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Down-to-Earth Ecoshire
Sage, California
Community Grief Ritual: 4-Day Traditional Ceremony for Honoring and Releasing Grief
How is unexpressed grief affecting you?
What could happen if your grief were welcomed in community, for honoring and release?
What if grief is the continued conversation with love?
Transforming Grief
We live in a culture skewed to the expression of joy and enthusiasm and avoidant of grief and emotions considered “negative”. Grief is as natural a part of the human experience as are all our emotions - just as night is to daylight. Yet grief in our culture is often run underground, hidden behind shame and denial, left to fester in the further recesses of our psyche without the same loving attention and open sharing we offer to our more jubilant emotions.
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Unexpressed grief, like all forms of energy, has to move. It searches for a way out of the box in which we have attempted to lock it. Grief needs to be seen and heard, given to dance and song. Our experiences of loss acknowledged as profound rites of passage in our lives. Grief is the continued conversation of love.
What is a Grief Ritual?
The Dagara tribe are from Burkina Faso, deep in West Africa. One of their respected Elders and medicine men is Malidoma Somé, whose first name means “friend of the enemy”. His purpose in life - ascribed to him before birth - is to help bring the teachings of his tribe to the modern world to reconnect us with our hearts. The Grief Ritual offered by Rites of Passage Council is an adaptation of a three day grief ritual traditional in his village. With Malidoma’s blessing, we bring this offering to you. Our guide is Malidoma's student and the founder and director of Rites of Passage Council, Kedar Brown.
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During our time together we will deepen our connection to the natural world, gather and share the stories of grief from our lives and bring them together in ritual space for respect, honoring and release.
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This indigenous African grief ritual offers a soul cleansing rite to release grief, lighten our soul and let our true spirit be heard, deepening our sense of balance and fulfillment.
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Our version is a closed container that brings people together for four days in a beautiful natural setting. Here we create our own village, build community and learn to lean in towards one another like a tree thirsty for water. We come together to create the ceremonial space of the village fire, an ancestor shrine and a grief portal to the other world. That evening, through drumming and song we grieve together as a village, as a people who share a common life experience.​
Learn More & Meet Your Guide
Your guide, Kedar Brown, is the founder and director of Rites of Passage Council, an organization offering nature immersion ceremonial encampments around the world. He is an internationally known ceremonialist, healer, intuitive and teacher of psychological and spiritual awareness with over thirty-five years of professional experience.
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Learn more about Kedar on the Rites of Passage Council website
and hear him speak about grief ritual in these videos:
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“From an indigenous perspective, the individual psyche can be healed only by addressing one’s relationship with the visible worlds of nature and community and one’s relationship with the invisible forces of the ancestors and Spirit allies. It is in ritual that nature, community, and the Spirit World come together to support the inner building of identity.”
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— Elder Malidoma Some
Loss is Part of Life
As modern culture has moved further away from the cycles of the natural world, we have learned to avoid the natural turning of the wheel of life. We push away the darkness with electric lights and screens, shield ourselves from winter with central heating and heated seats and shy away from our grief with endless entertainment or busy-ness. Indigenous cultures know all too well that night always falls, winter is inevitable and we all experience loss at some point.
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Whether it be loss through the death of a loved one, the end of a signifiant relationship, transitioning out of a job, moving away from a beloved community or the growing awareness of the loss of species and precious ecosystems on our planet, grief finds each of us in time. Our personal grief can also be a manifestation of ancestral trauma or unresolved loss that has moved down through our lineage continuing to look for release and healing. We all must apprentice ourselves to grief at some point.
Grief is to be Shared
We are not designed to experience our grief alone, however personal it might feel. Since the beginning of time, humans have come together to share their grief and help move it through, so it doesn’t get stuck in the body and psyche causing lingering sadness, physical pain and disease or disruptive behavior patterns passed down through generations. In indigenous cultures, grief rituals are held for the health and wellbeing of the individuals and the community.
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It is our collective responsibility to hold each other through the most challenging times in life. Indigenous cultures have always known this. It is only in modern times that we have banished our grief and so we turn to cultures with intact rites and rituals for dealing with grief in community. ​
“Grief is not a personal dilemma. It is a community, ritual responsibility to tend to the wellbeing of both the living and the dead. Our communal tears will flow as a river from this world to the other as an offering that activates connection, healing and belonging in both worlds.”
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— Kedar S. Brown
More About our Partner for this Event, Rites of Passage Council
Rites of Passage Council has been guiding people across their personal thresholds for more than 35 years. Their team of facilitators and ceremonial midwives have all trained under the guidance of Kedar S. Brown M.Ed. The team has varied backgrounds in psychotherapy, wilderness rites of passage, somatic therapy, professional counseling, Hakomi body-centered psychotherapy, depth psychology, marriage and family therapy, ecotherapy, shamanism and sound healing.
During your four day and three-night encampment you will be supported by highly skilled guides through the various phases of this powerful ritual, including:
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Learning how to access and express hidden emotions
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Building community and safe, open communication
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Unleashing your creativity, joy and connection with other
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Deepening your connection with Nature
Our guides are all highly trained through the 18-month Rites of Passage Guide training and are certified in Wilderness First Aid.
“In this ritual, I was able to experience an eye opening weekend. I went in with an open mind and came back with a better understanding of where I came from. I was able to leave with a feeling of a connection with a higher power that I can call my own. I feel as though someone is looking over me trying to guide me on the right path now.”
— 27 year old male​
What's Included?
Bring your camping gear and everything else is provided, including:
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Dinner on Thursday, 3 meals per day on Friday and Saturday, and brunch on Sunday
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Traditional West African grief ritual
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The full attention of our dedicated, highly-trained staff
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Drumming, movement and poetry
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Instruction in the Four Seasonal Shields of Initiation
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Personal myth making and storytelling
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Self and group generated ceremony
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Ritual process, body centered, group psychotherapy
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Healing ancestral trauma
We will provide you with a full gear list and more details on the activities after registration.
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Recommended reading prior to the Grief Ritual:
“Ritual Healing and Community” by Malidoma Somé
“The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief And Praise” by Martin Pretchel
Both are available on audio and in paperback.
Registration Details
Our Location:
We'll be camping at Down-to-Earth Ecoshire in Sage, California (outside of Hemet), a campground and event center dedicated to land restoration, regenerative stewardship, and community. Learn more about Down-to-Earth Ecoshire here.
Registration Deadline:
October 9, 2024
Illness Policy:
Within our group we will have varied levels of risk and vulnerability to infection with covid-19 and other contagious illnesses. Let's take good care of each other! With this in mind, we request:
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please only attend this event if you feel well and have no symptoms of any contagious illness
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consider wearing a mask to protect others if you know you've been exposed to anyone ill
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in the week leading up to the retreat, if you're taking public transportation/flying on an airplane, consider masking during your travels
During the retreat, we will be outdoors. Covid tests and masks will be available, and optional.
Refund Policy:
Cancellations more than 60 days prior to the event are eligible for a 75% refund.
Cancellations 30-60 days prior to the event are eligible for a 50% refund.
Cancellations less than 30 days prior to the event are not eligible for a refund.
In case of cancellation due to illness or emergency, please reach out to us at info@insidetransformation.life for special considerations.
If for any reason Inside Transformation needs to cancel or postpone this event, you will be notified as soon as possible and offered a full refund or credit toward a future event. If you are flying to the event, we strongly encourage you to purchase refundable or transferrable tickets.
The Well of Grief
by David Whyte
Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface of the well of grief
turning downward through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe
will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold and clear,
nor find in the darkness glimmering
the small round coins
thrown away by those
who wished for something else
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