Please Join My Pilot Good Grief Writing Hour This Wednesday

Let's talk about grief, baby.

I am stepping out of my comfort zone in many ways this week and trying to show up and be more visible:

—Yesterday I showed up at choir practice in Malvern for the second time and was warmly welcomed. Singing in a choir takes me back!
—Tomorrow I will video myself dancing and submit my recording to the dance app that has helped me learn to dance for use in their promotional materials. Overcoming significant resistance.
—On Wednesday I’m chopping off a bunch of my hair.
—On Thursday I will go to an open house at my kid’s middle school, having barely navigated a similar open house at my other kid’s high school this past week.
—On Friday I will go to my first-ever in-person dance lesson, swing.

After several years of isolating as the result of grief and trauma, I am showing up and trying to take part in more things.

In addition to singing and dancing and shedding and schooling and swinging, I will this week host a Good Grief writing hour, open to any of my paid subscribers here. It will take place on Wednesday, September 18, 2024, from 12 to 1 p.m. ET. On Zoom.

I’m still sorting out just what the hour will include—and it will depend on whether anyone shows up—but I want it to be a safe, healing space where people can feel free to share grief if they feel so moved and hold space for the grief of others. I’ll offer some nervous system regulation techniques to help us all process any grief that comes up before we head back into our days.

I’ve been studying grief and trauma recovery and nervous system regulation and writing for a very long time. I look forward to beginning to share some of what I have learned with people who might be interested. I’ve been too immersed in my own grief and trauma recovery to feel like I could do this for others before now.

I’m also terrified and not at all sure my forcing myself to show up and be visible is what my nervous system needs. But so far I’m surviving pushing myself a little more outside my comfort zone each time.

If you have grief around anything—loss of people, places, things, abilities, faith, hope, home—please feel warmly welcomed to join a space where grief is not treated as something taboo and potentially catching, but instead as an integral, natural, normal part of life.

Bring a pen and paper or a blank document on your device of choice. There will be invitations to write, but zero pressure to read or share.

I hope you’ll join me. (I sort of hope you won’t since I’m not sure what I’m doing but I will figure it out if people join and it will help me do more such things in the future. Sfo please join if you can.)

Zoom information below! And if there’s interest, I’ll repeat the Good Grief writing hour on the third Wednesday of each month.

This live Good Grief writing hour will be a regular feature for my paid subscribers provided it garners interest. But please, if you need a Good Grief writing hour and can’t afford the cost of a paid subscription, please send me an email and I will comp you. Your presence is more valuable to me than your dollars.