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Mourning Surf Movement for Grief

While I was swimming laps this morning, I looked up and the digital clock read 9:11. It’s a time signature that always s...
09/11/2026

While I was swimming laps this morning, I looked up and the digital clock read 9:11. It’s a time signature that always stops me in my tracks and I hold a little vigil in my mind for that minute. Many times, this happens when my daughter and I are together, and we give each other a knowing glance. When Flora was little, she had a set of blocks that were shaped like famous New York City buildings. Most of the blocks are long since gone, but I saved the twin towers. They sit on our mantle now, a reminder of a childhood memory, and of the cataclysmic event they represent – the many lives that were lost. 2,977 Innocent people, beloved family members, friends, co-workers, first responders were killed, and since that day more than 9,000 people have died from illnesses related to exposure from toxic dust, asbestos and debris.  Many more are living with chronic illnesses, cancer and trauma. The violent explosion of the towers coming down reverberates still; I feel it as an echo in my bones.  
 
For months after 9/11 my husband and I would lie awake in bed listening as trucks carrying debris, remains, the metal carcass of the towers rolled past our window. There must have been a loose pothole because every time one of the trucks rolled over it our whole apartment shook and we felt the shock of it in our teeth.
 
The body remembers.
We will never forget.

Lately a new image has come to mind when I am feeling griefy. It’s not a circle or a spiral and it’s not linear.  It’s a...
08/31/2026

Lately a new image has come to mind when I am feeling griefy. It’s not a circle or a spiral and it’s not linear.
 
It’s accordion shaped.
 
The reason grief feels like an accordion to me is because sometimes I may feel some distance from my grief, it is there, but separated by time, or by memory, or a kind of numbness. It’s been a decade since my husband Jim died, forty years since I lost my father. Even to write those words, I am in disbelief of all that time passing. That’s when the folds or bellows of the accordion are open, at their most expanded.  
 
Other times, like on my wedding anniversary, the two edges of the accordion contract and move toward one another and I feel as if I lost my husband yesterday. I’m as close as I can be to the pain.
 
I’m touching it.
 
The accordion opens a little, then closes, then opens wide again. Just envisioning the movement of grief, its cadences, it’s halts and stops, sometimes legato other times staccato; that grief has its own rhythms, can remind me as Rilke said, “that no feeling is final.”
 
Today is national grief awareness day and no matter how you imagine or frame your loss, I hope it will bring you comfort to think of the accordion, to know that even through grief is there, it will move, and it will change, and sometimes just having a different way of thinking about it can suggest other ways of being.
 
How do you envision grief? Does it have a particular shape?
 
📷Accordion
📷 My wedding
📷 My husband on our wedding day.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about various forms of kinesthetic empathy, or placing yourself in someone else’s shoes ...
02/12/2026

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about various forms of kinesthetic empathy, or placing yourself in someone else’s shoes and walking with them. We are neurologically motivated by “mirror neurons” to process what we see, through our own bodies. With so many visual images coming at us from social media and the news, images that depict people in often harrowing and desperate situations, we cannot help but feel it in our bodies.
I practice kinesthetic empathy in my grief movement classes and workshops – moving with – it’s a form of physical listening and an attuning to another’s experience. By expressing kinesthetic empathy, I am communicating without words that I am sharing the grief being expressed.
I had an incredible feeling of kinesthetic empathy while watching the movie Hamnet recently. The last scene ravaged me in ways I am still processing. But to see the audience reach their hands toward Hamlet, to feel their kinesthetic response formed into that collective reaching gesture was astonishing. They all had tears in their eyes, crying for someone else’s son. Empathy is the basis for tragic drama – the idea that we must feel for those onstage in order to ultimately purge painful emotions, which in turn causes catharsis.
Kinesthetic empathy is grief shared through movement.
Kinesthetic empathy is also shared joy. As Bad Bunny’s joyous performance demonstrated, movement invites us to collectively witness and celebrate the truth of another’s experience.
How are you experiencing, practicing or sharing Kinesthetic Empathy these days? Take care of yourself and each other ❤️

Rosalía recently made a performance out of stillness for her LUX show – in which she lay motionless for two hours enmesh...
01/06/2026

Rosalía recently made a performance out of stillness for her LUX show – in which she lay motionless for two hours enmeshed in a flowing white gown that resembled bedsheets - creating a meditative, immersive piece for deep listening.
 
I always tell my students, “Stillness is a movement,” meaning that stillness belongs to the repertoire of movement available to us. Stillness is intentional – it is not the same thing as simply being motionless, because stillness is alive, it has breath, it is a gesture suspended between moments.
 
I’ve been horizontal a lot this holiday. Some of it was not feeling well but mostly it was and is, exhaustion – a weariness that seems to have no end. As I embraced laying down, I started to think about what it means to be horizontal and how the word horizon is at its core: Horizontal comes from Greek kyklos or “bounding circle.” It refers to a boundary – specifically the line that appears to separate the earth and sky.
So to lie down is to align yourself with the horizon—where the world curves away from view and your body becomes parallel to what is visible, echoing the lie of the land or sea itself as it stretches toward the edge of sight. As I lay down, I imagine myself joining that gesture of stillness and expanse for the horizon is not where things end, but where they open to what lies beyond.
Wishing you a restful and restorative beginning to the new year! ❤️

Because grief is human-shaped ❤️
12/02/2025

Because grief is human-shaped ❤️

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