A virtual mini-retreat, presented by Reimagine and Marked by COVID, for exploring our grief and finding thanks.
We will come together to reimagine Thanksgiving and prepare ourselves for the winter holiday season ahead. Join us for a unique multi-day experience of community connection, creativity, and celebration.
Led by a diverse group of primarily BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) speakers, artists, and healers, The Gratitude Gathering will offer you valuable tools to evoke and express thanksgiving in a way that works for you. Our goal is to provide a meaningful experience for all who have experienced loss, with special care paid to those who have been deeply affected by COVID-19.
Reimagine and Marked by COVID are partnering to co-host The Gratitude Gathering for all who have experienced loss and are facing the coming holiday season with uncertainty. Holidays are often times of extreme vulnerability and grief. Thanksgiving, in particular, can be the most difficult holiday, because of its traditional association with large family gatherings. However, even in the darkest seasons of sorrow, reasons for gratitude and joy can be found. As we look back on a year of deep collective grief and physical distancing, how can we connect across cultural and geographical divides to reimagine the holiday of Thanksgiving?
4:30 - 6:00 pm PST // 7:30 - 9:00 pm EST
We begin our weekend in community connection - setting intentions, remembering our ancestors, and holding space for our grief through ritual. Meet your new virtual family - a beautiful community of souls who will be walking through this weekend with you.
Opening Ceremonies co-hosted by Bea Martino, Reimagine event producer, multimedia artist and grief-advocate, Brad Wolfe, Reimagine Founder and Executive Director, Kristin Urquiza, activist and co-founder of Marked by COVID, and Brenda Salgado, mindfulness author, and traditional medicine woman.
Discussions in Grief & Gratitude Circles facilitated by Belinda Liu, founder of Gratitude Blooming and Omar Brownson, co-founder and CEO of the gratitude platform, gthx.
8:30 - 11:00 am & 1:00 - 4:00 pm PST // 11:30 am - 2:00 pm & 4:00 - 7:00 pm EST
A day dedicated to holding space for grief, sharing our stories, learning from each other, and harnessing our inner creative spirit. We will connect with our innermost source of gratitude and love, and find ways to ground ourselves in the storms of grief. This day will include embodied practices, panel discussions, workshops, rituals, and a special keynote talk.
8:30 am PST / 11:30 am EST - Opening Meditation, Movement Practice & Welcome with Bea Martino, Kristin Urquiza, and mental health advocate, suicide loss survivor, and movement fluidity expert, Dionne Monsanto
9:00 am PST / 12:00 pm EST - Keynote Conversation: author and activist, Fred Guttenberg, in conversation with Kristin Urquiza
9:30 am PST / 12:30 pm EST - Discussion in Grief & Gratitude Circles facilitated by Marisa Urrutia Gedney from the COVID Grief Network
10:00 am PST / 1:00 pm EST - Panel Discussion: Honoring and Coping with Grief During the Holidays, with best-selling authors Claire Bidwell Smith, Tembi Locke, Sukey Forbes, Alison Gilbert, and Corey Kennard
1:00 pm PST / 4:00 pm EST - Workshops & Community Sessions:
2:00 pm PST / 5:00 pm EST - Workshops & Community Sessions:
3:00 pm PST / 6:00 pm EST - Artistic Offerings of dance, music, and poetry, hosted by Bea Martino. Performers include: Sasha Soreff, Margarita Castro McCabe, Rebbekah Vega-Romero, S.C. Says, Cida Vieira, Zina Bethea-Dawson, Isaac L. Thompson Jr. and more!
8:30 - 10:00 am PST // 11:30 am - 1:00 pm EST
A day of celebration! This will be a time to appreciate all that you have experienced during the weekend, deepen your connections with your virtual family, and prepare for the holiday week ahead.
Celebration and Mourning - in Words and Movement co-hosted by Bea Martino, Brad Wolfe, Kristin Urquiza, and choreographer and transformational facilitator Sasha Soreff
9:00 - 10:30 am PST // 12:00 - 1:30 pm EST
A chance to gather and connect with your new virtual family on this day of Thanks-Giving. Share family stories, recipes, and hold space for each other’s grief and gratitude.
A Community Gathering co-hosted by Bea Martino, Brad Wolfe, Kristin Urquiza, and Roshni Kavate
4:00 - 6:00 pm PST // 7:00 - 9:00 pm EST
“When Night Falls: A Memory Gathering Experience” is a soulful evening of remembering departed loved ones, through the powerful medium of language - both written and spoken. Across the terrain of poetry, journaling, and storytelling, we source resilience in the gifts that have been left behind to feed our souls. Co-hosted by end of life doula Oceana Sawyer and writer, grief coach, and interfaith minister Naila Francis.
4:00 - 6:00 pm PST // 7:00 - 9:00 pm EST
“Tending Heart, Tending Grief” is an evening event to tend your grief through the expressive arts. The experience begins in the body with movement and dance. Then we’ll bring you down a bit into some gentle breathwork and yoga postures which then flows into an opportunity to express your grief through artwork. Co-hosted by end of life doulas Oceana Sawyer, and Jessica Reis, and trauma-informed creative facilitator Evelyn Andry.
