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- The Grief Wave: What Remains, What Transforms
The Grief Wave: What Remains, What Transforms
On endurance, erasure, and the communities that carry grief forward into resilience.
Brian Stefan
August 22, 2025
🧭 TL;DR | This Week at a Glance
🌅 Legacies That Outlast Us
👵 Ethel Caterham Turns 116
Born in 1909, she has lived through wars, revolutions, and seismic shifts. A reminder that to live this long is to carry immense love and loss.
🕯 Echoes & Endings: Christopher Rowe
A scholar remembered for giving Plato a modern voice, and for helping us wrestle with the timeless grief of asking, what is it all for?
📚 Reading for Pleasure Declines
A 40% drop in daily reading marks a quiet loss of ritual, reflection, and solace.
🛡️ DIA Chief Fired
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse’s removal reveals how careers can be undone in an instant, leaving grief in its wake.
🏛️ IRS Whiplash
After forcing thousands out, the agency scrambles to rehire. A story of regret, repair, and fractured trust.
🌈 Illinois LGBTQ+ Legal Hotline
Launching Aug 25, offering recognition and protection where grief once came from silence.
🖍️ Pulse Crosswalk Painted Over
Erased paint gives way to chalk and resilience. Grief cannot be covered.
🌊 Tangled Net #8: The Globalization of Political Grief
When suffering is weaponized, grief travels faster than justice.
🌱 Spaces for Healing and Renewal
🕯 HOPE Group
Aug 30, online. Sitting with suicidal struggle through mindfulness and presence.
🍃 Wildwomxn Retreat
Aug 23, Los Angeles. Ritual, journaling, and song for grief and resilience.
🤝 Mindful Self-Compassion
Starts Sep 4. An eight-week practice to meet suffering with kindness.
🌊 Carrying Forward in Community
🎉 Jack Kornfield & Trudy Goodman’s 80th
Sep 27, hybrid. A joyful celebration of two beloved teachers.
🌊 California Grief Center
Therapy, groups, and training for every stage of grief, loss, and transition.
💌 Dear friends of The Grief Wave,
Facing the hurt — together.
This week’s stories reflect what remains across time and what transforms in the face of grief — from a 116-year-old woman who has outlived generations, to the quiet decline of reading, to symbols of remembrance erased and redrawn in chalk.
We begin with legacies that outlast us, honoring lives that hold memory and meaning across generations. From there, we turn to grief in the world we share, the transitions unfolding in politics, culture, and daily life.
You’ll also find spaces for healing and renewal, along with gatherings that carry us forward in community. Together, these stories remind us that grief is not just loss but a passage — a way of living, loving, and healing alongside one another.
👵 Ethel Caterham: A Century of Endurance
The world’s oldest living person, carrying 116 years of history, memory, and quiet resilience.
Ethel Caterham received a card from the King on her 115th birthday in 2024.
Born in 1909, Ethel Caterham has lived through two world wars, the Russian Revolution, and the rise of modern technology. She is the last surviving subject of Edward VII, a living bridge between past and present.
Her story is not only about longevity, but about the griefs and changes borne across time — siblings gone, worlds remade, and eras vanished. She reminds us that to live this long is to carry immense love and loss together.
🕯 Echoes & Endings: Christopher Rowe
A scholar who gave Plato and Aristotle a modern voice, reminding us that philosophy is not artifact but living wisdom.
Christopher Rowe (left)
Christopher Rowe spent his life translating and teaching, helping us see that the questions of the ancients — how to live, how to love, how to die well — are the same questions we still carry.
His passing is a grief felt not only in academia but in the hearts of those who turn to philosophy for meaning. To study with him was to be reminded that inquiry itself is an act of hope.
📚 Reading for Pleasure Declines
When daily rituals fade, we lose more than a pastime — we lose a way of holding ourselves through change.
A bookstore in Washington DC. (Photograph: Greg Kahn/the Guardian)
A new report shows daily reading in the U.S. has dropped 40 percent. Once a common refuge, the book in hand is becoming rarer, replaced by faster, louder distractions.
Reading has long been a quiet companion through grief, a place where sorrow could be named and softened. Its decline is not just cultural, but personal — a loss of solace, imagination, and the slow medicine of story.
