Eyes up. Hands ready. Feet turned. Paying attention not just to catch, but to receive.

Something happens between these two people: trust, timing, awareness.

Stories work the same way. If I throw mine carelessly, it drops. If you are not ready, it misses. But when both people are present, something moves between us.

Not just information.

Connection.

Storycatching as a skill

We teach speaking. We teach presenting. We teach framing your message.

We rarely teach how to sit with silence, stay with emotion, listen without preparing a reply, or let a story remain unfinished.

Storycatching is not passive. It asks for steadiness, presence, humility, and a willingness not to be the center of the moment.

In my life and work

In the years since David’s death, working with young people, families, and educators, I’ve noticed something:

Young people want to talk. They want to understand themselves. They want to support their friends.

People grieving want to speak the name of the person they lost. They want to tell stories others may be tired of hearing. They want room for complicated feelings.

Older adults often want something similar: not advice, but to be truly heard. I think of my mother now in her nineties. Storycatching feels especially important here. I want to hear her stories now, in her own voice, with the life still in them, rather than someday reaching for them only through my memory. She reminds me that storycatching belongs to every stage of life.

But more than anything, people want to be heard without being rushed, corrected, or managed.

In suicide prevention, grief work, and education, we often focus on what to say. And words matter.

But just as important is this:

Can we create spaces where someone’s story can land safely?

Because if someone feels overwhelmed, they are rarely ready to learn.

But if they feel heard?

Something opens.

Hope becomes possible.

The loop

Storytelling and storycatching are not separate practices. They are a loop.

When someone is truly heard, they become more able to speak. And when someone speaks honestly, they invite someone else to listen.

In the healthiest spaces, grief groups, classrooms, friendships, families, communities, this is always happening: someone speaks, someone receives, something shifts.

Not because the story was perfect.

Because it was heard.

A quiet invitation

If you’ve been working on your voice, your story, your message, I’d offer another question:

Who are you becoming as someone who receives the stories of others?

Because the world does not only need more storytellers.

It needs more people who know how to listen, hold, and stay.

Closing

There’s a line from David Whyte that is a favorite:

“The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement… but recognition.”

Not fixing. Not improving.

Recognition.

Some stories do not need to be shaped. They need to be witnessed.

And sometimes, the most meaningful thing we can offer another person is not our words, but our willingness to stay.

Support

I offer spaces of care, connection, support, and kindness through (links provided):

🌿 The Kita Center – As the Director of Postvention & Community Programming, I develop and lead year-round programming for suicide loss survivors, including a free summer camp for kids, weekend retreats for families and young adults, and our Navigating Grief in the Classroom professional development for schools (and much more). We also offer DavidCares as immediate support and care in the aftermath of a suicide loss.

🌿 1:1 Grief Support – Individualized mentoring grounded in compassion and presence

🌿 Elpis Consulting – Trainings and grief-informed support for schools and communities

Last night, I went to a benefit concert for The Kita Center.

I went as the Director of Postvention, my job.
I went as a long-time volunteer at Camp Kita, my heartwork.
I went as someone who has lost a loved one to suicide, my David.

And, though I didn’t fully realize it until I got there,
I went as someone in need of joy.

Also, if I’m being honest, I went because I love live music. I really love live music. I love Lake Street Dive. I wanted to see friends. I wanted to be in a room where something good was happening. I wanted to not be home on a Tuesday night, thinking about work or my own lack of a man in my life.

All of these things can be true at once.

And they were.

Where I’ve Been Sitting

The benefit concert had been sitting on my calendar for weeks. A Tuesday night. Something to look forward to… and, if I’m honest, something that also felt like an interruption. Not just to my schedule, but to where I’ve been sitting lately.

The world feels hard right now.

Even if, for me, it is not remotely as hard as it is for so many others. But I feel it, empathetically, and in the most human of ways.

Not only in my own life, but in the way I stay connected to others, and in the ways those connections themselves feel strained. Communities feel strained, fragile, and not as steady as they once felt. People are carrying more than they show. And there’s a quiet sense, at times, that we are both deeply connected and increasingly distant.

And I feel that.

I feel it in families navigating suicide loss. In teens, trying to make sense of something that doesn’t make sense. In educators and international school communities living inside instability, sometimes sleeping in bomb shelters, relocating across countries, and watching their schools close for safety.

Holding shock, grief, and loss. People are trying to understand how it moves through them, through us, through their hearts, their minds, their bodies, through their families, their classrooms, their communities, their cultures. and how to keep going, even as it all unfolds.

This is the work. And it doesn’t stay contained.

I wasn’t sure I had it in me for a concert, a night that could feel light when so much feels unresolved. When even the idea of fixing anything, including myself, felt out of reach. And, remembering that fixing is not the goal, connection is.

Getting There

Still, I got ready.

With a little more intention than usual. I put on my infrequently used black velvet jacket, tied a knot in my tie, then tied it again, trying to remember a Windsor knot, and then ran a comb through my typically tousled gray hair. Alas, there are limits to my transformation.

On the drive, I turned on a playlist I’ve been building for years: “Birthday Bash.” A playlist for a party I threw myself once in Cleveland. A playlist I keep adding to for the next one, if I ever throw myself a birthday party again.

Jamiroquai. Al Jarreau. Pet Shop Boys. Goldfrapp, Earth, Wind, & Fire.

A few showtunes, because of course. Music that reminds me, somewhere in me, that movement is still possible. And, something shifted during the drive. Not everything. But enough.

The Marquee

I parked, then walked toward the theater, turned down an alley when I saw it.

The marquee outside The Music Hall in Portsmouth, NH:

I stopped. Just stood there for a moment, took a picture and...

Tears came. And pride.

Tears for the reason any of us were there through the losses that shape the work of Kita. And pride in what has been built.

Three siblings, Isaiah, Sydney, and Morgan, who lost their father as teenagers and later created something they didn’t have. A free summer camp for kids who have experienced a loss to suicide.

Thirteen years later:

28 acres on Loon Pond.
12 buildings.
A ribbon-cutting in a few weeks.

