🧳 For all that we carry

There’s an old and poetic word for a group of swans: lamentation.

The word comes from an ancient mythological belief that swans, silent most of their lives, sing one final, beautiful, sorrowful song before they die. The swan song.

A lamentation is a gathering of grief.

This season, that word has stayed with me.

The Year of the Snake challenged me on all levels. Clenched. Stripped down. Surrendered. Shedding. I let old skins fall away to make room for what wants to be born.

The world feels tender too. War. Division. Genocide. Uncertainty. The quiet heaviness and fear so many are carrying beneath their everyday lives.

Music, art, poetry, nature, the body, loving on our people one breath at a time…are the only things that seem to make sense in this world.

Lie down and lament with us this Sunday.

Cellist Daniel Hamin Go has been following the light since he was 12. The moment he first felt it fill his body when bow met string and resonance rang. That light led him through his own grief and into ARIRANG, his debut album born in darkness.

But grief, he discovered, is never singular. It’s collective. The album became a response not just to his loss, but to ours. The unraveling, the injustice, the quiet suffering we’re all witnessing.

At Soul Care, we will rest and let the sounds of Daniel’s cello lift up what we’re all carrying. Together we will create a space where love, loss, longing, and grief can coexist. Where no one has to carry them alone.

🎟️ A few tickets left here

✨ Soul Care Sunday: Balm for Love, Loss, & Longing
🗓️ Sunday February 8, 10:30am-12pm
🎶 Cello by Daniel Hamin Go
👐 Guided movement, breath, & sound by Karen Choi
📍 Pluto at 60 Sumach St, Toronto

May you be honest about what you’re holding.
May you give yourself grace.
May you feel less alone.

With love,
Karen

P.S. New here? Welcome to Balm. Every week I send you one song, one poem, one move. A care kit for staying present to beauty, to grief, to your actual life. Thank you.

#21