We met up for the SOCIUS workshop on collective grief as early as the beginning of June. Nathalie Rajević and I were surprised and delighted by the response to our invitation; the reaction we’re used to is: “That’s a really important topic, it’s great that you’re organising this” – and then perhaps three to five people actually take the time to accept the invitation. This time it was different: a week beforehand, we already had eight registrations, all from people we didn’t know – people who really wanted to come because of the topic. By 4 June itself, we were fully booked, and one guest even turned up unannounced; naturally, we had a chair for her in our circle. 

I had invited Nathalie to this laboratory because last autumn she went on a two-month study trip that took her to Canada and Spain, where she was researching how collective grief is dealt with and wanted to take a fresh look at how we deal with it here in Germany from a distance. 

Combined with my new work in Global Social Witnessing, this quickly gave rise to the idea for a SOCIUS lab. 

We began the afternoon with the question: What brought you here today? What hope? What longing? 

The responses moved us deeply: “Grief is something intimate and painful; opening up to the collective takes courage” – “Grief is so personal, and urgently requires the involvement of the body when the ability to speak is limited” - “Our project is coming to an end; funding has been withdrawn, and everything we’ve built up – including our relationships – will fall apart. Our manager recommended we come here because she thought this would also help us through the grieving process we’re going through.” - “Nurseries that are members of the association are closing down without a fuss because there are fewer and fewer children, and parents no longer have the capacity to get involved.” - “I do my job to ensure there are spaces where people are allowed to grapple with difficult emotions. For over 100 years, grief in Germany has primarily been a neglected issue that permeates society and families.”. 

What a start! 

We then turned our attention to Breakages and losses and Nathalie shared her insights: 

We talk a lot about transformation, about change, new beginnings and reorientation. Yet we often forget to talk about what is lost in the process; often, we don’t even have the words to describe it.
In a civil society that is currently under considerable pressure, it is not grief itself that is lacking, but rather the permission to call it by its name.

Nathalie introduced us to words, terms and concepts that are essential when dealing with collective grief: 

• Ambiguous Loss: Coined by Pauline Boss, an American family therapist who described it in the 1990s: ‘Ambiguous Loss’ refers to losses that have no clear boundaries — no end, no closure, no socially recognised form. Boss distinguishes between two types: someone who is physically absent but psychologically present (e.g. missing persons, emigrants, estranged individuals); or someone who is physically present but psychologically absent (e.g. in cases of dementia, addiction or severe depression). However, the term also applies to collective situations: the loss of a homeland, of political hope, or of a shared vision of the future. What makes grief so difficult in the case of ambiguous loss is precisely what is missing: a moment when one could say — This is where it ended
• Disenfranchised Grief: Kenneth Doka, an American gerontologist and bereavement counsellor, uses this term to describe grief that is not socially recognised – in other words, grief that is not allowed to be grief. This applies to losses that are not considered "proper" losses: the death of an ex-partner, the end of a friendship, the loss of a job, a miscarriage, the death of a pet. Or those in mourning who are not granted the role of mourner: children, people with disabilities, employees who are expected to remain "professional". Doka thus highlights that grief always requires social validation — and that denying this validation causes additional suffering. In the context of collective grief, one might ask: which societal losses are even recognised as losses? Who is permitted to grieve publicly over climate change, the erosion of democracy or the end of a political era — without being seen as exaggerating or being naïve?
• Grievability: Judith Butler developed this concept in the context of her political philosophy, particularly in Precarious Life (2004) and Frames of War (2009). "Grievability" — sometimes translated into German as ‘Betrauerbarkeit’ — refers to the question of whose life is considered worthy of mourning. Butler argues that not all lives are recognised as lives in the same way: whose death elicits public mourning, obituaries and moments of silence — and whose does not? This is not a private question, but a deeply political one. Lives that are not deemed worthy of mourning are lives that have not been recognised as fully valid within the public sphere. Grievability is thus closely linked to precariousness, visibility and power. For collective mourning within organisations and civil society, this means that institutional losses — closed projects, disbanded teams, abandoned missions — also raise a question of ‘grievability’: is this loss treated as a loss, or is it managed, optimised and brushed under the carpet? 

It was just as well that we had plenty of time, as this meant we could take a break after this fascinating presentation and the discussion that followed, and still had enough time to focus on the practical aspects of Global Social Witnessing. Global Social Advocacy It starts precisely where we usually prefer to look away, numb ourselves or distract ourselves, and simply scroll on. In Global Social Witnessing, we practise looking together and sensing what it triggers within us, so that we can put it into words; for only in this way can we find answers to what causes us pain.

What became particularly clear to me during this Global Social Witnessing Session was: “What is in the field comes to the surface.” I can have complete confidence that whatever is there will also be expressed. Perhaps that is the most essential aspect of this practice.

At the start of the afternoon, one participant said quite openly that she wasn’t quite sure what to make of the term "collective grief". She didn’t really believe in it. What is it actually supposed to mean? The question wasn’t rhetorical; it was sincere, and she was probably speaking for more than one person in the room.

At the end of the afternoon, the same participant said that, although she hadn’t believed it would work, it had done her a world of good to come to terms with her grief. And now she no longer needed to believe, because she had learnt what collective grief meant.

That is at least one of the aims we are pursuing with the SOCIUS laboratories: a space for experiences.