A Simple Idea That Became Something Much More
On a cold Tuesday morning in November, seven people showed up to a park in Portland, Oregon, wearing mismatched scarves and holding paper cups of coffee they hadn’t quite finished. They didn’t know each other well. What they shared was something no one would choose: they had all lost a child.
The walk had been organized by a grief counselor named Sandra Okafor, who had watched her clients sit in circles in fluorescent-lit rooms for years, struggling to find words. She had a theory: that movement might unlock something that sitting still could not. She wasn’t sure it would work. She just knew the usual approaches weren’t always enough.
What happened over the following months would surprise even her.
Why Walking Works When Words Fall Short
Grief researchers have long noted that bereaved parents face a specific and devastating kind of loss, one that disrupts the natural order of life. Parents are not supposed to outlive their children. The psychological toll is profound, and traditional therapy, while valuable, doesn’t reach everyone in the same way.
Dr. Miriam Cho, a clinical psychologist at the University of Oregon who studies grief and movement, explains it this way: “When we walk side by side with someone, we remove the pressure of direct eye contact. The brain relaxes its social defenses. People often say things on a walk that they could never say sitting across a table from someone.”
This phenomenon even has a name in therapeutic circles: the “shoulder-to-shoulder” effect. It’s the same reason parents often find it easier to talk to teenagers during a car ride than at the dinner table. Parallel movement creates parallel thinking, and parallel thinking creates connection.
For grieving parents, that connection can be lifesaving, sometimes literally.
What the Group Actually Looks Like
The Portland group, which eventually named itself “Still Here,” now meets three times a week. Membership has grown from seven to over forty. There is no agenda, no facilitator walking alongside with a clipboard. People show up, they walk, and they talk, or they don’t. Both are acceptable.
Some mornings, the group walks in near silence, moving through the park while the city wakes up around them. Other mornings, stories spill out, memories of children who loved strawberry ice cream or who had a particular laugh or who were afraid of thunderstorms. On those mornings, strangers become something closer to family.
Marcus Webb, who lost his daughter Callie to a rare cardiac condition three years ago, describes the group as “the only place where I don’t have to explain myself.” He says that in most social situations, people either avoid mentioning Callie entirely or become so visibly uncomfortable that he ends up consoling them. In the walking group, Callie is simply part of the conversation. “I can say her name,” he says, “and no one flinches.”
The Science Behind Grief and Movement
The benefits of the group aren’t just emotional. There’s meaningful research supporting the physical and neurological advantages of walking as a grief tool.
- Cortisol regulation: Rhythmic, moderate exercise like walking helps lower cortisol levels, reducing the physiological stress response that accompanies grief.
- Endorphin release: Even a 20-minute walk can trigger endorphin production, offering a brief but real lift in mood.
- Circadian rhythm restoration: Bereaved individuals often suffer from severe sleep disruption. Morning walks in natural light help reset the body’s internal clock.
- Cognitive processing: Walking has been shown to increase activity in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain involved in processing complex emotions and making sense of difficult experiences.
- Social bonding: Group walks stimulate oxytocin production, the hormone associated with trust and human connection.
Sandra Okafor didn’t design the group around these findings, but they explain, at least in part, why it works.
Moments That Stay With You
Ask any member of Still Here about a moment that changed them, and the answers come quickly and specifically.
There was the morning a woman named Theresa arrived at the park barely able to stand upright, four days after what would have been her son’s eighteenth birthday. She hadn’t slept. She hadn’t eaten. She had driven to the park, she later admitted, because she didn’t know where else to go. The group simply folded her in. No one said much. They just walked, and she walked with them, and somehow that was enough to carry her through the day.
There was the rainy April morning when two fathers who had never spoken discovered they had both lost sons to the same pediatric cancer ward, in the same year, just three rooms apart. They stood in the middle of the path in the rain and held onto each other while the rest of the group quietly walked around them, giving them space and proximity at the same time.
There was the day a member named Gloria brought a photograph of her daughter to tape to a tree along the route, and by the following week, other members had brought photographs too, until that particular tree had become something of an informal memorial, layered with laminated faces and hand-written notes and waterproof flowers.
What Other Cities Are Doing
The model is spreading. Inspired by Sandra’s group, grief counselors in Seattle, Chicago, and Nashville have launched similar programs. A small nonprofit called Walk With Us is now working to bring the concept to underserved communities, where access to traditional grief counseling is often limited by cost, transportation, or cultural barriers.
The requirements to start a group are minimal: a consistent meeting time, a safe outdoor route, and at least one person willing to show up first. The rest, as Portland has shown, tends to build itself.
What Grieving Parents Want You to Know
Members of Still Here were asked what they wished the people in their lives understood about grief. Their answers were candid and worth sitting with.
- “Don’t stop saying my child’s name. I am not going to forget them if you mention them. I am going to feel seen.”
- “There is no timeline. Three years is not ‘long enough’ to be over it. There is no over it.”
- “Silence is sometimes better than the wrong words. You don’t have to fix it. You can just be there.”
- “Ask me about them. Ask what they liked, what they were funny about, what they wanted to be. That is a gift.”
- “Check on me in month four, not just week one. That is when everyone else has moved on and I am still standing in the wreckage.”
A Lifeline That Looks Like a Morning Walk
There is something quietly radical about the idea that healing doesn’t always happen in an office or through a prescribed protocol. Sometimes it happens between trees, at a pace slow enough to think, surrounded by people who understand without needing an explanation.
Sandra Okafor still leads the group some mornings. She walks at the back, mostly listening. She says the most meaningful thing she has witnessed is not any single conversation or breakthrough, but the simple, stubborn act of people returning. Week after week, through winter and summer and anniversaries and impossible days, they come back to the park. They lace up their shoes. They walk.
“Grief doesn’t go away,” she says. “But you can build a life around it. You can build a community around it. And sometimes that community looks like a group of people walking through a park on a Tuesday morning, carrying their loss together, one step at a time.”
If you are grieving, or if you know someone who is, the simplest invitation might be the most powerful one: come walk with us.