What happens in a community grief tending ritual?

There are different shapes of community grief tending - this is mine.

With the intention of release and renewal, we move through different stages - building the village, stirring our grief, the grief altar, integration and harvest.

Why do we need community grief tending rituals?

In indigenous cultures, grief has always been communal. We see this in the UK, with the old ‘keeners of the wake’ in the Celtic culture, in Mexico with the celebrated “Día de los Muertos” (the Day of the Dead), and the weekly grief rituals of the Dagara tribe of West Africa.

In all of these rituals, the role of the community is vital, it’s the people creating the banks of the river, which provides the container to allow our grief to flow and be released.

"Even the simplest of rituals is a way of acknowledging the unseen, the unspoken-about, the hold, which feeds our lives with its inexhaustible generosity. Ritual restores us to one another and to that grander coherence to which we all belong." Toka-pa Turner

Read more about grief tending, what I believe ‘grief needs’ and what happens when we don’t tend to our grief.

Building the village

This starts to happen before we gather, as the threads of each of our intentions begin weaving together. When people show up, even as strangers, they know they are on hallowed ground with other intrepid explorers. It’s not everyone that rocks up to tend to their grief on a Saturday.

This intention and a set of ethics including confidentiality, respect and no judgement, all create a sense of strength, safety and cohesion.

People are invited to bring items for an ancestor altar, which we build to support us on the day. Then we begin creating the circle, lighting a candle, and sharing our names and what grief is moving in us.

I work with the design of the spiral throughout the whole day. We spiral down to meet the wells of our grief, with stirring and time at the grief altar. Then we spiral back up for integration and harvest.

So in this stage, once we have our circle, we begin to spiral down, as we start stirring our grief.

Stirring our grief

I let people know when they sign up that they may begin to bubble with thoughts and dreams related to the grieving in the run up to the day. So, the stirring begins when you set the intention to spend a day tending to your grief, even before we meet. 

We stir our grief before the grief altar, to start loosening what we’ve held so tight and to make the repressed or invisible more visible. Exercises can include:

• writing shuttles

• dancing

• active listening in pairs

• milling. 

Through these exercises, we are gathering at the gates of the communal hall of sorrow.

The grief altar

We open the gates and our grief altar by honouring Francis Weller’s five gates of grief, knowing there are many more faces:

• Everything you love, you will lose

• The places that have not known love

• The sorrows of the world

• What we expected and didn’t receive

• Ancestral grief.

The whole day is held in ceremony, with many opportunities for expressing and witnessing our grief. But the grief altar invites another level of reverence.

These are some of the different designs for a grief altar we use:

• Joanna Macy’s bowl of tears

• Joanna Macy’s truth mandala

• Francis Weller’s five gates of grief

• nature-based altar

• spiral walk.

Sometimes the village witnesses in silence and other times they sing and dance to drumming, depending on the type of altar used. People move in and out of the grief altar during this time, and sometimes there can be more than one person. 

The grief altar is usually at one end of the space, and the village sits or stands on the other side. People are welcomed back into the village after being at the grief altar, and thanked for their work. 

It can be a bit daunting to sit in front of a grief altar for the first time, if it’s not in your culture. Often people feel numb, which is one face of grief and I invite them to sit with their numbness at the altar. Not everyone chooses to go to the grief altar, and the role of witness is equally important to those grieving. 

“Ritual can bring us into that state of togetherness, and there we can remember our deeper affinity and communality.....Ritual is a maintenance practice that offers us the means of tending wounds and sorrows, for offering gratitude, and for reconciling conflicts, thereby allowing our psyches regular periods of release and renewal”. Francis Weller

Integrating 

This is when we begin to spiral back up from the wells of our grief, and begin soothing our parasympathetic nervous systems. 

We do this using sound and touch. Practices include either a:

• guided meditation with a wind chime

• singing

• touch and light massage. 

Closing and harvest 

We grow and learn through action and reflection, so after we’ve soothed our bodies, we share our reflections, and what we’re harvesting after the day. 

People share what medicine they have found in their grief, what fresh insights they take away and what it feels like to be held in a village of fellow grief tenders. Personally, I always have new reflections on the depth and impact of this work, and am inspired by what everyone else shares. 

We may write letters to ourselves in the future, plant seeds, draw or create during the harvest. And we’ll share snacks and drinks to ground ourselves, before we head back into the world.

Find the next community grief tending ritual in my calendar.

Read testimonials from participants

“Witnessing each other's pain and grief was an honour.  Gail held the space with deep authenticity and respect.  This is definitely something I will come and engage in again.”

“This was my first grief tending ceremony. It was powerful right from the start. Just knowing that these other people valued tending their grief and were therefore willing to be vulnerable with other people in community and ceremony, gave a great sense of safety right from the beginning.

The main thing I have come away with from this, is how impossible deep feeling is to do without community and it’s left me longing to have more ceremonial community in my life.

I like it that Gail was clear that she was facilitating the ceremony, but we were all holding it. Gail was a participant too, which Stopped us projecting onto her and encouraged the synergy of the group to create a strong holding and healing presence.

There were many different and beautiful parts to the day's ritual, but the ending was the grand finale for me, singing me home to myself in such a beautiful way. Thank you!”

“I was nervous before the ritual. I felt like the grief was welling up inside me in preparation and I was concerned I would not feel comfortable to wail and let my grief loose in the monumental way I felt It needed. The ritual is not about words, its an embodied experience and this was exactly what I needed without knowing it. I feel like this is something that will be needed for me to attend several times to work on the layers of grief and help have a safe space to unpack it all. 

This works is such a gift to the community.”

“I have attended two grief tending rituals with Gail, both very different, both powerful. I was curious as to what it is, this grief tending, what is involved. She guides you, in a gentle, professional and honest way. Gail holds the space, the group, in such a way that I felt safe and brave. There is no pressure to do or be anything. It's all explained to you, the layout of the day...and it's okay to ask if you're not sure of anything. 

Her wisdom and knowledge is shared in such a caring, nurturing environment. I want to regularly attend the workshops, because it is work, work that I need to do, to make important shifts, to be unstuck in my grief and to let things flow, at my own pace. With guidance, I feel confident to do this and to move forward to a stronger, happier self which will not only benefit myself, but also those around me.”

“Gail holds ritual space with care and congruence. She comes prepared with a format, a container shape planned for the event. She is then open to responding to the needs that emerge on the day and tailors that structure to hold what is present in the circle. 

It is often deeply moving and very powerful. I come away tired, unburdened and thanked for the work we did together.  The legacy of these rituals of release and renewal echo long after the event. So does Gail’s deep care.”