Grief and Praise Space

Welcome to a space to creatively name, tend and honour our loves and losses together in community.

'Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses. If we do not grieve what we miss, we are not praising what we love. We are not praising the life we have been given in order to love. If we do not praise whom we miss, we are ourselves in some way dead. So grief and praise make us alive.' - Martin Prechtel, 'The Smell of Rain on Dust'

This session will allow you to explore what resources, supports and brings you joy as well as opening to your grief with short guided creative art-making and writing invitations. There will be space to express your grief in any way that feels right for you, witnessed and held by a supportive group.

Gathering to tend our grief together enriches our web of interbeing, bringing connection and care to places in our hearts and beings that might be contracted, loving, longing, isolated, heartbroken, sad, shut down, depressed, numb, angry, raging, despairing, hurting, healing.

We are not gathering to solve anything. The intention is to apprentice to and tend our grief, to give expression to its mysterious living movement. When we do this we may find we can begin to open to and weave relief, connection and beauty with our loss.

By spending time with and releasing our grief through creating, sound, silence, intuitive movement or words, we can begin to absorb the nutrients from our experiences and release the waste. Unexpressed grief is not benign! It can block and weigh us down, impacting and distorting our relationships and potential to live in the present moment.

The session will include creative and body-based practices to resource ourselves, stir and share our grief in circle and to soothe, integrate and rest afterwards.

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Facilitation

Hosted by Rosanna Cooper, Arts Psychotherapist. Rosanna holds so much faith in what happens when we gather together in our creativity, just as we are. You may not think of yourself as creative and that's so ok, but psst...you truly are! It is part of our innate human nature. We are all creators, whether we feel connected to this capacity or not.

Rosanna has worked in the public, private and charity sector and currently works in private practice seeing clients 1:1 and facilitating community groups.

This offering is inspired by an 'Apprenticing to Grief' training completed with Sophy Banks and her team. The facilitation of the space draws on and gives thanks to the practices, teachings and rituals of elders including Sophy Banks, Jeremy Thres, Maeve Gavin, Sobonfu Somé, the Dagara grieftending tradition, Joanna Macy, Francis Weller, Camille Sapara Barton, Martin Prechtel, and others.

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What kind of grief can I express?

All griefs are welcome. Building on Francis Weller's 'gates of grief', these identifed themes can help to frame the varied flavours of grief we may be carrying:

1 All that we love we will lose (Francis Weller)
2 The places that did not receive love (Francis Weller)
3 The sorrows of the world (Francis Weller)
4 What we expected but did not receive (Francis Weller)
5 Ancestral grief (Francis Weller)
Optional extra Gates of Grief:
6 Trauma (Francis Weller’s optional gate)
7 The harm I have caused to myself and others (Sophy Banks & Azul Thomé)
8 Anticipatory grief – fear of what is to come (Sarah Pletts)
9 Other – to include anything that doesn’t resonate with another gate (Sarah Pletts)

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Timings and cost

Each session runs monthly for 3 hours 15 mins. We will not be on screen the whole time.

Once you sign up, you will receive an e-mail 2 days before the session with joining instructions for the call as well as what to prepare ahead of the session.

50% of ticket proceeds will go to Medical Aid for Palestinans to support the liberation of our brothers and sisters. I am of Jewish descent with holocaust history so I acknowledge and honour the deep Jewish soul wound and grief too. Please do not let money be a barrier - there is also a ticket option to pay what feels good to you.

I am a freelance practitioner so the other 50% of funds support me to run and offer the space.

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Is this right for me?

If your grief currently feels incredibly raw, or you are experiencing a severe mental health crisis, or feel particularly unsupported in day to day life, this session may not be suitable for you at the current time. Please feel free to be in touch if you are unsure and we can connect and feel it out together.

I look forward to welcoming you to tend our grief and offer praise; to remember together our wider kinship and belonging to each other and the earth.

Feel free to get in touch with any questions you may have ahead of the session.