Camp Kita is still free for families. And now, through the expansion into The Kita Center, there are retreats for Young Adults, Families, and Men as well as monthly Healing Walks, community events, and grief education for schools and organizations.

A place for healing. A place for people to land. And, over time, a place that became mine too. Which still feels a little surreal to say out loud.

Then, back at the Music Hall, “Steven!”

A voice broke through. A hug followed, a Kita friend, a fellow human in this work.

Then more hugs. Introductions. That immediate recognition that happens in spaces like this. Standing there, still holding both the tears and the pride, something shifted for me, again, hmmm, I think it was connection finding its way in.

And then, together, we made our way inside.

Inside the Room

The room was full of people I knew, and many I didn’t. It was a VIP space before the show. Look how far we’ve come! Kita was visible everywhere on screens, banners, and pamphlets. But more than that, it was in the room, in every hug, in every breath. It was in the way people greeted each other. In the way conversations held just a little more weight. In the quiet understanding of why we were all there.

And I saw him.

An aged-out camper, though even that language feels incomplete. He was Billy when he came to camp as a young teen. A kid who had lost his father. And now he’s Bill, my friend. Grown. Working at The Music Hall. One of the people who helped bring this night together.

I still stumble a bit when I say his name. Billy comes more naturally. It probably always will. We hugged. The kind of hug that carries years inside it. And there was a moment, a quick one, but clear, where I thought:

This is what it can look like.

Not fixed.
Not finished.

But growing.
Leading.
Still here.

What Surfaced

A bit later, glass of cabernet in hand, I had a quiet thought:

The world is hard right now.
And we are here.

And then Bill spoke to the attendees.

He acknowledged why we were all there, the weight of it, the reality of the world. And in that space, he offered something simple. something that landed in a way I didn’t expect. He said:

Joy is an act of rebellion.

Later, Bill made it clear to me that the phrase wasn’t his; it was something he was carrying and passing along. I know it is something I’ve heard echoed in activist spaces, and in the writing of people like Toi Derricotte and adrienne maree brown, that joy, in its own way, is an act of resistance.

And, with that, I was ready. Ready to listen to Lake Street Dive, be with my friends, and, well, maybe, dance.

And I was ready to rebel.

Not rebellion against grief. But against the idea that grief and loss, not just our own, but the kind that soaks into everything and all of us, gets to take up all the space.
Gets to own us.

The Music

The music started. The crowd didn’t dance, well, not right away.

It took time. For me, and for many of us in the room, it took time to settle in, to find each other, to feel the space, to let things arrive as they would. Inside The Music Hall, something was happening quietly at first. We were finding our way back to one community.

Lake Street Dive has this way of blending styles that shouldn’t quite fit together, but somehow do. There’s pop in there, soul, jazz, a little folk, and all layered in a way that feels both familiar and completely their own. Layered together, like all we brought with us into the theater.

It’s catchy without being shallow. Thoughtful without trying too hard.

And live, it’s different.

They don’t just play music. They move with it. There’s energy, humor, and connection. The kind of performance where you can feel the band paying attention to the room, and the room responding right back.

It’s music you can listen to closely. And also music you can dance to. Which, as it turns out, matters.

Communities feel frayed right now. And in the way I stay connected to others through my work, through listening, through storycatching, I feel that fraying. I witness it. I carry pieces of it.

And in that room, something began to shift. Not all at once. Not dramatically. But enough. Some people were already dancing up in the balcony. Down near the front, off to the side, a beautiful couple just kept grooving, completely in it, carrying something the rest of us were still finding our way toward.

And the band, especially the lead singer, was moving with us. Not performing at us, but with us. Guiding, holding, inviting.

Opening something, in our bodies, in our hearts. making space for movement.

And then, we danced. Even I danced

Not halfway. Not politely.

With friends. With people I’ve known for years and people I’ve just met. There was laughter. Moments of connection. That feeling when a room moves together. At one point, I glanced back at my friend Morgan, two rows behind me, dancing, moving, right there in it too. We caught each other’s eyes, and we both pointed at each other. That kind of dual pointing. me toward her, her toward me.

I see you.
You see me.

We’re in this together.

And somewhere in there, I thought:

Oh. This is still in me.

Which, honestly, was both comforting and mildly surprising. Not instead of the grief or all that I’ve been holding. Alongside it.

Both / And

There’s something I often teach, and try, imperfectly, to live.

The dual process of grief.

The idea that we move between two spaces: one where we turn toward the loss, the heaviness, the confusion, the frustration, the sadness, and another where we turn toward restoration, toward life, toward connection, toward laughter, toward music.

Both are necessary. Both are real. And the goal isn’t to stay in either one. Not to live only in the weight. Not to escape only into the light. But to move between them. To allow both. To find a kind of balance, not perfect, not static, but alive.

Last night held both. The tears at the marquee, the pride, the connection, the music, the dancing. The remembering and the living.

And maybe that’s the point.

Not choosing between grief and joy, but making room for both, and trusting that, together, they can create something that feels like living.

What I’m Holding

We may not be able to remove the uncertainty. But we can create moments of steadiness, strengthen connection, and support one another. I come back to what I know, from research, from experience, from this work.

We don’t heal in isolation. We heal in relationship, in connection, in community. I live in a world where the work is not about fixing. It’s about listening, being present, holding stories with care.

And I also live in a world where it is hard to witness, where what others carry doesn’t stay contained. It moves through relationships. And if you’re open to it, it moves through you.

So here’s what I’m holding today:

Joy doesn’t erase what’s hard. It sits next to it. It doesn’t fix anything, but it can make life possible, manageable. And sometimes, choosing joy, especially when things feel heavy, is a quiet way of pushing back.

A quiet act of rebellion.

An Invitation

Where might joy find you this week?

Not something big. Not something forced. Just something real.

A song you haven’t listened to in a while.
A walk with music in your ears.
A moment where your body moves, even a little.

