A Film Screening About Grief, Community, and the Stars

In August of 2025, I discovered an incredible story about Charity Woodrum. I often listen to podcasts while I sketch in the early morning hours, while I do housework, and when I take walks. Radiolab is one of my very favorites.

This episode was called "Galaxy Quenching."

I was absolutely intrigued by the story of how Charity became an astrophysicist. I was even more moved by how she had lost her husband and son in a freak accident of nature and then managed to somehow put one foot in front of the other again.

I was riveted by the way her close friends, teachers, and fellow students surrounded her with care.

It made a deep sense to me that she turned to the work she loved. (One day I'll write about work and its power to help us like this.)

I frequently find myself drawn in by stories of grief and the ways that people learn to carry losses in their “afterlives”—their lives after the loss or losses.

The Radiolab episode led me to the documentary and when I watched it, something tugged at me to share it widely.

I have this sense that we are all struggling with grief on more than one level right now, both personally and on a whole larger level in our communities. We've lost loved ones. We've lost jobs. We've lost a way of living and thinking that we had before the pandemic. We've lost other things from our wonderful, yet terrible, technological advances too.

I wonder how we might surround one another and walk through all of this together in all of its messiness. How, like Charity, we might find our own stars to study and marvel at?

It felt like the Universe was gently prodding me to bring Charity's story to my own community as a way to help us come together, recognize, and talk about this collective grief. Like maybe doing so would help us all in some ineffable way. (The Universe can be insistent, but I've always found that voice to be soft. It sure is hard to explain sometimes.)

It also felt like it would be good to offer Charity’s story more widely than just in my Art Words and Yoga classes the way I normally would.

So I reached out to Margaret, the pastor at Puyallup United Methodist Church. We actually met at a Les Schwab to talk about it in their waiting area because she needed some work done on her car and that was our best chance to talk. (Can you imagine talking about Galaxy Quenching and making this pitch surrounded by stacks of tires with their strong rubber smell? It was wild. And also felt exactly right.)

Shortly after, she texted to tell me that I could pitch the idea to the church council THAT night. If you know me, you'll know that the evening is not my time to shine. I wilt after 5 pm. Still, I felt strongly enough about it, that I agreed to pitch the council.

It was like I was on a path or in a stream that was pulling me forward.

After a quick preparation, I told the council the things I've just passed on to you about our collective grief and how I felt the church has a role to play in offering resources like Space, Hope, and Charity.

The council looked a bit stunned by the idea. It had been a long meeting full of roof repair details, so I told them I wasn't expecting an answer right then. That I would come back for their decision. 

Life got busy in September. So busy, in fact, that I started to think the screening might be too much for me to organize and manage.

But then the deacon texted me with the fabulous news that the church council had approved my request. They would make the donation to Woody's Stars, so we could hold a screening!

The Universe apparently did not think I was too busy. (I negotiated a bit and told that Universe we would have to wait until January because the church and I were swamped last fall. That seemed to satisfy.)

So that's the backstory behind the free screening of Space, Hope, and Charity that is now happening SOON. On January 24 at 1:00 pm, I'll do a short introduction at PUMC. We'll watch the 78-minute film together and then we'll get a chance to ask questions of Charity and the filmmaker Sandy Cummings via Zoom.

One of Charity's close friends from the film is our neighbor may also be sitting with us in person.

If you have known grief and are drawn into stories of how others have managed their very significant losses, then I followed this path for you. As I told the church council, that grief might be about losing someone you cannot live without. It could also be about aging, about political situations, about job loss, or even about the way our society is changing with technology faster than many of us can manage.

I'd love to see you there as we watch a glorious film full of brilliant galaxies and stars. As we sit in community and watch how another wonderful community supported Charity so she could bring us the stars.

P.S. You can find more details at the link here. It REALLY helps me to plan our space if you will RSVP by clicking the link to let us know you are coming.

 https://www.puyallupumc.org/events/2026/space-hope-charity