Why We Do This
There's a moment after every tragedy that nobody talks about.
Not the moment it happens — the world shows up for that. The news crews, the crisis teams, the GoFundMe pages, the candlelight vigils. People are generous in those first days. They should be. That immediate response matters.
The moment I'm talking about comes later. Weeks later. Months. Sometimes a full year, when a date rolls around and the rest of the world has moved on but your body hasn't.
It's the moment you realize that everyone who said "let me know if you need anything" has gone back to their lives. The moment you understand that the kind of grief you're carrying doesn't have a place in normal conversation anymore. The moment you stop bringing it up because you can see people getting uncomfortable.
That's the space where The Holding Frames does its work.
What I learned in Orlando
I didn't plan to spend nearly a decade doing this. In June 2016, I was Director of Operations for a restaurant and entertainment group in Orlando when the Pulse nightclub shooting happened. Forty-nine people were killed. My community — my neighborhood, my coworkers, my friends — was shattered.
In the weeks that followed, I watched something that would shape everything I've done since: people wanted to help each other heal, but they didn't have the language. They didn't have the tools. And the systems that existed — therapy, counseling, support groups — weren't reaching most of the people who needed them.
Not because those services weren't good. They're essential. But most people don't walk through that door. They process grief by doing something with their hands. By sitting next to someone who understands. By making something that says what they can't put into words.
That's not a theory. That's what I watched happen, over and over, across 280 communities in 34 countries over the next eight years.
The oldest tool we have
Here's what we tend to forget: art isn't an alternative approach to healing. It's the original one.
Humans have been processing the hardest things through creative expression since the walls of caves. Long before we had therapists' offices and intake forms, we had pigment and stone and the impulse to make something that said "I was here. This mattered. I'm not carrying this alone."
Thirty thousand years of evidence that making something with your hands changes something inside you — and somehow, we've built a mental health system that barely uses it.
That's not a criticism of therapy. Therapy is vital. Our co-founder, Cait, is a licensed mental health counselor, and when a clinician is present in our programs, the work we do absolutely is therapeutic. But the reality is that seventy-two percent of people who recognize they need mental health support say they'd rather handle it on their own. That's not stubbornness — that's a signal that we need more ways in.
Art is a way in. It always has been. We're just bringing it back to the communities that need it most.
The gap nobody fills
Here's the pattern: A community experiences something devastating. Emergency responders show up. Mental health teams deploy. Donations pour in. The media covers it.
Then, within weeks, almost all of that goes away.
What's left is a community trying to figure out how to carry their grief into a world that's already moved on. The crisis teams have packed up. The therapy waitlists are months long. And the people who need the most support are often the least likely to seek it — not because they don't want help, but because sitting across from a stranger in an office and talking about the worst thing that ever happened to you isn't the only way humans are wired to heal.
The Holding Frames exist for the people in that gap.
What we actually do
We create art-based experiences where people can sit together, paint wooden frames, and write messages — to themselves, to their community, to other communities going through something similar.
No one has to share their story. No one has to cry. There's no pressure to perform grief or prove they're healing the "right" way. It's people sitting alongside each other, making something with their hands, in a space that's been intentionally designed to feel safe enough to be honest about what they're carrying.
The frames get installed in community spaces — libraries, schools, memorials, public buildings — where they become a visible, lasting reminder that this community was seen and that people showed up for each other.
We show up for the crisis response. And we stay for month six. And year two. And the date that rolls around every year that nobody else marks anymore.
Why it works
My co-founder, Cait Leavey, is a licensed mental health counselor who lost her father — FDNY Lieutenant Joseph Leavey — on September 11th. She was ten. She brings the clinical expertise that grounds everything we build, and she'll tell you what the research confirms: creative action regulates the nervous system. Sitting side-by-side with someone breaks isolation without the pressure of eye contact or verbal disclosure. Having a choice in what you create restores the sense of agency that trauma strips away.
We call this the FRAME Method — four pathways that shape every program we run: Presence, Proximity, Power, and Purpose. It's built from clinical research, lived experience, and lessons from hundreds of community gatherings.
But you don't need to know the framework to understand why it works. You just need to picture someone who hasn't talked about their loss in months, sitting down at a table, picking up a paintbrush, and realizing that the person next to them gets it.
That's not a new idea. That's the oldest idea humans have ever had. We're just putting it to work where it's needed most.
What this blog is for
Impact Stories is where we share what this work looks like in real life. Not press releases. Not field reports. Real stories about what happens when communities are given the space and the tools to hold their own healing.
You'll hear from the communities we work alongside. You'll hear about the science behind art-based healing and the clinicians, researchers, and practitioners doing this work across the field. You'll hear follow-ups — because we stay, and the story doesn't end when we leave.
And sometimes, you'll hear us wrestle with the hard stuff. This work isn't always beautiful. It's messy and heavy, and sometimes you sit with someone's pain, and there's nothing to do but be there. We're going to be honest about that, too.
If this resonates
If you're part of a community navigating something hard — whether it happened last week or ten years ago — we'd love to talk about what support could look like. There's no timeline for healing, and there's no wrong time to start.
If you're a clinician, art therapist, or practitioner who believes in this approach, we want to work with you. This field gets stronger when we build together.
And if you want to support this work, the most powerful thing you can do is share it. Most people who need what we offer will never search for it. But they might see a friend post about it. They might hear about it from someone they trust.
That's how this spreads. Person to person. Community to community.
The same way healing does.
Josh Garcia is Co-Founder and Board Chair of The Holding Frames. He has supported more than 280 communities across 34 countries in the aftermath of disaster, mass violence, and crisis. He serves as a consultant for the Office for Victims of Crime and sits on the steering committee for SAMHSA's Disaster Distress Helpline.