We may not be able to change everything that’s happening. But we can create moments of steadiness. We can strengthen connection. We can be present with each other

And sometimes…

We can dance.

Support

I offer spaces of care, connection, support, and kindness through (links provided):

🌿 The Kita Center – As the Director of Postvention & Community Programming, I develop and lead year-round programming for suicide loss survivors, including a free summer camp for kids, weekend retreats for families and young adults, and our Navigating Grief in the Classroom professional development for schools (and much more). We also offer DavidCares as immediate support and care in the aftermath of a suicide loss.

🌿 1:1 Grief Support – Individualized mentoring grounded in compassion and presence

🌿 Elpis Consulting – Trainings and grief-informed support for schools and communities

And before I say anything more, I don’t want to rewrite it or even try to retell it.

I want you to read hers.
I want you to hear her voice.
I want her to tell her story of loss, of the sudden death of her sister Anne, and of what it looks like to keep living, honestly, in the midst of it.

What I’ll share here is what it stirred in me.

Wallowing

She writes, “We all need a good wallow.”

Not in a dismissive way.
Not in a “get stuck there” way.
But in a way that felt honest.

Necessary and alive.

And as I read it, I kept thinking:

She’s not just writing about grief.
She’s showing us how to live.

What We’ve Been Taught

Because this is the part we don’t often say out loud:

Grief is not something we visit. It’s something we live alongside.

And most of us, if we’re honest, are trying to manage it, contain it, minimize it, move it along just enough so we can function again.

We’ve been taught, explicitly and implicitly, that staying too long in sorrow is dangerous. That if we “wallow,” we might not come back.

But what Megan names, and what so many of us who have lived loss come to learn, is something different:

Sometimes the way through is through.

Not around or over, and not reframed too quickly into something more comfortable.
But through.

The Swamp of Sadness

And if I’m being honest, this is where my mind went as I read her piece:

Back to Atreyu in The NeverEnding Story. If you don’t know this movie, give yourself time to watch it soon. Atreyu is a young boy on a journey through the land of Fantasia, trying to save the Childlike Empress and traveling with his horse, Artax.

At one point, their path takes them through the Swamp of Sadness.

And, if you have watched this as a kid, who else remembers being completely undone by it? I’m still undone by it.

I mean, the movie is high camp fantasy, sure, but also, why was that scene allowed to exist in a children’s movie?

Artax gets stuck in the swamp, deeply stuck, pulled into the Swamp of Sadness. Watching Artax find sadness and slowly sink into that swamp felt overwhelming. And now, as an adult, it lands differently, but no less powerfully. Because now I understand something I didn’t then:

How easy it is to get mired.

How the weight of sadness can slow you down, convince you to stop, and make it harder to keep moving.

You can’t rush it.
You can’t pretend it’s not there.
And you definitely can’t force your way out.

The more you fight it, the more it pulls.

Even Artax couldn’t keep going when the weight of it all took hold.

That’s what grief can feel like.

And yet, what Megan is showing us is something just as important:

That staying, not sinking, but staying, can also be a way through.

Oscillation (The Rhythm of Grief)

In grief work, we often talk about the dual process model. This is the natural movement, or oscillation, between loss and restoration.

Between turning toward the grief and turning back toward life.
Between remembering and rebuilding.
Between sorrow and moments of lightness.
Between sitting in it and stepping out of it.

Not as a strategy, and not as something we “do right,” but as something our system already knows how to do when we give it permission.

This is also the foundation of the work we hold at The Kita Center, creating space for both.

For grief to be named, honored, and felt, and for restoration to be experienced through connection, nature, and moments of lightness.

Not as opposites, but as part of the same rhythm.

Bothness

What Megan shows us is what that actually looks like in real life.

The practice of allowing herself to sit fully in the loss, the despair, the longing, the sharp edges, without rushing herself to the other side.

And because of that, she is able to arrive somewhere real.

Not forced gratitude.
Not performative resilience.

But what she calls bothness.

Beneath

It also reminds me of the quiet wisdom in Beneath by Cori Doerrfeld:

“Beneath what’s growing up above is what’s growing deep below.”

There is always more under the surface.

More to discover if we give ourselves the time to stay.

Not to solve it.
Not to make it neat.

But to understand what’s actually there.

To notice what lives underneath the first layer of “I’m sad.”

The longing.
The love.
The anger.
The gratitude.
The ache of what will never be.

Turning Toward

The truth is, all of us are living with loss.

Some of it visible.
Some of it named.
Some of it buried so deeply we’ve learned how to move around it without ever really touching it.

And there’s a quiet divide that happens:

Some of us keep it underneath. We keep it managed, contained, occasionally leaking out in ways we don’t fully understand.

And some of us, often not by choice, but by necessity, begin the work of turning toward it.

Of digging.
Of discovering.
Of allowing something new, and often unexpected, to grow in the same soil as the grief.

Where Meaning Lives

This is not easy work.

It is slow.
It is nonlinear.
It is, at times, deeply uncomfortable.

But it is also where meaning lives.

Where connection deepens.
Where we learn how to sit beside others, not to fix, but to witness.

Where we begin to understand that sorrow and joy are not opposites, but companions.

The Invitation

What I appreciate most about Megan’s writing is that she doesn’t just describe this.

She embodies it.

She is not telling us how to grieve.
She is showing us what it looks like to live with grief.

Fully. Honestly. Without rushing.

And maybe that’s the invitation.

Not to get it right.
Not to move through it faster.
Not to make it make sense too soon.

But to allow ourselves, when we can, to feel what is actually there.

To sit in it long enough to know it.

To trust that we can.

Landscape

Because grief is not quicksand.

It’s a landscape.

And when we allow ourselves to walk through it, the mud, cliffs, light, and all, we don’t get stuck.

We become more fluent in being human.

Her Words

I’ll end where I began.

Not by summarizing Megan’s writing, but by pointing you back to it.

If you haven’t yet, take a few minutes to read Megan’s piece. Let her words do their work.

