News filled with violence has once again shattered my sense of ordinary life.
I just came home from an extended road trip across the United States and back. Everywhere we went, we were warmly greeted, hosted, and welcomed. My belief in humanity was bolstered. Beneath all the opinions and differences, we share a basic humanity that wants what is good for us and others. That is my lived experience.
I didn’t check the news until Sunday evening. And then the headlines came in a wave: the mass shooting at Bondi Beach in Sydney, during a Hanukkah gathering. The active shooter and lockdown at Brown University. And then: Rob and Michele Reiner found dead in their home, with their son arrested as the investigation unfolded.
On our road trip, we watched The Princess Bride. It’s a long-time favorite. So the news of the Reiners’ deaths didn’t land as “celebrity news.” It felt like a rupture in the story I want to believe: that true love exists, friends will show up for each other, home is safe—and the places we gather—beaches, campuses, living rooms—are not hunting grounds.
A new cycle of grief is beginning. I didn’t know any of the victims personally, and yet this grief feels more potent than other losses. Maybe because so many of us can feel the break in our shared story: our old way of life is dying, but we keep hoping for a miraculous recovery—one morning we will wake up and the social fabric has been mended, fear has receded, and the good news outweighs the bad.
The collapse is truly underway. It didn’t arrive as a single event. It arrived as competing versions of reality, multiplied by exhaustion. Some people are resilient. Some are sad. Some are angry. And some become violent. In a time like this, grief isn’t only about individual lives lost—it’s also grief for the life we thought we were living.
I wonder what it must have felt like when Rome was in decline. Or Greece. Or Great Britain. Or Japan. I’m not well versed in the histories of African empires, or those in Latin America. Maybe not being at the center of an empire makes cultural change easier to bear. I honestly don’t know.
What I do know is this: much of my work has been focused on co-creating a culture we can live into—a set of values, principles, and norms that support life itself. Somewhere along the way, our culture began rewarding the belief that you can “win” the human game with enough money, power, or resources. And the winner gets to set the values, principles and norms for everyone else. When that belief takes root, people become disposable. Truth becomes optional. And safety becomes something you buy, not something you build together.
We are all grieving a lost life inside a lost culture. How we grieve our lost culture matters.
If we grieve in isolation, grief can curdle. It becomes numbness, contempt, conspiracy, vengeance, or a quiet decision to stop caring. Isolation doesn’t “protect our peace”—it hollows out our capacity to respond, hardening our hearts.
But if we grieve in community, something else becomes possible. Not a quick fix. Not a forced optimism. A threshold.
Because communal grief does two holy things at once:
it tells the truth about what hurts, and
it refuses to let pain turn us into the kind of people who create more pain.
Grieving in community can be a rallying point—not the rallying point of slogans, but the rallying point of witness. The kind that says: I will not pretend this is normal. I will not carry it alone. I will not harden into someone who can’t feel.
So here is what I mean by “grieving in community,” in plain, doable terms—especially in the rawness, when we don’t know what to do with ourselves:
A 45-minute grief circle (living room, library room, Zoom): one story, one fear, one hope, one ask. No fixing. No debates. I have several friends who are hosting weekly circles.
A candle-and-commitment ritual: light a candle, speak the names you know, then write one sentence: “Because I loved, I will…”
A neighborhood check-in: one call or visit to someone who is isolated, anxious, or raising kids in this atmosphere.
A 7-day “do no harm” media vow: don’t share rumors, gore, or dehumanizing takes. Don’t turn tragedy into a weapon.
A local act of support: show up at vigils, give blood, fund trauma care, bring meals, donate to legitimate victim support funds.
One civic action without hate: a call to a representative, a city meeting, support for evidence-based prevention—done with steadiness, not a rage spiral.
These aren’t grand gestures. They’re the first steps of a healing journey—made of small refusals and small commitments that, together, become a different culture.
I’m not trying to turn grief into productivity. I’m trying to keep grief from turning into collapse inside our own hearts.
Because I want to survive this era. And I want to stay human while surviving the collapse. And I don’t think we can do that alone.
Please share your thoughts or comments with me!