top of page

Secret Reunion


This is my sister's face. I saw it for the first time in February.

My sister is 16 years younger than I am. Our visit felt like a first meeting, but also a strange kind of reunion because - here's something curious about my sister's face: it's my face.

More my face, in some ways, from certain angles, than the one sitting on my body.

It was a secret reunion because feeling smitten over surprise glimpses of a me I thought was gone seems not good. Right? I feel embarrassed saying it out loud. And yet...my face!

I didn't really know her when she lived in the mirror, when it was my job to fix and hide her. It feels like a magic gift, like slippers from enchanted mice, the chance to see this bit of me again and love her like I know how to love now: tenderly, gratefully, with awe.

It feels like bad manners, over-confidence, conceit, loving my face out loud. My before face, my current face, hatching plans to love my future face. But why? It's my intermediary, it offers itself to the world at my behest.

And it keeps leaving.

Over and over again, ever since I was born.

Do we have a plan for this?

Do we have a plan for how to love our bodies as we're born into them over and over? How to grieve our bodies as they die and reincarnate day by week by year?

I don't. And maybe I can't - maybe no plan is the only way to move in this. Still - I'd love to hold hands with you while we fall and wander through our constantly departing bodies, our constantly transforming identities.

I'd love to love your many faces, ache a little for the ones that are gone, hope to be lucky enough to meet the ones that come next. I'd love for us to do that with each other, together.

Yes?



 
 
 

Recent Posts

See All

Comentários


The Grief House Logo House.jpg
  • Portals Podcast
  • Our Instagram
  • Our Facebook Page
  • Our YouTube Channel

All grief is welcome here.

All are welcome here.

This is an LGBTQ+ and BIPOC-affirming place.

The Grief House is not a replacement for skilled mental health care. We cannot provide acute crisis intervention. If you’re struggling to find the help you need, we are happy to offer referrals and suggest resources. If you feel like you might hurt yourself or someone else, help is available 24 hours a day from the National Suicide Hotline (1-800-273-8255) or by dialing or texting 988. If you are having a medical emergency, please dial 911.

Finding Us

The Atlanta Grief House Nickerson Cottage at Legacy Park Decatur 500 S. Columbia Dr, Decatur, GA 30030 Notes on finding us: GPS will take you to the center of Legacy Park. The Nickerson Cottage is a stone building with raised bed gardens on the south side of Legacy Park's campus. If you enter campus through the south entrance it will be the first cottage you come to. You can park in any of the surrounding lots. If coming in the evening you will see the string lights on our front porch. Nickerson Cottage is largely wheelchair accessible.

The Portland Grief House 7906 N Fessenden St, Portland, OR 97203 Notes on finding us: We are the green house on the corner of N Fessenden & N Allegheny Ave. Enter through the gate at the corner.

Wilderings, operating as The Grief House, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (EIN  84-4336786) and all donations are tax deductible. 

The Grief House works on and serves communities on land that is the unceeded territory of the Muskogee, Cherokee and Creek peoples in Georgia and the Clackamas, Stl’pulmsh, Cayuse, Umatilla, Walla Walla and Siletz peoples in Oregon.

 

We honor them as we live, work and serve grievers on these unceeded lands. 

Copyright © 2025 The Grief House | All Rights Reserved | Privacy | Terms of Use

bottom of page