If you have a few quiet minutes, I hope you’ll read it:

“We All Need a Good Wallow” by Megan Saxelby

Wild Feelings

We All Need a Good Wallow

My sister would have been 45 this year, and her birthday last week hit me like a ton of bricks. It was a mix of things, like it always is. Something about the round number of this marking 5 years since we lost her made it sharper. Being sent a picture of her hugging her kids on her 40th birthday, when no one knew we only had a few months left with her, …

Read more

5 months ago · 3 likes · Megan Saxelby

Dignity Researcher and Author Donna Hicks, PhD, writes:

“Dignity is the mutual recognition of each person’s inherent self-worth and inherent vulnerability.”

She also writes:

“Dignity is an internal state of peace that comes with the recognition and acceptance of the value and vulnerability of all living things.”

An internal state of peace.

Not perfection.
Not composure.
Not emotional tidiness.

Peace that comes from recognizing both value and vulnerability.

And, what is more vulnerable than grief?

Grief strips us down. It exposes our longing, our attachment, our unfinished love. It makes visible how much we needed someone or something.

And when that grief belongs to a child or young adult?
The vulnerability deepens.

Because children are still learning how to name and navigate emotions. Sadness doesn’t arrive neatly. It interrupts. It disrupts.

And, it shows up:

• In the middle of a soccer game

• During math, when the room goes quiet to work

• While painting something that suddenly reminds them of someone

• In laughter that turns to tears without warning

Joy and guilt can coexist. Silly and sorrow can sit side by side. A child can be playing tag one minute and asking, “Why did this happen?” the next.

Sometimes they are crying over a lost pet.
Sometimes they are arguing over whose turn it is.
Sometimes they are doing both within five minutes.

Development is not linear. Neither is grief.

What It Means to Give Dignity to Grief

To give dignity to a child in grief is not to fix the emotion.

It is to recognize the vulnerability without diminishing the self-worth.

It is to say, in posture and tone:

You are not too much.
Your feelings are not a problem to solve.
Your grief does not make you fragile or broken.
You still belong here.

This is the heart of my work. And, at The Kita Center, where I now serve as Director of Postvention & Community Programs, it is the heart of what we do so well.

Whether at Camp Kita (our free summer camp), in our retreats, or in classrooms through our professional development, Navigating Grief in the Classroom: Learning through Loss, we center dignity. We do not rush children, nor the educators supporting them, past their grief. We do not shrink it. We do not treat it as a disruption to learning.

We treat it as human.

Grief Is Already in Our Schools

Students carry many forms of loss into classrooms every day: death, family change, displacement, identity shifts, and disruptions in their communities.

In a world where young people are also absorbing difficult events beyond their immediate lives, across countries and communities, those feelings can quietly follow them into school.

When this happens, educators are often the ones holding that moment.
Not as therapists, but as steady adults in a young person’s day.

Many educators want to respond with compassion and steadiness, but don’t always feel they have the language, preparation, or support to do so.

And yet grief in schools is not only about sadness.

It is also about connection, dignity, and helping young people feel seen and supported when life becomes complicated.

Teachers matter in this.
Coaches matter.
Counselors matter.
School leaders who quietly check in matter.

The custodian who notices a child lingering in the hallway matters.
The kitchen staff member who slides an extra apple across the counter and says hello matters.
The office administrator who remembers a name and a story matters.
The bus driver who sees a child every morning and afternoon matters.

All of these adults are part of the emotional ecosystem of a school.

Because sometimes dignity arrives not through a formal conversation, but through being seen.

Often, it is not the perfect words that stay with a child.

It is the adult who noticed.
The adult who paused.
The adult who said quietly,

“I’m here.”

Dignity as a Developmental Roadmap

My dear friend and Dignity-Based Parenting Coach, Megan Saxelby, writes:

“Most approaches to healthy culture in adolescence force a false choice: either kids figure it out, or adults step in with rules and lectures. Neither teaches young people how to matter in a social world without making someone else smaller.”

Grief is often met with those same false choices.

Be strong.
Or be managed.

Dignity solves that problem.

Megan also writes that dignity offers young people a roadmap for how to matter in a social world without making someone else smaller. As Megan shares, in her framing around dignity, young people learn to:

• Claim autonomy without diminishing others

• Seek belonging without self-erasure

• Repair harm without collapsing into shame

• Handle conflict without dehumanizing

These are not abstract ideals. They are daily developmental skills.

And in grief, each one becomes even more essential.

Claim autonomy without diminishing others
A grieving child may need space, choice, or control, not as defiance, but as steadiness. Saying “I don’t want to play right now” or “I need to sit out” is not a power move. It is often the nervous system asking for regulation. Dignity allows autonomy without labeling it as behavior.

Seek belonging without self-erasure.
A grieving teen should not have to pretend they are fine in order to stay socially connected. They should not have to shrink their sadness to remain in the group chat, on the team, or at the lunch table. Dignity allows them to belong without hiding their pain.

Repair harm without collapsing into shame.
Grief spills. It shows up as irritability, withdrawal, sharp words, unfinished homework, and missed cues. Dignity makes room for accountability without branding the child as “the problem.” It says, “What happened here?” instead of “What’s wrong with you?”

Handle conflict without dehumanizing.
When emotions are heightened, dignity keeps us from reducing a grieving young person to their hardest moment. They are not their outburst. They are not their silence. They are not their absence. They are a whole person carrying something heavy.

In this way, dignity does more than support culture.

It supports grief.

It gives young people a roadmap - thank you, Megan - for how to matter in the world even when the world has just shifted beneath their feet.

What Dignity Looks Like in Schools

In classrooms, dignity looks like:

• A teacher quietly kneeling beside a child who suddenly withdraws during group work.

• A coach noticing a shift during practice and offering, “You seem somewhere else today, want to talk or just want me to know?”

• A school responding to a loss with care and discernment, sometimes quietly, sometimes collectively, always guided by what honors the loss, the child, and the family.

• An adult allowing a child to sit out for a few minutes without interrogation.

• A teacher saying, “You don’t have to explain everything right now.”

It also looks like restraint.

