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 Integration Session, we will focus on working with the grief that was revealed in the last week’s Sharing Session for The Second Gate of Grief, The places that have not known love. Through guided discussion and ritual, we will allow this unearthed grief to move into practice as we venture into a collective Apprenticeship with Sorrow. It’s highly recommended that you attend the companion Sharing Session offered the week prior, 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 second session of this series, it’s highly recommended that you read the section of this chapter subtitled “The Second Gate: The places that have not known love” (pages 31-46)
The Five Gates of Grief
A brief summary of each of the five gates of grief