LETTERS OF LAMENT C/O FORTIFYU

For the grief that has nowhere else to go…

How could something so large

not have a place to be seen?

For those who do the work of caring for animals and ecosystems, there is grief in this work that all too often never gets said out loud.

It has names, though it is rarely honored by them:

The disenfranchised grief the world doesn't count as a loss.

The anticipatory grief for the animals and places you are already losing while they are still here.

The ambiguous losses with no body, no closure, no ceremony.

The ecological grief for a world coming apart in your hands. If any of this is yours, you are in the right place.

WHAT TO SEND

This is the place to put it down.

Send me your grief, in whatever form it takes: a letter, a poem, a drawing, a photograph. By mail if you can; the handwriting itself carries something a screen cannot, because the writing itself is part of the healing. Grief that's been given words, a shape, a page to land on, has already begun to move. I will read every one, myself. I will sit with it, so that you are not the only one holding it.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

Some of what you send, I will bear witness to out loud, read here, shared, one day perhaps gathered into a book, so that others carrying the same weight know they are not alone, and so these specific lives get to matter again: remembered, held in love, even a grieving kind. If you send yours, I will take that as your blessing to share it, with care, and I will hold back anything that shouldn't be public, even so. Grief was always meant to be communal; when we let it be witnessed, it stops being only ours to hold. If you would rather yours stay between us, just say so on the letter, and it will stay with me. I will still read every one, even if never shared beyond you and I.

We are all grief waiting to be released.

SEND ME YOURS