Not turning every tear into a lesson.
Not forcing resilience speeches.
Not announcing, “You’re so strong!” when what they feel is shaky.

Dignity is not grand. It is relational.

It is presence.

It is listening.

The Rabbit

There’s a wonderful children’s book called The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld. In it, a young child’s tower of blocks falls. Different animals show up with very strong opinions about what should happen next.

The Chicken wants to talk about it immediately.
The Bear wants to growl about it.
The Elephant wants to remember every detail.
The Hyena tries to laugh it off.
The Ostrich would rather pretend it never happened, head in the sand.
The Kangaroo wants to clean it up and move on.
And the Snake… well, the Snake seems ready to destroy something else entirely.

Each response makes a kind of sense.

We have all been at least one of those animals at some point.

Sometimes we are the Bear.
Sometimes the Ostrich.
Sometimes, if we’re honest, the Kangaroo.

And then the rabbit arrives.

The rabbit does not fix.
The rabbit does not strategize.
The rabbit does not lecture or cheerlead.

The rabbit listens.

The rabbit dignifies.

And in that quiet presence, something softens.

To dignify grief is to say:

Your sadness makes sense.
Your joy still makes sense.
Your contradictions make sense.
You are still whole.

In schools, we often talk about resilience. But resilience without dignity can feel like pressure.

Dignity says:

You matter now.
Even in this.
Especially in this.

The Campfire

And then there is the campfire.

At Camp Kita, the free signature program at The Kita Center for young people, ages 8-17, who have had a loss to suicide, we gather one evening around a campfire that has become sacred in its own quiet way. Campers and the adults who support them sit in a wide circle. The air is different that night. Softer. Expectant.

Earlier in the week, each young person had written a letter to the person they lost to suicide.

When we come to the fire, the young people are invited, never required, to decide what they want to do with that letter.

They can place it in the fire.
They can keep it in their pocket.
They can bury it in the woods.

They can read it
They can hold it.
They can share it with someone.

Each child chooses how their grief will be received.

That is dignity.

I remind you of Megan’s framework:

Claim autonomy without diminishing others.

No one is told what healing should look like. No one is applauded for bravery. No one is rushed. The choice belongs to them.

As the letters are folded, unfolded, held, or released to the flame, emotions move through the circle. Some young people speak. Some cry. Some sit in silence. Some laugh mid-story and then cry again. Joy and sorrow make their usual, confusing appearance together.

Seek belonging without self-erasure.

At the fire, no one has to pretend they are okay. No one has to perform resilience. Their story, however messy, however unfinished, is met.

And when a camper’s words tumble out in anger or guilt or regret, when a voice shakes or falters, something else happens.

Repair harm without collapsing into shame.

There is no fixing. No correcting. No adult stepping in to tidy the narrative. The adults are trained to pause, to let the feeling move through the body before rushing to soothe it away. We trust that emotions are not emergencies.

And then, almost inevitably, the comfort comes.

Not from a script.
Not from a lecture.
From a peer.

A hand reaches across the circle.
A shoulder leans in.
A quiet “me too” lands.

A rabbit listens.

Hugs are shared. Tears are shared. Laughter returns in small sparks. The fire keeps burning.

What is built in that circle is not only connection around suicide loss.

It is dignity.

Each young person is seen in both their vulnerability and their worth. No one is reduced to their hardest day. No one is defined solely by how their person died.

They are whole.

And in that wholeness, something shifts.

An internal state of peace, not because the grief disappears, but because it is held.

That night, relationships are formed that often last far beyond the week. Not only because of shared loss, but because of a shared experience of being dignified in it.

That is what dignity in grief looks like.

Not a cure.
Not closure.
Not a lesson.

A fire.
A circle.
A choice.
A pause.
And, again, a community that says:

You matter.
Even now.
Especially now.

When we give children dignity in their grief, we are not only helping them survive loss.
We are teaching them how to live in a world where vulnerability and worth coexist.

With kids.
With listening.
With the mutual recognition of inherent self-worth and inherent vulnerability.

Links and resources for more information:

• Donna Hicks, PhD - https://drdonnahicks.com/

• Megan Saxelby - https://wildfeelings.co/

• The Kita Center - https://www.thekitacenter.org/

• Navigating Grief in the Classroom: Learning through Loss - https://www.thekitacenter.org/workshops/navigatinggrief

Support

I offer spaces of care, connection, support, and kindness through (links provided):

🌿 The Kita Center – As the Director of Postvention & Community Programming, I develop and lead year-round programming for suicide loss survivors, including a free summer camp for kids, weekend retreats for families and young adults, and our Navigating Grief in the Classroom professional development for schools (and much more). We also offer DavidCares as immediate support and care in the aftermath of a suicide loss.

🌿 1:1 Grief Support – Individualized mentoring grounded in compassion and presence

🌿 Elpis Consulting – Trainings and grief-informed support for schools and communities

Let’s be clear at the start:

Young people navigating grief are not broken learners.

They are developing humans

Because when grief is met with relationship, learning doesn’t stop; it deepens.
Let me explain.

Grief does not wait for adulthood.

It doesn’t wait for vocabulary, for emotional sophistication, or for a permission slip. It shows up early, often quietly, and almost always sideways. And more often than we realize, it walks straight into the classroom…unannounced.

When we think about grief in schools, many of us instinctively think about death. A parent dies. A student loses a sibling. A tragedy ripples through a community. Those moments matter deeply, and they deserve care, language, and support.

But grief in schools is much broader and far more common than we often name.
As I’ve written before, grief doesn’t only arrive through death; it arrives whenever something that mattered is disrupted, changed, or taken away.

Grief can be the loss of a parent or the loss of friends after a classroom change.
It can be a death or a family move.

It can be divorce, incarceration, foster placement, illness, identity shifts, learning differences becoming visible, or simply the quiet realization that something familiar is gone and not coming back.

For children and young people, loss is not an abstract concept. It is lived in their bodies, their behaviors, their attention, and their relationships.

