community Grief retreat

Honoring Our Grief and Gratitude with Rituals of Renewal

Ages 18+ | Mar. 29 & 30th, 2025 | Return to Community Workshops & Events

Program Details | Program Staff | Other Programs

In many traditional cultures, grief rituals are considered the “glue” of connection that holds the community together. They offer us one of the most powerful means for reweaving our connection and belonging to ourselves, each other, and all our relations.

Join us as we honor the sacredness of our grief and gratitude through talking circles, singing, poetry, movement, practice in sacred listening, ceremony, sharing food, and some quiet time in nature. The heart of our time together will include a sacred ritual inspired by the work of Sobonfu Some and Malidoma Some.

Our work is also inspired by Francis Weller’s Five Gates of Grief, which help us to welcome in all forms of grief we may be carrying, including:

Everything we love we will lose
The places that have not known love
The sorrows of the world
The things we cannot even name that we ache for
Intergenerational or ancestral grief

Communal grief rituals are about reaching for each other to find the courage and support required to face what needs tending, keep our hearts open, and return us to what matters most. By listening to others, we learn to articulate what often feels inexpressible. In this space, we aim to destigmatize grief, metabolize it, and move away from the idea that grief is pathological. This is a chance to co-regulate our nervous systems in the village and be reminded that we are not alone.

This offering is designed to be experiential and embodied, helping us move away from intellectualizing grief and instead stay rooted in our hearts and bodies as we navigate the unprocessed grief within us. Here, we create a space where grief can take any form—whether it’s numbness, shame, rage, trembling, stillness, wailing, or something else. There is no grief too big or too small to be welcomed. We invite you to lean in with us as we remember how to grieve in community.

The spiritual framework for our ritual includes earth-based practices that honor the power of drumming and song, the natural world as a web of interconnectedness, and the unseen realms, including our ancestors.

You can listen to a 1-minute video of Sobonfu Some speak on Grief Recovery and Ritual, or learn more about community grief work at Northwest Grief Tending.

We invite you to lean in with us as we remember how to grieve in community. There is no grief too big or too small to be worthy of welcome here.

14 participant minimum and 20 participant max

Retreat Schedule:

Sunday, March 30 from 9:30 a.m. - 5 p.m. (ish)

● 9:00 - 9:15 a.m. - Arrive and settle in

● 9:30 a.m. - Circle opening

● 3:30 p.m. (ish) - Circle closing

● 4-5 p.m. (ish) - Community clean up - we aim to complete clean up by 5pm

Saturday, March 29 from 9 a.m. - late evening

● 9:00 - 9:15 a.m. - Arrive and settle in

● 9:30 a.m. - Circle opening

● Early evening - Community grief ritual

● 8:00 p.m. (ish) - Circle closing & community potluck

Saturday: We’ll begin by slowly building our community container—sharing, creating agreements, calling in support, and crafting beauty together. As Martin Prechtel reminds us, “Spirit eats beauty” – so when we grieve together, we get on our knees to create a feast. We call in help through beauty offerings of song, poems, altars, flowers, tears, and other creative expressions. In the afternoon, we’ll sit with whatever is alive in our hearts, connecting in small groups and spending time in nature. The flow of the day will guide us deeper into our hearts and community connection in preparation for the evening grief ritual.

Evening Grief Ritual: The evening will be dedicated to a community grief ritual, where we will create a ritual container capable of holding deeply embodied expressions of grief. You will be invited to explore a variety of ways to use your voice, body, and support to express what’s moving through you. This includes permission to keen, wail, scream, and rage—expressions held within the containment of song, drumming, and ritual structure. For some, this may be a new experience—witnessing and expressing grief and anger as sounds of healing, especially if grief was expressed in your past in uncontained or unsafe ways. We will offer teachings and exercises to help you engage with these energies in a grounded, supportive, and healing way. Please know you always have the choice to decide how deeply you wish to participate and to ask for support if needed.

Sunday: On Sunday, we’ll share our experiences of the ritual and offer more time at the grief shrine. In the afternoon, we’ll engage in reintegration practices to help ease our transition out of the retreat.

Logistics:

Meals & Lodging: Please note that meals and lodging are not included. Attendees will be responsible for their own overnight accommodations and bringing personal meals, a dish for a community potluck, and community snacks.

Land & Accessibility: Our gathering will take place at Rite of Passage Journey’s Basecamp, a rustic retreat set on 11 acres of wooded hillside, gardens, and meadow, located in a semi-rural area next to the Songaia CoHousing community. The main gathering space is a cozy yurt, with

a kitchen and tea station situated in a covered outdoor area about 20 feet away. A nearby porta- potty and handwashing station provide basic amenities. Outdoors, there’s a fire pit, a large grassy meadow, and wooded walking paths—we plan to integrate some time in nature throughout our retreat. For accessibility, the site has flat dirt paths connecting the various areas, and there are three steps leading up to the yurt.

Registration & Fees: We offer sliding scale pricing in support of economic justice, which requires your active participation in determining where you fall on the scale. We ask that you be as generous as you are able in order to increase accessibility and support facilitator well-being. Please read the tier descriptions closely as a guide for selecting the tier that best fits your resources and/or limitations.

Reciprocity Gift: A portion of facilitator compensation will be gifted back to the Dagara community through two initiatives led by community elders, as a way for Western communities to give back for the gifts shared by Malidoma, Sobonfu, and other Dagara leaders. The Sonder Project provides sustainable drinking water through well construction, addressing a critical need, while the Lawn Ta Council, consisting of elders representing over 500 people, distributes emergency aid to combat food insecurity, housing instability, and medical shortages exacerbated by the climate crisis.

COVID Protocol: We ask that all participants take a COVID home test the day of our event. Once gathered, each participant will be at choice as to what feels good to them in terms of masking, distancing, contact, etc. If you are COVID positive or showing any flu-like symptoms on the days of the ritual, please stay home.

To learn more before registering, or if you have a question about your registration or your payment arrangement,
please contact us.