// Changing the Channel

shadowdancing is now ... GRIEVER'S BALL

Hi ~~ you’re getting this email because you were subscribed to shadowdancing —and, hey, lemme just say that I really appreciated that. Among my favorite feelings in this life is having a creative project that is seen and supported by friends and community. While I consider that particular project very minor in the overall mix, it felt good to try out that idea—and to have the attempt received.

As of ~ right now ~ shadowdancing is GRIEVER’S BALL, a new attempt that I hope you will likewise open up to and even reach out for.

This new project is for and about people who are experiencing grief. Not running toward it—but not running away from it, either. Living with grief like they’re living with love, friendship, work, play, the weather, their lunch plans, and the to-do list stuck on the refrigerator.

Grief is an experience that comes to us as a result of many different kinds of loss and change, all of which are valid and important and deserving of our love and attention … but here in this “space,” in these marble hallways and underneath these vainglorious and scintillating chandeliers, we are especially concerned with the specific grief of death. There are plenty of messages hurdled and streamed at us about death awareness. We should talk about it, the messages say. We should get to know it as a central fact of our lives. But how—and when? And where?

GRIEVER’S BALL offers a way and a place to begin — and to be. This virtual reception hall, this metaphorical slow-dance/slam-dance banquet consists of several different content types/literary series delivered on an irregular once-a-week¹ rotation.

So, maybe a Monday, maybe a Thursday—the day of the week doesn’t matter in this plan—you’ll receive one email pulling from one of these content types:

• GRIEVER’S DOSSIER, a Q+A series wherein various grieving humans respond to and riff on questions—based loosely on the Proust Questionnaire—about the tone, tenor, circumstances, and subject of the death and loss they’re living with

• a set of short, easily digestible and highly actionable suggestions, connections, and imaginations called the GRIEVER’S EXCHANGE, designed to help all of us think creatively and practically about the finite experience of being alive, and the ways in which our relationships shift and change through and because of death

• OPEN QUESTION, a query or two for pondering or prompting. Every day I see first hand how inquiry, active contemplation, and gentle deliberation are nothing short of transformative. Consider it getting to know yourself—and your ideas about yourself, your life, and your death and the deaths of others. I’ll ask, and you’ll respond. Maybe in the comments, sure. Maybe in a journal. But also, there’s a lot of merit in just responding inside. In thinking, feeling, arriving, editing, and re-working.

• GRIEF ILLUSTRATED, in which we take a break from reading and even (for the most part) language and turn toward visual, poetic, and artful languages.

• personal reads filed under the name THE LIFE AND DEATH ESSAY, about the various ways in which folks are drawn to exploring and engaging with grief and the end of life

AND ~~~

• occasional, irregular, new and full episodes of GRIEVER’S BALL, a not-sad interview + playlist podcast about sad and cathartic music, and the relative nature of "good" songs in times of need.

• (and, and … whatever else occurs to me and makes it through the labyrinth of my idea-mind.)

Like I often say of the grief work I offer, GRIEVER’S BALL may not necessarily be for folks in the acute stages of grief, though really, that’s not for me to decide. As the name suggests, GRIEVER’S BALL isn’t exactly the most solemn grief-processing opportunity on the planet, but neither is it glib nor insincere or unserious.

GRIEVER’S BALL is about starting where we are.

With who we are. And who we are without.

I certainly don’t wish the grief of death and loss on anyone, but I know that’s where many of us are at. I hope that whether or not you identify as a griever, or have lost someone you love or someone you have complex or complicated feelings about, you’ll stick around and see what unfolds. The one thing I know for sure is that all of us are living, and all of us are dying. The more we can understand what that can mean for us—perhaps via, in part, the stories of what it means for others—the better off we are.

Thank you for reading this,
LSC

1. Thank you for trusting me to take a pass when I need to; I absolutely will.