Sacred Work of Grief Tending
"Drink enough of the sweet, strong mead of grief and love for being alive and it isn't long before you're sending a trembling, life-soaked greeting out to everything that came before you and to everything that will follow, a kind of love letter to the Big Story." -Stephen Jenksinson in "Die Wise"
When I first encountered these words in Stephen Jenkinson’s Manifesto for Sanity and Soul, something in me stirred awake. I read the sentence again and again, feeling a warm, fiery passion rise up from my belly into my chest. I remember calling a close friend and reading it aloud to her, my voice recognizing my truth as I spoke aloud. It felt less like learning something new and more like remembering something ancient.
I was a spiritual and imaginative child, always sensing into the wonder and mystery of the created world and the human heart. I am still captivated by beauty, by awe, by what shimmers just beneath the surface of things. Perhaps this is why sorrow has long felt like a companion to me.
I experience myself as someone who feels deeply what is happening in the environments I move through, interpersonally, culturally, and collectively. I understand sensitivity as a form of intelligence. To be sensitive is to be receptive and in relationship with many streams of information at once. At the same time, this receptivity can be overwhelming. Without support, we can form narratives and protective patterns shaped by our nervous systems rather than by the fullness of what is true.
When I turn toward the ocean of grief within me, I can sense my own distinct thread and also how it is woven into something much larger. My grief does not belong to me alone. It carries echoes of my lineage and reverberations of the collective field. We are not islands. What came before us and what is unfolding now lives on in our bodies and hearts.
At the heart of my grief is a longing for the world to show up differently. This longing continually invites me to inhabit my dignity more fully and to stand in my humanity without collapsing or hardening. I am drawn to perennial and Indigenous wisdom traditions. Their perspectives points me to the possibilities of paradigms outside of white/patriarchal "power over" ways of being and relating. They remind me that relationship, reciprocity, and belonging are possible. They inspire me to listen in a different way to ways of relating that is emerging.
Part of my sorrow includes noticing the harsh inner voice that learned to power over my more vulnerable places. This is the part of me that learned to shrink, to hesitate, and to step back from taking up space. Apprenticing my grief has been a way of meeting not only my own pain, but also the unmet grief and unspoken trauma carried in my family lineage. Over time, I have come to trust my grief as an expression of my authenticity.
Grief can feel wild and unruly, yet it is a profound teacher. It grows our capacity to hold complexity, tenderness, and new ways of being with ourselves, with others, and with the living world. Grief reveals what we love. It shows us what matters. In this way, I experience grief as a vessel through which the dreaming earth can give birth to new ways of seeing and living.
My interest in grief work began early in my career as a therapist. While serving on staff at a local wisdom school and designing a curriculum for a course called Deep Healing, I felt a clear intuitive knowing that grief tending needed to be part of it. Around that time, I encountered the work of Francis Weller and his book The Wild Edge of Sorrow. His articulation of the Five Gates of Grief gave language to something I had long felt but had not yet known how to name.
Those gates became both a map and a permission slip. They offered a way of understanding grief not as pathology, but as a natural and initiatory force that deepens our humanity and restores our belonging to the wider web of life.
I recognize my grief includes grief from my ancestral lineage and the collective grief. My grief is an expression of my authenticity. Grief can feel wild and yet it is a great teacher that can give birth to a larger capacity of holding new ways of being within myself, others, and creation. Grief is a teacher of the beauty of my heart, what it loves, and what it longs for. I see it as a potential vesself for the dreaming earth to birth new ways of seeing and being.
I was interested in grief work early in my career as a therapist. When I came on staff of a local wisdom school and was designing a curriculum for the class "Deep Healing," I intuitvely knew grief tending needed to be included. It was during this time I was introduced to the work of Francis Weller and read his book "The Wild Edge of Sorrow." His gates of grief put a language to what, up until that point I had felt, but not known to name. See my colleague's short description here of the 5 gates. I had my class watch this 13 min video of Francis share about his work and the 5 Gates.
"The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them. How much sorrow can I hold? That’s how much gratitude I can give."
-Francis Weller
My heart's wisdom recognizes the interconnectedness between embracing our grief and experiencing joy. The more we allow ourselves to fully engage with our grief, the more capacity we have to fully embrace joy. Through my work in a private therapeutic practice, I have witnessed firsthand how we tend to keep our grief hidden in our individualistic culture. We often apologize for shedding tears, even with clients who are seeking our support.
Sacred Grief. Sacred Rage. Sacred Play Residential Grief Retreat at Haw River State Park
While we do have communal rituals like funerals and support groups for specific losses, such as relationships or infertility, we lack regular communal rituals that help us process our daily grief. For many of us, this type of practice may seem radical. Francis Weller suggests that regular grief rituals are essential for the well-being of our souls, providing a nourishment that material possessions cannot fulfill.
As I delved into the teachings of Elder Malidoma Some from Burkina Faso and other Indigenous wisdom keepers, I was struck by the absence of grief rituals in my culture. This realization led me into participation in Malidoma's elemental ritual intensive and training with Francis Weller (who also worked with Malidoma Some). My colleague and friend, Samantha Dirosa and I met through our mutual love and commitment to this work.
It has been a honor and homecoming to embrace this aspect of my calling. Since 2021, we have been co-facilitating both online and in-person rituals and grief retreats. Each time I come away with the gift of experiencing the paradox of bearing witness to deep pain and also experiencing profound beauty. Honoring and giving space to the authenticity of our hearts is where we find our alivesness and ourselves held within a Larger Mystery.
Our statement on diversity and cultural appropriation:
As facilitators, our intention is to create an inclusive space that honors all cultures and ethnicities. However, as white-bodied, cisgender women, we recognize the privilege and systemic advantages inherent in our identities. We acknowledge the racial lenses and gendered systems that have shaped our experiences and perspectives, understanding that they differ significantly from those of BIPOC individuals. We are dedicated to actively listening, learning, and unlearning, and we are committed to ongoing growth in this area.
In our work, we approach any rituals, songs, or practices from non-dominant cultures with deep respect and gratitude. They have been shared and gifted with blessings to aid in our collective healing. We are committed to acknowledging and honoring the sources of these practices, recognizing the responsibility that comes with engaging with them. May our collective grief cry serve as a catalyst for change and liberation, as we work towards dismantling oppressive systems and creating a world where all beings can thrive.
How to work with me and grief:
Embodied Intelligence partners with Rituals for Grief in offering 2 and 3 day grief rituals through out the year and a bespoke apprenticeship each year for a small cohort.
To learn more about our apprenticeship click here.
To learn more about our grief rituals click here.
To learn more about coming home to the authenticity of your heart through individual and community based grief tending rituals click the link here.