.

NEW DATES COMING SOON One of the calls that my being and heart responded to sometime ago was to join in sacred circle Azul Thomé, Christina Jarc and five other apprentices on an initiatory ‘Ensouling’ journey over eight months through Gratitude and Grief to become a guide; apprenticing myself to the revelatory work of Grief with the intention to also then hold space for others. The apprenticeship wove within it many threads and sources of learning and we deeply journeyed through Francis Weller’s ‘Five Gates of Grief’ through ritual, ceremony, sharing, time on the land and time creating our ‘Earth Art’ piece or flag; in the words of Azul, these pieces were ‘infused with ritual, informed by Earth for Life.’ In many ways I feel this in itself underpinned much of our time together. This work continues to blow my heart open in the wake of meeting Death more intimately through the loss of my mother in early 2020 and gathering in spaces for our collective griefs to be shared, expressed and held, continues to pave the way for my soul to sing the song it has longed to sing… perhaps for generations. I feel together we are alchemising something potent, returning to what is ancient through gathering in sacred circle. In the words of Francis Weller, it would seem for the most part, that we live in a ‘grief-phobic and death-denying society’. He goes on to suggest that it is our ‘unexpressed sorrows, the congested stories of loss, that, when left unattended, block our access to the soul’. In my experience, this resonates. It is my intention in these monthly circles to gather and compost our sorrows however they wish to be expressed. It is healing to see and feel that we are not alone, and it has been a gift for me to journey the dance of grief, this kaleidoscope of colour, texture, shape and flavour with others in a held container and space; to share, to be heard, witnessed, received, and to witness and receive others. here is a brokenness out of which comes the unbroken, A shatteredness Out of which blooms the unshatterable. There is a sorrow Beyond all grief which leads to joy And a fragility Out of whose depths emerges strength. There is a hollow space Too vast for words Through which we pass with each loss, Out of whose darkness We are sanctified into being. There is a cry deeper than all sound Whose serrated edges cut the heart As we break open to the place inside Which is unbreakable and whole, While learning to sing. ~ Rashani Réa, ‘The Unbroken’