You’re not meant to grieve alone.
Join me for an upcoming event.
Sweet Grief: Poetry of Love and Loss - Poets Katherine Durham Oldmixon Garza (Life Afterlife: A Book of the Hours) and Cindy Huyser (Cartography) will read from each of their recent books of poems on love—and loss. I’ll be facilitating a conversation between these books and their authors. We’ll talk about the wisdom of gardens, road trips, and more. Sunday, March 22nd at 3 pm at Prizer Arts & Letters, 212 Main St., Smithville, TX. (Doors open at 2:30 pm.) Free. Learn more.
Grief in This Green World: A Grief & Creativity Retreat - Replenish yourself at this one-day retreat just 25 minutes from central Austin. Reconnect deeply with yourself and your grief, through a day including ritual and generous time to rest, walk the labyrinth or nature trails, write, make a collage, or take mindful photographs. Saturday, May 16th. Cost: $150-50 (sliding scale). Limited to 12 participants. Learn more.
What is grief tending?
We all need care. When you watch over a pot of simmering soup, you tend. When you cultivate a garden, you tend to plants. When you tend to someone who’s sick, you sit by their side. Grief tending is gentle, non-interventional, and led by the arising needs and experience of the grieving person. Grief tending is fostering a place and time in which you can feel safe to grieve in your own way and in your own time with an experienced guide. When your grief is well-tended, you feel heard, able to ride grief’s waves, and eventually open to the positive transformation that sorrow invites.
Some people who work with grieving people call themselves “grief coaches.” But the role of a coach is to bring out the best in people. Frankly, we are not at our best when we are grieving—and we don’t need to be! I like that the word “tend” comes from the idea of stretching, as in reaching out one’s hand.
Take care of your sorrow.
Your grief is precious. Your loss deserves witnessing and acknowledgment—whether it’s the death of a loved one, loss of a relationship or pet, ancestral wounds, worry for our planet, or life’s many disappointments. Our culture tells us to “hurry up and grieve,” but our bodies and souls tell us differently. Let me show you gentle ways to weather loss and embrace joy again.