At Wheels Durham, pop music booms across walls plastered with neon signs as skaters whiz around a wooden floor. A child in pigtails, dressed head to toe in bright pink, pushes her triangular skating aid, her father hovering cautiously nearby. A young man zooms past, wobbles, then splats hands-first onto the floor, while next to the rink, a mother strides over to her children, holding tall cups brimming with blue slushy ice.
Amid the chaotic chorus, a group of eight congregates in a corner, chattering as they pull on their skates. A woman with dark hair gestures to three women nearby, smiling. She directs them to a table with a clipboard, stickers, posters, and name tags, next to a large blue banner: “Sad Hour.”
At Wheels Durham, a public skating session and a birthday party are happening all at once — as well as a “Wheels and Wails” event, hosted by Grieve Leave, a Durham-based organization “creating space for real conversations, meaningful connection, and practical grief support.” This skating event is Grieve Leave’s “Sad Hour” for the month, which brings people processing loss into community through creative, unconventional ways.
At “Wheels and Wails,” people orbit around the rink, then return to the tables to converse.
“I’m watching them connect right now. I know they are talking about probably makeup and their dead parents,” explains Rebecca Feinglos, 36, founder of Grieve Leave. “This is a space for them to come as they are. To bring people together in a way that is not formal. People are just yapping with each other and very naturally being like, ‘Why are you here?’”
Two women hobble over in their skates, waving. They join two other women at a table, and minutes later, they’re chatting and smiling. One woman pulls out her phone and shows the others a picture. The group grows solemn.
At 13, Feinglos lost her mother to brain cancer. Her father died unexpectedly during COVID lockdown when she was 30, at a time when she was simultaneously divorcing her husband. She started a blog on Jan. 1, 2022, where she publicly processed the loss of her parents and her divorce. She then founded Grieve Leave as a business in 2023, after her blog and divorce party went viral, thanks partially to a shoutout from Adele at a concert. She realized that existing grief support structures were not offering her the help she needed, especially as a young woman.
“For me, I wanted grief support that was with people my own age who understood my own similar kind of experience,” Feinglos said. “But when I started to look for grief support, all I found was grief support in churches, … but I’m Jewish. Even though they said these were interfaith groups, they were located in churches at 4 p.m. on Tuesdays, so they weren’t for working people. I was the youngest person there by decades, always.”
Throughout her teens and college at Duke University, she suppressed her mourning, trying to “outrun it with productivity.” But after her father’s death and her divorce, she realized how much unsurfaced grief she still held for her mother. She stopped her career in education policy to give herself a year-long “grieve leave.”
She sat down with friends at a Happy Hour, who listened as she laid her emotions bare. They held her. They stayed with her. Feinglos realized: this wasn’t a Happy Hour. It was a Sad Hour. She wanted to spread the care and, in 2023, began hosting “Meet and Grieves,” which evolved into Sad Hours, with different small businesses around the Triangle. (Grieve Leave has since expanded, offering a podcast and workplace training on grief support, among other efforts.)
Back at the rink, a woman with highlighter orange skates, brown hair knotted in a half-updo, places her hand on the wall at the rink’s edge to slow herself. She treads up the ramp to the seated area, cheeks flushed and panting lightly. She hobbles to the Sad Hour table, attempting to walk on her skates, a grin spreading across her cheeks. The name tag on her shirt reads “Alyssa :(”.
Alyssa Brunner, 33, moved to Durham three months ago from Austin, Texas. In the last eight years, she’s lost multiple family members and a dog. She saw “Wheels and Wails” on Reddit and knew she wanted to come.
“I saw it as a really great way to connect with other people who have been through similar situations and understand what it means to grieve,” Brunner explains, “Because people who haven’t dealt with grief don’t really have the right words for it. And I don’t even know if we have the right words for it, but it’s an understanding from person to person.”
As the clock ticks towards 7 p.m., Feinglos gathers the crowd. A couple sitting near her gazes up at her, smiles widening with her every sentence. As Feinglos speaks, “Golden” pulses over the speakers: “You know together we’re glowin’ / Gonna be, gonna be golden.”
“We love to bring people together,” Feinglos says. “I hope you met someone that makes you feel a little less shitty today.”
Above: Skaters whiz by during the “Wheels and Wails” event at Wheels Durham. Photo by Angela Chen — The 9th Street Journal
Angela Chen
