Community Grief Lodge

WHAT IS IT?

 

Community Grief Lodge is a land-based, community-fed relational and musical healing space. In this ritual container we welcome in the multi-faceted expressions of grief, joy, anger, desire, fear, longing (etc.) — emotions that are so often suppressed and stuck in our bodies — to be honored, expressed and tenderly held by others. No need to be ‘experienced’ in the ways of ritual, rhythm and music, or ‘good’ at grief-tending to participate— this space is open to anyone who feels called to explore and express the depths of their humanness, together.

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"We know that when you have pain it is not a personal pain, it is a pain of the whole group. We experience a collective sharing, so that an individual does not need to bear all the weight of the suffering."  - Sobonfu Somé (Grief Ancestor)

 

WHY IS IT HAPPENING?

 

Community Grief Lodge is a space to explore the waters of collective depth, attunement and belonging, together.

 

For many of us, life throws curve balls our way when we least expect it. Our schemes fail. Our plans fall through. Our dreams fade and our wishes seem to go unanswered. Our life, inevitably, finds itself changing. 

 

When these things happen we can sometimes feel sad, distracted, weighed down, at a loss, or impacted by major (and sometimes especially minor) life-shifts. But what if we could be held with compassion and courage in the rawness and fullness of our experience, and invited to give ourselves permission to share the bigness of whatever it is? How would it feel to be witnessed, listened to and supported in a collective way no matter what you’re going through?

 

In the words of one of our facilitators, Micaela Musterer, “...What feels really important to Jen and myself [with Community Grief Lodge] is that we cultivate a space where people can just be in their shit, without having any pressure or expectation or promise that it should be, could be or will be something else.”

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We have each gleaned through our own direct experience how much inner-strength, resilience and generative beauty can be cultivated through returning to collective grief spaces time and time again.  It’s one of the many reasons we have called this container into being: because we ourselves need it, and have found it to be beneficial in our lives and our communities. To us, collective grief tending feels like practicing basic sanity - a standard exercise in collective heart & soul maintenance. 

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"Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses." 

- Martín Prechtel

 

WHAT CAN I EXPECT?

 

Expect tears, laughs, tender heartache and healing attention. Expect to feel things. Expect realness and encouragement to be exactly where you are without expectations to be changed or fixed. The totality of who you are is welcome here. 

 

This invitation is one that asks you to sense into this healing, life-giving culture of Village that many of us have not yet experienced, but remember somewhere deep inside our bones and are longing for. We don’t have the answers. We are simply answering the call of our hearts, and inviting others to answer theirs with us.

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"If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us all weep for the world we are breaking apart so we can love it back to wholeness again.” 

- Robin Wall Kimmerer 

 

LINEAGE OF TEACHERS

 

The style of grief ritual in this container is informed by - but not a direct descendant of - the teachings and offerings of Malidoma Patrice Somé, Sobonfu Somé, The Dagara People of Burkina Faso, West Africa, Resmaa Menakem, Francis Weller, Joanna Macy, Martín Prechtel, Laurence Cole, Thérèse Charvet, Tere Carranza, Collin Brown, and others. We give thanks and praise to each of them for their ongoing guidance, and recognize that none of what we are offering would be possible without their vital contributions to the world of grief-tending.