Gathering to Greet (And Welcome) Grief

We all carry grief – whether from personal loss, ancestral wounds or the sorrows of the world. When grief remains unexpressed, it can weigh heavily on our bodies, hearts, and spirits. Many of us express our grief in solitude – or not at all. But in community, people can create a safe and sacred space where grief can move, allowing us to soften into the tenderness of our souls and the openness of our hearts.

Grieving together dissolves isolation, nurtures belonging, and reminds us that we do not carry our sorrow alone.

That’s the intent behind Embracing Grief Together: A Community Grief Ritual, a sacred gathering for healing and connection hosted by Wilderness Youth Project and its Program Manager Sharon Buczaczer along with several others. The free gathering, slated for October 17-18 at St. Mark’s United Methodist Church: 3942 La Colina Road, is based on the teachings of Sobonfu Somé – who WYP hosted three times dating back to 2010 – as well as Malidoma Patrice Somé, Francis Weller, Joanna Macy, Laurence Cole and many other influences. 

The ritual is not about fixing or analyzing grief. It is about witnessing, honoring, and releasing, while being held in the steady presence of drums, song, movement and, especially, community.

Sobonfu Somé, who died in 2017, was an initiated member of the Dagara tribe from Burkina Faso who was sent to the West to teach their culture’s ancient wisdom to the world, said Buczaczer. 

“Communal grieving offers something that we cannot get when we grieve by ourselves. Through validation, acknowledgment, and witnessing, communal grieving allows us to experience a level of healing that is deeply and profoundly freeing.”
– Sobonfu Somé

“They said that ours is a culture that doesn’t know how to grieve in community,” she said. “We often suppress our grief and that is destroying the world. Sobonfu brought this ceremony and ritual to the West with the intention that people learn how to grieve in community, to take the shame and the isolation out of grieving. We are attempting in the best way we know how to continue that tradition.” 

The event takes place on Friday night and continues from morning to late afternoon on Saturday, largely working to set a container for the actual grief ceremony. 

“We warm up to start to loosen grief, to start to shake it, to pull the thread of the grief because it requires us coming together and being able to trust each other,” Buczaczer said. “We see who these people are that we’re going to be crying and wailing with, we start to just get a little sense of what it feels like to feel grief when not locked in a room but around all these other people, and start to just feel a little bit tender with ourselves and each other. We build that up and then on Saturday afternoon there’s the ritual where we grieve together.”

Activities over the weekend include journaling and reflection, small group sharing, guided exercises from Macy’s The Work That Reconnects to help transform grief into connection, courage, and renewed purpose, and the Collective Grief Ceremony that employs drumming, singing, and movement to create a sacred container where grief can be held, honored, and released.

Lia Grippo, Matef Harmachis, Ulises Rios, Jenn and Marcelino Sepulveda, as well as Lauren David and Stacy McCrory are part of the container that will support the ritual throughout the weekend. 

“It takes a lot of people to hold a space that offers safety and protection where people can come and grieve in all the ways That grief wants to be expressed,” Buczaczer said. “They’re all versed in different approaches. Wilderness Youth Project is hosting, but it’s meant to be held by community members. We hope others learn ways of how to hold space for the community to grieve so that more of us have the tools to be able to hold a grief ritual together.” 

If even reading this brings up fear, shame or resistance, that’s to be expected. Indeed, one of the ways to know if the ritual might be of value is to ask yourself some questions, Buczaczer suggested.

“Are you hiding your grief? Do you feel shame around your grief? Did somebody tell you once that you shouldn’t cry or grieve in public? Did somebody tell you you’ve got to hold it together and be strong? Have you been told that if your grief encompasses rage and anger and you want to scream or use profanity, that it’s not acceptable? Most of us in Western culture have been told at least one of those things. So we have been conditioned to hold onto our own grief, not to bother anybody else, and not to seek support from community. But we welcome whatever comes up. It’s an opportunity to be witnessed and held in however your grief wants to be expressed.”