And school, whether we intend it or not, is one of the primary places where that grief gets expressed.

“Some things that happen are just so big they can’t fit inside one person.”
— Kate DiCamillo, Because of Winn-Dixie

What Grief Looks Like Depends on Age

One of the biggest mistakes we make is expecting grief to look the same across development. Grief is not just something schools respond to. It is something development unfolds within.

In young children

Grief often shows up as:

• Separation anxiety

• Regressions in behavior or skills

• Increased irritability or tearfulness

• Resistance to routines that once felt safe

• A sudden loss of interest in academic work

• Big emotions over “small” things

Young children don’t yet have the language to say “I am grieving.” What they can say, through their behavior, is “Something doesn’t feel right.”

In adolescents and young adults

Grief often looks different:

• Withdrawal or emotional numbing

• Anger, cynicism, or humor as armor

• Risk-taking or disengagement

• Difficulty concentrating or caring about schoolwork

• Deep sensitivity to themes of death, injustice, or meaning

At these ages, grief often collides with identity formation. The question isn’t just What happened? but, Who am I now that this has happened?

Understanding these differences matters. The same loss carries very different emotional loads and needs depending on where a student is developmentally. And when we miss that, we often mislabel grief as defiance, immaturity, or lack of motivation.

The Second Grader Who “Didn’t Like School Anymore”

A second-grade student, someone who had always loved school, suddenly couldn’t get through the morning. She cried at drop-off. She avoided her work. She felt overwhelmed and disconnected. The playground was the only place she seemed relaxed or joyful.

As I worked to support this teacher and the student, the initial theories made sense: school is getting harder, maybe there are academic gaps, perhaps she’s just adjusting to a new year.

But when someone slowed down long enough to ask her, the truth emerged within minutes:

“All my friends are in the other second-grade class.”

These were friends she had known since Pre-K. Friends who had been part of her sense of safety, identity, and belonging. And without realizing it, she had lost them overnight.

This wasn’t misbehavior.
It wasn’t avoidance.
It was grief.

Once that loss was named, everything changed. Adults could validate her feelings instead of trying to extinguish them. Educators could intentionally support new relationship-building as a skill, not a personality flaw. The classroom could remain structured and predictable while also acknowledging emotional weight.

It was also a reminder for all of us:
Classrooms are not just instructional spaces.
They are emotional environments.

Even routines such as lining up, morning meetings, and seating arrangements carry emotional meaning. They can create safety, pressure, calm, or stress depending on how they are designed and held. When we focus only on behavior without attending to emotion, we miss the story entirely.

“Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.”
— A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

The Student, Hamlet, and the Break of a Heart

A young adult lost his father to suicide.

As I listened and supported, his teachers were understandably concerned when Hamlet appeared on the syllabus, even with the loss being over a year prior. Death. Grief. Existential questioning. Would this be too much? Would it reopen wounds? Would it harm him?

And of course, in Shakespeare’s defense, it’s a little difficult to find a play where grief, loss, or complicated family dynamics don’t appear somewhere along the way.

What emerged through conversation, care, and trust was something different.

He wasn’t broken.

He had experienced a break… of his heart.

And that heart was healing.

Grief had not removed his capacity to think, read, or engage. It had reshaped it. With the right support, he could approach the material not as something that would destroy him, but as something that met questions he was already carrying.

I am certainly not a Shakespearean scholar, but lines from Hamlet often find their way into grief reflections. That is not surprising. Shakespeare spent a great deal of time exploring love, loss, loyalty, and the complicated emotional lives of human beings.

Hamlet says to his trusted friend Horatio:

“Give me that man
That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him
In my heart’s core.”
— Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2

Hamlet is speaking about someone who can feel deeply without being ruled entirely by emotion. In the chaos of grief, betrayal, and uncertainty that surrounds him, Horatio represents steadiness and trust.

It is not a rejection of feeling.

It is an acknowledgment that human beings can experience profound emotion and still remain thoughtful, reflective, and capable.

That was true for this young man.

This is a critical distinction. Too often, we pathologize grief rather than contextualize it. We protect students by lowering expectations instead of by walking alongside them.

Healing does not happen in isolation.

It happens in relationship through curiosity, consent, pacing, and trust.

Educators as Anchors (Not Therapists)

Why does this work matter so much?

Because in the wake of loss, students often turn first to the people they trust most in their daily lives, and that is frequently their classroom teachers, counselors, and school staff.

Educators are not expected to be therapists.
They are not meant to diagnose, treat, or “fix” grief. And, honestly, no one can fix grief.

But the simple, steady presence of a trusted adult, someone who notices, names, and stays, can be one of the most powerful sources of healing and belonging a grieving student ever experiences.

This is especially true when grief is ambiguous, ongoing, or unspoken.

A family move.
A sudden classroom change.
A parent is deployed or incarcerated.
A community under threat.
A world that no longer feels predictable.

All of this is loss.
All of this is grief.

At the heart of grief is a longing for dignity. We want to be seen, heard, and valued, to know that we matter. And when we are grieving, we need that dignity not less, but more explicitly and profoundly: dignity in our pain, our sorrow, our sadness, and our need.

As dignity scholar Donna Hicks writes, dignity is “the mutual recognition of each person’s inherent worth and inherent vulnerability.” In schools, for teachers, leaders, parents, and our students, honoring dignity in grief means resisting the urge to minimize, fix, or rush what hurts. It means meeting loss with respect, curiosity, and presence, and communicating, again and again, that: You matter, even now. Especially now.

“Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable.”
— Fred Rogers

A Recent Lived Experience That Sharpened This Understanding

I recently found myself thinking about this work, grief in classrooms, loss in schools, healing through relationship, from 35,000 feet in the air.

I was on my way home from Hong Kong, after co-leading a full-day professional development at Hong Kong International School with my colleague and dear friend Ellen Mahoney. The keynote was delivered by Dr. David Yeager, yes, that David Yeager, whose research on adolescent development, motivation, and the mentor mindset has shaped so much of how we understand young people’s capacity for growth.

