Apprenticing Ourselves to the Unknown: An Eight-Part Series on the Skill of Grieving
This series is intended for those who find themselves grieving in a culture that doesn’t quite know how to hold them as they work through their transformation. This course synthesizes community-building, emotional processing, contemplative body-based practice, grief education, writing exercises, and ceremonial elements. Together we will turn toward the wise, if challenging, ways of grief, and courageously, patiently develop a healing intimacy with our experience of transience and loss—and with each other.
While the format will shift week to week, generally speaking we will spend roughly half our time on education and practices and the other half on group discussion and sharing. You will find the themes for each week below. In between our gatherings, I will send emails with contemplations, poetry, gentle reminders, reflections, and other supportive resources. Please use the contact form or email me to register or ask clarifying questions. If there is a local organization or group that would like to hire me to offer this series, please reach out and we can discuss that possibility.
Themes By Week
Undertaking the Apprenticeship (Introductions, opening the Container, Leaning into Village)
Grief as Skill, Grief as Healing (Orienting the “Six Domains” and “Three Roots” of Grief)
Cultivating Compassion in the Dark (Building Intimacy with Ourselves and with Grief)
The Meaning of Death and Grief (Sharing Our Memories, Stories, and Beliefs about Death)
Our Relationship to Relationship (Exploring Reciprocity, Obligation, and Belonging)
Tracing the Shape of Loss (On Sacredness, Emptiness, Longing, and Carrying)
The Willingness to Be Transformed (On Rhythm, Transformation, and Mystery)
Reflections, Wakes, and Echoes (Holding Endings Dear, Closing the Container)