Winter Tenderness for Grief

What if we’re part of something vast and interactive, all wellness and suffering is collaborative, and trying to find our way out of pain using just our human brains is impossible?

What if there’s medicine for every ailment and we’re part of the medicine? What if we’ve simply forgotten how to offer ourselves and receive? What if we can remember?

For this retreat, we’ll play with the possibility that we’re held inside something that knows its way to wellness; if we listen and try to move collaboratively, the system might balance in ways we can’t think up on our own.

We’ll test this possibility by working with a particular pain or quandary. We will work with nature, each other, and our deep, wise selves to explore ways we might find a new understanding of our grief and how to move with it.

We’re excited to offer a place to gather generously in the presence of our loss, see how strong and beautiful we are when we show our suffering, and feel empowered to live a bit more genuinely, more of the time. 

Sascha & Laura

What to expect at this gathering:

Over the two nights, we will have many offerings for the gentle tending of each other and ourselves.

We’ll spend the weekend feeling what it’s like to be cared for by each other and the non-human world, with less dependence on spoken language for connection. We’ll be offering a number of meditation and writing prompts throughout our time together as well as guided movement and sound work. 

We’ll have time to share spoken words with each other, but our focus will be on noticing how our grief responds to other, perhaps less practiced, ways of being together and being known.

Friday

• 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm Arrive at Elohee, check in, settle into your weekend home. Walk about, get familiar with the land.
• 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm Gather at the Forest Studio. We will make a circle, offer gratitude to the land and her stewards, go over the itinerary and logistics and then introduce ourselves to each other. We’ll share names and pronouns, and a few sentences to describe how we are, really. We’ll begin our weekend practice of listening attentively and witnessing each other. We will close for dinner with breathwork.
• 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm Communal dinners
• 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm We’ll gather at the fire pit for our first grief spill – a chance for us to lay down, in language, whatever is weighing most heavily. We’ll welcome grief from all loss and listen generously and quietly. We will conclude our spill with physical grounding and a group wish-sharing activity.
• After the spill – The Forest Studio will be open with oracle cards, blankets and cushions, prompts for journaling, and self-guided yoga. Perhaps you’ll be ready for sleep, further connections, or a quiet moment on the Elohee grounds. Do the thing that calls you.

Saturday

• 8:00 am – 9:00 am Breakfast. Silent or conversational, as you choose.
• 9:30 am – 11:30 am We’ll reconvene at the Forest Studio. Expanding our exploration of how our grief responds to non-verbal connection, we’ll offer journal/meditation prompts that draw attention to our physical and energetic bodies and the way they meet the larger, non-human constructed world. We’ll spend our morning cycling, at the rhythm that feels right, between writing, meditating, movement, and wilderness walking. Cycling out and in with the woods and each other, we’ll notice how they and we are new each time and how they and we are constantly ourselves.
• 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm Lunch. Silent or conversational, as you choose.
• 1:00 – 4:15 – Open time to walk, rest, book a massage, or  join us for one of the optional activities below. Do the thing that calls you. Some options with us or with Elohee directly:

  • 1pm – 4:15pm – Book a massage with Elohee sometime during this window if you would like.

  • 1pm – 3:30pm – Spend self guided time in the forest studio. Guide yourself with oracle cards, rest, movement, meditation and writing

  • 1pm – Join Laura for a quiet walk in the woods. Meet at the Forest Studio after lunch. We’ll take this opportunity to practice spilling our grief aloud to this complex, intelligent system and feeling for how we nourish and find nourishment within it. We will walk out and back along a path. On our walk out we’ll tell the forest about our loss and grief. We’ll ask her and all the ones she holds to see us and help us. We’ll offer ourselves up as hurt and wanting. On our walk back we will give ourselves to the forest and all she holds. We’ll offer our unique and needed wellness and welcome her and her wanting ones to take what they can use.

  • 3:30pm – Join Sascha at the Forest Studio for breathwork and gentle movement and writing prompts.

• 4:15 pm – 5:45 pm Second grief spill in the Forest Studio.
• 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm Dinner. All are invited to sit together and welcome conversation (or opt out for quiet, if preferred).
• 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm Sascha and Laura will lead physical care activities, including tapping, and hand, foot, and head massage, which can be exchanged or done on your own body.
• 8:00 pm – 9:00 pm Read-aloud/restorative yoga. Sascha and Laura will take turns reading aloud while you rest in a series of supported, restorative yoga poses.
• After evening tenderness – Private time to journal, meditate etc. The Forest Studio will be open with oracle cards, blankets and cushions, and prompts for journaling, meditation and self-care.

Sunday

• Wake up, wander.
• 8:00 am – 9:00 am Breakfast. Silent or conversational, as you choose.
• 9:30 am – 10:00 am Meditation, writing and yoga at the Forest Studio
• 10:00 am – 11:30 am We will close with a final grief spill and thoughts on moving back into the busy world. We will end with a quiet walk to the woods to offer our thanks and devotion before goodbyes and heading to lunch.
• 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm Lunch
• 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm Departure

For more information, contact Sascha Demerjian at info@griefhouse.org.

Check out Elohee’s Guest Information FAQs here.