The Grief Wave: Echoes & Renewal + The Second Funeral (October)

🧭 TL;DR | This Week at a Glance

✨ Profiles & Ideas

⚖️ Pregnancy Justice President Lourdes Rivera — Protecting freedom, health, and dignity in a post-Roe America

🌊 The Tangled Net #14: The Weaponization of Nostalgia — When longing for “home” became the most powerful political force of our age

🕯️ Echoes & Endings | Jane Goodall (1934–2025) — A life that proved patience could transform our understanding of being human

📰 News & Reminders

🏛️ From Roe to Retribution — Hundreds of women face pregnancy-related prosecutions, most in the US South

🌍 The Rise and Fall of Climate Science — After 60 years of building digital Earth models, scientists reach a critical turning point

🕊️ Choosing the Final Chapter in Colorado — Inside Denver Health’s Medical Aid in Dying clinic, where more patients are deciding how—and when—to say goodbye

🎉 Events & Gatherings

🌸 Oct 18 — The Second Funeral: A Half-Day Gathering for Grief & Renewal
“What happens when one funeral isn’t enough for your heart?”
(Culver City, LA)

🌈 Oct 4 — Affirming Neurodiversity Through CRM and TRM with Dr. Jamie Gamboa, PsyD
(Virtual)

🤖 Oct 15 — Suicide and AI: Virtual Armchair Discussion with Stacey Freedenthal, PhD, LCSW & Jonathan B. Singer, PhD, LCSW
(Free | Virtual)

🧘 Oct 23 — Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction with Christiane Wolf, MD, PhD
(Santa Monica)

🌅 Dec 3–8 — 2025 Ram Dass Legacy “Open Your Heart in Paradise” Retreat
(Napili Kai Beach Resort, Maui)

💔 The Traumatic Loss Companion Course
An online program for navigating sudden, unexpected, or traumatic loss
(Virtual | Self-Paced)

🌊 California Grief Center
Therapy, groups, and support for every stage of grief.

💌 Dear friends of The Grief Wave,

Grief arises in many places—in the fight to protect dignity, in the longing for a home that can’t return, and in the quiet courage of those facing the end of life. This week’s stories remind us that grief is not only about loss; it is also about the ways we create meaning, agency, and connection in the face of what cannot be changed.

From reproductive rights to climate futures to the choices surrounding death and dying, each story carries both sorrow and resilience. Together, they invite us to ask: How do we honor what is gone while shaping what comes next?

✨ Profiles & Ideas

⚖️ Pregnancy Justice President Lourdes Rivera

Protecting freedom, health, and dignity in a post-Roe America

Lourdes Rivera has devoted her life to ensuring that no one loses their rights because of pregnancy. From her early years as a Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellow co-leading the Women in Prison Project to leadership roles at the Ford Foundation and the Center for Reproductive Rights, she has carried both the history of the reproductive justice movement and the urgency of defending it, earning recognition as a lawyer who blends legal strategy with a commitment to human dignity.

Now president of Pregnancy Justice, she has pushed advocacy into critical spaces: Supreme Court cases, state legislatures, global grantmaking, and classrooms where she taught health and human rights. Along the way she has navigated shifting landscapes, countered escalating threats in the wake of Roe’s fall, and built coalitions that ensure the voices of those most affected are at the table. Her work reflects both the resilience of law and its power to transform.

Most recently, Rivera has emerged as a leading voice on reproductive justice, celebrated for defending the full personhood of pregnant people. Yet for those who watch her bring clarity to the complexity of law, this moment underscores the tension between rights denied and rights reclaimed. Through it all, she represents the best of advocacy—dedication, audacity, and a career defined by breaking barriers, ensuring reproductive rights are not relics but guarantees of freedom, equity, and lasting justice.

🌊 The Tangled Net #14: The Weaponization of Nostalgia

When longing for "home" became the most powerful political force of our age

Nostalgia’s grief is the quiet story politics often exploits, yet its absence unsettles whole nations. Communities sense loss earlier than elites imagine, their concerns silenced by well-meant dismissal, their streets carrying the weight of shuttered factories, their stories echoing what cannot be named aloud. The fracture does not come as sudden collapse but as deindustrialization, a neighborhood emptied, a vote cast in longing. What disappears is not memory, but the thread of continuity that ties people to belonging.

Researchers trace the impact in rising despair, fractured families, and lingering fears. These are not illusions but evidence—suicides, overdoses, vanishing jobs, citizens burdened with nostalgia they cannot yet release. Grief moves in cycles of anger and hope, and when reality is denied, the net of understanding frays. The loss multiplies in silence, even while questions rise again and again.

Our task is to meet this truth—acknowledging disruption, balancing honesty with possibility, and listening when communities reveal grief in votes, protests, or startling claims. Only then can the next generation inherit not erasure but renewal, where remembering becomes a path toward building rather than a weapon of division.

