Friends of the California Grief Center,

This Mother’s Day, as stores bloom with flowers and brunch tables fill, let us remember its true origin: not celebration, but sorrow, courage, and care.

In the 1800s, Ann Reeves Jarvis formed “Mother’s Day Work Clubs” to save children’s lives and tend to the sick (North and South) during the Civil War. Her daughter Anna, devastated by loss, turned that grief into a movement, creating Mother’s Day as a time for remembrance, not commerce.

When corporations twisted it into profit, Anna fought back, heartbroken. She died childless and alone, still mourning not just her mother, but what the day had become.

This Sunday, may we honor them and the love that heals, and the grief that birthed this day.

🌹 2nd Annual Mother’s Day Gathering – Grief Support for All (Catharsis Theater)

📅 Sunday, May 11 | ⏰ 1–4:30 PM | 📍 Blue Door Theater, Culver City
🎟️ Sliding Scale (Green Bottle Model) | 🌱 Adults 21+

Whether you’re grieving a mother, a child, a dream, a country, or the mothering you never received…
Whether you’re estranged, exhausted, or simply need a place to breathe…
This Catharsis Theater experience is for you.

We’re honored to host our second annual Mother’s Day Gathering—a space for reflection, release, and remembrance.

At its heart, Mother's Day is for everyone: those who have mothers, miss mothers, are mothers, never knew their mothers, or have lost children themselves.
It is a day to honor love in all its forms—and to allow the pain of grief to be witnessed in community.
Because grief was never meant to be carried alone. It is a shared human truth.

Through guided story-sharing, simple ritual, and the ancient tools of psychodrama techniques and spontaneous truth-telling, we gather not to “celebrate,” but to witness.
To feel. To remember. To begin to heal.

💐 This is not a performance—it’s a place to lay down the mask.
🎙️ You will never be asked to speak unless you choose to.
🎟️ Sliding scale / Green Bottle model. No one turned away.
🌿 Held in honor of Ann & Anna Jarvis, and all mothers—known and unknown.

Let this Mother’s Day return to its roots:
A day of grief, love, and radical tenderness.

👉 Register Here
(Please attend only if you can be fully present.)

💫 A Dharma Talk for the Weather of the Soul (Trudy Goodman)

Sunday | May 11, 2025 | 10:00–11:30 AM PT
Zoom | Donation-Based | Open to All

Grief doesn’t keep a schedule. Some seasons overstay. Some relief arrives like rain on dry ground. On May 11, Trudy Goodman—founder of InsightLA—offers a place to land, where sorrow is welcomed and presence is shared.

This isn’t a lecture. It’s guided reflection. Gentle silence. A reminder that in painful times, community can steady us and help us carry what’s hard.

🕯️ Come as you are. We’ll be here—tending the light.
👉 Register Here

🧭 Circle These Dates—They’re Worth the Show-Up

💸 Facing Financial Fear
A Catharsis Theater Journey Through Work, Worth & Wreckage

📅 Sunday, May 18 | ⏰ 1–4:30 PM | 📍 Blue Door Theater, Culver City
🎟️ Sliding Scale (Green Bottle Model) | 🌱 Adults 21+

As the world lurches through uncertainty and economic strain tightens its grip, many are quietly carrying the heavy ache of financial grief—unseen, but deeply felt.

It surfaces in debt. In shame. In vanished jobs, deferred dreams, and the rising panic at checkout lines.

Financial grief is quiet, heavy, and widespread.

Through psychodrama techniques, storytelling, and group ritual, we’ll name what hurts and reclaim our breath, voice, and power. No toxic positivity. No pressure to perform. Just space to feel—and to discern the next right step in our financial lives.

✨ Featuring:
– Nikki Lewis (Sage Haven Therapy)
– Brian Stefan, LCSW (California Grief Center)
– Suzy Taylor, trauma-informed financial planner offering tools, insight & post-event support

🙋 No previous experience needed. Just come as you are.
🔗 Register Here

Let’s gather not just to survive—but to grieve, breathe, and begin again. Together.

🌿 HOPE Group: Healing Ourselves through the Present Experience
with Dr. Jamie Gamboa

Sunday | May 31, 2025 | 10:00–11:30 AM PT
Zoom | Donation-Based | Open to All

Since 2020, HOPE Group has offered a steady sanctuary for those navigating deep suffering—a place where nothing needs to be fixed, only felt. Together, we practice staying with what is, trusting that healing unfolds not in the past or future, but here—in the present experience.

This month’s gathering, Spotlight on Suicide (SOS), invites us to meet sorrow with courage. No need to outrun it. No need to dress it up. Just come close and breathe.

Dr. Jamie Gamboa will guide us through the quiet medicine of presence—the kind that doesn't push pain away, but holds it gently until it softens.

🕯️ Come as you are. No story too heavy, no silence too deep.
👉 Register Here

🌊 More About California Grief Center

A Harbor for the Heartbroken, a Beacon for the Lost

Grief doesn’t need fixing—it needs a place to land. Like the tide, it comes unbidden, brimming with memory, heavy with longing. At the California Grief Center, we don’t patch the boat. We keep the lantern lit.

From private sessions to Catharsis Theater’s ocean-floor journeys, we help people find their sea legs again. We sail with schools, families, and entire communities—and now offer virtual support, wherever you drift.

🌀 Drop anchor at www.caligrief.com

—Brian Stefan, LCSW
California Grief Center Founder