New Year, Same Grief
A grief-conscious way to approach the dawning of 2025 (and presidential inauguration-specific grief offerings)
Welcome to the January 2025 issue of The Grief Letters with Claire, a monthly-ish newsletter about living alongside grief and death. This newsletter remains unchanged and forever freely offered. Paid subscribers via Substack will have access to additional writings and a monthly Grief & Writing Chat. Reach out if you are in need of this space but cannot become a paid subscriber at this time. It’s an honor to be in grief with you and your presence is your greatest contribution to this community.
Here we are. 2025. As I write this, someone very dear to me is dying. I will write more on this grief at some point, I’m sure. But for now, it’s a reminder of how little control we have over how we are able to greet each new year we’re given on this good Earth. Even before I got the news that Death was coming for someone I loved, it felt important to begin thinking about ways to have a more “grief-conscious” approach to the new year, something that allows for the wonder and excitement of what’s new and becoming while also honoring all that is lost and missing.
In Ask Grief, we get to hear about ways to have a “grief-conscious” new year. In Journal Prompts, you’ll be invited to reflect on what your griefs need at the dawn of this new year. This month’s Grief Resource is a gorgeous poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer called “For This, I Walk Outside".” And finally, a Grief Offering I’m really looking forward to: Grief Read & Ritual which will be a quarterly book club that culminates in a grief ritual (all held virtually and via Substack comments). We’ll read Francis Weller’s Wild Edge of Sorrow and center the griefs that are arising as we approach the presidential inauguration. More details below.
Thanks for joining me as I attempt to voice all that grief means to me, all that grief can mean to you, and as I try to honor the sacred practice of grief tending.
Ask Grief: A Grief-Conscious New Year
Dear Grief,
My grief has followed me into this new year. I had hoped for a fresh start. How can I manage this?
Sincerely,
New Year, Same Grief
Dear Same Grief,
Oh darling, yes, and I’m so sorry. Your griefs don’t need fixing, but how might you manage to abide with them? Consider this: approach these griefs as you would something precious and fragile, something that needs your attention. There is a common misconception that allowing grief in will ruin the joyous moments, that sadness is to be avoided at all costs if you want a happy life.
But grief and delight are interwoven and can be dear companions to each other if you let them. How might you approach the new year, then, if you are as grief-filled as ever? If you are not going to “best life now” anytime soon?
How about you allow yourself to greet the new year slowly? What if January became a liminal space where you could feel into the new year rather than demand “New Year, New Me” energy in the early days of this fresh year?
If you are the resolution type (someone who delights in the new and loves challenge), but are also carrying a lot of grief, consider seasonal resolutions. What might you like to do, change, be, or love this winter? You see, grief and loss are portals, places of unpredictable transformation. Giving your grief space is wise, looking forward a few months, rather than twelve, might be what your grief-soaked body needs.
Consider the practice of “grief sipping.” If you’re feeling emotionally overloaded or congested, this practice might help clear some of that up in order to better hear the the clear but quiet voice of hope/awe/delight. Schedule regular times to “sip” at your grief, to invite it in rather than waiting for it to break down your door. This could look like grief walks or having a grief coffee with a friend or writing out a conversation with your griefs. The invitation, repeated as many times as needed, is “What’s breaking my heart in this moment?”
This is not to say that grief is the only invitation for 2025 but rather that everything else you want from and with and amidst 2025 is waiting for you on the other side of giving your griefs a voice. Take time to wail and you might be surprised at how much more frequently laughter can then arise. Flow with your feelings rather than bracing against their impact, clenching against their outpouring. They are your teachers and guides. Clumsy and inconvenient at times, I know. But, darling, what wonders they have in store for you!
Love always,
Grief
Journal Prompts
I suggest lighting a candle and taking a few grounding breaths before writing on these:
What I want to love in 2025…(make a list, try for 10, then 25, then why not 100?)
What’s breaking my heart today is…
Dear 2025…
Grief Resource: A Poem About Loving this Good Earth
For This, I Walk Outside by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Not to escape the world,
but to be more wholly in it.
Sharp cold stings my cheeks—
not like a slap, but like the thrilling burn
of whiskey as it blazes down the throat—
the kind of wild aliveness
that brooks no choice
but to wake up to life,
to champion it, to know life
as the most wondrous thing
even as I steep in the ugliness
we humans commit.
This is what life asks of us.
I walk outside to be more wholly here,
here the way the Stellar’s jay is here.
Even on the coldest day,
its every fluffing, every peck, every head bob,
every flight is in service to life.
It’s never confused about its purpose.
I want to be in service.
Outside, everything is teacher:
the cold, the snow, the bird, the day,
this fallible, fabulous human race,
this improbable, beautiful planet in space.
To serve life, I must inhabit it wholly
and be inhabited by it, too.
As if it all could end tonight.
As if it goes on forever.
Grief Offering: Grief Read & Ritual, a Seasonal Experience with Grief
For paid Substack subscribers (or reach out & I’ll get you on the list :) ).
During each season, we’ll read a new book on grief (i.e. 4 books per calendar year). Throughout the season, I’ll include some of my own reflections and opportunity for readers to share their thoughts in the comments. At the end of the season we’ll finish the book and come together for a virtual grief ritual inspired by the reading (likely taking the format of my already-established Grief Church format but the community may craft additional elements as we read). Folks can join in and participate as much or as little as feels right.
The opening Grief Read & Ritual this winter will be a bit different in that the read will be over the course of two weeks rather than three months. Details below:
Read: Francis Weller’s The Wild Edge of Sorrow.
Ritual: Inauguration-Eve Grief Circle (freely offered). Sunday 1/19/25, 6:30-8:00PM CST. Register here (held via Zoom).
Reading Schedule for Monday 1/6/25: Forward & Preface
A Reminder: What I Believe About This Grief Space/Newsletter
I believe in tending to grief, not healing grief. I don’t believe grief ever “heals” the way our body heals from a cold, for instance. Grief remains. So, we tend to it.
I don’t believe any specific grief is any more important or sad or valid than another. This space is for all the griefs.
This is a space for openness and wonder, for acknowledging the precarity of being human. You will not find religious, political, or cultural allegiances here. Right and wrong, good and bad in the context of grief is meaningless. Grief is, we are.
In grief,
Claire