UPDATE: This event is full
"Grief is natural: to grieve the loss of what we love is as natural as peeing, eating, singing, dreaming, running, or looking under rocks for bugs to feed your frog. More importantly, grieving is necessary: when there is real loss, grieving should never be avoided or postponed; grieving is absolutely necessary. Without grief the world would cease to renew itself; the world would cease to exist. Grief is not a preference, for choosing to not have grief when grief is there is to defer and burden someone else with having to do your grieving. This makes the world a sick place. To truly and freely grieve as an entire people can revive an entire culture just as much as it can bring back to life an individual.” ~Martín Prechtél
Where does it hurt?
Let’s aim our love, our listening, our Song, our care right there.
Welcome to this natural, necessary, liberatory work.
Together we are powerful to tend and move the grief that heavies our souls ~ from the particular losses and traumas of this lifetime to the terrors inside the lineages we each inherited. Collective grief ritual is a cutting edge of soul activism, a way to support each other in moving energy that otherwise might stagnate or get repressed. It’s way too much heavy lifting to do alone – but when we join together in community and ceremony, we alchemize suffering into tremendous bandwidth for Love.
Come explore with us, where your tender places are welcome ~ held in connection, community, and lots of Song.
Facilitated by Joanna Laws Landis and Lyndsey Scott, this 2-day embodied grief ritual will welcome us into co-created sacred space through altar craft, ancestral honoring, land connection, and ritual practice. Our bodies already know how to do this —- in all of our bones’ is the knowing of how to let go through wailing, drumming, dancing, holding, being held. We will spark this remembering in a brave and clear container that includes solo reflection, sacred witness, somatic practice, song medicine, solo time in nature, and rest.
+++ Your full participation for the entirety of both days is required. +++
The ritual is inspired and informed by the Dagara tradition as carried to the states by Sobonfu Somé and Malidoma Somé. With humility and profound gratitude, we intend to honor this lineage by stewarding the technology they brought as much needed medicine for the western world. We are also weaving wisdom from teachers Francis Weller, Martín Prechtél, Laurence Cole, and Joanna Macy.
Details:
Option to come early for evening song circle and camping, Friday June 16. (More info upon registration.)
Ritual:: 9am Saturday to 5pm Sunday, June 17-18, 2023
Free camping is available on-site.
COST:: $282-444*
282 ~ community supported
383 ~ break even
444 ~ community supporting
6 meals & camping space included.
*$$ sliding scale wide variation meant to welcome people of diverse age, and economic experience. Notice your positionality and please choose the sweet spot that is both generous & affordable for you.
Two spaces are saved for partial scholarship; inquire if it's for you!
Payment plan available as needed.
Max: 22 participants (30 including team)
Register by MAY 31.
If you would like support in discerning if this ritual is a fit for you, welcome to call Lyndsey or Joanna for a quick discernment conversation prior to registering.
Lyndsey: 217 898 3777
Joanna: 717 368 0143
Further directions for preparation will be sent upon registration.
No refunds after June 7.
More about your facilitators:
🧡 Lyndsey Scott (she/her) is a cis-white womxn artist + songleader, born raised and residing in central IL, devoted to priestesSing the Heartland, (literal and figurative). She weaves community singing to empower earth-based spiritual consciousness, and gathers soul circles that, through Song and sacred listening, decompose oppressive scripts that get in the way of freely living the Love we are. With jams that get you skipping easily between the sacred, sexy, and sssssilly : your inner child, exiled banshee, and wise elder are all very invited to the circle! Listen to her new album Well Held for twelve luscious singalong earworms to nourish your journey. @ Nevertidy she creates imagery to nourish the soul journey; @ The We Belong Community of Song, she gathers small groups for song & story in real life and on zoom, and with @Earthkeeper Wisdom School, she tends grief and ceremony in service of social change. Visit her Patreon to learn more and support this prayer-in-process!
🧡 Joanna Laws Landis (she/her, white cis-woman) is a grief-tender and song-carrier with a deep belief in the transformative healing power of Welcome and Compassion. With depth of presence, heart-led facilitation, and playful engagement with What Is, Joanna welcomes you just as you are into a container of witness and healing. Leading community grief ritual since 2018, she is grateful to have learned from many mentors in the lineage of Sobonfú and Malidoma Somé who brought their Dagara grief ritual to the western world where they saw it was much needed. She currently lives in Santa Fe, NM where she is deepening her exploration of tapping the body’s innate wisdom for healing with Somatic Experiencing International, and is also a student of collective trauma integration with Thomas Hübl.