“There is some strange intimacy between grief and aliveness, some sacred exchange between what seems unbearable and what is most exquisitely alive. Through this, I have come to have a lasting faith in grief.”―Francis Weller

If one thing is guaranteed in this life it is that we will all be touched by grief in many and varied ways. Yet in our society grief is something we are compelled to carry on with, to suppress and move past. It is even something that can breed shame and embarrassment. We are rarely taught, let alone role-modelled, healthy ways to be with and express our grief. Instead convinced that grief is only a moment in time that we move past on some linear colonial timeline. But our grief is not linear, it is not just a moment, not just a feeling, but a relationship that can span a lifetime.

Tending to our grief is a full-day workshop based on creating relationship with our grief, not trying to fix or move past her.

Through this workshop, we will work with rhythm, melody, and song, we will journey in drum meditation, journal, experience voice work and group singing, and tap into Francis Weller’s ‘5 Gates of grief’ as a tool for accessing the edges of our grief, with acknowledgement of the more recently coined 6th gate of grief that will broaden our sense of self.

We will expand our capacity to bear witness to the grief of the world within and without, re-membering that our greatest healing does not happen in isolation.