Every year before Memorial Day, my husband and I spend the week in Yosemite. There is nothing that creates more clarity and inspires more feelings of awe than being surrounded by nature for seven straight days, twenty-four hours a day.
I had a strange interaction that I’m still trying to make sense of during the trip. I was in the line for the women’s restroom when a teenage girl ahead of me turned and looked me in the eye and stared at me. I smiled, and immediately she returned a warm smile. She turned around and started whispering to her mother. It was one of those, “It’s obvious she’s talking about me,” but I had no idea why. Her mother slowly turned to act like she was just naturally looking at something else and made eye contact with me. Then they both made eye contact with me, so I smiled again. The mom smiled, and they turned to face forward again. Then the mother hugged her daughter for a long time until it was their turn to enter the restroom.
When I left the restroom to look for Paul, I saw the mother and daughter again, this time with another daughter and father. They (not so) discreetly pointed at me and smiled at me warmly, and the teenager started to weep. The family huddled around her to soothe her with a long embrace. As they walked away, the teen wiped her eyes and looked at me and smiled at me with a beautiful sadness.
I’ll never know what this was all about. My story is that I must have reminded her of someone—someone she loved. It was as if she had seen a ghost that warmed her heart and made her remember. It made me wonder how many times that happens to us and we don’t even know it. We remind a stranger of someone they love, just by being present. We can affect each other without even knowing it. I like to believe our interaction brought her some small healing and that my presence warmed something in her—but I’ll never know.
That brief encounter in Yosemite made me realize something I hadn’t put words to before: Grief lives quietly in so many of us, and sometimes we bear witness to someone else’s without even knowing it.
Some days, I look back on the interaction and regret not reaching out to her to ask. I was touched by how tender they were with the teen; the family members seemed to really understand why she was crying and were more than willing to console her. Seeing that was a gift to me. I often hide my sadness when I see someone who reminds me of my parents. The flood of grief hits me like a wave, and though I have warm feelings and memories, the grief sits by its side.
In America, we lack the rituals to process grief as a community. If we let it out at work, we look unprofessional or worry that people will assume we’re not capable. But what’s the cost of stuffing it? And what’s the cost of processing it alone? Grief isn’t just about losing a loved one. It’s about processing regret; finishing a big chapter in life and retiring and losing the structure and connections you’ve grown accustomed to every day. It’s about a love that could have been but wasn’t; wanting more intimacy in a relationship and not having it; changes in mobility or health that once came so easily; a lost connection with a friend because she’s losing her memory. It’s about losing a sense of who you used to be, even though who you are becoming is the most authentic version of you.
I wonder why we’re often afraid to talk about grief or share it with others, especially at work. I know I often keep it in for fear that, if I don’t, I won’t be able to reel it back in. But I rarely reach out to others to share it. Many of us have been conditioned to keep it in, look at the positive, and keep a stiff upper lip.
Some days, I catch myself doing it—tightening up, putting on my “I’m fine” face, and brushing past what hurts. It’s easier. It feels safer. But that kind of holding costs something. It numbs us. It keeps us from asking for what we need or offering what we have to give.
Processing grief in community is often more healing and life-affirming than grieving in isolation—not because it removes the pain but because it helps us metabolize it. Many Indigenous cultures and ancestral traditions hold grief as a shared, sacred experience that deepens connection and strengthens community. Grief needs witnessing. When others witness it, the grief transforms suffering into meaning. Being seen in our sadness and sorrow allows our pain to move rather than stay frozen or hidden. It connects us to the web of life.
We remember that any kind of loss is a shared human experience. And letting it out with others regulates the nervous system and allows the grief to move through the body and not just the mind. Sitting Shiva in the Jewish tradition is a beautiful example of all of the above. The tangihanga is a several-day communal mourning process that the Maori in New Zealand practice to support someone during a time of grief. Individuals share stories and tears that are welcomed (and expected).
I’m inspired by new and modern ways of processing grief as a community. The Dinner Party is a peer-led, small-group community for twenty- to forty-somethings grieving together about significant loss. Nick Cave, one of my absolute favorite musicians, processes the grief of losing his two sons through his concerts. Cave has reimagined live concerts as intimate, grief-honoring spaces. During his Conversations with Nick Cave tour, he invited the audience to ask questions, often improvising responses about loss, faith, addiction, and death. People sobbed, laughed, and shared openly in a setting that felt more like a group ritual than a performance.
He has been an unexpected grief elder by starting The Red Hand Files, where he answers thousands of fan-submitted letters, often about grief, love, depression, creativity, and spirituality. It has quietly become one of the most intimate and profound digital spaces for grief, human connection, and meaning. What began as a modest Q&A between artist and fan has evolved into a global sanctuary for the soul, where people turn not just for answers but for witnessing, wisdom, and warmth.
That teenager in the Yosemite restroom line may never know how much she gave me in return. In her tears, I saw my own. In her family’s embrace, I saw what’s possible when grief is honored instead of hidden—when love isn’t rushed, explained, or tidied up.
Grief is not a detour from life. It’s part of the landscape. And maybe what we need most isn’t a way out of grief but a way through—together.
So, the next time someone crosses your path and something stirs in you or them, pause. Let your heart stay open. You might be the ghost of someone they loved. Or the warmth they didn’t know they needed. Or simply a witness to what they can’t yet say out loud.
Maybe that’s enough.
