Hello, Friends! I'm going to try something a little different this week and share a bit more off the cuff. Something I experienced sitting in a movie theater this week has been taking up space in my head and I just can't let it go. We start here.
Jonathan knows that I'm a huge fan of Sara Bareilles, one of the few artists whose songs I have loved for the better part of two decades. Knowing this, he spotted a showing of a new documentary about the recording of her most recent album, Good Grief.
Sitting in the theater, there was a moment, among many, where I realized I had stopped breathing while she sang. The song is called Forever and is sung from the point of view of someone who has already passed away. It's a message back to the person sitting in their grief, in the chasm of absence. They say they are already home but always with them, and that there is beauty in the love and in the grief. I thought of my sister, who died when I was 20, and of everything I still had to tell her. The thoughts washed through me. I held Jonathan's hand and wept, not sobbed, but wept. I felt the ache in my chest as I released something I've tended to keep at bay.
Throughout the film you see that Sara gathered a small group of friends for six days to record this album, in a 19th-century church turned recording studio outside of Woodstock, NY. As they worked through each song, they shared their own experiences alongside hers. One shared their struggle with infertility, which paralleled Sara's. Another shared dark moments as a new mom struggling with depression. We watched them stop takes to cry or talk. There was one moment where, as they listened back to a song they had just recorded, Ladies in a Line, a song about the struggles of infertility, one of the musicians broke down in tears. They stopped what they were doing and Sara came to her and embraced her and just cried with her.
It took me back to a moment years earlier when I was at Wake Forest and my sister had just passed away. I had an exceptionally difficult time with her death. I had a love for her as a big sister that was difficult to put into words, and yet I had not come out to her before she died. I hadn't shared all of who I was with someone who would have undoubtedly loved 100 percent of me. It was complex, but it was my journey. I was coping the best I could at school and doing all the things I could to keep my face together, not always successfully. Then came the moment I wasn't expecting. I was in the middle of a performance with my a cappella group in front of several hundred students. The director of our ensemble paused us and shared with the audience that the next song was one they wanted to dedicate to me, because I had recently lost my sister. They proceeded to sing Angel by Sarah McLachlan to me. I wept as they did, and my heart swelled with both gratitude and grief. I felt seen and loved, something I don't know that I was expecting, and it ultimately gave me a sense of home.
These moments of grief and loss are happening all around us every day. The person returning from bereavement leave, or on their fourth attempt at IVF, brings those moments with them. They sit with them while trying to keep focused on the 5pm deadline. They sit with them while trying to stay calm as a client is yelling at them. They are everywhere, and we may not even know as we pass them in the hall. Perhaps there is a brevity in their exchange, or their usually vibrant countenance seems just a little dimmer. Perhaps you see no signs at all. Either way the pain and grief are no less present.
What we can hope is that when this person goes home, they feel that space was made for them. That if their pain was known, it was okay for them to feel the very human things they were feeling. That if they found themselves in tears, someone stopped what they were doing and let them simply be. Hopefully, when they go home, they share that someone cared.
"My prayer for this music is that it offers comfort to other people who might be feeling the same way."
— Sara Bareilles, Good Grief (2026)