THE NATURE OF GRIEF and LOSS 

Grief comes in many shapes, at different times, in response to specific events (loss, war, overwhelm) or as a creeping mist that slowly envelops, so we become frozen, even angry or tetchy, and sapped of energy and life. It can completely consume a person, a family or community or it can be hard to spot and harder still to ‘deal with’. In part because our traditions and society norms are wary of ‘weak emotions’, spontaneous tears and grief ridden outbursts.

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Read my blog post about Grief, Community and Healing.

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MY UNDERSTANDING TO SHARE

From many years of participating in, and then leading, a specific type of ritual to release grief, I have a longstanding familiarity with some of the shapes grief can form and express, in myself and in others. This grief ritual is a cauldron, a strong and safe place reinforced by the community of grievers and the tried and tested shape of the event, to enable people to step into and encounter and then to move through and transform their grief and relationship to it.

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A GRIEF RITUAL

(Send an email and we will notify you of the date and details for the next ritual)

Based on the traditions of the Dagara people (from sub Saharan, Burkina Faso) and taught by initiated elders from there, Malidoma and Sobonfu Some, this a very full-on event that takes a whole day (longer if allowed) to prepare and conduct, to integrate new feelings and make good after the ritual. Many people look years younger when it is done; having laid down their burdens of sorrow; others will have expressed griefs they might not have known held them; and some might have cried for the first time in years. With frozen grief expressed and transformed, many people find a new sense of aliveness available to them; other feelings, held up by the effort of managing grief and fear of its expression, become available to them.

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JUST TOO SCARY?

And for other folks this is a too challenging ritual, too much of a step into the unknown (and the dreadful)! Instead, with others' help I have developed shorter (and for some, perhaps a more approachable) form of ceremony. If you think this is for you let me know.

 

These smaller encounters can be a very important way to open the door to something ‘felt, but unspoken’. You let in as much as you can manage this time around, avoiding the sense that these emotions are too big to engage with.

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SEND A MAIL AND WE WILL NOTIFY YOU OF THE DATE AND DETAILS OF THE NEXT RITUAL

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