The Grief Wave: Facing Hurt, Finding Hope

🧭 TL;DR | This Week at a Glance

🏛 Leadership & Community

👩‍⚖️ Senator Caroline Menjivar
Her story is one of resilience and representation — a reminder that leadership often begins in the places where loss and inequity are most deeply felt.

🕯 HOPE Group: Sitting With the Unbearable—Mindfulness & Suicidal Struggle (Aug 30, Online)
A space for mindfulness and presence in the face of deep suffering — where despair and grief can be witnessed, and hope practiced.

🌐 The Tangled Net #9: The Globalization of Grief
Loss no longer stays local. When grief becomes global, our healing must become collective.

🕯️ Echoes & Endings | Frank Caprio (1936–2025)
Judge Frank Caprio reminded us that kindness can live even in the halls of justice. His absence leaves a quieter bench, but a louder legacy.

🌍 Grief Across the World

🚨 Minneapolis School Shooting
Two children killed, 18 injured. Families and classmates now face a grief no community should carry, yet one we continue to see too often.

🍼 Mississippi’s Infant Mortality Crisis
The highest infant mortality in a decade has turned statistics into heartbreak for parents, families, and communities struggling to hold life at its most fragile.

🌍 Greenland’s Quiet Grief: Denmark & U.S. in Tension
Diplomatic tensions over Greenland remind us how even nations wrestle with the grief of influence, autonomy, and histories that never fully settle.

🌊 Atlantic Current Collapse
Scientists warn the AMOC may fail sooner than expected — a planetary grief unfolding as oceans shift and futures are rewritten.

💙 Gatherings & Offerings

💙 Volunteer with Didi Hirsch Suicide Prevention Center (LA or virtually nationwide)
Service becomes a way to transmute crisis and grief into meaning — a gift both given and received.

🎶 Music & Health Conference 2025 (Sep 22)
At UCLA this September, musicians and researchers explore how melody and rhythm can carry what words alone cannot.

🤝 Mindful Self-Compassion (Sep 4)
An eight-week practice to meet suffering with kindness.

🎉 Jack Kornfield & Trudy Goodman’s 80th (Sep 27)
A joyful celebration of two beloved teachers who have guided countless people through life’s transitions.

🌊 California Grief Center
Therapy, groups, and training for every stage of grief, loss, and change.

💌 Dear friends of The Grief Wave,

As August turns to September, we are reminded that every season carries both endings and beginnings. September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, a time to speak what too often stays silent: the grief and suffering carried alone.

This week’s stories reflect those truths — from a Minneapolis school reeling after loss to Mississippi families facing an infant mortality crisis, from Greenland’s fragile autonomy to scientists warning of oceans in collapse.

Yet there are also threads of renewal: Senator Caroline Menjivar’s resilient leadership, music’s healing presence at UCLA, Judge Frank Caprio’s legacy of kindness, and the reminder that service can transform sorrow into meaning.

Grief is not only loss. It is also the passage back into presence, connection, and the possibility of beginning again — together, in the tangled net we all share.

👩‍⚖️ Senator Caroline Menjivar: Leadership Born of Resilience

From personal struggle to public service, her story reminds us that healing and justice often grow from the places marked by loss.

Born in 1990 in the San Fernando Valley to Salvadoran immigrants, Caroline Menjivar became the first openly LGBTQ+ Latina to represent California’s 20th Senate District. Her path included service in the Marine Corps under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, work as an EMT on the graveyard shift, and years as a domestic violence therapist.

Now, as a California State Senator, she carries forward the stories of immigrants, survivors, students, and families caught between crisis and care. Her life shows how grief can be transformed into leadership, and how silence and struggle can give rise to new voices shaping a more compassionate future.

🕯️ HOPE Group: Sitting With the Unbearable—Mindfulness & Suicidal Struggle (with Patrick Park)

Virtual (Zoom) | Saturday, August 30 | 10:00–11:30 AM PT

Since 2020, HOPE has been a refuge from chaos, offering space for reflection and presence. This month’s theme: mindfulness, deep suffering, and sitting with suicide, with guest Patrick Park, a senior Zen teacher.

💛 Donation-based & open to all

🌐 The Tangled Net #9: The Globalization of Grief

Loss no longer stays local. When grief becomes global, our healing must become collective.

Grief no longer stays local. In a hyperconnected world, every loss — from a wildfire to a pension collapse — ripples instantly across continents.

This global mourning can overwhelm us, but it also offers possibility: to stand together across borders, to create rituals that hold both personal and planetary loss, and to discover that shared sorrow may yet become shared strength.

🕯️ Echoes & Endings | Frank Caprio (1936–2025)

Judge Frank Caprio reminded us that kindness can live even in the halls of justice. His absence leaves a quieter bench, but a louder legacy.

