Links & Upcoming Events
Submissions Open | Howl & Hold Issue II
It’s that time again! Submit your work here: https://forms.gle/zSWjAuFNPT5WJteM9
Grief builds shrines in the unlikeliest of places: a jacket never worn again, a half-empty cup on the kitchen table, a saved voicemail. Some altars we build with intention—candles lit, photos framed, stones carefully placed. Others assemble themselves slowly, without our permission or awareness. Howl & Hold Issue II invites you to explore the sacred spaces of your grief—those built, stumbled upon, or refused.
This issue, ALTARS, asks: What do you return to again and again in your mourning? What objects or spaces have become charged with meaning? What cannot be held, even here?
Prompts for this issue include:
Grief Talisman – If your grief could take physical form—if you could carry it in your pocket, wear it on a chain, keep it tucked in a drawer—what would it be? Describe it in vivid detail or sketch it, paint it, sculpt it. Is it heavy or weightless, glowing or dull? What textures, sounds, or scents does it hold? Do you have an actual grief talisman?
Altar of the Everyday – What quiet rituals or objects have become sacred since your loss? Photograph or write about an “altar” that has formed unintentionally—your nightstand, a cluttered shelf, the inside of your glovebox. What meaning does it hold?
What the Altar Cannot Hold – Create a piece (poem, prose, collage, etc.) about the things too large, too raw, or too unnameable to fit on any altar. What truths or feelings spill off the edge? What gets left behind?
Vestiges & Visions – Grief often leaves traces—images that haunt, symbols that return, colors we can’t stop painting with. What visions rise when you give grief form without words? Create an image, comic, painting, or collage that channels your mourning through texture, line, shape, or shadow. What visual language does your grief speak? What ghosts appear when you draw from memory? What remains when words fail?
We welcome submissions across all mediums: writing (poetry, prose, hybrid), visual art, photography, collage, or anything else that gives form to the feral, the sacred, the unspeakable. And, as always, submissions that do not precisely fall within these guidelines but are pertinent to your grief are WELCOME.
Let this be a place to remember, to rage, to resist forgetting. Let this be your altar.
Gone But Still In My Google Calendar | Sept 13
The heart wants what the heart wants. So does grief. Both are messy, primal, and difficult to reason with.
Join psychotherapist and death educator Lori Zaspel of Moonvine Grief and Catherine of Death Project Manager for Gone But Still in My Google Calendar: a discussion on polyamory / ENM and grief.
All griefs welcome - whether from death, or living losses like breakups, change, the heartaches that come from being alive.
Lori is a psychotherapist, grief activist, death educator, and content creator who was a founding member of the Philly Death Doula Collective, is a current member of Salt Trails Philly (an art collective working to honor grief as a vital and sacred part of the human experience).
Catherine is the creator of the Mortality Workbook, a toolkit to collect what your loved ones should know before you go, so that you can rest in peace. She has hosted death education events around the globe in multiple languages.
Saturday, September 13, 7PM EST / 4PM PST; 90 minutes over GoogleMeet.
$10-$20 sliding scale suggested donation; no one turned away for lack of funds.
We'll open with a grounding exercise, share information on relational grief, then create space for your thoughts on non-monogamy, grief, breakups within breakups, changes, endings, new beginnings.
Bring all your feelings, even the ones you’re embarrassed to feel. We’ll meet them, and you, on the internet.
Bound By Loss | September
🌾 September – Black Grief/White Grievance: The Politics of Loss by Juliet Hooker
Theme: Political Grief, Racial Justice, and Whose Loss Gets Mourned
📖 A searing analysis of how grief operates differently across race and power structures in America. Hooker challenges narratives of national unity and explores how Black grief is pathologized while white grievance is weaponized. A vital read for collective care work and political mourning.
🌀 Mini-Practice: Grief and Power journaling prompt.
Ask yourself: Whose grief do I see honored? Whose pain gets dismissed? What does my grief demand of the systems I live within?
