When Grieving a Loss, Be It a Person or a Home, We Often Find Renewed Hope Through Connection with Others
Taking time.
I took my walk along the beach this morning, looked south toward Palos Verdes, then north to Malibu and the Palisades. I remember standing there one afternoon six months ago, watching the ominous white clouds puffing up, turning dark and darker still, the Santa Ana winds blowing the ashes of people’s homes and neighborhoods out into the ocean.
Many of those people are now living here in the little Beach Cities community we call the South Bay. They’ve relocated. What began as a one-week stay at a hotel turned into a six-month leased apartment. And for some, a permanent home.
They’ve enrolled their children in our local schools. They roam the streets, following their car’s nav systems because they don’t know their way around our towns yet. It’s still new to them.
They let their kids hang out in Downtown Manhattan Beach after school because “when in Rome,” they say. They walk along The Strand looking out at the Pacific; they sit on the benches that have someone’s name, the year they were born, the year they died.
They think about the grief they are enduring right here, right now. They wonder about others who have endured grief in this same spot. Someone’s husband, old-school Hermosa, married for 30 years. Or someone’s son, so loved and with so much promise, only 18 years old when he died. I wonder about them too.
The pain is with us. What makes a difference is to not face it alone. I didn’t write these words alone; they were written sitting alongside my peers.
I volunteer for a grief group called Taking Time: South Bay. Three years ago, co-founders Claire Towle and Patty Ellis started a nonprofit offering individual and group support for adults and children who have experienced grief and are looking to find a way forward.
Grief doesn’t follow a schedule, nor does it look the same for any two people. Yet in the quiet, aching aftermath of loss, one thing often makes all the difference: connection. Asking questions, listening to others’ sorrows, joys and stories. Finding hope.
In a community that celebrates sunshine and strength, Taking Time: South Bay reminds us that vulnerability is part of the human experience—and that healing begins when we give ourselves permission to grieve.
Learn more at takingtime.org.
