08/17/2026
When tragedy strikes any community, it is difficult and it's exceptionally so when young lives are lost. Shock eventually gives way to grief, the emotional, biological, physical, and relational response to the loss of something or someone you love.
It's all encompassing and destabilizing.
In time, when the community has started to move on, grief will still be present with the families. It shows up in forgetfulness and feeling like you are losing your mind. Frustration and anger, overwhelm and messiness. Grief changes and flows like a river, sometimes its fast, sometimes it bubbles up out of nowhere. Sometimes, it erodes the shore and then there are times of stillness. There's not a right or wrong way to grieve. It's there whether we want it or not.
There are tools that help turn the dial down on the intensity of grief and in time, something we learn to walk with and hold differently. For these first few weeks and months after a tragic accident, the job of those around the family is to help them focus on the basics. Did they eat? If they can't, shift to soup and smoothies. Did they have any water? Did they get any sunshine or movement? Then build from there amongst the messiness of living.
For today, we invite you to hold the families and first responders gently. And in the future to remember, as we've shared before: Our experience now is theirs as well. Our joy, our tears, and everything in between we share with them. We seamlessly blend all our love, all of ourselves, with the ones we hold dear. They are as much a part of us as our own heart and soul. That's where we can show them what they have meant to us and what they will always mean. The love that we share with one another and the love that we show ourselves is the love we share with those we've lost. Comfort is not always wanted in active grief, the pain too large a part. So when you can't, let it live in the future, let it in with your loved ones around you, as you hear their words and feel their embrace. What is remembered is never lost.
We are wishing you gentleness where ever you are at in your grief journey.
Jen • Jessica • Jodi • Kelsey • Lianna • Lora • Nef
