You Are Invited
This Year in Grief, Next Year in Hope (Dec. 3)
I was really missing my father Greg this past week. This year was our family’s second Thanksgiving without my dad, and the rest of my family was all on the East Coast together, without me.
Until my father’s passing, our unit was usually intact: me, my mom, my brother, and my dad - who passed away in June 2024. So I spent much of Thanksgiving day making macaroni and cheese in tears, yearning for those familiar family gatherings of my youth.
Any of us who have lost a loved one knows that holidays are really, really hard. Happy memories from the past collide with the stark reality that our holiday events will never be the same again.
Life is always changing with new generations, loss, aging, and settling into new phases of life. Within these changes, the yearning to gather and mark moments in community is universal.
One organization that serves this very need is Reimagine, a non-profit dedicated to reimagining loss, adversity, and mortality, and helping us to channel painful experiences into meaning and growth.
I’m honored to serve as a speaker and musical guest for Reimagine’s online capstone event of the year, a chance to help transform our grief into communal healing.
“This Year in Grief, next Year in Hope”
Wed. December 3
5:00pm - 6:30pm PST
“Featuring a diverse roster of luminaries in grief, spirituality, the arts, creativity, personal development, this gathering provides a space to reflect on what we’ve been grieving this year – personally and/or collectively – and to name what we’re yearning and dreaming about for 2026. The 90-minute program consists of music, the building of an altar and a moment to invite the public to acknowledge losses.”
And I’ll be serving as “one-man-house-band”!
If you or someone you know is contending with loss of any kind this year, I hope you’ll consider joining us for this pay-what-you-can event, open to all.
Register here: https://letsreimagine.org/76768/this-year-in-grief-next-year-in-hope
Sneak Preview: “A Life In Starry Vision”
This song came to me in the dark, the first line from a dream - I stumbled out of sleep at 3 AM to record it. grew into a search for profound acceptance, and the belief that darkness always carries an invitation to seek light.
This demo is exclusively shared with our Substack community.
I’ll be performing it at the Reimagine event, and I hope you’ll join us here.
Lyrics:
Don’t lose who you are,
That’s all that you’re given.
Seek light in the dark,
That’s your decision.
Love will follow
Love will lead
It will find you
When love sees.
Don’t give up the stars,
For some starry vision.
When you lead with your heart
Then there’s no division.
Let love follow
Let love lead
It will guide you
When love sees.
A life in starry vision
Is holding without seeing the way
Holding on to tomorrow
Pushes the light so far away.
There’s so much time in this fleeting life
So much to gain in every loss
So long as we keep on singing to ourselves,
“I will find what is to be mine”
Wishing you all a beautiful close to the year. Hope to see you there.
Joshua