Grief Is Community Work
In the US, grief is often treated as a private or individual experience.
Institutions encourage us to find our own way through it, possibly with some support from our faith, family, or close friends. We can take the time we need, but not too much. Eventually, we are expected to return to work, return to routine, return to whatever “normal” looked like before our whole world changed.
But most grief does not belong to one person, especially when what we are grieving is the result of histories of racism, policing, displacement, injustice, or other forms of collective harm. That kind of grief requires community attention.
It can reopen older wounds, reminding people of others they have lost. It can intensify fear about the safety of their children or loved ones and leave people wondering whether anything will ever change.
I have experienced it myself and witnessed it firsthand. A friend once taught me that grief likes company. These past few months, I have experienced anger, sadness, and guilt, and I know I am not alone.
And then comes the question after the vigils, statements, meetings, and immediate response: how do we build relationships and practices that support us before, during, and long after moments of rupture and loss?
There is a rhythm to responding during a crisis - organizing vigils, delivering food, sending texts, creating fundraisers, and attending community meetings. We gather people into rooms and circles because something has happened and we know, instinctively, that we should not be alone.
Those responses matter, but community cannot only exist during emergencies.
If people only experience care when they are visibly in crisis, then care has become another emergency service rather than a way of being in relationship. If we only create places for people to tell the truth when the pain becomes unbearable, we have waited too long.
We need to build the container for community support before we need it, and nurture it long after the emergency is over.
At some point, the vigils end, the meetings slow down, and the community returns to “Sunday brunch.” Grief does not.
That might look like gathering regularly, without needing an agenda or a crisis to justify it. It might mean learning how to attend without immediately trying to fix what another person is struggling with. It can mean noticing who has disappeared from community spaces and contacting to them. It can mean creating rituals for grief, remembrance, joy, conflict, celebration, and repair.
It also means allowing grief to have a longer life than our public attention span.
Grief is not on the same timetable as the bereavement leave policy at your job. It hits everyone differently, and it even hits the same person differently under different circumstances. While news cycles move on and institutions return to business as usual, people surrounded by support in the first days and weeks often find themselves much more alone.
What would it look like to keep showing up when it seems like the community has moved on?
How might we make space for anger that has not resolved?
Can we practice allowing grief and joy to coexist without asking one to replace the other?
While community care is not a substitute for accountability or systemic transformation, systems are not the only things that need rebuilding after harm. Relationships and trust do too.
This is part of what we mean when we talk about rebuilding together.
We are interested not only in what happens after the fire, but in the relationships we cultivate before it, and the practices we can return to when things fall apart.
Grief reminds us that we need one another.
Do you want to process community grief with others? nINA Director, dr. ananda, is hosting in-person circles in Madison on Sundays at 5:30. Click here to sign up.