How Teenagers Grieve

Last year, I was reporting a story about alternative churches in San Francisco. I talked to Matthew Fox, an Oakland pastor and the creator of the Cosmic Mass, a Christian rave that replaces sermons and hymns with techno music and dancing. Hold the drugs. Fox developed his event as a way for people to experience and process intense feelings of ecstasy, anger, and grief.

"We're not shown ways to deal with grief," he said. "It's where a lot of our addictions come from. We bottle it up, we take a drink or a pill."

The patterns develop early, he said, especially in low-income neighborhoods ravaged by violence.

"Whenever I see a lot of anger, especially in young people, I ask, 'what are they grieving?'" Fox said. "Grief work is more important than ever. Our parents are failing our children. Our churches and synagogues are failing."

Over the course of my fellowship project, I will look into ways grief is being expressed and addressed (or not) in Oakland, where gang violence and youth homicide rates are sky high, and Palo Alto, where one high school is still reeling from a series of teen suicides.