Learning to Grieve

Hello comrades in care,

I’m writing to you as I listen to the recording of Sunday night’s Tanglewood performance, part three of the “We The People” series Yo-Yo Ma curated. It opens with vocalist Arooj Aftab (a favorite of mine) performing John Tavener’s atmospheric and spiritual composition Mahátmátar with Yo-Yo Ma on solo cello, a chorus of young voices, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The other pieces draw from Iran’s Woman Life Freedom protests and Pablo Neruda’s poem “The Heights of Macchu Picchu” and use symphonic creation as an expansive and other-worldly mode of communication. I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the open rehearsal for this program on Saturday, with my parents, my spouse, and our baby.

A quick note for folks who may be new to this newsletter: I know that we get too much communication and our email inboxes can feel — and be — unwieldy. If you do not wish to continue to receive this newsletter, you can scroll all the way down and unsubscribe. In this month’s update, I include some reflection and resources on grieving, some specific requests for folks located in Alaska and Cape Cod, and a list of upcoming opportunities to see me speak or take a workshop, as well as a free online recording and published essays.

Yo-Yo Ma offered these words as a guide for the experience of performing and listening to the music together this Sunday:

Of course I was drawn to a collection of live music that anchored into the suffering and transformations and beauty and collectiveness of the past and present to offer us wisdom and envisionings for the future.

Music, and really all art, that truly moves me does so because it resonates with the both/and within me and within life: pain and ecstasy. “Sacrifice and inspiration,” in Ma’s words. It’s felt lately as though we are so awash in pain that I’ve made intentionally finding and practicing the joy and awe of life much of my focus in public-facing work. In my private work — psychotherapy, I honor the darker pieces, and help my clients practice holding pain, while we contain their suffering together.

But I write today with an acknowledgment: I’m not so great at holding my own grief. I suspect it is part of what I find meaningful about my work as a deeply relational and deeply attuned psychotherapist: I know how difficult and vulnerable it is to access one’s sadness and share it with others. I also suspect doing this work with others has been an effective defense against doing it with myself. And I wondered recently, how many of my fellow comrades in care are also perhaps hiding from their own sadnesses? Showing up to hold others’ while keeping theirs locked up in the attic of their minds…

If this is you, I wanted to share a few things I’m embarking on to work on growing these capacities within myself for my own grieving. First, I’m going to be participating in therapist Dani Sullivan’s Shaping Grief group for care workers, offered in collaboration with Kintsugi Therapist Collective. I’m really looking forward to this — they said I was the first to sign up, literally the minute I heard they were launching it — and it is clear that Dani has put a great deal of work into it. They’re still enrolling and we will start this Fall once the group is full. But I would not sleep on this and risk missing your chance to join us.

I will also be attending a virtual training series from the Institute of the Development of Human Arts (IDHA). This is how the IDHA describes their mission:

The training series is titled Archaeologies of Grief, and honestly I imagine this will serve me both personally and professionally, with three trainings:

• Resisting Epistemicide: Restoring Indigenous and Lived Wisdom for Grief Care

• Disabled Grief Portals: Storytelling, Ritual, Art, and Changing Narratives of What Disability Is and Can Be

• Grief Literacy: Alternatives to Suppression

Finally, I have started reading a book that comes endorsed by two of my favorite thinkers, Kai Cheng Thom and adrienne maree brown — Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community by Camille Barton.

May we all have the tools, space, and relationships with self and others that allow us to meaningfully grieve.

See Me Speak / Learn With Me!

There will be a number of opportunities in 2026 to attend a talk or workshop by yours truly.

First, Cape Cod Institute recorded my community-facing talk on Practicing Hope While Facing Sociopolitical Realities and Stress. The recording of that talk is available for free through the CCI website and I’ll embed it below as well.

Second, in a couple of weeks on August 25 at 6pm Eastern, I’ll be joining Dr. Joonwoo Lee to discuss our project Transness is Our Salve: Trans People’s Experiences of Healing from Parental Trauma at a Brazilian symposium developed around our talk. This will be virtual and I believe free. I will share an update ASAP when I have specific details. In the meantime, you can read the zine and an academic paper developed from that project at Joonwoo’s and my website transnessishealing.net.

Last, I’m happy to announce that I will be offering one of the highlighted workshops at the Kentucky Psychological Association’s annual conference. This will be a three-hour workshop on working with sociopolitical distress in session, with a focus on oppressed trans and queer clients. This conference in honestly jam packed with incredible offerings that bridge research and clinical practice, and even if you’re not local to KY, I would consider attending. (I lived in Louisville and Lexington for five years while I worked on my PhD — I love Louisville and have lots of recs for places to check out if you email me! Learn more and register for the conference here (check out Friday’s sessions for more details about my workshop specifically).

Do You Live in Alaska or Cape Cod? Email me!

I have connected with a trans-affirming provider living and working in Alaska who is interested in building community with trans and trans-affirming therapists and mental health care workers in the state. If this is you, let me know!

Also I had a request passed along from a friend for therapists in Cape Cod (specifically Orleans area) who work with adults and couples and take Harvard Pilgrim Health to take referrals from a practice that is closing due to retirement. Clientele isn’t necessarily trans FYI!

Email me by replying to this message or sending me a message directly at [email protected] 

Catch Up on My Writing

As always, you can subscribe to my substack to get essays emailed to you as I published them. There’s also the chance there to upgrade your subscription to support my work and I’m deeply grateful to my few dozen paid subscribers, though really I’m grateful to everyone who reads and engages with my words!

These are the pieces I’ve written since my last full update in early June. Click each image/headline below to read specific pieces:

In closing, let me really encourage you to listen to this beautiful live recording from Tanglewood I referenced at the opening of the newsletter. I generally prefer to share music and art created specifically by trans folks. To my knowledge the folks centered as composers and highlighted performers in this program are not trans (and I do not know if any members of the BSO are). But you know, some cisgender people make incredible art, too!

In the hours and days between now and our next communication, I hope you both grieve and delight in the world. - Sebastian