Tending the Rivers of Grief
Welcome grief-tenders.
These are monthly ritual gatherings for those seeking an online space to explore their grief— within a community of others whom are committed to tending and learning from grief.
“Ritual is the way culture enacts and affirms its values. Ritual (and myth) are like seed crystals of new patterns what can eventually reshape culture around them. The visions we share, the acts we create, make tangible our imminent value. The purpose of ritual is to create the situations in which these moments may happen.” — Starhawk
Each gathering with include a transitional time to settle in and ground into the space, writing prompts and time for journaling, group explorations on topics related to our ever-evolving relationship to grief, and opportunities to break into smaller groups for more intimate shares when there is desire.
“Communal grieving offers something that we cannot get when we grieve by ourselves. Through validation, acknowledgement and witnessing, communal grieving allows us to experience a level of healing that is deeply and profoundly freeing. Each of us has a basic human right to that genuine love, happiness and freedom."
“I believe the future of our world depends greatly on the manner in which we handle grief. Positive expressions of grief are healing. However, the lack of expression of our grief or its improper release is what is at the root of the general unhappiness and depression that people feel, all of which lead to war and crimes.”
-Sobonfu Somé
Because most humans have been conditioned to believe that grief isn’t something to prioritize spending time with, we find ourselves in a culture that is gravely and deeply emotionally immature.
The big emotions of grief will often be woven in with feelings of shame.
If you notice that happening, it’s very normal.
In all major rites of passage and thresholds of life, there is grief.
In many micro moments of every day life we feel sadness.
When we don’t learn to feel it and express that, we skip over some of the most powerful alchemy that occurs at these times.
As parents, we know that children naturally express their sadness and their grief. Bodies know and can remember how to do this.
We once knew how to follow the impulses of our bodies. Grief got conditioned and shamed out of us by our familial and cultural norms.
Many of our bodies are often frozen in pain patterns that manifest as blockages to the natural flow of our passionately creative lifeforce.
When our grief is bypassed or continually shoved down, we also don’t know how to meet others in their experiences of grief. This creates major blockages in relational intimacy and feelings of isolation and loneliness.
As we develop a long term relationship to tending our grief, we often gain access to our lifeforce in a way that thaws the shame that comes along with the longstanding suppression of our emotions.
Expressions of our grief open the channel for emotional alchemy to occur and for us to make contact with the fierce expressions of love, passion and the deep truth, that live inside of our bones and blood.
The more we normalize our expressions and experience of grief, the more connected we become to the greater webs of our shared humanity and the potency and resilience of our shared lifeforce.
“Grief is subversive, undermining the quiet agreement to behave and be in control of our emotions. It is an act of protest that declares our refusal to live numb and small. There is something feral about grief, something essentially outside the ordained and sanctioned behaviors of our culture. Because of that, grief is necessary to the vitality of the soul. Contrary to our fears, grief is suffused with life-force. It is not a state of deadness or emotional flatness.”
“Grief is alive, wild, untamed and cannot be domesticated. It resists the demands to remain passive and still. We move in jangled, unsettled, and riotous ways when grief takes hold of us. It is truly an emotion that rises from the soul.”
— Francis Weller
“Rituals of mourning create strong communal bonds.” — Starhawk
Clim your spot.
Reignite y
Register for
Tending the Rivers of Grief
Single payment of $49
We Tend the Rivers of Grief, Together.
