Soloss
Soloss is community care for loss and grief, offering peer-to-peer support and the co-creation of individual and neighbourhood healing rituals. It is a network of Edmontonians legitimizing and destigmatizing loss and grief. By bearing witness to loss in all its forms and giving grief a concrete form -- as paintings, objects, songs, dances, meditations and stories -- Soloss seeks to foster a deep sense of respect, connectedness, and meaning.
This year, Soloss is being done in the encampment space. It is one of the 5 prototypes identified within the City of Edmonton’s Encampment Strategy. It is being done in partnership with REACH Edmonton, InWithForward, the growing network of Soloss alumni, and the City of Edmonton’s Encampment Strategy team (and with financial support from The United Way).
Building on the 2021 and 2022 Soloss Experiences
In 2022, in partnership with REACH Edmonton and InWithForward (and with support from the Stollery Charitable Foundation, Bissell Centre and Mustard Seed), we tested Soloss in the context of frontline social service agencies as a form of employee assistance. In 2021, in partnership with InWithForward and REACH Edmonton, we tested Soloss in the Belvedere and Balwin neighbourhoods. (Read more about the problem, the solution and what we tried on the Soloss 2021 page here.)
Prototyping evidence from both years showed that when we pause to recognize loss, and mark the moment, together, as fellow humans -- not as professionals or experts -- we can start to bridge class, race and religious divides and lay the groundwork for individual and collective healing. Everyone involved agreed that we needed to continue learning with this prototype.
The Background
Across 59 ethnographic stories of street-involved adults spending time in Edmonton’s inner city and south side between 2017-19, profound experiences of loss & grief were the common thread. Inadequately acknowledged losses, with little to no space for mourning, were often a catalyst to chronic crisis -- to repeated housing evictions, stalled addiction recovery, and relationship breakdown. And this was before the pandemic turned loss of life, work, rituals, freedom, and certainty into our collective realities.
The Problem it Addresses
Soloss addresses disenfranchised grief, recognizing that when loss & grief is minimized & sidelined, it can fuel depression, isolation, addiction, eviction, and further marginalization.
“Disenfranchised grief ... results when a person experiences a significant loss and the resultant grief is not openly acknowledged, socially validated or publicly mourned. In short, although the individual is experiencing a grief reaction, there is no social recognition that the person has a right to grieve or a claim for social sympathy or support.” - Kenneth Doka
The Focus for 2023
Testing Soloss in the context of encampments is like going back to its roots. Early research in encampments showed that disenfranchised grief and loss were huge. This news article explains: “No, sleeping outside wasn’t some utopian ideal. But, for many, it was a way to try to gain back something they had lost: some agency, some respect, some purpose. And yet, the losses kept piling up. Loss of friends and relatives. Loss of safety and belongings. Each time their tents were found, they risked losing their home and their community. Mostly these losses went unrecognized, the grief that ensues, unacknowledged. When we don’t have space to mourn and opportunities to heal, we can carry the pain, the hurt, the heaviness, the anger, and the fear with us. It can thwart our wellbeing. That’s when the spark for Soloss emerged.” We will continue to test how Soloss might offer a different kind of support for grief and loss, rooted in cultural healing versus clinical problem solving.
Learning about ways to grow and support this community-based innovation. Over 2023, the Soloss network will continue to grow and evolve - there will be a new cohort of Losstenders, new Sharers, new people in other new roles we are testing (Circle of Support and Network Liaisons). We will further explore new governance models to support it and other innovative, community-led solutions. We will test alternative structures and decision-making processes that are more conducive to different logics, values and roles - ones that will preserve the transformative energy of Soloss. To support this, we continue to partner with Dr. Tim Barlott at the University of Alberta. With funding from a Killam Grant, he is helping us to creatively explore questions around growth and scale for Soloss.
Relation to RECOVER’s Wellbeing Framework
Underpinning Soloss is the belief that we, as fellow humans, are capable of responding to each other’s grief and connecting across lines of difference. We come from a plurality of rich traditions to help us journey through grief together; however, western culture has in many ways strayed from the traditions and rituals that nourish wellbeing as connection and interdependence.
Targeted Outcomes: Sharers and Losstenders experience greater sense of balance and connection to at least one of the six domains.
Tools/Levers: All the levers:
Frames & Narratives: Soloss brings disenfranchised grief and loss out into the open, shifting the storyline from one of isolation and shame to solidarity and healing.
Knowledge & Meanings: Soloss recognizes and draws on healing practices from across cultural, religious and disciplinary traditions.
Routines & Repertoires: Soloss creates healing artifacts and rituals at an individual and neighbourhood level.
Interactions & Environments: Soloss brokers horizontal, peer-to-peer relationships in people’s own natural environments.
Roles: Soloss values lived experiences of grief and loss, and offers flexible, paid work for individuals poorly served by the traditional labour market.
Incentives: Soloss works with a broad cross-section of community members, learning what incentives work best to grow participation.
What We Learned
This round in encampments was rich with learning. Here are some highlights:
engaging with Soloss, whether as a Losstender, Sharer, Circle of Support or Community Member, contributed to wellbeing by both deepening and widening connection to community, the sacred, culture, and a sense of meaning and purpose. Meaningful interactions included cohort onboarding, the use of sacred ceremonies, and community debriefs.
an institutional culture of learning, deep listening, relationship building and repair is necessary to engage with community members & encampment residents with integrity. Engaging people in the encampment context works best when we are:
(1) prioritizing human-to-human interactions without preset agendas;
(2) valuing the contributions of people typically seen only as recipients of care;
(3) creating collective spaces where tending to our own losses opens up opportunity for others;
(4) showing up in quirky and artistic ways;
(5) bringing healing ceremony, ritual, and art to where people are and on their schedule instead of only having it available at fixed buildings and times; and
(6) connecting people to resources when they ask for help in their own time, not jumping to these topics before someone brings it up on their own.
And that these same ingredients (from the bullet above) are critical to embed in Soloss as it grows. This third prototype led us to recognize that for Soloss to grow in values-aligned ways it must operate more as a self-organizing network and less as a fixed program. Preset processes, structures, and targets risk stripping Soloss of the freely given ethos that seems to be its core differentiator and ‘secret sauce.’