O’ahu Grief Rituals
tending our grief, together
We are meant to regularly and ritually tend to both our individual and our collective grief. Our humanity is found here. Our aliveness is found here. Our togetherness is found here.
I facilitate monthly Communal Grief Rituals on the Windward side of O’ahu.
Email me if you would like to be notified when the next gathering on the Windward side is OR join our WhatsApp group for all of the updates.
We don’t “get over grief”, we learn to open the door for it to come and go as needed, when our hearts need a good scrubbing.
Sometimes we don’t get to choose when that happens, but a regular, ritual heart-scrubbing is essential to caring for the entirety of both our body and our collective bodies.
We need bodies who are willing to learn how to grieve and we need grief tenders and sensitive hearted folk to stop feeling ashamed of their ability to have access to such tender expressions of love.
Grief, like many other energies that hold vitality and wisdom, was made “taboo”; tears were cast out as weakness; grief was patholigized and often feared. Grief was too mysterious for many.
Who has time for that? Our culture says: Move on. Keep going. Focus on what is good only. Show your best face— the one that makes everyone else not have to deal with their buried emotions, especially ones that connect us so deeply with our shared humanity.
Our shared humanity.
The spirit of grief can take us there and root us into the beauty of our collective soul.
Rituals can soften our internal resistance.
Other bodies who aren’t afraid of this wild energy that is grief become bridges and allies. We are here, and we are in this together.
Our Communal Grief Ritual is for those that desire to be held in a group of other grief tenders.
This gathering is for you if:
•
you feel drawn to tending grief and our shared humanness in the company of others
•
you are unsure how to meet with the grief that lives within you
you are longing for a container that is well-held, honest, and centers our shared humanity
you crave a space where you don’t feel pressured to show up in a certain way
you want to explore grief in a way that allows for your own conditioned misconceptions about it to alchemize
you want a ritual space to sink into, to feel, and to ritualize the big heart feels
•
you are needing a reminder that your sensitivity is not too much - it is just right for being a full-spectrum human
•
you want to remember that group ritual can be both incredibly simple and powerful
•
you desire more tools and practices to meet with the grief in your heart
you know that there is a thread of deep connection and remembrance that only can get met through ritual
Having an intimate relationship with grief doesn’t make someone depressed, it often makes them much more alive and connected to the pulse of love within and around them.
There is a way to tend both our grief and our embodied aliveness, joy, and pleasure. These are not at odds with one another.
Sometimes our grief is personal and sometimes it is collective - oftentimes it can be both at the same time which expands us beyond our individual selves and into the web of our collective bodies.
We need practices, rituals and gatherings that create a remembrance that we are not alone in our grief. As we tend our grief, may we remember, with every fiber of our being, that we are intricately connected through a larger communal web of hearts. May the nectar of this remembrance, continue to feed us all.
Grief can be courted like a lover — slow, intentional, titrated, ritual practices allow it the feelings of safety that it sometimes craves and needs before it can fully show itself.
Register for the next
GRIEF RITUAL by making a sliding scale payment.
Venmo $30-$40: @Elisa-Spring
Your Guide —
