People’s Clinic

Through the pandemic and beyond, we've witnessed the urgent need for healing spaces rooted in collective care. People’s Clinics invites us to pause, come back to one another, and reimagine how we give and receive care, especially in social movement spaces where burnout, disconnection, and urgency often take hold. 

People’s Clinic: Grief & Joy is an invitation to acknowledge that: 

    1) together, our grief serves as a constellation of the human experience; 

    2) our grief can be transmuted into the deepest expressions of joy; and 

    3) rituals for processing and metabolizing our grief are required for our healing

The day began with an embodied movement practice followed by a ritual flower arranging workshop. We’ll have spaciousness for conversation and reflection. All participants received a copy of the book Tending Grief by Camille Sapara Barton.

We invite you to join us in this transformative work. Let us know if you want to host a Grief Clinic with support from MAH.

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  • Group of women participating in a yoga class in a spacious studio with large windows, wooden wall, and a sign that reads 'Read Language Project'
  • Two women sitting at a table arranging flowers in vases, with gardening tools, notebooks, and drinks on the table, in a room with large windows and wooden accents.
  • People practicing yoga in a studio with large windows and wooden and brick decor, some with arms raised in yoga poses.
  • A woman with curly hair and glasses arranging flowers on a table in a bright room.
  • Multiple people participating in a yoga class inside a studio with wooden floors, barrels, and a wall decorated with string lights. A woman instructor is guiding the class, and natural light streams in from large windows.
  • A young man with dreadlocks and a nose ring smiling and holding a colorful bouquet of flowers in a glass jar, standing in front of a beige wall.

“The People’s Clinic: Grief & Joy was born from my own long-delayed grief. I didn’t truly understand loss until my sister passed in 2010. I was raising my younger siblings then, holding everything together, and didn’t have space to slow down or feel. For years, I pushed my emotions aside and became an overachiever instead of a mourner.

In 2020, I began honoring her memory in small ways—lighting candles, displaying her photos throughout our home, and later hosting Hartford’s annual Día de Muertos celebration. Each year, people would ask if I had a grief group or something more intimate, and I heard that call deeply. When the Imaginal Cell Program opened, I proposed a mental health and grief workshop that became The People’s Clinic: Grief & Joy—a space for collective healing through mutual care. With my cohort’s guidance and Gabbie’s supportive facilitation, I learned to pivot and release guilt. Together with Ty’s embodied movement practice and Naime’s ritual flower arranging, we created a space where participants could breathe out “all the shit,” share their grief stories, and nurture their joy.

Seeing everyone’s vulnerability affirmed the clinic’s success—it created the kind of gentle, intentional space our community had been longing for. Grief and joy are connected; each helps us understand the other, and when we hold both within community, healing can happen!

My experience in the Imaginal Cell Program helped me see mutual aid as something we can live and practice every day through care, connection, and community. It is not complicated or something that needs to be scheduled—it can be as simple as showing up. I loved the partner and group work where we learned from one another and explored how to incorporate these values into our projects and daily lives. Supporting each other’s in-person events was especially meaningful. The IRL events were some of my favorites; such a simple idea had so much value in unplugging from our phones, being fully present with one another, and seeing how we each express our creativity.” — Helena Martinez-Fernandez, Grief & Joy Clinic Coordinator

“I hear people talk about joy meaning something like happiness, but the joy I’m talking about, the joy I’m reaching toward, is informed by the profound sorrow that we’re constantly in the midst of.” — Ross Gay, author (on finding hope and joy)