📅 Event: September 18
Register here: https://forms.gle/g2MJXdb3H2KcstwZ8
Singing Our Grief | Companion Animals @ Op Barks
We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.
— Henry Beston, “The Outermost House”
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We’re thrilled to partner this month with @opbarks for Singing Our Grief.
The loss of our animal companions is like no other loss. The grief we feel when they’re no longer a part of our everyday is one that’s often misunderstood and minimized by those who haven’t loved and been loved in this way.
Join us on Friday, September 19, as we make space to honor these family members who have died or are ailing.
Whether you’re grieving the loss of a pet or not, all are welcome, as are all griefs.
🎶 Singing Our Grief
🗓️7 to 8:30 pm Friday, Sept. 19
📍Opportunity Barks, 3510 Scotts Lane, Suite 3112, Philadelphia
💲Donation: $10-$30 (no one turned away for lack of funds)
Bound By Loss | August
Theme: Grief, Ritual, and Embodied Justice
📅 Circle Date: August 14
In August, we’re slowing down with Tending Grief — a soul-nourishing offering from Camille Sapara Barton that blends grief work, social justice, and somatic practice. This book feels like a balm: it doesn’t rush you. It offers gentle, grounded tools for making space for loss in the body, the collective, and the ancestral line.
If you’re seeking a more embodied relationship to your grief — one that doesn’t pathologize or fix, but tends and honors — this one’s for you.
🌀 Mini Practice: Create a grounding altar.
Gather a few meaningful, natural items — a stone, a feather, a leaf. Spend a minute each day connecting with one through your senses. Ask your grief: what do you need right now?
Register here: https://forms.gle/iMjzu1Uuec9LNg8C6
Howl & Hold Grief Zine & Stickers NOW ON SALE
🖤 IT’S HERE 🖤
https://www.lorizaspel.com/shop
The very first issue of Howl & Hold: A Feral Grief Zine is officially live + for sale on my website — alongside a glorious pile of griefy, gritty, magical stickers.
This was a massive labor of love, featuring 30+ contributors sharing art, words, rituals, weird wisdoms, and soft spots for anyone trying to survive loss without losing themselves.
✨ Part survival guide
✨ Part scream into the void
✨ 100% not your grandma’s grief manual (unless she was a punk witch creature with a tarot deck and a social work degree)
Inside: poetry, prose, collage, photographs, grief rituals, prompts, and reminders that your pain belongs — and so do you. Cry on it. Write in it. Throw it across the room. It can take it.
32 full-color pages
Locally printed by Fireball Printing
Saddle-stitched like a dream
$19 — because grief deserves beautifully designed and printed things
Bundles of goodies available
🖤 Tap the link in bio to get your copy + support the next issue (because funding this one just came straight out of my pocket, let's be real)
🖤 Stickers also available, because sometimes you need to advertise what's going on with you on your car or laptop
Singing Our Grief
Singing Our Grief is a communal gathering of music, ritual, and shared remembrance — an invitation to honor our losses through the healing power of voice and presence. Whether you're grieving a person, a relationship, a season of life, or the state of the world, come as you are. No singing experience needed — just a willingness to show up with your tender heart.
💛 Suggested donation: $15-25
🎶 Venmo: @Naila-Francis
All are welcome.
Bound By Loss | Renegade Grief
Bound By Loss is a thoughtfully facilitated book circle for those navigating loss who feel ready to engage with their grief through reading, reflection, and discussion. This circle will provide a supportive, non-pathologizing space to explore grief-related literature — offering insight, validation, and connection outside the structure of formal therapy and with a return to community in mind.
📖 Second Meeting: June 12th, 6–8 PM
📚 Our Book: Renegade Grief by Carla Fernandez
This group will meet via Google Meet. Auto-generated captions will be available, and I am open to discussing alternative accessibility options as needed. While cameras on is preferred (because we wanna see your beautiful face), no one will be required to do so. Please note that listening to audio books is reading in this group. Braille is reading in this group.