🕯️ Echoes & Endings | Jane Goodall (1934–2025)

A life that showed patience could transform how we understand being human

Jane Goodall’s legacy is remembered not just in discoveries, but as a testament to patience and compassion. Born in London in 1934, her life showed the world that empathy could be revolutionary, proving through decades at Gombe that animals deserved names, not numbers, and that grief, love, and emotion were not uniquely human traits. Her work demonstrated that understanding in the age of science is not about detachment—it is about connection, reminding us that observation requires both intellect and heart.

From her first glimpse of David Greybeard crafting tools to her founding of Roots & Shoots, Jane redefined how we think about our place in the natural world, turning barriers between species into bridges of kinship, fear into advocacy, and silence into global action. Her philosophy—that every individual matters and every action counts—now guides generations of scientists, conservationists, and young leaders across the globe.

The mission endures—in every tree planted by a youth group, every lecture that inspires change, every chimpanzee still studied at Gombe. Jane’s vision lives on as both a milestone and a call to action, reminding us that patience is not passive—it is the foundation of discovery, protection, and hope.

📰 News & Reminders

🏛️ From Roe to Retribution

Hundreds of women face pregnancy-related prosecutions, most in the US South

Prosecutors in 16 US states have charged more than 400 women with pregnancy-related crimes since Roe v Wade was overturned, new research shows. Compiled by Pregnancy Justice, the report found most cases in the South, largely targeting low-income women under child abuse, neglect, or endangerment laws. Without oversight, these prosecutions—which included 16 homicide charges—are likely an undercount, raising alarms about the expanding reach of “fetal personhood” in states like Alabama and Oklahoma.

The findings go beyond statistics—they reveal how women face arrest for substance use during pregnancy, even for legal or prescribed drugs, and how miscarriages and stillbirths can result in felony charges. At least nine women were investigated for merely considering abortion or ordering pills online. Advocates warn this strategy cements a doctrine that prioritizes embryos over pregnant people. As lawmakers push new personhood bills carrying potential homicide penalties, the study underscores what many fear: pregnancy itself is increasingly being policed as a crime.

🌍 The Rise and Fall of Climate Science

Scientists have spent 60 years building a computer model of Earth, one of humanity’s most ambitious projects, and it has now reached a critical moment

For the first time, scientists have built computer models that allow us to see the planet’s future before it arrives. After decades of trial and error, researchers have traced how even a speck of Saharan dust can ripple across continents—melting glaciers, feeding rainforests, or seeding clouds above the ocean. Rather than view Earth in fragments, they have captured its interwoven processes in digital form. The approach reflects 60 years of work, beginning with crude simulations and culminating in models that now predict the consequences of fossil fuel emissions.

The progress underscores more than a technical feat—it shows how humanity is rethinking climate as a whole-earth challenge rather than a series of local weather events. Supporters argue the models can illuminate long-term risks such as superstorms, heat waves, and ecosystem collapse, while guiding policymakers and communities toward urgent action.

Read the full article to see how climate models are reshaping our vision of the future—and what uncertainties remain.

🕊️ Choosing the Final Chapter in Colorado

Inside Denver Health’s Medical Aid in Dying clinic, where more terminally ill patients are deciding how—and when—to say goodbye.

A new report marks the rise of Medical Aid in Dying in Colorado, highlighting both its deeply personal impact and the moral debates it provokes. First approved by voters in 2016 through the End of Life Options Act, the law allows terminally ill adults to self-administer prescribed medication and has since guided more than 1,100 Coloradans through their final moments.

Advocates note that demand for Denver Health’s MAID clinic is growing, with hundreds of patients each year seeking autonomy and relief from unbearable suffering. Yet critics warn the practice devalues life and raises ethical questions about control at the end of life. Supporters stress it restores dignity and choice for the dying, while opponents escalate challenges in legislatures, lawsuits, and public debate. The question endures: how much control should we have over the terms of our deaths?

🎉 Events & Gatherings

🌸 The Second Funeral: A Half-Day Gathering for Grief & Renewal

“What happens when one funeral isn’t enough for your heart?”

Saturday, October 18, 2025 | 1:00-4:30pm | Los Angeles (Culver City)

The Second Funeral is a monthly gathering where unfinished grief finds witness, catharsis, and relief in community. All are welcome. Established in 2023, continuing today.

📅 Saturday, October 18 | 1:00–4:30 PM (arrive 12:30–12:45)
📍 Blue Door Theater, Culver City

What is The Second Funeral?
The Second Funeral is a safe, trauma-informed gathering inspired by psychodrama and grounded in mental health best practices, drawing on proven group methods that became some of the most effective and widely trusted approaches of the 20th century.

