Need to ‘grieve out loud’? Atlanta’s wind phone will take your call.

If you’ve lost someone, the holiday season isn’t all turkey dinners and gingerbread houses — not since they’ve been gone. Reminders of happier days when our loved ones were still with us can stop us in our tracks.

But some of Atlanta’s bereaved have found a way through it, and it doesn’t take much to participate. All you have to do is stop by, pick up the phone and dial in. Georgia’s wind phones are ready to take your call.

These inoperative telephones, usually of the older rotary or push-button variety, are located along wooded walking trails, in parks or on church grounds. The inert installations are scattered across the world and, without so much as a dial tone, offer users something arguably profound — the opportunity to grieve out loud.

The Atlanta Wind Phone is part of Woodruff Park’s latest art installation — “The Space Within.” The public art pieces are designed to inspire reflection and inner peace. Among them, the wind phone offers a place for the bereaved to embrace their grief. (Courtesy of Jeffrey Moustache)

The Atlanta Grief House dials in

The Grief House is participating in Woodruff Park’s “The Space Within” art display, a collection of public art designed to inspire reflection and inner peace — including the state’s latest wind phone in downtown Atlanta. According to international cataloger My Wind Phone’s database, Georgia had at least seven wind phones before the Woodruff Park art display was installed.

“It’s a reminder that you can talk to your loved ones and that maybe there’s something to be said for still trying to connect with the ones you’ve lost,” Sascha Demerjian, Ph.D., the Grief House co-founder and executive director, said. “Because we carry that with us so much of the time, but we don’t talk about it.”

Clinical social worker and therapist Melanie Storrusten often works with the Grief House to bridge the gap between therapy and community. She told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that using a wind phone can have a different emotional effect than speaking to a lost loved one at home or writing them a letter, acts common to grief therapy.

“It probably is going to move you slightly more outside of your comfort zone,” she said, “Also we’re engaging in a cultural practice that has a kind of ritual act that has been done by others in the past. So it’s tying us in to these archetypal energetic threads that maybe can lead to more powerful experiences.”

Storrusten added that grief is meant to be witnessed and shared. Through a wind phone, people might find a quiet space where grief feels acknowledged and held.

The Grief House is looking for a permanent home for its wind phone, as “The Space Within” art display will not continue into the new year. Those interested in offering support are encouraged to attend the The Grievers Ball on Saturday, Nov. 15, at Decatur’s Legacy Park for a night of art, music, refreshments and community.

A grieving mother’s story

One grieving Atlanta mother found her own sense of community through Woodruff Park’s wind phone.

Grief specialty therapist Pamela Elder Mobley honors and continues the legacy of her late daughter, Raven Jeffress. On March 25, 2023, Jeffress was killed in a head-on collision after a wrong-way driver entered her exit ramp.

Mobley has been grieving “out loud” ever since. She recently found out about Atlanta’s wind phone through friends on social media, who she said have become a welcoming community to her and others suffering from grief.

Pamela Elder visits the Grief House wind phone at Woodruff Park, which she recently found out about through friends on social media. (Courtesy of Pamela Elder)

“I feel like it gave me a (deeper) connection to the people that I have been connected to,” she said, speaking on how the wind phone experience brought her closer to her grief-centered community. “Just for them to think of me, to send that to me, for me to go to the experience — it’s like a constant connection to others.”

A “bubble” separating her from the din of downtown, it was also an opportunity to focus.

“It just felt like I was away from all of that, and it was just kind of me, the wind and the phone,” she said. “And so it was just a really good experience.”

Find moments of release

So why visit a wind phone? It’s certainly not about “fixing” your pain, Demerjian explained. But mental health experts say the experience can offer a therapeutic way to process loss.

“This is an opportunity to practice being present with it, without getting anything except for the experience of sharing,” Demerjian said.

Mobley added that grief is a lifelong journey.

“It’s never going to go completely away, but we get small tokens throughout the day — throughout our life — to have some moments of release and that’s helpful,” Mobley said.

The Grief House is looking for a permanent home for its wind phone, as “The Space Within” art display will not continue into the new year. (Courtesy of Jeffrey Moustache)

It’s part of a familiar practice in grief therapy: expressing what is left unsaid.

“It’s not a wind phone per se,” Storrusten said, explaining how the concept connects to therapeutic methods. “That’s a very specific, very artistic, creative, cultural thing. But grief involves things left unsaid and so a lot of times our distress about the things left unsaid can kind of gunk up and complicate the grieving process.”

However it’s expressed, you don’t have to grieve alone.