A Thousand Mothers Collecting the Bones

About

A Thousand Mothers Collecting the Bones: A Theater and Music Performance of Grief and Praise Doors: 7:00 PM / Show: 7:30–9:00 PM Performers: Monique Miyake and Phoenix Song Director: Vicki Dello Joio Through a performance piece featuring theater, poetry, storytelling, and music, Phoenix Song and Monique Miyake share their journey of grief and healing after the loss of their seventeen-year-old son to suicide. Experience how they navigated the unimaginable to create this show as an offering of deep love, healing, and the transformation that becomes possible when we allow loss to reshape us into more authentic versions of ourselves. This performance is for anyone carrying personal or collective loss. It invites us into a shared space of witnessing, where one story can hold the stories of many. As grief is expressed and honored, it can begin to move—within us and between us—opening the possibility of integration, meaning, and renewal. “When the heart breaks into a million pieces, the only thing left to do is let the light shine through.” Before the performance begins, we will create a communal grief altar together. As you enter La Peña, you are invited to bring a photograph or small object honoring who or what you are grieving, and place it on the altar to be held, witnessed, and carried in community. Phoenix Song , featured in SF Magazine’s Best of the Bay, plays music from around the world on didgeridoo, Native flute, buffalo drum, djembe, hand pan, jaw harp, esraj, and vocals that help us move energy through breath and sound. A Q&A talkback will follow along with an artist’s reception of Monique’s art prints. 10% of sales will be donated to the Trevor Project, the leading suicide prevention and crisis intervention nonprofit organization for LGTBTQ+ young people. For discounted tickets, please email phoenixsongmusic@gmail.com . For accomodation requests please contact us at least one week in advance. Email us at programs@Lapena.org . Reviews: “What a profound gift you have crafted through fire and offered to the world. An invitation to join you on this sacred journey of wild and inconceivable grief and rage and beauty and love. I see your love as such a testimony of grit and grace and what it means to become human together. Feeling waves of awe and gratitude, my heart shattered into a thousand pieces, transformed into butterflies.” — Aryeh , educator and activist “What a spectacular performance of vulnerable heartbreak and beauty. You have gifted us the Art of Soul Bearing the most painful human experience. Your collective performance allows us all to be free to ourselves to go deep, open and outstretched to the truth and wholeness of allowing the pain of grief all the way in. I am so honored and grateful for the witness experience and the place it touches in me. I feel safer in the world to be me in my own brokenness.” — Tree , bereaved mother and retired palliative care nurse “I had been processing a lot of mama grief (for my mom, my grief about my kids. etc) when I went to your ritual, and it really helped move something for me. Just being reminded of and seeing your powerful process and how your surrender to grief has really transformed you in such profound ways was a beautiful reminder to me that opening to grief is really the medicine. I respect your radical vulnerability in sharing all of that and letting people see the shadow and that there’s medicine in being with it!” — Anastasia , mother, therapist About Monique: Monique is a multidisciplinary artist, performer, ritualist, end-of-life doula, hospice RN, and bereaved mother. Her work lives at the intersection of grief, care, and transformation. Her previous solo shows were When the Heavens Opened and Sealskin Soulskin: Finding My Way Home. Grounded in both lived experience and spiritual care, she holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard University, and is a Reiki master and chaplain trained in Clinical Pastoral Education at UCSF. Monique is a certified Compassionate Bereavement Care Provider and HOPE Mentor through the MISS Foundation. Her original artwork, grief companion deck, prints and grief services including art facilitation are available here: https://www.moniquemiyake.com IG: @moniquemiyake About Phoenix: Phoenix Song is a queer, nonbinary Korean American adoptee performer, writer, teacher, and healer featured in SF Magazine’s Best of the Bay. They specialize in world fusion and sacred ritual through Korean shamanic music, Indian classical, neo-soul, and wordless chanting. For the last twenty years, Phoenix has performed many solo and collaborative shows at Queer and Asian Conference, Empowering Women of Color Festival, Reimagine Festival at SF Jazz, SF Pride Main Stage, Asian Heritage Festival main stage, the Queer Arts Festival, and SF International Arts Festival. Phoenix loves to help people free their voices to sing, sound and speak their truths in private and group sessions.