Good Grief is a group exploration of our collective grief through the frameworks of Francis Weller’s Five Gates of Grief (The Wild Edge of Sorrow). Inspired by our EcoGathering on Grieving during the autumnal Composting series in 2024 and an increasing urgency to process the compounding loss we experience as the continuation of modernity relies on genocide, ecocide, omnicide and fascism’s impingement on our basic rights and liberties, we will hold space to tend to the complex and often unaddressed grief that accompanies these losses and expand our emotional capacity for collective grieving as a skill for navigating uncertain futures.
In this fifth session we will focus on The Fifth Gate of Grief and the last entryway into the Weller’s Communal Hall of Sorrows, Ancestral Grief. Walking through this gate asks us to address the generations of untended grief and compounded losses of our ancestors, passed on to us to heal and hold. In this Sharing Session all participants are welcome to release the grief that arises at this gate to be witnessed and held in the collective well of sorrow. It’s highly recommended that you attend the companion Integration Session offered the following week, for the sake of group continuity and comfortability, as well as the opportunity to fully sit with the experience of witnessing and processing the grief at this gate.
Recommended Resources
The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller, Chapter 3
For the fifth and final session of this series, it’s highly recommended that you read the section of this chapter subtitled “The Fifth Gate: Ancestral Grief” (pages 63-69)
The Five Gates of Grief
A brief summary of each of the five gates of grief