Even a single page can carry us through.
🛡️ DIA Chief Fired
When leadership is cut short, the loss is not only a position but the stability and trust it carried.
Jeffrey Kruse testifying at a 2024 hearing. (Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/AP)
Trump allies have removed Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, following an Iran report. In a world already steeped in uncertainty, such abrupt endings ripple outward — reshaping careers, institutions, and the lives tethered to them.
For those inside the agency, it is a reminder that service can be undone in an instant, leaving behind the grief of unfinished work and sudden transition.
Sometimes the hardest part is not the departure, but the silence that follows.
🏛️ IRS Whiplash
When institutions reverse course, the people inside them are left holding the weight of whiplash and regret.
Outside the IRS building in Washington (Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
After pushing thousands of employees out, the IRS is now scrambling to rehire the very workers it once dismissed. Careers were disrupted, lives were reshaped, and trust was fractured.
For those returning, the grief is layered — the loss of stability, the bitterness of being let go, and the uncertainty of reentering the same halls that once cast them out.
Sometimes the wound is not just in the departure, but in being asked to return as if nothing was lost.
🌈 Illinois LGBTQ+ Legal Hotline
When protection is denied, the grief of invisibility deepens.
Governor JB Pritzker. Governor JB Pritzker is Illinois' 43rd Governor, elected in 2018 and reelected in 2022. (Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Launching Aug 25, Illinois will open its first statewide LGBTQ+ legal hotline — a lifeline for those navigating discrimination, rejection, and systemic silence. Behind every call is a story of loss: of safety, of belonging, of rights that should never have been in question.
This new resource is not only about laws and legal aid, but about recognition — the healing that comes when people are no longer forced to carry their struggles alone.
Sometimes the simple act of being seen is enough to restore hope.
🖍️ Pulse Crosswalk Painted Over
When symbols of remembrance are erased, grief returns to the surface.
The crosswalk was part of the Pulse Memorial, which honoured the people who were shot in the nightclub.
In Orlando, the rainbow-painted crosswalk honoring the 49 lives lost at Pulse was recently covered. Yet the community responded with chalk — fragile, temporary, and deeply human. Each mark a reminder that grief cannot be painted over.
These gestures are more than art; they are acts of defiance and love, ways of saying the memory of those lost still matters.
Even chalk on pavement can carry memory forward.
🌊 Tangled Net #8: The Globalization of Political Grief
When suffering is weaponized, grief becomes a language that crosses borders.
In every tangled net, some threads carry hope while others carry anguish, and increasingly, they're the same threads.
From Argentina’s white scarves to Nigeria’s #BringBackOurGirls to today’s prisoner swaps, local tragedies are pulled into a global stage. Grief is no longer only personal or national — it is traded, amplified, and carried across continents.
Behind every headline is a family still waiting, a community still grieving. The question is not whether political grief will spread, but how we respond when it does.
Sometimes bearing witness is the only way to keep dignity alive.
🕯️ HOPE Group: Sitting With the Unbearable—Mindfulness & Suicidal Struggle (with Patrick Park)
Virtual (Zoom) | Saturday, August 30 | 10:00–11:30 AM PT
HOPE for all.
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 and open to all.
💛 Donation-based & open to all
🍃 Wildwomxn: Honoring Grief, Awakening Gratitude
Retreat Day | Saturday, August 23 | 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM | Benedict Canyon, LA
Alexis Slutzky has over a decade of experience gently guiding individuals and communities through grief and change with empathy, humor, and deep insight.
Led by Alexis Slutzky, this day of ritual, journaling, nature, and song explores how grief deepens our hearts. For female-identified and non-binary individuals.
Suggested donation: $75–$150.
🗓 Saturday, August 23 | 10 AM–5 PM | Benedict Canyon
🤝 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
Lisa Kring, LCSW, is a senior InsightLA teacher for over 15 years, leading classes such as MBSR, Mindful Self- Compassion, Awakening Joy, and Basics of Mindfulness.
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
Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman—beloved teachers, partners, and pioneers in mindfulness—sharing a joyful moment ahead of their 80th birthday celebration.
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
Brian Stefan, LCSW
Founder & Clinical Director
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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Facing the hurt — together.