12:00 - 1:00 pm PST // 3:00 - 4:00 pm EST
“Balm for the Soul” is a quiet space to commune with your loved one through guided meditation and journaling. Facilitated by end of life doulas Oceana Sawyer and Paymaneh Ghaffari.
4:00 - 6:00 pm PST // 7:00 - 9:00 pm EST
Join end of life doula, Oceana Sawyer and her friends for an interactive Game Night. Have some fun celebrating what you are grateful for through an interactive game, complete with prizes!
8:30 - 11:00 am PST // 11:30 am - 1:00 pm EST
Reconnect with your virtual family through story sharing and rituals. This will be a time to reflect and share how the Thanksgiving holiday was for you, share your stories of grief and gratitude, and prepare for the coming winter holiday season.
Closing Ceremonies co-hosted by Bea Martino, Reimagine event producer, multimedia artist and grief-advocate, Brad Wolfe, Reimagine Founder and Executive Director, Kristin Urquiza, activist and co-founder of Marked by COVID, Dionne Monsanto, mental health advocate, suicide loss survivor, and movement fluidity expert, and Brenda Salgado, mindfulness author, and traditional medicine woman.
The Gratitude Gathering will feature a variety of different events including: a keynote lecture, panel discussions, creative workshops, virtual rituals, movement practices, and opportunities for personal sharing in small groups. The Gratitude Gathering is intended as an immersive and holistic experience - each of the events will connect to one another. To get the most out of The Gratitude Gathering, we recommend attending for the entire weekend.
If you are grieving the loss of a loved one, this event is for you. If you are apprehensive about the coming holiday season and need space to sit with your grief, this event is for you. If you are seeking community connection and new rituals to honor yourself and others, this event is for you. These virtual events are open to all ages, races, orientations, and genders, and care will be taken to ensure that all parts of the event are as accessible as possible. If you need any special accommodations to be able to attend this event, please do not hesitate to reach out to us, and we will do our best to accommodate you.
The Gratitude Gathering is proud to be grounded in Reimagine’s principles of Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI). The Gratitude Gathering welcomes people of all genders, races, ethnic backgrounds, abilities, body types, spiritual beliefs, sexual orientations, and socioeconomic statuses. These events are centered on holding space for community connection and reflection and are intended as a safe and nourishing place for grief processing. However, these events are not a replacement for professional mental health services or grief therapy.
Beatrice (Bea) Antonie Martino (she/her) is a Reimagine event producer and Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary installation artist, choreographer, and grief activist. She specializes in crafting site-specific, multi-sensory experiences and interactive environments that hold space for introspection, emotional processing, and community connection. Working at the intersections of live performance and technology, she uses video art, projection, movement, and choreography to build worlds that encourage holistic engagement with our shared humanity. Her current work explores individual and collective relationships to grief and mourning, and seeks to create new healing rituals to honor the dead.
Bea's academic background includes B.A. degrees with honors in Dance and Psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an M.A. degree from New York University Gallatin School of Individualized Study (Artistic Thesis: What Remains: Ritual Spaces for the Contemporary Mourner). Driven by multiple experiences of significant personal loss, Bea has been exploring themes of grief, memory, loss, and identity in her creative work since 2007. In a society where death and grief are marginalized, she believes that we need to make more concerted efforts to create communal spaces in which people can process these experiences through ritual.
To engage with Bea’s work and learn more about her upcoming projects, please visit: https://www.beatricemartino.com.
Kristin Urquiza (she/her) is the Co-Founder and Chief Activist of Marked by COVID. She is a graduate of Yale University and UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy where she has a Master of Public Affairs. She is an environmental advocate at Mighty Earth, where she works to hold corporations like Cargill accountable to their industrial agricultural practices that displace indigenous people from their lands and drive deforestation in places like the Amazon rainforest and beyond. Additionally, Kristin works closely with Liberation in a Generation, a group working to narrow the wealth gap between people of color and white families in the United States within a generation.
Her grandparents were migrant farmworkers– from Mexico and Oklahoma — and her father worked in the fields as a child. She grew up in the Maryvale community of Phoenix, and is a proud product of public primary education and the first person in her family to go to college. Maryvale is a community of predominantly people of color and immigrants, and is now seeing the highest rates of COVID-19 in the nation, where people are waiting 13 hours to be tested.
Kristin’s parents contracted COVID-19 in June, following Governor Ducey’s downplay of the severity of the coronavirus and subsequent rollback of the state’s shelter-in-place ordinance. When her dad passed on June 30 from COVID-19 she launched Marked by COVID to honor her father, collect stories of people who have been impacted by COVID-19, and inspire safer public health policies. With the help of friends and family, she wrote the first #HonestObit, invited the governor to her dad’s funeral, and held a vigil at the state capitol. For more information about Kristin and Marked by COVID visit: https://markedbycovid.com.
