01/27/2026
This morning I received the following message from Tamara Beachum, an instructor of Creative Grief Studio, which is the organization that trained and certified me as a Creative Grief Support Practitioner. I hope reading this will help validate your feelings of grief for the tragic loss of life in the US, while reminding you that you're not alone. The photo is mine.
I am struggling. I don’t know what to say about the escalation of state violence that has overtaken the United States. And let’s not get it twisted: this is not new. Black and brown people have been bearing the brunt of this type of violence over the entire history of the United States. Recent murders of protesters by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are just that, the most recent murders. Over the last several weeks, many of us have been carrying a kind of grief that does not belong to one moment or one person. The layers accumulate. It settles like the heavy weight of ice on power lines.
Simultaneously, a large part of the country has been gripped by snow and ice storms. Trees topple. Power is lost. Movement is halted. Life narrows to what is immediately necessary. It has been impossible for me not to feel the connection between the weather outside and the emotional climate many of us are moving through.
Winter does not ask our permission.
Collective grief often arrives this way. Not as a single shock, but as a slow accumulation. A recognition that something essential is being harmed again and again, while we are told that this is justified. We are told not to believe our lying eyes, but instead the talking heads of the state, whose stories do not line up with what we see and hear. “I’m not mad at you, bro,” were the last words of Renee Good. “Are you okay,” from Alex Pretti who was putting his body between ICE and two women who had been violently shoved to the ground and pepper sprayed directly in the face. Yes, it accumulates.
Collective grief is not theoretical. We experience it in our bodies, our relationships, our work, and our sense of safety in the world. It is grief for the people who have been killed. It is grief for those living under constant threat. It is grief for communities targeted by policies and practices designed to harm them. Black and brown people are not incidental casualties of this system. They are its primary targets.
It is also grief for what these events ask of us emotionally. To witness, sometimes against our will. To absorb. To continue functioning. To advocate harder. Some are carrying grief not only for what has happened, but for how familiar it feels.
There is grief over the sheer volume of it all. The sense that there is no time to metabolize one loss before the next arrives. For many, it is also a moral grief. The pain of witnessing harm that violates our deepest values, paired with the knowledge that we have limited power to stop it.
One of the most painful layers of this moment is relational. People are grieving not only what is happening, but how their loved ones are responding to it. Friends. Family members. Colleagues. People who explain away state violence. People who minimize deaths. People who ask us to be their version of ‘reasonable.’ People who regurgitate the propaganda of the state as gospel.
That creates a particular kind of grief. The grief of realizing that shared values may not be shared after all. The grief of feeling emotionally unsafe in relationships that once felt grounding. The grief of choosing silence or distance to protect oneself.
