01/09/2026
๐ช๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ช๐๐๐ Holding Grief Together โ
Processing ๐ช๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ Grief with Music
As the world feels especially heavy right now, Iโm choosing to move slowly, tend to my spiritual health, and honor grief as a real and necessary practice.
Iโve created a winter grief playlist as an offeringโa space to sit with what is broken, ground into lineage and community, and find the resolve to continue without bypassing what hurts. This music holds mourning, truth, and care across many traditions, cultures and voices, because grief is not owned by any one identity, and neither is healing.
This grief playlist moves in three quiet acts: mourning what is broken, grounding in lineage and spirit, and finding the resolve to continue together. Rooted in blues, soul, cultural tradition, protest, and contemplative sound, these songs are offered as a space to feel honestlyโwithout bypassing grief or rushing toward false hope. This is music for listening slowly, tending the nervous system, and remembering that care, community, and conscience are practices.
Listen slowly. Take breaks. Share it with someone you trust.
Take care of yourselves and each otherโcommunity is how we endure.
ACT I โ Mourning
1. Blind Willie Johnson โ Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground
2. Nina Simone โ Why?
3. Arooj Aftab โ Mohabbat
4. Sam Cooke โ A Change Is Gonna Come
5. รlafur Arnalds โ Saman
ACT II โ Grounding
6. Fela Kuti โ Sorrow, Tears and Blood
7. Gil Scott-Heron โ Winter in America
8. Alice Coltrane โ Journey in Satchidananda
9. Ibeyi โ River
10. Celina Gonzรกlez โ A Santa Bรกrbara (Changรณ)
11. Lisa Gerrard & Patrick Cassidy โ Elegy
ACT III โ Resolve
12. India.Arie โ Soulbird
13. Odetta โ Trouble So Hard
14. Sweet Honey in the Rock โ Breaths
15. Mahalia Jackson โ How I Got Over
16. Leonard Cohen โ Anthem
Mourning โ Grounding โ Resolve
(This is not โclosure.โ Itโs steadiness.)
Listen with intention and be present with the emotions that come up. This playlist doesnโt ask you to feel better.
It asks you to feel together.
๐ณ๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐
