6 Months of Grief Project: Day 50

Rest in Power, Sunny Balzano

This is Day 50 of my #6MonthsOfGrief Project. To learn more about this practice, feel free to visit Day One, where I explain this project in more detail.

Last night I got to hang out in the Forbidden Island, where they have a sea of decorated dollar bills and tiny umbrellas covering the ceiling. When the bartender gave me a tub of pens to decorate my dollar bill, I started giving George Washington a pink wig and for some reason, this made him look a lot like Sunny Balzano, the sweet, creative wizard who passed away recently.

His bar in Red Hook is a very special place, and perhaps a rustier, more lopsided, outlaw cousin to the Forbidden Island. It felt so right to honor Sunny in this tiki wonderland and stick my weird dollar bill to the ceiling. Impromptu creative ritual moments like these make me so happy - when spirit seems to just show up and guide me. I am grateful for these kind of adventures and I want to always stay open to the strange and beautiful ways that spirit moves through my life and my grief. It is all intertwined and it is all important.

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I am very aware that this project can bring up a lot around yours or other's grief and loss, I will always follow every post with some online grief support resources that have helped me. Please feel free to let me know of online support that you have found healing in your grief, as well:

Art with Grief:

• Photographer [Sarah Treanor] Takes Moving Self-Portraits to Cope with Her Fiance's Death by Jillian Wong
• When the Fall Comes, a film about Grief by Adriana Marchione
• Self-Portraits: Expressing Emotion Through Art on What's Your Grief?
• The Hard Romance of Grief by Mark Liebenow
• The poetry of John O’Donohue

Resources for Widows:

• Camp Widow

• Soaring Spirits International

Living with Grief Resources:

• Modern Loss's excellent resource list
• Grief Bibliography on Grief Healing

• Teresa “TL” Bruce's What to Say When Someone Dies
• They Brought Cookies: For A New Widow, Empathy Eases Death's Pain by Ann Finkbeiner on NPR
• A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit

• Megan Devine’s Refuge in Grief

• The Geography of Sorrow: Francis Weller on Navigating Our Loses, interviewed by Tim McKee in Sun Magazine

• How to Be a Friend in Deed by Bruce Feiler in the New York Times

• 12 Things to Know About the First Year of Grieving Someone You Can’t Live Without by Laurie Costanza in Elephant Magazine

And remember, I am sharing this project on a variety of platforms, including my Instagram, Twitter, & Facebook feeds, as well as my Pinterest page on Grief. I use the hashtag #6MonthsOfGrief, so it can easily be found on any platform. Please share this project with anyone you think might need it.

Thank you, and see you tomorrow.