Returning.
Home to the farm. Home to the ocean.
I’ve been home less than a week.
The rains came home much sooner than I.
On the farm, the days are full: shared dinners, muddy boots, projects half-finished and picked up again. There’s wood to make into kindling, leaks to mend, fruit somehow still on the trees, and lots of scheduling meetings :).
In my little home, we spend most nights by candle light and hum of harmonium.
There’s beauty here.
And there’s the other stuff too—the tangled reality of living together. Communication and miscommunication. Different ideas of “clean”. The ache of shared goals and dropped balls. The quiet moments of tenderness that follow misunderstanding, when someone finally says, “I was acting out of hurt, I’m sorry”.
This is the work of belonging.
And it is NOT clean work.
It is not the tucked in, clean and organized kind of work we wish it could be, expect it should be. It’s not without dissapointment and exhaustion. It’s not without humility and surrender. It’s alive and dynamic, this work.
This work of belonging.
This work of village-ing.
This work of creating together.
This work that is also grief work.
From Farm to Shore
In just a few days, we’ll gather by the ocean for the fourth annual grief integration retreat.
Each year, as winter nears, we make this pilgrimage—a sudden village formed at the edge of the world. For two days, we BE together in a space strong enough to hold our heartbreak and pour beauty and care into those cracks at the same time.
This gathering was born from my longing to create what I needed most: a place and a people to grieve with. A place to honor all that has been lost BEFORE we turn towards gratitude, thanksgiving, and the forced merriment of the holidays. A place to be real about what hurts. A place to visit and return to. A place. A ritual. A village.
Each year, I’m humbled by what happens there.
How new perspective pierces through the morning light.
How laughter returns through tears.
How the moon shines through the window at dawn, and Ocean churns.
How we remember our innate connection to the land, to the sea, to the skies.
The village we form is brief, but it’s real. It reminds us what’s possible when we stop pretending we’re supposed to hold it all alone. When we stop acting so busy and so important. When we stop believing the story that it is not safe enough to feel. When we stop believing we are not strong enough to heal.
The Need for Beauty and Tenderness
It feels, in these times, that the world is unraveling faster than I can see.
The news alone seems to require my dissociation to look at. The noise of daily life is untethering and the desire to escape is strong.
And yet, we need beauty more than ever.
Not as decoration, but as medicine.
We need to be in awe again—by the curling of a wave, the warmth of a flame, the taste of food prepared for us, the surprise of our favorite chocolate bar surfacing with one piece left. We need tenderness that slows us down enough to feel our lives. We need the kind of awe that reminds us we still belong to something alive and dynamic.
The work of grief is not to collapse into despair, but to open ourselves more fully to life. To build trust in ourselves and our capacity to feel deeply. To remember what we belong to. To create resilient relationships that we can count on. To learn to love still.
As I sit here tonight, the candles flickering—the wood crackling in the stove— I feel all those who are preparing to be together at the Ocean this weekend. I feel lucky to hold snapshots of their stories and though I feel prepared, I also feel ready to surrender and let the ritual and the grief move through our group as it chooses.
Tonight, the lights are off in my home and I’m thinking about how the power goes out sometimes—literally, and in us. How we forget the warmth of the fire that waits for us. We forget the candles that have been pushed to the back of the shelf. And I’m thinking how easy it can be to remember.
The ocean calls us back to that flame.
Back to the tenderness, the awe, the beauty that make us human.
Back to one another.
Back to life.
With love and gratitude,
Alyssa
Save the date for the next grief retreat weekend happening in Portland February 27th weekend. Details to come: www.alyssarosehealingarts.com.