grief – Grief Tending in Community

Honouring Joanna Macy

I was first inspired by Joanna about 20 years ago, at a Work that Reconnects workshop led by her in London. I had come across her work during my therapy training. The Work That Reconnects was one of the two really powerful elements of that course. The other was Family Constellations. Both look at the collective healing of pain, as a symptom of systemic rather than individual problems.

I feel blessed to have met Joanna on several further occasions when I was working for the Transition Towns movement, creating community scale responses to the multiple crises of our time. My role was to anchor practices which brought depth, emotional understanding, curiosity about shadow and unconscious dynamics and more into a movement that could often be focused on material issues. Joanna’s clear and powerful teachings were a key part of what I shared with groups around the world.

November – December 2021 update

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Trauma is everywhere, and it’s getting talked about..

Grief tending and trauma.. what are the connections? Is all old grief a form of trauma, an injury or hurt that is waiting for healing? Can we heal trauma without support from outside, from humans or non-humans?

There seems to be widening recognition of how widespread trauma is in modern culture – from the Wisdom of Trauma film and on line events to trauma-informed approaches to mindfulness to an increasing understanding of historic and ancestral trauma related to colonisation, gender violence and more. In this post I share some of the insights I’ve come to about trauma, and offer some links to useful resources and places to continue learning.

Grief tending in Community – 1 day workshop 29th Sept

Take a day to honour and tend grief with others, in beautiful surroundings. Make a deep journey of building banks, stirring and expressing grief, and witnessing others. Return safely with time for soothing and integration.

Tending Grief, in a room with other people

I felt trepidation as well as relief as a group gathered for the first in person Grief tending indoors since before COVID dramatically changed how we meet, more than a year ago.

In the correspondence before the workshop I felt a new part of my role, to help figure out how to meet possibly different needs about COVID precautions, behaviours, proximity and contact in a grief tending space.

Grief is not a tidy and controlled process by its nature. Involving body liquids, loud noises, and often, the longing for touch.

Kind touch is one of the few ways we generate oxytocin – as well as singing together, giving birth and breastfeeding. Oxytocin helps us to feel a sense of bonding with others, of deep connection