The Grief Wave: When Grief Feels Too Much + Catharsis Theater: A Gathering for Release, Relief, and Connection (11/22)

When heartbreak swells beyond what one heart can hold, the stories we share help grief soften and become more bearable.

We’re moving through a season defined by loss, uncertainty, and deep transition. Heartbreak is being held quietly in so many homes, and the strain of isolation and disconnection is something nearly everyone has felt.

Because of this need — and because so many of you asked — we’re gathering again this Saturday 11/22 for a free community psychodrama session for anyone who has experienced grief or anticipatory loss, whether in 2025 or years before. This will be our 46th Catharsis Theater gathering since 2023, and we offer it at no cost to the Los Angeles community.

Event details and the Eventbrite link here and below.

Explore care, connection, and community at caligrief.com.

🧭 TL;DR | This Week at a Glance

✨ Profiles & Ideas
🎭 Yevgenia Berkovich — The director who wouldn’t look away

🍎 American Education Week 2025 — Celebrating the people who make our public schools safe, strong, and thriving

📰 News & Reminders
📦 Sorting Through a Lifetime — What we discover about our parents (and ourselves) when we inherit their things

🤝 The New Dementia Model — As memory care units expand nationwide, a quiet countermovement is choosing integration instead

🎉 Events & Gatherings
🕯️ Nov 22 — Catharsis Theater: A Gathering for Release, Relief, and Connection
(Free | Culver City, LA)

🔔 Nov 20 — End Well 2025: A Day About Death & Life
(Los Angeles)

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

🔔 Dec 10 — Grounding in Gratitude: A Holiday Season Wellness Gathering
(Santa Monica + Virtual)

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

🌊 California Grief Center
Virtual grief counseling in CA and nationwide, support groups, Catharsis Theater, and companionship for every stage of loss.

💌 Dear friends of The Grief Wave,

When sorrow stretches past the edges of what we can name, the simple act of being witnessed can steady us.

In a season shaped by uncertainty, transition, and quiet heartbreak, many people are carrying grief that is both deeply personal and widely shared — losses from long ago, losses unfolding now, and losses we fear but haven’t yet faced. What binds them is the tenderness required to keep going.

This week’s stories remind us that grief is not a solitary element of life; it moves through families, classrooms, communities, and generations. We see it in the courage of artists who refuse to look away from suffering, in the everyday labor of school staff who hold children through their hardest days, in the emotional weight of sorting through a parent’s lifetime of belongings, and in the growing movement to reimagine dignity for elders living with memory loss. Each piece reveals how connection — sometimes quiet, sometimes brave — makes grief more bearable.

If your own heart feels stretched thin right now, let this edition be a gentle place to land.

Compassion doesn’t take pain away; it reminds us that we don’t have to carry it alone.

✨ Profiles & Ideas

🎭 Yevgenia Berkovich

The director who wouldn’t look away

Born into a family of journalists, writers, and human-rights defenders, Yevgenia Berkovich grew up steeped in the values of empathy, dissent, and artistic inquiry. A poet, playwright, and theatre director shaped by the legacies of Soviet Jewish memory and the avant-garde tradition, she became known for intimate, socially attuned productions that foregrounded everyday people—women, children, the elderly—and the fragility of their lives. Her award-winning staging of Finist, the Bright Falcon, based on Svetlana Petriychuk’s play, blended documentary narrative with myth, examining the stories of Russian women drawn into extremist networks. Premiering in 2020, it won two Golden Mask awards and was praised for its compassion and moral clarity.

In 2023, Berkovich and Petriychuk were arrested and later convicted on fabricated “terrorism” charges for the very play that critics understood as a warning against radicalisation. Their trial—marked by secrecy, flawed evidence, and refusal to examine the work itself—exposed the tightening ideological grip of the Russian state. Sentenced to years in a penal colony, Berkovich continues to write poetry, holding fast to the humanism that shaped her art: a belief that compassion, mercy, and the dignity of ordinary life are not crimes, but essential acts of resistance.

🍎 American Education Week 2025

Celebrating the people who make our public schools safe, strong, and thriving

When we honor education, we honor everyone who makes learning possible. American Education Week, observed each year during the week before Thanksgiving, began in 1921 when the National Education Association and the American Legion called for a nationwide effort to spotlight the accomplishments and needs of public schools. What started as a call to strengthen literacy and support students after World War I has grown into a yearly celebration of the people who keep schools thriving.

Today, American Education Week recognizes the entire team that sustains our public schools—from paraeducators and clerical staff to bus drivers, technicians, food service workers, and substitute educators. Each plays a vital role in supporting students and families, ensuring safety, and helping schools run with care, dignity, and reliability. To honor education is to honor this collective labor, and to remember that strong schools are built by many hands, working together for every child.

