Grief Tending 3 dates

Grief Tending is a space to come together in a group to feel and release our grief. 

A simple way to explain why we might want to tend to our grief is that we often feel better after a good cry. We all carry pain, sadness, anger and loneliness within us. When we experience the full range of our feelings, we become more whole and feel more alive. This can then ripple out to positively impact the people and the world around us. Processing and letting our grief out may unlock our ability to feel more positive emotions. Unexpressed or suppressed grief can cause problems for ourselves, our relationships, society and the natural world.

We may not always be able to feel our grief, we may not always cry, yet that is the intention we bring to grief tending. We are showing up to feel our pain and create space for feelings that we might not have time for in everyday life or that we might usually avoid. The focus is on feeling emotions, rather than narratives in the mind or fixing things. There may be very strong expressions of emotion in this space, or not.

Joining Information

On registering for this event, you will be required to fill in a Google form; this helps you prepare for grief tending and helps the facilitator to support your journey.

There is no late entry, so please aim to arrive 15 minutes before the session starts.  

No refunds are available for this event. If you pass your ticket on, please let me know, and please tell the person you pass your ticket on to that they must complete the Google Form. 

Mycelium Space is up a flight of 16 stairs and a further flight of 3 stairs; there is a handrail but no wheelchair access currently. If price is a barrier to attending this event, please get in touch with me directly.

More About Grief Tending 

What do people grieve?
There is no prescription for what you might want to grieve. You can grieve any experience, situation, thought or feeling, past or present. It might be things from long ago or recent pain; it might be personal to you or grief for the world. We will work with the five gateways of grief as defined by Francis Weller and the sixth gateway defined by my teacher, Sophy Banks. The gateways are; the sorrows of the world, places which have not known love, ancestral trauma, everything we love we will lose, what we expected and did not receive, and the harm we have caused.

What happens at a grief tending workshop?
In this workshop, we will go on a group journey together. We begin with an introduction and set of agreements, then we will do exercises to connect with the gateways and with our grief. There will be a section where we honour and express our grief, before resting, integration and closing.

Why do we do grief tending in a group?
It can feel overwhelming to deal with grief on our own, so being with a group gives us a sense of support and community. We may feel like we are the only ones who have grief, and being in a group reminds us that it’s part of the human condition to feel grief, pain and sadness. Expressing our grief with others can help us to feel seen and heard. Seeing others in their grief can support us to go deeper into our feelings. We may connect to collective sources of grief in a new way and gain new perspectives. Our grief may be hard to access, so having a group structure and held space can help us to connect with and express our grief effectively.

What should I be aware of? 
Grief tending requires participants to have a baseline level of emotional stability and external emotional support in their lives. Grief tending is not therapy, and it is not specifically bereavement support. Grief tending cannot replace ongoing therapy or a support network of people in your life you can turn to. You may feel tender after grieving, so it’s vital to have people you can connect with and share your experience with. If you are currently completely overwhelmed with feelings of grief, sadness, isolation and depression or if you are in a mental health crisis, you should contact your GP for advice or seek one-to-one support from a mental health professional. Grief tending in a group is not the right place for you at this stage in your journey. 

The origins and elders of Grief Tending
I completed my Apprenticing to Grief with Sophy Banks, Jeremy Thres and Sarah Pletts of Grief Tending in Community. The work they teach is indebted to Malidoma Some and Sibonfu Some of the Dagara people of Burkina Faso, who committed to bringing the wisdom of grief tending to the West; both have now passed. Sophy Banks’ work on ‘Healthy Human Culture’ is a core influence on my work; it builds on traditional grief work and places it within a Western psychological framing, emphasising how necessary and transformative it is to cultivate effective return paths from individual and collective trauma. Francis Weller codified the work of the Dagara people and others when he authored the ‘Wild Edge of Sorrow’ and the five gateways to grief. Maeve Gavin, now passed, inspired the Grief Tending in Community project, and her work, the Keening Wake, explores traditional keening and grief practice in Ireland and the UK. Joanna Macey’s life’s work, known as ‘The Work that Reconnects’ and ‘Active Hope’ (with Dr Chris Johnstone), also provide foundational framings for my grief work.

Your Facilitator Sarah Vero 

I am a science of wellbeing communicator, campaigner and group facilitator. I lead workshops that support people to find a greater sense of wellbeing, deliver corporate training and keynotes on mental resilience, and communicate the science of happiness to the general public through my campaign work. I provide evidence-based frameworks and embodied, practical tools for wellbeing that people can apply in their own lives. My work offers pathways towards a sense of aliveness, wholeness and connection, which get us closer to what it means to be human. For the past nine years, I have led meaningful group experiences, events, workshops, rituals, and transformational spaces. I trained in Apprenticing to Grief with Sophy Banks and Jeremy Thres in 2021. 

You can read more about my work at sarahvero.net