The Grief Wave: When Memory Plays Again

🧭 TL;DR | This Week at a Glance

✨ Profiles & Ideas
✊ María Corina Machado — A voice for democracy in a nation under siege

🌊 Grief 101: When Loss Was Preventable And Someone Knew It (Part 1) — What happens when grief meets betrayal

📰 News & Reminders
💉 America’s Measles Comeback — U.S. measles cases continue to climb, with outbreaks across the country

🎻 Can Cellos Remember? — A journey through silence to sound

🎉 Events & Gatherings
🌸 Oct 18 — FINAL GRIEF SUPPORT GATHERING OF 2025
Catharsis Theater for Loss and Healing: Grief Relief — When loss feels overwhelming, community and wellness create pathways to healing and renewed hope. (More than 40 gatherings since 2023)
(Free | Culver City, LA)

🤖 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)

🔔 Nov 1 — Living Deeply Retreat with Elizabeth Stomp and Lulu Toselli
(Santa Monica & Virtual)

🌅 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
Grief counseling, groups, Catharsis Theater, and support for every stage of loss.

💌 Dear friends of The Grief Wave,

Grief is the meeting point between pain and meaning—the place where loss insists on being understood, not erased. It asks us to listen closely: to the body’s memory, to the stories we carry, and to the ways connection can still be found amid what’s been broken.

This week’s pieces explore that conversation—between loss and discovery, silence and sound, solitude and community. From the recognition of preventable grief to the return of a long-lost cello, each reminds us that mourning is also an act of devotion: a way of saying that what mattered still matters.

✨ Profiles & Ideas

✊ María Corina Machado

A voice for democracy in a nation under siege

María Corina Machado has dedicated her life to the fight for democracy in Venezuela.
Born in Caracas in 1967, she earned degrees in industrial engineering and finance from Andrés Bello Catholic University and IESA before founding the civic organization Súmate in 2001 to promote electoral transparency. Her activism brought her international attention and legal persecution under Hugo Chávez’s government. Elected to the National Assembly in 2011 representing Miranda, she became a leading voice of Venezuela’s opposition, advocating for free elections, civil rights, and a transition from authoritarian rule.

Her leadership was defined by courage under repression. During the 2014 protests, she organized demonstrations against Nicolás Maduro’s government and was expelled from the Assembly for speaking before the OAS. In 2023, she won the opposition primary for the 2024 presidential election but was barred from running; she later supported Edmundo González, whom the opposition claimed won by a landslide. Forced into hiding after the disputed vote, she continued to call for peaceful democratic change.

In recognition of her steadfast defense of human rights, Machado received the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize, the Sakharov Prize, and in 2025, the Nobel Peace Prize “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela.” Named among Time’s 100 most influential people, she remains a symbol of resilience and hope for a free Venezuela.

🌊 Grief 101: When Loss Was Preventable — And Someone Knew It (Part 1)

What happens when grief meets betrayal

When those who should have protected us fail, grief changes form. It stops being a private ache and becomes an indictment—a collision of loss and betrayal. Fires that should have been contained, systems that should have worked, hospitals that should have answered in time: every failure carves a new layer into mourning. This is not natural grief but contaminated grief, altered by negligence and greed. It carries the taste of injustice, the heavy knowing that someone, somewhere, made choices that turned tragedy into crime.

Researchers and clinicians now call this moral injury—a rupture of trust so deep it rewires the psyche. The body keeps scanning for danger, the brain replays the moment of betrayal, and the soul refuses premature peace. Anger here is not pathology but fidelity: proof that one’s moral compass survived the wreckage. Yet society urges forgiveness, turning grief into a performance of civility while institutions evade accountability. The demand to “move on” protects systems, not survivors.

Our collective task is to face this grief together—to name what was preventable, to honor rage as evidence of care, and to resist the seduction of forgetting. Healing will not come through resignation but through witness, solidarity, and the rebuilding of trust that should never have been broken. Only then can we restore the meaning of loss in a world that keeps trying to deny responsibility.

