Institutional Loss | Sheila Collins

Grieving for a Country

by Sheila Collins | Jan 25, 2025 | Book Excerpts, book promotion, Community, Dances, Environment, Gatherings, Good Will Come, Grieving, Improvisation, Institutional Loss, Personal Stories, Story-telling, The Art of Grieving

About a decade ago, I expanded my view of loss and what situations need grieving. I had written a book, Warrior Mother: Fierce Love, Unbearable Loss and the Rituals that Heal that illustrated the grieving of personal and familial situations of loss and touched on the...

Grief, Money and Dirty Pain

by Sheila Collins | Dec 12, 2024 | Duality, Environment, Grieving, Health, Health and Wellness, History, Institutional Loss, Personal Stories, Story-telling, the Big Body

To become resilient and grow from what happens to us, we must choose to face and metabolize the pain of loss. That’s what the art of grieving is. Psychotherapist Resmaa Menakem describes “clean pain’ as that which is faced and transformed while “Dirty Pain” is pain...

The Arts and Collective Grieving

by Sheila Collins | Nov 14, 2024 | Art & Life, Book Excerpts, book promotion, Gatherings, Grieving, Institutional Loss, Personal Stories, The Art of Grieving, the Big Body

Collective grief is stimulated by large scale losses and tragedies, some impacting people and communities far from the initial ground zero of the event. I began putting together the material for my current book during the lock down phase of COVID when most everyone’s...

The Morning After

by Sheila Collins | Nov 7, 2024 | Art & Life, Community, Duality, Grieving, Institutional Loss, Personal Stories

I arrived home last night from my job as a poll watcher about 9 pm. I warmed up some soup and checked the television news for early returns as the polls were closing across the country. Checking into my own body, I realized I had “left it all on the field,” as the...

Grieving Our Covid Losses

by Sheila Collins | Mar 28, 2024 | Art & Life, book promotion, Celebrations, Community, Duality, Grieving, Health and Wellness, History, Institutional Loss, Past Events, Personal Stories, ReImagine, The Art of Grieving

Like many other writers during the Covid pandemic shutdown I decided to use the time I was being given to write a new book. For a grief advocate the situation was offering continuous, unprecedented, multiple examples of losses in need of processing. And, at the bottom...

Pittsburgh Understands the Art of Grieving and Practices it Well

by Sheila Collins | Oct 26, 2023 | Art & Life, Institutional Loss, Noteworthy men, Past Events, Personal Stories, Resilience, Rituals, The Art of Grieving, Uncategorized

It was the spring of 2018. A group of leaders, educational institutions, and non-profits in Pittsburgh began working together to bring to Pittsburgh some of the 70 restored string instruments played by Jewish musicians before and during the Holocaust. They wanted...

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Learn the Many, Magical Ways Art Transforms Grieving!

(No art skills required.)

Loss is inevitable, yet too often we bury our grief, pretending we're OK when we're not.

In my new book (COMING SOON), I'll share some uncommon notions about grief and how the arts, and art-making, have transformative powers that take us to the heart of the matter.

Grieving for a Country

Grief, Money and Dirty Pain

The Arts and Collective Grieving

The Morning After

Grieving Our Covid Losses

Pittsburgh Understands the Art of Grieving and Practices it Well

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