At 88, Judge Frank Caprio left behind more than a courtroom — he left a lesson in how justice could be lived with kindness. His rulings touched millions not because they were merciful, but because they revealed the person behind every case.

His courtroom became a place where dignity was restored, even in the smallest matters. In his absence, the gavel falls silent — but the echo of his compassion is impossible to ignore.

🚨 Minneapolis School Shooting

Families and classmates now face a grief no community should carry.

Eight-year-old Fletcher Merkel and 10-year-old Harper Moyski were killed when a gunman opened fire during a school Mass. Children hid under pews, parents rushed to reunite, and first responders carried scenes they will never forget.

What remains is the grief of futures stolen, the fear carried by young lives, and the urgent need for healing and change.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988, or go to 988lifeline.org, to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. You can also call the network, previously known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 800-273-8255, or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.

🍼 Mississippi’s Infant Mortality Crisis

The highest infant mortality in a decade has turned statistics into heartbreak for parents, families, and communities struggling to hold life at its most fragile.

Mississippi has declared a public health emergency as infant deaths rise to their highest level in a decade.

The crisis is not only in the numbers — it is in the families shattered, the mothers left without support, and the communities carrying grief that should never have been theirs. Some see this as a wake-up call to expand maternal care; others as the result of decades of neglect.

Recovery here will not be a single program or policy but a long journey — one measured by every child who reaches their first birthday.

🌍 Greenland’s Quiet Grief: Denmark & U.S. in Tension

Diplomatic tensions over Greenland remind us that even nations wrestle with the grief of influence, autonomy, and histories that never fully settle.

For centuries, Greenland has carried the weight of other nations’ ambitions — its ice, minerals, and strategic position drawing outside eyes. Now Denmark has summoned the top U.S. diplomat over alleged influence operations, a reminder that even the Arctic’s quiet landscapes hold deep fractures.

What looks like geopolitics is also grief: autonomy challenged, trust strained, and histories of control resurfacing. Greenland’s future remains contested, and its people risk being overshadowed by powerful nations treating their home as a prize.

🌊 Atlantic Current Collapse

Scientists warn the AMOC may fail sooner than expected — a planetary grief unfolding as oceans shift and futures are rewritten.

The Atlantic Ocean carries more than waves — it carries the pulse of the planet. For centuries, the AMOC has sustained climates, harvests, and human life itself.

Now scientists warn that this rhythm is faltering. New models suggest its tipping point could arrive within decades. Its collapse would reshape rainfall, seasons, coastlines, and millions of lives.

Like a silence spreading through a symphony, the weakening of the AMOC reminds us that absence can be as powerful as presence.

💙 Volunteer with Didi Hirsch Suicide Prevention Center (LA or virtually nationwide)

Service becomes a way to transmute crisis and grief into meaning — a gift both given and received.

At Didi Hirsch, service carries lives, not just hours. Each shift on the Crisis Line turns listening into lifeline and presence into prevention.

The Center now calls for new volunteers. Training is rigorous, but the work is transformative — a chance to sit with another’s suffering and offer words that steady and save. Demanding as it is, the reward is hope made real, passed hand to hand across the line.

🎶 Music & Health Conference 2025 (Sep 22)

At UCLA this September, musicians and researchers explore how melody and rhythm can carry what words alone cannot.

At the Music & Health Conference, sound carries more than melody — it carries healing. Each presentation, panel, and performance joins a rhythm of discovery, where research meets resonance and music becomes medicine.

This inaugural gathering brings scientists, clinicians, and musicians together to explore how rhythm steadies anxiety, melody restores memory, and harmony reaches where words cannot. The dialogue is urgent — a full day on how music can transform mental health, stress, and illness.

Like voices in chorus, each participant becomes part of something greater. The questions are complex, but so is the suffering we face. In coming together, we discover health is not only clinical — it is also sung, strummed, and carried note by note.

🤝 Mindful Self-Compassion 8-week Program (Hybrid: In-person & Virtual)

Starting Thursday, September 4 | 6:00 PM – 8:30 PM PT | Benedict Canyon, LA & Virtual

Taught by Lisa Kring, this evidence-based course blends Buddhist wisdom and clinical research to help you meet suffering with kindness. Includes guided meditations, discussions, and practical tools for emotional resilience. CE credits available.

Fee: $600 | With CEs: $685.

🎉 A Joyful Celebration: Honoring the 80th Birthdays of Jack Kornfield & Trudy Goodman

Saturday, September 27, 2025 | 2:00–5:00 PM PT

Guided presence, shared stories, and gratitude for two beloved mindfulness teachers. Proceeds support InsightLA’s mission of access, equity, and care.

📅 Saturday, September 27 | 2:00–5:00 PM PT | Santa Monica + Live Online

🌊 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)

• Grief Counselor Training (Fall 2025)

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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