Grief is permeating our politics and personal relationships

Grief permeates our political choices and our personal relationships.

ashley’s dad died. All dads will die. Dads are complicated. What shapes our political beliefs is complicated. Dads + politics + working class white guy stuff = something messy and bittersweet that reminds us that the personal and political are inseparable.

When witnessed and supported, navigating change and loss can spur deep personal growth. That’s not what we’re seeing in our culture.

White men accounted for 68% of suicides in 2023. 47% of Americans think there is a likelihood of another civil war in their lifetime. We are in an estrangement and loneliness epidemic.  White men’s collective grief is felt in our communities even while rarely acknowledged as grief.  How does that untended collective grief shape the health of our democracy? Queer, immigrant, Black, trans, and female bodies can tell you the costs incurred when that grief goes unexamined. 

What if all of us, and men in particular, had more grief literacy?

As a white queer person who accompanied a Southern-Construction-Worker-Vietnam-Veteran- Fox-News-Watching father on his dementia induced dying journey, ashley is profoundly aware of the complex inheritances. 

Yes. Leaving the Party includes civic dialogue and a house party — it’s an organizing tool with John Wayne and Charles Darwin cameos and at least one dirty joke.

It pairs the intimacy of a living room with the intentionality of deep canvassing, designed to move audiences through grief and toward action. By the end, some write letters to their senators. Some fill out their Advanced Care Directives. Some call someone they've been estranged from. The strategy is about organizing one room at a time, in a deep way that can only happen relationally. Grief is the door. Political change is what's on the other side.

These are a few of the questions discussed while folding laundry or enjoying a snack or getting a foot massage:

• How are we experiencing men collectively grieving?

• Who did your dad admire, and how did that inform his parenting style and politics?

• Is it possible for culture to have dementia?

ashley tells stories and asks the audience questions. We all fold laundry. Eat cake. Share stories with each other on the themes of death, dying, grief, race, politics, dementia, and loss. We all learn some grief vocab words.

Leaving the Party is designed to travel to intimate audiences of 15–50 in living rooms, church fellowship halls, and flex-use theaters.

The show goes where the conversation lives: in people's homes, in community spaces, in the rooms where the next election will actually be decided.

Participation is always on your terms.

Through consensual participation, the audience helps ashley sort through piles of pants while trying to make sense of how men's grief impacts their political choices. Folks who want to participate will put on a name tag. Folks who don’t wear a name tag can simply watch. It’s pretty simple and you can always change your mind. (Take the name tag off, put one on.) Zero pressure to participate.

The party has already started.

The show is still in its work-in-process stage, but since 2025 it has been in residence at Catapult (New Orleans), Lil' Pond (Bath, PA), Farm Arts (Damascus, PA), Highlander Center (New Market, TN), and Saint Mark's Cathedral (Minneapolis, MN), and been performed in living rooms hosted by individuals in Virginia, California, New York, Louisiana, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and New York City.