“It’s not the weight you carry

but how you carry it –
books, bricks, grief –
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.”

–Excerpt From Heavy by Mary Oliver

Our community’s grief is acutely present in St. Paul and Minneapolis as I go about my daily activities here, where I’ve lived half my life. Grief is felt in the mundane conversations that now have a glint of tenderness I distinctly notice. Felt in the details revealed and the extra kindnesses and thanks extended. Sometimes in silence as eyes lock in a pause of understanding and pain. In a text that goes beneath the outrage to sadness that refuses rhetoric.

The way it’s being carried by my colleagues and friends shows up in ongoing acts of caring and resistance of all sizes, and when it becomes exhausting there are other neighbors near and far to balance it by picking up the reins because we “cannot and would not put it down.”

Among the most compassionate acts of solidarity and public mourning I’ve seen were the recent jingle dress healing ceremonies held by a group of native community organizers at the sites where Renee Good and Alex Pretti are now memorialized. Started over one hundred years ago by the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, dancing in the jingle dress became a medicine tradition that spread from Minnesota into the Dakotas. The jingle dress dancing ceremonies are meant to bring healing to those who are sick and suffering.

In the midst of so much sadness, let us remember and have courage.