Participation is offered on a sliding scale of $10, $15, or $20 per session, payable via Venmo.
Links & Resources
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An interdisciplinary group of healers, artists, ministers, and activists who are united by a shared commitment to honoring grief as a vital and sacred part of the human experience. We hold grief events across the Philadelphia area.
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Sign up for my newsletter! A tender, truth-telling monthly missive exploring grief, longing, and the strange light that lives inside sorrow.
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An invitation to explore mortality, meaning, and remembrance through books that illuminate our relationship to death and dying. From 2023.
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An insightful series of interviews with end-of-life doulas working in the US and abroad. Mitzi's four-question interviews usually run between 20-35 minutes.
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Browse and buy from the Bound by Loss reading list (as well as other books I love) via my Bookshop.org affiliate link—support independent bookstores while exploring books that speak to grief, memory, and meaning.
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Open Path is a nonprofit network connecting clients with therapists offering sessions at significantly reduced rates, typically between $40–70. It’s a great resource for finding quality, accessible care.
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My go-to directory for finding socially aware, culturally responsive care. It centers 2SLGBTQ+ folks, neurodivergent communities, and people of color, making it easier to connect with therapists who affirm and celebrate your full identity.
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A directory of professionals who are knowledgeable about and affirming of polyamorous identities. It really does make a difference when your therapist understands the dynamics of consensual non-monogamy—without judgment or needing a crash course.
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What’s Your Grief – A creative, practical grief resource hub.
The Dinner Party – Community for 20- and 30-somethings navigating life after loss.
Reimagine – Events and resources to explore grief, death, and end-of-life with creativity and community.
Healing in Community – Radical mental health tools and community-based resources for collective care.
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Trans Lifeline – Peer support hotline run by and for trans people.
The Trevor Project – Crisis intervention and suicide prevention for queer youth.
QTPoC Mental Health — A community-run resource hub centering the mental health of queer & trans people of color.
FOR THE GWORLS — A grassroots org raising money for Black trans people to afford rent, gender-affirming surgeries, and travel for medical care.
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Therapy for Black Girls – A space to find culturally competent mental health professionals for Black women and girls.
Therapy for Black Men – Therapist directory plus community-building and mental wellness content.
Latinx Therapy – Mental health resources and a directory of Latinx therapists.
Asian Mental Health Collective – Therapist directory and community support for Asian diaspora communities.
National Queer & Trans Therapists of Color Network (NQTTCN) – A healing justice resource and network of QTBIPOC therapists.
How to find a grief group
1. For ages 20-40s: www.dinnerparty.org. They offer virtual and IRL tables, as well as a buddy program.
2. Local hospice. Hospices are required to offer groups, many will open them to the community but they are not advertised. If the person who died was served by a hospice, start there.
3. Organizations associated with a disease process. For example, Cancer Support Community is for all cancers, many oncology centers also host grief groups. Reach out to the social work department to inquire. Alzheimer’s Association, breast cancer org, etc.
4. Loss of a child — https://www.compassionatefriends.org/
5. Suicide loss — https://afsp.org/find-a-support-group/
6. Substance use related loss — https://www.phila.gov/.../grief-support-for-drug-related.../ (Philadelphia County only) and https://grasphelp.org/about-us/ (chapters all over)
7. Loss due to violence (Philly specific) — https://avpphila.org/families-of-murder-victims/ At last check, AVP has been pretty overwhelmed and has a waitlist.
8. Support groups for children and their caregivers, all losses — https://upliftphilly.org/, https://bereavementcenter.org/ (up in Skippack), and https://petersplaceonline.org/. https://supportingkidds.org/ in Delaware. If you are not in Philly, you can Google to find the nearest children’s grief center.
9. Death doulas and grief coaches. Connect with local doulas and grief workers for a wide variety of community support options. The Salt Trails Collective is one such group (full disclosure, I am in that group). To locate local doulas, try NEDAlliance.org or INELDA.org.
10. My Instagram stories and highlights are full of local and virtual grief events, many offering community grieving.