“We hate that you had to find us, but we’re honored you’re here.” So begins the online introduction to E-Motion’s Movement Communities, one of which will be coming to East Hampton this spring thanks to the mother-son duo of Danielle Epstein and Maxim Bellenoue.
Movement is the medium in the eight-week programs, designed for those who have experienced the “life-altering loss of a person.” The physical goal is to walk or run a 5K by the end of eight weeks, but the overarching and more important mission of E-Motion is creating a supportive community for anyone who is grieving, facilitated by people like Epstein and Bellenoue, who have been there themselves.
The program, for ages 18 and over, will feature hourlong meet-ups in East Hampton on Saturdays at 8 a.m. beginning May 2. Sessions will start with a 10-minute “sacred circle,” during which participants introduce themselves and those they have lost. A short topical discussion will be reinforced by a follow-up email, and then they’ll get moving along a route that will be printed out each week, so participants can go at their own pace.
“We’re not sitting around having to talk,” Epstein said last week in her office at East Hampton High School, where she is a school nurse. “You can listen, you can talk, it’s really a very gentle space . . . a safe space.”
“One premise of E-Motion is that we all have different loss experiences,” she said. “This can be lonely when we compare our experience to the experience of another’s loss. We would like to invite connection rather than comparison. We are trying to connect in order to experience love and the sense of not being alone.”
In 2013, Epstein lost her first husband, Benoit Bellenoue. “It was unexpected. He was 44 years old and we had two small children.”
“After a loss we have to relearn how to do the simplest things,” she said. “We have to find the muscle memory. We also need to be around a community who are comfortable with and can cradle vulnerability.”
“It can be difficult to move our bodies when we are frozen by grief. It can be hard to sleep, to eat, to move.” She and her son hope that the Movement Community they are facilitating can be, for participants, a “baby step towards moving back into our bodies, as well as moving together.”
“The sorrow of trauma cannot be explained,” Epstein said, “but it can be acknowledged so that together we the living can lean into it and find that we are not alone. Which is a great gift. There is no recovering the self that existed prior to a loss, but there are ways to keep moving in order not to get stuck, to feel safe knowing we are not alone in the world. We can become something bigger, which does not leave our loved ones behind. We are not moving away from anything. We are moving with it. This can become quite powerful, one step at a time.”
Bellenoue, a high school senior and three-season runner throughout his high school career, has already experienced how physical movement could be both literal and metaphorical, a powerful way to process the most challenging life circumstances. And when his mom, who was new to running, began training alongside him to run the 2025 New York City Marathon, she felt it too. They did the marathon with Fred’s Team, the running program of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where Epstein’s husband, Nick, has been treated since his cancer diagnosis in 2024.
She discovered E-Motion last summer, while listing to an interview with its founder, Myra Sack, on the podcast “Grief Out Loud.” “She was so eloquent, and had so much intelligence around emotion and presence,” Epstein said. “The group is based on grounding concepts such as ‘be where your feet are.’ ”
“I immediately looked it up, and sent it to Maxim. . . . And we were like, we are right now training for a marathon. We are in motion trying to process and grieve and heal and keep moving.” They applied to become facilitators, and after a rigorous interview process were accepted and began training via Zoom along with some 50 others across the country.
“I have a lot of experience with talk therapy,” Bellenoue said. But the idea of a bereavement group focused on movement “is a completely new mode of coping, which is exciting.” Bellenoue is heading to Hamilton College in the fall, where he hopes to start another E-Motion Movement Community.
Epstein, her son, and her daughter, Pai, have been involved in grief and bereavement groups as participants, facilitators, or camp counselors since the death of her husband back in 2013. “There is a lot of hope in finding a community of individuals in all different stages of grief,” Epstein said. Katy’s Kids, a bereavement group founded by Jim Stewart and Brigid Collins, was an important part of their lives for the decade it existed, and they had been looking to find a way to provide others with the support they found through Katy’s Kids since it disbanded in 2024.
“I remember thinking, in my darkest moments years ago, I hope one day that I will be providing this comfort to others who will need it. Maxim is similarly driven to pay forward the support he has received,” she said. “Anyone who is grieving deserves to know that there is nothing wrong with them for having the whole spectrum of feelings and nothing wrong if they are temporarily unable to complete the simple tasks of daily life. In grief, putting one foot in front of another is powerful.”
There are no fitness prerequisites to take part in the East Hampton Movement Community, and even people with mobility issues could find a place in the group. Participants must commit to the full eight weeks. There is space for 18 in the spring program, which is free.
Those interested in joining can fill out a short intake form on E-Motion’s website at bit.ly/4aWGpvq. Epstein and Bellenoue will contact applicants by email and set up phone calls to determine if the program would be a good fit.
