Grief and Community Grieving

“We gather together to be together.”

-Martin Prechtel

“Death and birth are bookends of life. Death and loss are a rite of passage that brings a family of initiatory emotions: grief, anger, terror, rage, disappointment, sadness. Of all these, Grandmother Grief leads the way. She calls forth an initiation that renews, heals and cleanses our souls.

Grandmother Grief gives us a way back into our own heart. It is precisely because we love so much that we have the opportunity for a greater human experience.... an opportunity to be initiated into greater inner harmony, unity with our own heart, memory of our innate healing gifts and ancient wisdom, and to be re-affirmed in love with all our relations.

Because we love so deeply, even if that love and care may be temporarily covered over in resentments or conflicts, it can still give rise to new life. It can provide an opportunity to re-fine, re-kindle, re-move, re-store, and shake us free of locked and held feelings. It can rejoin us with the truth of love and the memory of who we are.”

-Tarron Estes Conscious Dying Institute

Can you imagine what would it be like to be held, heard, and seen in our grief?  To feel safe enough to express our loss and emotions within our community and to share it with one another?

What if grief is something that is not to “get over“ or “get better” from?

We all experience loss, wether personal, people, marriage, relationship, family, friends, hopes, aspirations, dreams, visions, identitiy, body parts, place, job, or home. We may carry personal, community, environmental, worldly, and ancestral grief.

The ritual of a community in grieving is so that we have the opportunity to witness and celebrate each other.

I welcome you to a loving space to bring your heart ache, tears, love, cries, laughter, sounds, and movement to support and celebrate that which is ready to be witnessed.

As the faces of loss, our held emotions, and love are expressed, there is a dawning recognition that this is a shared sorrow. An opportunity to allow a collective gathering of unforeseen healing to manifest.

Grief Ritual, Support in Grief, Grieving a loss

“Why Create a Grief Ritual?” 

It can be a rite of passage, an initiation into a new life, and an honoring of the dead.  A grief ritual can:

  • make sense of life

  • release grief so it doesn’t pass on

  • bring tears as a river for love and care to ancestors

  • reset our humanity, make us real, rekindle our emotional body

  • acknowledge feelings, behaviors, and experiences

  • allow us to honor what is real and trust one another

  • hold community/allow the community to have a real-making function

  • allow us to “go wild” with grief and be held by community

  • restores death to its sacred place