04/08/2026
Grief Group Meets Tonight at our Waitsfield Office at 6:30 PM
Open to all ~ no rsvp, just show up
Free
A note from your host...
Spring in Vermont is such a funny season – unpredictable, muddy, sometimes hot, sometimes cold, often large blasts of wind blowing away leaves left behind by fall. I never know whether I’ll need a jacket or not. But also, it’s a time to exhale, to look outward. The birds return. The snow melts. The grass grows. The season turns.
I turned up the radio the other day, and it was a song I always used to listen to with my late friend. It’s one that I would generally skip, or avoid, as it burns hot in my chest still. Something shifted, I leaned in. I welcomed the burn and found myself enjoying the feeling of singing along as I remembered what it was like to sing with her in the car. I think something I’ve always appreciated about song is that it can be limited, three to four minutes. And then the playlist brings on the next. I can dip in and dip out. It vacillates feeling for me. I sang and cried and the next one came on and the moment passed. This had me thinking about grief’s relationship to music – what songs do I turn to and what do I avoid? What draws memories, what draws emotion? What do I use to try to push grief away?
This April, I gently invite you to reflect on what relationship your grief has with music. What moves you, what do you move to? Is there a song you’ve been wondering if it’s time to revisit? Or maybe just a noticing that it isn’t time yet at all. Is there a sound that has been a bolster while your grief clutches and blusters? I invite you to notice – just note, even, the role song or sound has had for you thus far. We are all so different, perhaps what you notice is that there is no relationship to sound or music and that can be important, too. Note what you listen to get ready to walk into the world. Note if there’s something that offers a balm amongst the rawness of experience.
These notes of what does what inside us as we walk this walk – what brings moments of balm and what brings bluster are important to identify, to turn to. Awareness can offer agency.
Just as music draws out things language can be too limited to state, it too can bring us together. Yes, this experience is an individual one. My song is not your song, and my feeling is not your feeling. But much like grief, when listening to music in community there is this shared experience – I don’t hear it the way you do, but we both hear it.
This second Wednesday of the month, April 8th, we will be meeting in the conference room at Hannah's House 859 Old County Road, Waitsfield. Enter through the back entrance and go up the stairs or take the elevator to the second floor. Bring a song, or don’t. We will be here to listen regardless.
With care,
Katie
Hannah's House