📰 News & Reminders

📦 Sorting Through a Lifetime

What we discover about our parents — and ourselves — when we inherit their things

On November 14, 2025, Bloomberg Businessweek published a sweeping look at the growing reality behind the Great Wealth Transfer — not just the $90 trillion being passed from boomers to their millennial and Gen X heirs, but the overwhelming volume of belongings that come with it. Drawing on vivid reporting, the article follows families navigating tens of thousands of accumulated objects: Pez dispensers, fine china, baseball cards, antique furniture, salt-and-pepper shakers, bobbleheads, and entire collections built over decades.

A central story follows Nick Malis, who spent years sorting through his late mother’s 2,000-square-foot SoHo lofts filled with memorabilia, artwork, diaries, and collectibles dating back to the 18th century. The piece widens out to explore the forces that created this cultural moment — from Depression-era scarcity to 20th-century consumerism — and the modern businesses emerging to help families manage it all. Organizers, collectors, and estate experts describe the emotional complexity of inheriting both treasures and clutter, highlighting how grief, memory, and meaning shape the process of deciding what to keep, sell, or release as America enters what some have aptly named “The Great Stuff Transfer.”

🤝 The New Dementia Model

As memory care units expand nationwide, a quiet countermovement is choosing integration instead

In 2025, as families across the country faced difficult choices about aging and care, a quiet shift began to take hold inside senior communities. What had long been treated as an inevitable stage of decline — dementia requiring locked doors and separation — was being reconsidered. At places like Loomis Lakeside at Reeds Landing in Massachusetts, residents with memory loss walk freely, join activities, and move through daily life without confinement, supported by neighbors who are trained to meet them with patience, redirection, and dignity. What once seemed risky is becoming a vision of belonging, where safety comes from community rather than restraint.

Care leaders warn that the challenge is not merely how to build more memory care units, but how to rethink what safety, autonomy, and inclusion truly mean. Even as some families worry about wandering or harm, staff and residents demonstrate that behavior often signals unmet needs — fear, hunger, loneliness — not danger. Across the movement, from executives to longtime residents, people are reimagining what it means to live well with dementia. The task ahead is no longer just managing the disease — it’s learning how to create environments where the person is still seen, still included, and still treated as fully human.

🎉 Events & Gatherings

🌸 Catharsis Theater: A Gathering for Release, Relief, and Connection

📅 Saturday, November 22 | 1:00–4:30 PM (arrive 12:30–12:45)
📍 Blue Door Theater, Culver City

Catharsis Theater isn’t a class or a performance.
It’s a space where grief finally has somewhere to go.

Whether your loss is fresh… years old… or still unfolding in real time, you are welcome here. This gathering meets you wherever you are — in heartbreak, in numbness, in confusion, in quiet strength, or in the ache you’ve learned to carry silently.

✨ What you’ll experience:
– The relief of being witnessed without having to explain
– A way to move grief out of your body instead of holding it alone
– A sense of belonging you didn’t know you needed
– Permission to feel, soften, breathe, or simply rest
– Unexpected moments of connection that stay with you

This is not therapy, and it's not traditional theater.
It’s a guided, trauma-informed space where your story, your silence, your tears, and your hope are all equally welcome.

🕯️ If you’ve lost someone, are losing someone, or have carried grief quietly for years — this is a place to lay it down for a while.
Come exactly as you are. Leave supported.

With gratitude to ArtsUp! LA for hosting.

🔔 End Well 2025: A Day About Death & Life

Los Angeles | Thursday, November 20, 2025

End Well gathers people from all walks of life to reimagine how we live, care, and connect—especially at life’s end.

This year’s theme, Radical Bravery, invites participants to show up fully: to face grief, illness, caregiving, and dying with open eyes and open hearts. It honors the quiet courage of individuals and the bold collective action needed to build a more compassionate world.

Throughout the day, participants explore how age-old wisdom, new technologies, and evolving models of care can transform our relationship with death and deepen our capacity for empathy and belonging. Together, the gathering challenges outdated narratives, sparks meaningful dialogue, and ignites a movement grounded in connection and care.

💛 Join in Los Angeles on Thursday, November 20, 2025.

🔔 Grounding in Gratitude: A Holiday Season Wellness Gathering

Santa Monica Yoga | December 10th, 2025 | 7:00pm–8:30pm

The holiday season can amplify stress responses and emotional overwhelm, making grounding practices more essential than ever. This evening gathering offers a supportive space to regulate the nervous system through gentle yin yoga, light breathwork, and an immersive sound meditation experience.

As we move toward the complexities and joys of year’s end, we come together in community for somatic grounding, mindfulness, and restorative connection. This offering is designed for anyone seeking nervous system regulation, trauma-informed support, or a moment of stillness amid seasonal intensity.

All are invited to join this 90-minute experience of movement, breath, sound, and shared presence in Santa Monica.

💛 Registration open now. December 10th, Santa Monica Yoga, 1640 Ocean Park Blvd.
Yin & Breath: Lauren Walter-Rozells, AMFT & Frances Zumbro, AMFT
Sound: Meg Reinis, LMFT
$44 per person | Sliding scale available

🌅 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.

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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