Disenfranchised Grief:
Connection, Courage, & community care
for queer BIPOC Individuals
We experience “disenfranchised grief” when we suffer loss that cannot be openly mourned, acknowledged, or valued publicly due to a lack of societal recognition and the potential threat to safety, security, and stability. This often results from social stigma and fewer economic privileges linked to specific social identities, stemming from hierarchical barriers and a lack of belonging, equity, and equality.
This virtual community care group (not a psychotherapy group) is for queer, gender-expansive BIPOC individuals who are actively working to challenge social and economic systems of oppression—such as activists, educators, movement leaders, cultural workers, medical and mental health providers, advocates, and creatives dedicated to disrupting these systems. Our community’s work is heartfelt, but it is also accompanied by grief.
To maintain the energy needed for our vital work, both community care and self-care are essential. As we develop liberatory care practices that reconnect us with our spirits, bodies, and intuition through rituals involving rest, pleasure, joy, and play, we will build connections in this virtual sanctuary while summoning courage and remaining committed to justice.
While resisting the ongoing onslaught of global violence in all its forms, including racism, sexism, homophobia, climate change, displacement, voter oppression, and the continuing efforts of political regimes to silence justice warriors, we choose to be in the gap with marginalized queer BIPOC communities. This community care group will be a space for us to join together.
Our Why
Audre Lorde, a beloved ancestor, reminds us that silence does not protect us. She also encouraged us to care for ourselves, as self-care is “not an act of indulgence.” In fact, she identifies self-care as “self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
In the spirit of bell hooks, another ancestor whose light and encouragement inspire us to embrace our diverse lived experiences, we stand at the margins—neither here nor there—and despite our positionality within the intersections of our identities, it is possible to decenter oppression, explore the power of connection, and embrace our communities and our collective healing, along with the liberatory medicine we co-create.
Grief demands its due, and human beings are not designed to grieve alone. Belonging to a community and connecting with others who are intentionally making a conscious effort to mourn is essential. In this co-created space, we will honor grief as a catalyst for social activism and channel our individual and collective grief in community.
Starting from December 6, 2025 through February 28, 2026, spanning three months and encompassing the Fall and Winter seasons, we will meet virtually every other Saturday from 1-3 p.m. PST to mourn, heal, and cultivate resilience together through co-created, culturally-affirming medicine.
On the weeks when we don’t meet virtually, we will provide self-guided practices for participants to deepen their reflections and engagement.
This community care group will be co-facilitated by my trusted colleague, Irazema Guerrero Meléndez, ASW, and I invite you to learn more about her below. Together with Irazema, I welcome you to join us in our effort to cultivate a sanctuary where we can restore, renew our strength, and heal in community.
Click here for information on Program Logistics.
Disenfranchised Grief Examples (not a complete list)
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The loss of a sense of belonging due to a lack of access to cultural resources.
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The loss of possessions, homeland, culture, or language.
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The loss of connection with family and community due to coming out as LGBTQIA+.
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The loss of a family or community member to suicide or substance use.
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The loss of feeling valued, seen, and understood because of neurodivergence.
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The loss of faith, hope, and vitality caused by social, physical, emotional, and spiritual depletion.
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The loss of inclusion and upward mobility caused by racial and economic barriers.
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The loss of community members due to police brutality or hate crimes.
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The loss of a loved one due to incarceration.
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The loss of connection, partnership, and collaboration resulting from the termination of romantic, platonic, or professional relationships.
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The loss of potential to create an extension of the family due to infertility.
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The loss of new life due to miscarriage, stillbirth, or missed opportunities to foster a child.
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The loss of access to critical medical interventions, such as organ transplants or cures.
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The loss of access to quality mental and physical health services.
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The grief from relocation and losing one’s community or family support system, even if the move was intentional.
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The grief caused by neighborhood gentrification.
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The loss of creative, intellectual, or emotional agility due to cognitive decline.
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The loss of professional stature due to technological and political shifts.
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The loss of economic stability from layoffs, wrongful termination, or government shutdowns.
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The anticipated loss of a loved one from Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia.
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The loss of well-being caused by chronic health or mental health challenges.
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The loss of rest, relaxation, renewal, and the capacity to recover caused by being overwhelmed and undersupported.
Drawing from our shared and individual cultural traditions and identities, participants will co-develop collective healing practices, and our community care group’s grief rituals will cover various themes, including some of the following offerings:
Creating Altars
Ceremonial Medicine
Sound Healing
Movement & Dance
Meditation
Journaling
Literature (Excerpts from Books, Prose, Poetry)
Connection to Land
Working with Natural Elements
Storytelling
Photography
Food and Libations
Sacred Power of Vulnerability
Meet The Co-facilitators
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Yolonda M. Young-Adisa, ASW, is dedicated to advancing healing legacies through her brand’s services, including social justice-informed mental health coaching, consulting, and community care group design and facilitation. She curates online wellness programs to address health disparities among queer, BIPOC, and neurodivergent communities, believing that holistic healing occurs when individuals feel compassionately seen and cared for within the social and economic contexts of their unique life experiences. Yolonda offers one-on-one, family, group, and organizational wellness sessions focused on emotional well-being and educational leadership within a trauma-informed, social justice framework.
Irazema Guerrero Meléndez, ASW, is an associate clinical social worker, a certified mindfulness facilitator, a lifelong learner, and an educator. They grew up as the eldest daughter of Mexican immigrants, living in South Los Angeles. They honor the love, strength, and resilience of her parents and ancestors, who serve as sources of courage and vision. Their firsthand experience of the inequitable conditions faced by BIPOC and economically disadvantaged communities inspired their work as a public school educator and now fuels their healing justice and clinical social work.
Irazema was placed on this earth to heal generational trauma in their own lineage and support the work of healing trauma and building a culture of love, care, and belonging in relationship to others. They are driven by the indigenous principles of community love, sacred interdependence, honoring nature, and collective responsibility. Guided by their teachers and medicine elders, Irazema is cultivating a path toward individual and collective liberation by integrating their indigenous ancestry, mindfulness practices, and clinical skills. Irazema lives, works, and builds community in the East Bay, on the ancestral and unceded lands of the Ohlone people.
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