This past weekend, we gathered in the long light of summer, drawn together by a longing. A longing unique to us, ancient, and as natural as the human itself. We came bearing the invisible weight of what we’ve lost—loved ones who have died, identities that no longer fit, dreams that were never met, oceans choked with grief, families fractured by silence or circumstance. We came not to solve our sorrow, but to honor it. To give it a place at the table. To let it breathe. Let it rest. Let it rage. Let it be felt.
For two days, we lived inside a container of courageous feeling. We built altars with our hands, placed stones and petals with intention, and gently coaxed our grief and rage out of hiding in their own time. We made a nest in which they were welcome and we admired them with great curiosity and patience. We spoke the unspeakable. We wept for children and animals and forests and futures. We screamed for our beloveds lost to suicide, for the partners we couldn’t save, for the fathers who left too early or stayed too long in their absence. We howled for the lives we thought we would have. And we were not alone.
We had each other.
We had the trees, the many birds that sang, the earth beneath bare feet, the blue skies, our loved ones that supported us being there by watching the kids, or checking in on us with sweet messages from across town.
And we had the shrines.
The grief shrine— filled with the stones, water, flowers, and all that would be buried and burned after the ritual.
The forgiveness and water alter, full of softness—inspiration, reminders of beauty, of compassion, of softness.
The ancestral and fire altar, full of strength — the faces of our beloved dead watching us, the power of fire present.
The rage shrine, full —a place to scream and physically throw ourselves against .
These shrines became our sacred mirrors. They held what no single one of us could carry alone.
We had the music. The djembe found me again, not as a performance, but as a prayer. Its pulse, my own. And my harmonium, screamed all my longings so softly as we invited awe and movement into the circle. I sat with my own grief—the quiet ache of single motherhood, the leaving of a home I really believed would last, the love still lodged in my chest like a book of poems unfinished.
It is no small thing to host a grief ritual on the land where I live. To welcome others into this meadow, this yurt, this place where I once arrived so broken—and where I now live in devotion to what heals. I am learning my new family here. These swaying trees. These native (and non native) plants. The unique songs of the birds here. The way the sunlight streams through the small window and my daughter coos me awake. The voices, the laughter, the shared meals in a community that I am new to. To do this work here is a way of placing myself more firmly, home.
Home is such a deep root of my grief. The home I wanted. The home I thought I would have. The way I thought home would feel and look like. And this, is how I now create my home, claim my home, make home here. I am so grateful to be offering grief care supported by this land and those whom have and continue to tend it.
Sobonfu Somé’s teachings echoed through all we did. Her voice, her lineage, the rituals of her people that she crafted and brought here. We carry the wisdom she and Malidoma Some passed on with reverence. This ritual was born from that current.
On Sunday, after the final grieving ritual had closed and our tears dried upon our faces in the sun, something unexpected seeped into the space… Awe.
It came in resting, in sound, and in the growing song of the harmonium that invited these bodies to live and love still. It came in the sound of bare feet on the floor designed and built by people living here. It came in a teary hug exchanged between strangers who, just days before, did not know each other’s names—but who now know each other’s pain.
The question I wonder so deeply is what how does it feel when we are grieved? When we are held well, when we are allowed to be as big as feel in our grief, our disappointment, our rage? It’s so unfamiliar, can we slow down and feel it in our bodies? What’s it feel like?
Who are we and what choices to we make on how to live and to love when we feel this way?
This weekend we made a small village where grief was not exiled, but welcomed. Where sorrow wove wildly through our ceremony. Where awe grew in the cracks of our breaking open, and where belonging held us.
We remember now: grief and gratitude are sisters. And the work of feeling is the work of living awake.
To those who came, thank you. To those still to come, we’ll be here. With drumbeat and altar, with cedar and tears, with open hands and open hearts.
This is the work.
This is the way back to belonging.
And you were never meant to do this alone.
—Alyssa
Barefoot on this land with a full heart.