Ribbons Over Boulder Creek Represent Community Grief and Gratitude

Between now and Jan. 11, you might notice brightly colored ribbons hanging from the Boulder Creek bridge just west of Broadway. Next to the ribbons you’ll see a sign inviting you to tie on a ribbon of your own to express grief or gratitude.

“It seems so important that we have ways of sharing our grief in a collective way,” said project co-organizer Gaia Mika, who is also a KGNU board member.

The Community Grief and Gratitude Project is a small, Boulder-based group of community members who has been doing this since 2020.

“The way that grief is handled in this society is so isolating. People are left alone with it and then feel that they can’t even go there because they’re all alone. They’re not being held,” said Mika. “And this is a way, a very small way, to bring the grief right out into the open and give anyone that walks by an opportunity to share their grief.”

The project, which lasts for two weeks, begins with an opening ceremony. The day after Christmas, 16 people gathered near the bridge to share songs, poems, and reflections on the things they are grieving, and feeling grateful for, this year.

Eileen Walz, another co-organizer, said “ I think it’s so important to have space to let our heartbreak be shared and seen and felt by other people. Our world is feeling pretty heavy on my heart these days, and it’s just nice to have a space where we can actually presence some of the intensity and the grief and the pain.”

Attendees started by hanging ribbons to represent unhoused people from the local community who died this year. A participant named Daphne said she came to hang a ribbon for a friend’s daughter who recently died by suicide. And, said Daphne, for “all of the people in this country who are losing so much.  When I thought about grief and gratitude this morning before I came, I was so aware of how anger also went along with the grief. And how grief and gratitude actually hold all the feelings and emotions that we carry as humans. And I’m also aware that if we can hold our anger clearly, that it actually can be clarifying and a healing process.”

In her opening statement to the group, Mika said that grief is a manifestation of love and praise. “We would not be grieving if we didn’t love. If we didn’t love this world, this life. The people in this life, the plants, the animals, all the things that we are grieving are because we love,” she said. “The collective grief, it could bring us together.”

The ribbon project runs from now until Jan. 11, when there will be a public closing ceremony at noon. Members of the public are invited anytime between now and then to hang a ribbon on the bridge to honor their own grief or gratitude. The organizers also note that you if you want to create a ribbon but can’t get to the bridge, you can send them an email at [email protected], and they will hang one for you.

This story aired on the Morning Magazine, KGNU’s weekday morning show featuring in-depth discussions on local news issues. Click here to listen to other episodes of the Morning Magazine.