Visit https://wyp.org/grief-ritual to register or for more information and resources

Wild Belonging Welcomes Grief

Four weeks after the Wilderness Youth Project weekend ritual, Alex Slutzky’s Wild Belonging will hold its annual Community Grief Ritual event on November 15. “We gather together at the common well of grief to tend our hearts, sing our tears; to be with whatever your particular experience is at this time, whether grief, shame, rage, numbness, fear, joy, resistance,” Slutzky says in the event’s materials. “It still feels relevant to have places to grieve and honor what we love together, to be in solidarity and heartbroken openness over personal losses or any number of the sorrows of our world. We witness, accompany, and have each other’s back, when, as Martin Prechtel says, ‘the grief may be so strong, we fear we might drown, and we need to know someone is there to pull us out of the water.’ Grief is a given in this life, a natural part of the human experience, meant to be shared with others, not in isolation, and with a ritual container big enough to hold the magnitude of our losses and well as the magnificence of our love and praise.”

Slutzky has worked with both Sobonfu Somé and Malidome Somé, been mentored by Francis Weller and trained in related work with the late Joanna Macy (Despair and Empowerment/The Work that Reconnects), Deena Metzger (Grief into Vision) and Martin Prechtel (Grief and Praise), among others. The Wild Belonging ritual also recognizes the Chumash people, on whose land we all live, and recognizes as well all of our ancestral traditional rites and condolence ceremonies from around the world. 

Community song leader/psychotherapist Elisabeth Gonella, Hospice’s Kolmi Majumdar and writer/facilitator/psychosomatic practitioner Rene Tonalli join Slutsky in the Ritual Support Team. 

“Tending to and metabolizing our grief often transforms into gifts of beauty, action, and wholehearted care for our world,” she says. 

The ritual, which will take place 9:30 am-5 pm at Trinity Episcopal Church (1500 State St.) is scheduled around Veterans Day as a call for peace. Admission is by sliding scale donation of $40-$120 with no one being turned away for lack of funds. 

Visit www.eventbrite.com/e/community-grief-and-gratitude-ritual-tickets-1501700118479 or www.alexisslutzky.com

Land’s End 

After a summer hiatus, Slutzky is also resuming leading Land Listening Circle, held 2-5 pm every third Saturday of the month, starting with October 18. The gathering at a local park is a practice held in a circle of community, where participants share stories and center their relationship with the holy in nature, offering listening and attunement to the land as a gift and receiving the stories, experiences and relational gifts in reciprocity.

Details on the free events are provided with registration at www.alexisslutzky.com/land-listening-earth-circle. 

Lifting Voices in Protest 

The Santa Barbara Community Song Circle that meets every Tuesday evening at Yoga Soup informally participated in the last three earlier No Kings Rallies on lower State Street and Stearns Wharf. At each event, more of the group’s singers participated, often joined by those just passing by or looking in. Now Indivisible Santa Barbara, which coordinates the rallies in town, has invited the circle to join in the upcoming event on October 18 at Alameda Park, slated for 12 – 3 pm followed by a march to De La Guerra Plaza. The rally will be the first where newly minted “song sparklers” have the chance to lead in public, having undergone a six-hour “training” called “Together In Song: Finding Your Voice for the Movement” led by Yoga Soup’s Heather Stevenson and Unitarian Society Community Choir leader Gwendolyn Kilfoyle. It’s a cinch that “Courage” will be among the selections, with the lyric of “Courage is not the absence of fear / It’s feeling the fear / Being afraid / and showing up anyway.” (Repeated with various activities substituting for “showing up”). 

Details at www.mobilize.us/nokings/event/839871

Dive Into Silence at Sunburst Sanctuary

The retreat center hosts its Fall Silent Retreat next month in Lompoc amidst the stunning natural landscapes of Sunburst Ranch. The gathering – slated for November 6-9 – will delve into practices of silence and mindfulness, fostering a broader and more peaceful experience of life.  

The registration deadline is October 29. Call (805) 736-6528 or visit www.sunburst.org.