In the days surrounding that work, through conversations with educators, researchers, school leaders, and community partners from across Asia, I kept noticing something familiar. Yeager’s research language and my own work around grief, especially suicide grief, weren’t just aligned. They were pointing toward the same core truth.

In essence, young people can do impressive things and make meaningful contributions when they have enough support.

And even as that truth was being spoken, there was still something unspoken. Because in schools, grief so often disrupts our confidence in that belief.

As I listened to educators talk about students navigating war, displacement, sudden teacher departures, identity shifts, and loss of safety, not always death, but always some form of grief. I realized how essential it is for schools to see grief not as the end of young people’s capacity, but as a context in which that capacity needs thoughtful support.

I’ve seen this most starkly while supporting educators in schools facing active crisis, including communities in Ukraine and Israel, where teachers are asked to hold learning while carrying layered losses of safety, colleagues, routines, and sometimes life itself. But the truth is, this kind of compounded grief isn’t limited to war-torn places.

It also lives in schools where leadership turns over suddenly, where a beloved educator retires or is laid off, where a trusted counselor leaves mid-year, or where a community changes faster than people can emotionally keep up. The scale may differ, but the experience is familiar: educators holding students’ grief while quietly carrying their own.

When a child is struggling after a loss, we sometimes slide into what Yeager calls the protector mindset, of high support, low expectations, softening demands, shielding them from challenge, unintentionally signaling fragility. Other times, we fall into the enforcer mindset, of high expectations, low support, pushing resilience, productivity, and normalcy without attending to the emotional rupture underneath.

But the mentor mindset, of high support and high belief, sounds different. And in grief, it matters deeply.

It sounds like:

I believe in you.
I know you can carry this loss.
I won’t rescue you from your grief, and I won’t rush you through it.
I’ll stay with you.

This experience echoed themes I’ve been circling in my grief work for years, but seeing them reflected so clearly in youth development research sharpened something new.

Support does not remove struggle.
It makes courage possible.

As Charlie Mackesy writes in The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse:

“What is the bravest thing you’ve ever said?” asked the boy.
“Help,” said the horse.

Learning Through Loss: Why This Matters

This is why the professional development Navigating Grief in the Classroom: Learning Through Loss was created through The Kita Center.

Not to turn educators into clinicians, but to offer language, frameworks, and permission.

Permission to see grief clearly.
Permission to respond with dignity.
Permission to understand that grief-informed classrooms are not “softer,” they are safer, more humane, and ultimately more effective.

When we support grief in schools, we are not lowering standards.
We are widening the bridge so students can reach them.

Grief will enter the classroom whether we are prepared or not.
The question is not if, but how.

Will we meet it with silence and misinterpretation?
Or with curiosity, relationship, and care?

An Invitation to Educators and School Leaders

Educators are often the emotional anchors for students navigating loss, whether that loss comes through death, displacement, transition, disruption, or identity shifts.

Their role is not to fix grief, but to offer steady presence, compassionate communication, and spaces where students feel seen, heard, and valued.

Navigating Grief in the Classroom: Learning Through Loss professional development offers relational and practical tools to help educators support grieving students through everyday practices rooted in dignity, emotional literacy, and community.

More info: Navigating Grief in the Classroom Professional Development

These resources are designed to be accessible, developmentally appropriate, and adaptable to the unique needs of each school setting.

We invite you to learn how to sit beside grief, listen to what it needs, and create classrooms where belonging and learning can coexist.

Because when grief is met with relationship, learning doesn’t stop; it deepens.

Support

I offer spaces of care, connection, support, and kindness through (links provided):

🌿 The Kita Center – As the Director of Postvention & Community Programming, I develop and lead year-round programming for suicide loss survivors, including a free summer camp for kids, weekend retreats for families and young adults, and our Navigating Grief in the Classroom professional development for schools (and much more). We also offer DavidCares as immediate support and care in the aftermath of a suicide loss.

🌿 1:1 Grief Support – Individualized mentoring grounded in compassion and presence

🌿 Elpis Consulting – Trainings and grief-informed support for schools and communities

Three years ago, I wrote about March 4th as a day that asked more of me than most.
That piece still matters. It still tells the truth of where I was in 2023.
This reflection does not replace it. It sits beside it.

Like so much with grief, it’s not either/or.
It’s alongside.

March 4th, Still

March 4th comes back around again.

A day in a week, in a month, in a year, much like any other, and a day that has always asked a little more of me than most.

March 4th is my nephew Milo’s birthday. He’s turning 22.
March 4th is also the day my partner, David, died by suicide. He will always be 34.

Two Truths, One Date

Those two truths have shared a calendar square for many years now, since Milo’s fifth birthday and the day David died in 2009. I used to think that was strange, maybe even unfair, with the exuberance of a young life braided together with the ache of a life cut short. Over time, I’ve stopped trying to untangle them. This day doesn’t ask me to choose. It asks me to hold.

What Grief Keeps

Grief still isn’t easy. It never has been. The sharpest edges dull, but the shape remains. It becomes more familiar, more integrated, maybe more workable, but not something you outgrow or outpace. I’ve heard all the phrases: move on, get over it, isn’t it better by now? They never quite land. Not because healing hasn’t happened, but because forgetting was never the goal.

If I try to forget the pain of David’s death, I risk forgetting how fully he lived and loved. If I rush past the grief, I strand his life somewhere behind me. His life doesn’t deserve to be abandoned. It deserves to be remembered whole. His humor, his sway and bounce, his talents, his struggles, his pain, and yes, that smile. Especially that smile. All of it made him real. All of it still shapes me.

What has changed is how I carry this day.

2010: Being Held

In 2010, in the thickest part of my grief, my sister Laura offered me a lifeline. I moved into her home and was given what I most needed: space, time, and care. My nephews were five and two then. Milo and Cohan. As my sister, a pilot, flew and her husband, a teacher, taught, I became uncle and a bit of a nanny, well, manny, I suppose.