✨ What makes it unique:
– Not performance, but presence
– Not scripted, but supportive
– Not clinical therapy, but deeply healing

🕯️ Join if you’re ready. Simply come as you are.
With gratitude to ArtsUp! LA for hosting.

🌈 Affirming Neurodiversity Through CRM and TRM with Dr. Jamie Gamboa, PsyD

Zoom | October 4, 2025 | 9:00am-12:00pm PT | Sliding Scale

Since its founding, the Trauma Resource Institute has been a place of learning and resilience—a space where lived experience, scholarship, and practice meet to support healing.

As October begins, we gather online with Dr. Jamie Gamboa, PsyD, to explore how the Trauma Resiliency Model (TRM)® and the Community Resiliency Model (CRM)® can be applied in affirming, inclusive ways for neurodiverse individuals. This timely training invites mental health professionals, educators, and community members to expand their skills while fostering empowerment and belonging.

All are welcome to join this thoughtful 3-hour session of education, practice, and community connection.

💛 Registration open now. Oct. 4, 2025, 9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. PT.

🤖 Suicide and AI — Virtual Armchair Discussion with Experts Stacey Freedenthal, PhD, LCSW and Jonathan B. Singer, PhD, LCSW (FREE)

Zoom | October 15, 2025 | 8:00-9:30am PT | 11:00am-12:30pm ET

Since its beginning, the Suicide and AI discussion has been a gathering for reflection—a space to explore lived experience, scholarship, and practice wisdom at the edge of technology and human suffering.

As we approach October, we meet virtually with Stacey Freedenthal, PhD, LCSW, and Jonathan B. Singer, PhD, LCSW, to unpack the risks and opportunities of generative AI in suicide prevention. This timely conversation welcomes mental health professionals, educators, and scholars seeking tools to use today while planning for a safer tomorrow.

All are invited to join this thoughtful 90-minute exchange of ideas, practice, and community online.

💛 Registration open now. Oct. 15, 2025, 8:00 a.m. PT / 11:00 a.m. ET.

🧘 Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction with Christiane Wolf, MD, PhD

Santa Monica | October 23-December 18, 2025 | Thursdays 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM PT

For over 20 years, InsightLA has offered mindfulness teachings to people from all walks of life—a community gathering to find balance, peace, and well-being.

This fall, we meet at the Santa Monica Meditation Center for an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction & Mindful Self-Compassion series with Christiane Wolf, MD, PhD. Rooted in decades of research, this program supports greater resilience, healing, and connection in daily life.

Each session welcomes both newcomers and longtime practitioners, offering guided practices, reflection, and tools for managing stress, pain, and uncertainty.

💛 Registration open now. Thursdays, Oct. 23–Dec. 18, 2025, Santa Monica.

🌅 2025 Ram Dass Legacy "Open Your Heart in Paradise" Maui Retreat

Napili Kai Beach Resort | December 3-8, 2025

Since 2008, the Ram Dass Legacy Retreat has been a sanctuary for seekers—a gathering to reflect, connect, and return to the heart.

As we approach December, we meet once more at the Napili Kai Beach Resort for Open Your Heart in Paradise, honoring Ram Dass’s vision with music, meditation, teachings, and community. This beloved retreat continues to welcome pilgrims, newcomers, and longtime friends alike on the spiritual path.

All are invited to join this immersive six-day experience of silence, song, practice, and celebration in Maui.

💛 Registration open now. Dec. 3–8, 2025, Napili Bay.

💔 The Traumatic Loss Companion Course (Virtual)

An online self-help program for individuals living with the aftermath of a sudden, unexpected or traumatic death of a loved one

Since its creation, the Traumatic Loss Companion Course has been a refuge for the grieving—a guided path through pain, chaos, and the search for meaning.

As you face the aftermath of a sudden, devastating death, you are invited to join this online program led by Dr. Jennifer Levin. With warmth and clarity, she offers video modules, guided practices, and community calls designed to support you through trauma and grief, step by step.

All are welcome to begin this self-paced journey of healing, understanding, and connection with others who truly understand.

💛 Enrollment open now. 12 modules online + monthly live calls.

🌊 Get Help from the California Grief Center

You do not have to grieve alone. Whether you have lost someone, lost your way, or carry unspoken sorrow, there is a place for you here.

What We Offer:

• Grief Therapy (in-person and virtual)

• Catharsis Theater (monthly gatherings)

• Virtual Support Groups (confidential and facilitated)

Our Philosophy: We do not treat grief as a problem. We treat it as a passage.
Consultations are always free.

💛 With care,
Brian Stefan, LCSW
Founder & Clinical Director
California Grief Center

✅ P.S. Know someone quietly grieving?
👉 Forward this letter. You never know who needs it.
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