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 constellator, radical footballer, community activist, engineer, computer trainer, and more.
Sophy’s understanding of the importance of shared grief work started through attending workshops of Joanna Macy and Sobonfu Some and continued in more recent work with Maeve Gavin. Since 2013 she has been growing Grief tending in community to seed and spread the practices of tending grief together, through offering talks, workshops in many formats, and supporting facilitators of grief work in the Apprenticing programme and beyond.
She is deeply committed to creating healthy human culture at all levels of scale, and sees that shared practices to express and hear our grief is a fundamental part of what brings us to right relationship to ourselves and those around us. This work of surfacing, witnessing and making meaning of our pain is crucial to transforming the systems of harm that abound in our world – and creating healthy relationships with ourselves, other people, and the wider living systems of the planet. You can find out more about Sophy’s work on Healthy Human Culture here.
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. When the movement spread across the industrialised world, she jointly set up Transition Training, and shared this positive, holistic model for creating a vibrant future with groups in four continents.
Sophy lives in Devon, where she grows fruit, vegetables and friendships, and can still just about get up the hills on her bike.
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, Joanna Macy and playing a support role and participating in work with Maeve. 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
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 ‘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 practiced 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.
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
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
Rasha has been part of the Apprenticing to Grief holding team since Spring 2023. She is an experienced therapist and supervisor. See more about her here
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