About us

Grief Tending in Community is a growing group of people wanting to spread practices for welcoming grief in spaces which are courageous, beautiful and caring. Those who facilitate the Apprenticing to Grief programme are listed below. Over 100 people have passed through this programme, some of whom are also offering spaces for grief find them in recent issues of the newsletter, here

Sophy Banks

Sophy’s eclectic life has included time as a therapist, family systems constellator, radical footballer, organiser and trainer in regenerating local communities, engineer and systems analyst, and more.

Sophy’s understanding of shared grief work started through attending workshops of Joanna Macy and Sobonfu Somé and later through working with Maeve Gavin. Since 2013 she has been growing Grief Tending in Community to share practices of tending grief together, offering talks, workshops in many formats, and supporting facilitators of grief work in the Apprenticing programme and beyond.

An overarching quest of Sophy’s life has been understand what is needed to create vibrant, just, regenerative human culture. She sees that shared practices to hear our grief is an essential part of what brings us to right relationship with ourselves, those around us and the wider web of life. The work of surfacing, witnessing and making meaning of our pain is crucial to transforming the systems of violence and inequality that pervade the modern world. You can find out more about Sophy’s work on Healthy Human Culture here.

After many years in east London working as a computer trainer, therapist, and playing for Hackney Women’s Football club, Sophy moved to Devon. In 2006 as Transition Town Totnes was coming into being Sophy co-founded the “Heart and Soul” group, addressing the inner aspects of re-imagining and rebuilding resilient, local ways of living. As the movement spread across the industrialised world, she set up Transition Training with her partner. They offered workshops and trained an international group of trainers in four continents. In 2012 Sophy turned to focus her attention on the Inner dimension of Transition, strengthening its focus on the psychological, relational and spiritual dimensions of responding to the crises of these times.

Sophy lives in Devon, where she grows food and friendships, and can still just about get up the hills on her (now electric) bike.

Sarah Pletts

Sarah is an experienced facilitator who holds grief tending groups in a variety of settings. She set up Embracing Grief with Bilal Nasim and Tony Pletts, and also holds queer grief spaces. She is passionate about the value of grief tending as a practice to digest a wide range of difficult experiences; and to create emotional intelligence in a bewildering world.

Since completing ‘Apprenticing to Grief’ in 2019, Sarah has worked extensively with Sophy and Jeremy, and joins them on the ‘Apprenticing to Grief’ facilitation team. Her understanding of the context in which life, trauma and grief happens is informed by Sophy’s work on Healthy Human Culture

As an artist, Sarah’s approach brings playfulness and beauty. Her creative practice includes interactive performances, making objects and images. You can watch her hand-drawn animated videos about grief tending and find more of her writing and podcasts here

The death of her father, when she was 23, sparked a deep exploration into dying and grief, including designing ceremonies, holding funerals, offering Death Cafés, sitting with dying friends and family. Holding complex care roles as a daughter and parent while being with her own long spell of chronic illness helped grow her commitment to deep self-care, boundaries and embodied awareness.

For many years Sarah has practised meditation, Birch healing, and nature connection through walking and being with animals. She lives in inter-generational community in London with partners and chosen family. You will often find her dancing, eating dark chocolate and feeding the crows on Hackney Marshes.

Jeremy Thres

Founder of not for profit organisation Regenco, Jeremy’s interest in regenerating and reintegrating Land, People and Spirit led him to be involved in wilderness oriented rites of passage work and it was within that that he first learned the importance of grief tending. Alone in the wilds he was able to release pent up grief held from many years before, and with that release something else could flood in. Internally though he was told he now had to learn how to do that with people, and it has been through this grief tending in community work that has most deeply made that possible.

He found time with Martin Prechtel deeply inspirational in relation to this, as has been touching in with Malidoma Somé, Joanna Macy and playing a support role and participating in work with Maeve Gavin. Community based grief tending has enabled the surfacing and release of layers of grief he didn’t know he held.

More on Jeremy’s work here

Dita Vizoso

Dita is a forager, farmer, fermenter. A rewilder, of herself, of land, and of people.  An experienced facilitator holding spaces for inquiry and tending of grief and joy.

A scientist in recovery, Dita worked on the evolution of conflict for a couple of decades until the need to actively work on land regeneration led her to break free from the story of Business as Usual.  Soon she encountered Active Hope and, during a Grief Ritual, experienced the power of tending grief in community.  With that came the realisation that without regenerating our souls there will be little hope for the soil.  A few hours later she had made a pact with the Earth, to find ways to be of service, learn skillful means to invite the rewilding of our souls, so that we can finally stop destroying nature—ourselves included.

Dita met grief first hand while in her mourning mother’s womb, and has had a lively and complex relationship with it.  Deep investigations on dying and living, beauty and horror, physical and spiritual decomposition have been part of her life from an early age.  She has accompanied friends and family through illness and the transition to death, and holds rites of passage and threshold work through life’s changes.

Since attending their Grief Tending in 2017, Dita has worked with Sophy and Jeremy, learning, supporting, apprenticing to this work.  She tends grief —and joy— in different contexts and keeps exploring the fertile edges of human emotions and capacities.

Being a life-long foreigner of mixed-heritage and the landless daughter of displaced people, Dita has been deepening her understanding of collective trauma and the consequences of cultural and racial oppression, and learning and practicing trauma healing at different scales, through remembering, ritual, inquiry, bearing witness, somatics, collective practices, nature…  This work has greatly been inspired by Sophy’s Healthy Human Culture.

Besides grief tending and deep inquiry, Dita is involved in regeneration and rewilding, compassionate activism, exploring simple living and natural farming… She’s happiest with a song and a wheelbarrow, inviting dirt to become soil sponge, while listening to the world.  You can find her writings here, and explore her other offerings here.

Aama Sade Shepniki

A facilitator, trainer, storyteller, percussionist and Creative Alchemist. Her platform Tree Circle Ceremonies offers unique spiritually expressive ceremonies for Children, Marriages and End of Life.
Creating organic connections with her audience she imparts the message of cohesion, positive expression & transformation.

Through Sacred Space Initiatives she ‘Realigns and Instils the Values of spiritual Harmony’ in a grounded traditional language.

Through creative facilitation in Grief Workshops and Retreats there’s connection with our ancestral stories and a sharing of expressions with others.

Aamasade hold space for growth and transformation through ceremony, with a grounded approach.

Rasha Hammami

Our ancestors, on the other side of the shrine

Deep gratitude to Sobonfu and Malidoma Somé, who brought practices of ritual to the global north, seeing the depth of harm that Euro-centric modern culture was doing to all parts of the planet. They focused on Grief tending as a necessary practice for community health, as well as many other kinds of ceremony. Both died early.

Also honouring Maeve Gavin, weaver of many of the practices we share, and Mel Lamb, who supported and hosted us for years at High Heathercombe . Beautiful women, pioneers and teachers of grief work.

May we meet you often at the Ancestor shrine. Please bless our work and help us to stay true to what you brought and taught in your short lives.

See links to their work and websites on our page The shoulders on which we stand

You can find links to others holding grief spaces here