Many mornings, I bundled Coe into a stroller, and we walked Milo to school. Coe and I would then head to a coffee shop where I read, and he scribbled and giggled and did what two-year-olds do best. They exist fully. We walked trails, napped, and picked Milo up in the afternoon. Those days were simple. Almost perfect. And absolutely necessary.

My nephews knew very little, maybe nothing, about my grief. But they gave me exactly what I needed. Hope. Purpose. Joy. Not by trying. Just by being five and two. Just by being Milo and Cohan.

Now: Watching Them Become

Now, years later, I’ve just spent Christmas with them in Denver. Milo turns twenty-two today. Cohan will be nineteen later this year. And, at Christmas, we wore matching Santa tracksuits everywhere. On the train between terminals at the Denver airport. On the entire flight to Ohio to join the rest of our family, including my mom, their grandmother, for Christmas. And again at the holiday party at my mom’s senior living facility. I probably don’t need to say we were a hit.

At the Denver airport, we got stares and smiles and maybe even a finger pointed our way. Standing there with them on the train between terminals, at the gate, on the plane, at baggage claim in Columbus, watching them move through the world now, I felt the long arc of our lives all at once. Uncle and nephews. Then and now. The before and the after. The long arc of my grief alongside the long arc of their becoming.

I’m in the midst of my own transitions, personal and professional, exciting and unsettling in equal measure (those who know me might ask, again? That’s fair). I recently moved to Maine to begin a new role as Director of Postvention & Community Programs at The Kita Center. Work I never could have imagined doing. Work that exists because David died. Work shaped by grief, by love, by staying, by becoming.

And once again, just like 16 years ago, in just a few days together, my nephews reminded me of what matters. Just like when they were little, they didn’t offer advice. They didn’t need to. They simply were themselves, then and now. Twenty-two and almost nineteen. Curious. Thoughtful. Funny. Becoming.

Hope still lives there, with them, and here with me. It just speaks in a different register now.

Stories That Travel

During the past year, a video series I participated in with Samaritans was filmed and released. These are powerful stories of suicide loss, told honestly, without polish. I shared my own story as a gay man, as an early childhood educator, a human being, grieving my partner in 2009, without bereavement leave, without workplace recognition, without language for the loneliness, anger, relief, guilt, shame, and identity rupture that followed.

That video reached a former student of mine. A young man who wrote to ask if I remembered him. He shared that he had lost someone to suicide at nineteen. Seeing the video mattered. He told me he is now entering the field of psychology and mental health to help others.

These stories matter.
Mine.
David’s.
His.
My former students.
The young people who have attended Camp Kita.
The ones who will.
And yours, whether your loss is from suicide or from another deep breaking open.

What Remains With Us

“As long as we remember a person, they’re not really gone.
Their thoughts, their feelings, their memories—they become a part of us.”
— Justin Cronin

Dear David,
You are so loved.
You are so missed.
You guide the work I do, the life I lead.
You are a part of me.

In ways I never could have imagined, your life continues to move through mine, through my questions, through my listening, through the way I sit with people when words fall short. The work I now do, the work I never could have foreseen, exists because you died and because I kept asking how to live honestly after that kind of loss.

Dear Milo,
You are joy made visible.
You are curiosity and kindness growing into your own shape.
You remind me, again and again, that life keeps asking us forward.
I am grateful to witness who you are becoming.

And Cohan, too, with his steadiness, his quiet way of seeing, and his exploration of music, golf, and life, well, hope lives there as well. Watching him move through the world with that combination of attentiveness and expression reminds me that there are many ways to make meaning. Hope was always there in you both. I see it now, the same way I’ve always seen it. I see it in young people again and again, in how they keep reaching forward, even when they don’t yet know what they’re reaching toward.

Finding Us Again

David used to give me yellow roses. A dozen, sometimes out of nowhere. It was his thing.

One year, on March 4th, long after he was gone, a group of second-grade girls, the Sunshine Committee at a school, walked around campus handing out single yellow roses. One landed in my hands.

Of course.

Thank you to those girls.
Thank you to the universe.
Thank you, David, for the reminder that love has a way of finding us, even now.

Falling Into One Another

Poet Ross Gay writes about what happens when we learn to witness one another with care, when we make room for grief, for change, for unfixing. He says that when we do this, again and again, we fall apart into one another. Not collapse. Not disappear. But fall into, held by story, by memory, by relationship.

“When we witness the learning, the changing, the grieving,
with curiosity and patience and care and love;
when we make room for each other’s unfixing,
and so are unfixing ourselves;
when we join in grieving, again and again—
we fall into one another.”
— Ross Gay

Holding the Date

Hope hasn’t erased the grief. It never promised to.
But hope has given me somewhere to stand while I feel what I feel.
It has given me permission to care deeply without fearing the cost.

This is the question I first asked myself years ago, quietly and without knowing where it would lead: Who am I now?
It became part of my own grief work before it ever became something I shared with others. It remains a lived question, not a slogan. One I return to again and again personally, professionally, humanly.

March 4th still holds both.
Smiles and sorrow.
Birthdays and death days.
Memory and becoming.

This year, I don’t feel the need to explain that complexity.
I trust it.
I trust myself with it.

If you’re reading this and carrying a date of your own, a birthday, an anniversary, a day that asks more of you than most, I wonder how you hold it. What helps you stay close to it? What do you need on that day?

You don’t have to make it tidy.
You don’t have to choose one feeling.
You’re allowed to let love keep changing you.

And this, too, is part of who you are becoming.

It’s part of who I am becoming.

Support

I offer spaces of care, connection, support, and kindness through (links provided):

🌿 The Kita Center – As the Director of Postvention & Community Programming, I develop and lead year-round programming for suicide loss survivors, including a free summer camp for kids, weekend retreats for families and young adults, and our Navigating Grief in the Classroom professional development for schools (and much more). We also offer DavidCares as immediate support and care in the aftermath of a suicide loss.

🌿 1:1 Grief Support – Individualized mentoring grounded in compassion and presence

🌿 Elpis Consulting – Trainings and grief-informed support for schools and communities