Remembrance: Zhuna Lynn Holden ’03
(Jennifer Atkinson)
September 13, 1981–July 28, 2025
By Jericho Bicknell ’03, in collaboration with Kathryn Hunninen ’03 and Emily Clark ’03
My first memories of Zhuna were in the College of the Atlantic kitchen where we both worked: me, painfully shy, and her always with smiles and laughter and jokes about robots and turtles making me and everyone else feel welcome and loved.
She was a world traveler and adventurer seeming to slip into other places and cultures with ease, yet also always yearning for roots and a feeling of solidity. Zhuna’s life endeavors took her from Idaho to Maine to China to México to Maui to Morocco and many places in between. She created community and impact wherever her path led.
Zhuna was a philosopher, a poet, an artist, a planner, an athlete, a linguist, an entrepreneur, and so much more, but the thing that defined her most was her friendship. She was not the kind of friend who would always agree with you or like the things you like. She had fierce opinions and wasn’t afraid to share them. If something wasn’t going to be fun for her she would state that fact and decline. Just one year ago, she said she was in “a state of fierce self-advocacy,” but I think she lived this way most of her life and I admired her so much for that.
Very few adventures were declined though—Zhuna was up for just about anything. Travel and study in China and México? Sure! Go get our ears pierced at the Bangor Mall? Yes, please! Drive to Vermont on the spur of the moment (and in the middle of the night) to spend the weekend? Of course! She had an uncanny ability to show up just how and when you needed her. And every year on my birthday, she sent me a message.
As Zhuna once said, “The only permission that I was ever given that had any bearing on who I am or what I do is the permission my mother gave me to be unapologetically myself, the permission my grandfather gave me to use my mind to the fullest extent, and the permission my grandmother gave me to sow my wild oats however I damn well pleased. I ignored all of the other ones.”
They say that those who shine brightest often burn fastest. In the case of Zhuna Lynn Holden, the truth of this hurts so deeply. In the heaviness of the days without her, I feel the same as I did during my first time swimming in the ocean at night, where each stroke pulls against the current and the thickness of the water and there is an untethered feeling in the darkness. Yet like the sparkles of bioluminescence that suddenly appeared in the water as I moved, Zhuna’s words, her art, and the memories of her laughter and love can give us a bit of fire to burn brighter, love harder, advocate more fiercely, and live life more fully. We will miss you forever, Zhuna.
