Today I joined the writer Katherine May for her first-ever Substack Live. Katherine and I have been in conversation for years around a shared question: How do we gather in harder moments, when the pull might be to just be alone but the medicine lies in community? She writes about wintering and overwhelm and seasons when life pulls you inward. I write about how, in those same moments, gathering can become a lifeline.
Click on the video above to watch our conversation.
Here are 10 highlights and tidbits from our conversation:
1. We’ve lost many forms of collective grief, and we’re the worse off for it. In her book, Renegade Grief, Carla Fernandez writes that the United Kingdom was a place where public mourning was part of the culture. In fact, it was Queen Victoria who popularized dressing in black during periods of grief. However, according to Fernandez, during World War II – when there was so much loss and death – public forms of mourning began to be seen as “anti-state.” And were banned. And we are the worse off for it. “The social technology and norms around grief and loss felt stale and stuck,” Fernandez writes. She is also one of the co-founders of the brilliant gathering series The Dinner Party, which she created when she lost her father in her 20s, and realized that there were very few places or people with whom she could talk about it.
2. Scream into the waves with other people. During the pandemic, a mother from Boston invited women to meet at midnight on a football field for a collective “Primal Scream.” Scream clubs are now a thing. Katherine said similar gatherings are happening along the British coast, where women gather at the sea and scream into the waves. These are people intuitively coming together to let it all out, when we no longer have ways to do so.
3. We need more projects like the National Parks of Emotion. During the pandemic, I learned about a project by the photographer and artist (and GROUP LIFER!), Mindy Stricke, called the National Parks of Emotion. Stricke created a participatory public project for strangers to share what it felt like to live through a pandemic, by naming an emotion they were experiencing and then giving it a land: The National Park of Uncertainty or Anxiety or Gratitude. She ran dozens of workshops to help people name an emotion, create a visual representation of it, and then share the story behind these emotional states they were living in. She then created a visual map of these parks of emotion for all to experience and read. Seeing where others were offered a simple recognition: Oh. I’m not the only one living here. I’m not the only person going through this. I’m not alone.
4. When we design gatherings that are inclusive of neurodivergence, everyone benefits. Katherine shared that when she was first diagnosed with autism as an adult, she immediately thought: “That’s it. I’m never going to go to a party again.” She associated gatherings with harm: overstimulation, noise, not knowing the rules, leaving physically unwell. But, she said, it does not have to be that way, at all. I asked her to share practical tips to think about how to design gatherings that are inclusive of neurodivergent guests. She shared:
Adjust the soundscape; loud, rattling rooms quietly exclude
Tell people what to expect (i.e. when it begins, when it ends)
Offer roles or focal activities to reduce anxiety
Create an escape room (her parties have a LEGO room with snacks and soft lighting for kids, which so often the adults end up in, too)
Be explicit about dress codes, norms, and flow
As I was listening to her, so much of what she shared reminded me of the core of artful gathering: figuring out how to design for meaningful connection across difference in modern life.
5. In moments of illness or grief, don’t be afraid to (have someone) tell people exactly what you need. As Katherine shared this example, I thought of a woman I met named Bonnie, who seemingly overnight developed sudden, severe vision loss and spent weeks lying in a dark room. She knew she needed people, but only in tiny, careful doses. She told her husband her exact capacity, and he sent this invitation to friends:
“Bed Time with Bonnie”
Attire: Casual, pajamas welcome, sunglasses encouraged. Bedhead optional.
Visit length: 60–90 minutes.
Agenda: Be ready to talk, shoot the shit, talk about cool stuff you’re up to. Meandering conversations are appreciated. Leave your troubles at the door.
Bonnie might cry, and it’s okay if you cry. She’ll want to hold your hand sometimes.
Friends showed up ready to hold her hand if she cried. She later told me: “It kept me going.” You can read my full newsletter about Bonnie’s gathering here.
6. Specifically invite children in. Katherine talked about her husband’s lung cancer diagnosis and the awkward social landscape that forms around illness. People want to help, but they’re terrified of misstepping. She’s learned to send clear, specific messages: “He’d love to see you. Please come fed. I can’t cook right now.” And, she added, invite children in specifically: “He’d love a hug. He’s still okay for hugs.” And how amazing it is to help people over that bridge of connection. When we don’t have common grief rituals or codes to help, we need to build the bridge towards one another.
7. Bake a soul cake and bring it to someone in mourning. Katherine shared a tradition from England and Scotland that she has recently taken up: baking soul cakes on All Souls’ Day and delivering them to people who are grieving (even if their loss happened years ago). This year, she baked a batch for her husband, whose best friend passed away the year before. He walked into the kitchen, saw the cakes, and when he realized they were for him, had “a gulp about that.” A simple gesture reminds people: I remember. I’m with you.
8. Many traditional communities have ancient forms of ritual to hold (and normalize) mourners and the state of grieving. The Rabbi Sharon Brous once shared with me her own experience of entering a temple and doing the mourner’s prayer (called the Mourner’s Kaddish) and how struck she was that those who were in mourning walked around the circle in the opposite direction of everyone else, and how powerful it was to be witnessed. It’s a subtle way for the room to say: We see you. You’re not alone. She writes movingly about ancient forms of wisdom in The Amen Effect. Rituals don’t have to be elaborate to be powerful.
9. Grief is a land, not an identity. One of my absolute favorite titles of a book is Suleika Jaouad’s Between Two Kingdoms. In it, she describes illness not as an identity but as a land (“the kingdom of the well” and”the kingdom of the sick”). And these kingdoms as places we are all bound to visit over the course of our lives (sometimes in the course of a day!). Grief can work in the same way. For more on Suleika’s gorgeous work, start with our Substack Live here.
10. “I resist the narrative that grief gives us baggage.” When I first read Fernandez’s Renegade Grief, this paragraph stopped me in my tracks:
To go deeper into Fernandez’s work, start with an interview I did with her here.
If you’re navigating a season of grief, or supporting someone who is, I hope something here offers a way to hold it.
As always,
Priya
I’m sharing the first 15 minutes of our conversation for all. To watch the full video, become a GROUP LIFER. (You can watch our conversation by clicking on the video at the top of this email.)