📰 News & Reminders

💉 America’s Measles Comeback

U.S. measles cases continue to climb, with outbreaks across the country

In 2025, measles — once declared eliminated in the U.S. — has resurged with more than 1,500 confirmed cases, the highest in over 30 years. Public health officials warn the true number could exceed 5,000, as outbreaks spread from Texas to South Carolina, Utah, and Minnesota. Nearly all cases are among the unvaccinated, with one in eight requiring hospitalization.

Experts link the rise to falling vaccination rates, now at 92.5%, below the 95% needed for herd protection. Amid misinformation and political mixed messages, epidemiologists stress that measles remains one of the most contagious diseases known — and entirely preventable.

🎻 Can Cellos Remember?

A journey through silence to sound

In January, a 1730 Gagliano cello stood before the European Parliament for Holocaust Remembrance Day, carrying the story of Pál Hermann, a Jewish Hungarian virtuoso murdered in 1944 after internment at Drancy. Lost for more than eighty years, the instrument resurfaced after Kate Kennedy’s sleuthing, having first reappeared at her Wigmore Hall launch in 2024 and then again in Brussels, where Hermann once performed.

The book Kennedy wrote traces four cello journeys through absence and return: Hermann’s rescued instrument; Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, the Auschwitz orchestra’s sole cellist; Lise Cristiani, an early professional who toured Siberia with a 1701 Strad; and the “Mara” Stradivarius, recovered after a fiery River Plate shipwreck and painstaking restoration. Threaded through are the Nazi theft of tens of thousands of instruments, the opaque markets that hid them, and experiments showing that modern violins and cellos can match or beat revered antiques, reminding us that the player, not the relic, makes the music.

Read the full essay to see how silence becomes sound, how memory lives in wood and hands, and what these recoveries reveal about loss, resilience, and the meanings we carry.

🎉 Events & Gatherings

🌸 FINAL GRIEF SUPPORT GATHERING OF 2025 - Catharsis Theater for Loss and Healing: Grief Relief (Saturday October 18th 1:00-4:30pm)

When loss feels overwhelming, community and psychodrama open the way to proven healing and renewed hope

To honor our final gathering of the year, this session will be offered free of charge. In a time when the world feels heavy with loss and uncertainty, Catharsis Theater for Loss and Healing provides a monthly space where unfinished grief finds witness, expression, and relief in community. All are welcome.

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

What is Catharsis Theater?
Catharsis Theater is a safe, psychodrama-inspired, trauma-informed gathering that draws on psychodrama, sociometry, and other proven group-based methods that emerged as some of the most effective, supportive, and most widely used mental health approaches of the 20th century. We’ve met more than 40 times since 2023 and will continue in 2026.

Psychodrama is reemerging as a powerful way to help people navigate profound grief and loss, just as it once did for returning soldiers after World War II, during the Civil Rights era, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and in New York after 9/11. Through Catharsis Theater for Loss and Healing, individuals, families, and communities can once again transform sorrow into connection and resilience, honoring both personal pain and the collective grief of our country.

✨ 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.

🤖 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.

🔔 Living Deeply Retreat with Elizabeth Stomp and Lulu Toselli

Santa Monica & Online (Hybrid) | Saturday, November 1, 2025

For over 20 years, InsightLA has welcomed people from all backgrounds into a community of mindfulness—spaces to pause, restore, and reconnect with the heart.

This fall, we gather at the Benedict Canyon Retreat House for a daylong Living Deeply Retreat with Elizabeth Stomp and Lulu Toselli. Rooted in mindfulness and compassion, the program offers guided meditation, movement, walking practice, and gentle silence in a peaceful natural setting.

Each retreat invites both newcomers and longtime practitioners, providing tools for steadiness, clarity, and care amidst life’s uncertainty.

💛 Registration open now. Saturday, Nov. 1, 2025, 10 a.m.–4 p.m. PT, Benedict Canyon.

🌅 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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