The Alchemy of Grief

I want to talk about something people don't usually say out loud.

Grief can be a gift.

Not at first. Not when it's fresh and it's sitting on your chest like a stone.

My mother was the kind of person who made you want to sit down and stay awhile. A social worker and psychologist for most of her career. She had this way of making everyone feel like they were the most interesting person in the room. When you met her, you just wanted to go deep.

She was also, simply, my greatest cheerleader.

She had beaten cancer three times. Biked to radiation and back during her first diagnosis — her doctors joked it was charging her batteries. After her third cancer, she climbed 10,000 feet in Bhutan to carry a 40Lb weight around the temple three times as a blessing. She used to say about her final fight: "Cancer, you can keep my body - but I'm keeping my spirit."

When I told her about Alchemy Springs - this wild, improbable vision I had to build a communal bathhouse in San Francisco from scratch, with no real estate experience, no construction background, nothing but a brand deck and a fire in my chest - she didn't blink.

She saw me in a way that made me feel like I could do anything. And then she got sick for the last time, and we knew she wasn’t going to make it, she said: "This is it. This is your calling. I can feel it. You're going to do this. I want my ashes and heart shaped rocks in your garden, so I can visit you"

I said yes, I am going to do this… for us. I had no idea yet how long that would take, or how much it would cost me, or how many times I would almost not make it there.

Here's what they don't tell you about grief: it doesn't just sit still and hurt.

It moves. It transforms. It finds places to go.

In the years after losing her, I was in the fight of my life to get this bathhouse open. I poured my life savings in. I lost nearly all my funding in a single phone call from someone I trusted. We ran a crowdfunding campaign, raised almost $400,000 from strangers who believed in what this city needed. We got close - really close - with a private equity firm, flew to New York, did everything right. They pulled out days before our deadline because of the headlines about San Francisco during the pandemic. 

Every time I hit a wall, I thought about her.

Not in a sad way. In a “what would she do” way. I thought about a woman who biked to chemotherapy and called it a workout. I thought about a woman who, when the doctors said cancer is back, started planning a trip to Bhutan. I thought about her voice - this is it, you're going to do this - and I got back up.

She didn't give me her spirit when she died. She gave it to me my whole life. I just finally understood what to do with it.

The day we opened the Sauna Garden and I held a ceremony and put her ashes into the earth - the day I could finally say "Mom, we did it" - something cracked open in me.

I realized I had a closer relationship with her than ever.

Because she is here. Every single day, she is here. In the warmth of the space. In the way strangers soften around each other in the heat. In the guests who come up to me with tears in their eyes and say they didn't know how much they needed this. In the laughter. In the exhale.

She was a connector of people. So am I. She spent her life making people feel less alone. So do I. That's not a coincidence. That's a mother's legacy, alive in me and in a building on Post Street in San Francisco.

I used to think grief was what happened when someone left.

Now I think it's what happens when their love finds a new shape.

The hardest thing I've ever done, and the most beautiful thing I've ever built are the same thing. That's not despite losing her. That's because of it.

I built this for her. And she built me for it.

Come feel it for yourself → alchemysprings.com

— Anne, Founder & CEO, Alchemy Springs