
Grief Ritual Integration and Resources
Grief Ritual After Care
Below is a list of resources for your community grief ritual integration. We wish you much support, resource, gratitude, and joy in your continued journey. May these poems, music, and more from our time together continue to nourish and hold you.
Breathe & Connect with Nature
Create a reminder to take a full, deep breath into your abdomen regularly throughout your day (place your hand on your abdomen to see it actually move), count to 4, exhale, repeat 3 times, and only then resume what you’re doing. Commune with nature as often as possible. Let the wild ones hold you in your grief journey.
Presence and Attention
Pay attention to your thoughts, dreams, feelings, synchronicities. Be open to insights and messages from ancestors, higher self, Spirit by slowing down, taking time in nature. As a co-creator of your life, set intentions, make prayers. Remember the ancient way of giving offerings to the earth, ancestors and the spirits as reciprocity for your life.
Home Altar Creation
If you feel called, build a home altar honoring your sacred grief, ancestors & compassion/forgiveness. This will be a sacred container to visit, honor what you love and the tender places within yourself. Let your intuition guide you towards colors and objects to be placed on your altar that speak to your soul and heart’s longing. For example - a deep red candle to connect with the wisdom of your ancestors. This can also be a place in nature you go to on a regular basis, a certain tree or river or spot at the beach.
Be Gentle With Yourself
Know that you have moved a lot of energy and it will continue to flow if given the opportunity. Being gentle with yourself and willing to move slowly will allow any insights and/or further resolving and/or revitalizing your passion/purpose to be integrated.
Epsom or Sea Salts Bath
To release all forms of old or stagnant energy (physical, emotional, energetic), it is helpful to take an Epsom salt bath. Sea salt/Epsom salt is used for continued clearing and balancing of your physical and energetic systems. Use 1-2 cups of Epsom or sea salts in your comfortably, very warm water. Soak 15-20 minutes and try to submerge as much of your body as possible. Keep a glass of cool, (not cold), water close by to drink. If diabetic, use baking soda rather than Epsom or sea salt.
Create Good Grief Inspiration Reminders
Use post-it notes, write on your bathroom mirror, hang things on the computer screen or fridge, create a screen-saver on the computer, or leave yourself phone messages to keep welcoming grief to flow. (Suggestions: To grieve is to say ‘Yes’ to life”, “Every moment we are mourning and/or celebrating what we love”, “Grief is a movement- let is flow”, “I can share my grief”, “My grief shows me what I love”)
Reach Out & Share Your Experience
Connect with your grief partner from the circle in the way you both agreed. It can be as simple as "How is your heart? How is your grief today?"We are learning how to be with grief, and trust it has intelligence on its own. It doesn’t need to be solved or fixed. Ask others if they would be willing to listen, to hold, offer touch while refraining from giving advice (unless you ask for it). Consider sharing your own experience of the grief ritual with your families, extended community and friends, as the time feels right. You have been initiated into sacred grief work, and may feel called to be a sacred grief soul-activist by inviting others to join you and others in befriending their personal and collective griefs.
Drink Water
Make a goal of drinking half your body weight in ounces (ex: 250 lbs of weight = 125 oz. of water) throughout your day. If you’re thirsty, you’re already dehydrated! Increasing your intake of fruits and vegetables, (water-rich, live foods) helps a lot.
Cleanse Ritual Clothing
To cleanse clothing worn in ritual, add intention and gratitude when washing and if possible add a handful of salt (Dagara tradition to help cleanse energy).
Listen to Your Body
Remember that after gathering and ritual your communication with your body will be more clear than it has been. So try to listen for its requests or suggestions, such as additional rest, drinking more water, journaling, guidance for rituals, solitude, connection, movement, dance, singing, art, and time in nature. These may reduce mental pressure and thereby ease the strain on your body. There are many physical changes that take place in our brain, nervous system, and body as we grieve. Listening to your body is a good habit to form, and especially important after going through ritual and deep transformative work!
Track Your Questions and/or Experiences Between Gathering
Keep track of what allows grief to flow and/or what impedes it. Make the most of our next gathering by bringing any questions that have come up or experiences you’ve had.
Our Integration Circle will be held on Zoom, April 5th at 9:30 am pdt
Poems
-
Bird Wings
by Rumi
Your grief for what you've lost holds a mirror
up to where you're bravely working.
Expecting the worst, you look and instead,
here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.
Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralyzed.
Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings. -
Those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief,
turning down 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 by those who wished for something else.
-
The Healing Time
by Pesha Joyce Gertler
Finally on my way to yes
I bump into
all the places
where I said no
to my life
all the untended wounds
the red and purple scars
those hieroglyphs of pain
carved into my skin, my bones,
those coded messages
that send me down
the wrong street
again and again
where I find them
the old wounds
the old misdirections
and I lift them
one by one
close to my heart
and I sayholy
holy. -
Kindness
by Noami Shihab Nye
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend. -
Black Water Woods
by Mary Oliver
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillarsof light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shouldersof the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, isnameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learnedin my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other sideis salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this worldyou must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold itagainst your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go. -
Love Dogs
by Rumi
One night a man was crying,
“Allah, Allah!”
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,
“So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?”
The man had no answer for that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.
He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage,
“Why did you stop praising?”
“Because I’ve never heard anything back.”
“This longing you express
is the return message.”
The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness that wants help
is the secret cup.
Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.
There are love dogs no one knows the names of.
Give your life to be one of them. -
All of You
by Maya Luna
You.
Yes You.
All of you.
Your chaos and your madness
Your foolish nonsense
Your fearless magic
You are welcome here
Your passion and your eros
Your red fever dreams
Your resistance
Your doubt
Your power, wild and uncontained
You, yes, you
Your fist of rage
Your bottomless grief
Your heart break bursting out at the seams
Spilling out in messy floods of Inconvenient feelings
You.
Yes, you.
Your oceans of confusion
Your terror running deep
Your river of longing
Your precious illusions
Even if it makes you look foolish
Even if it makes you go mad
All of you is welcome here
Your brain tangled with neurons Firing wild impulses
From the dark forest of your unconscious
You are Welcome Here
The twisted vines and purple fog of melancholy in your heart
Your bloody messy crazy love
Your fears
Your Desires, wet with unrequited lust
Pushing and stretching to be expressed
The lies you told yourself
Your deepest regrets
The mess of never getting it exactly as you had planned
You. Yes. You.
Your awkward stumbles
Your shakey knees
Your hunger for some meaning
You are welcome Here
Your flaming hatred
Your tender broken faith
Your need for control
You are welcome here.
Your untainted innocence
Your will to rise again
The pain you try to hide.
You are welcome
Here.
I want every part of me touched and seen
I want to be as big as the universe and
As tiny as an insect
I want every contradiction
Every disproportionate feeling
Every chaotic thought to be met
Right Here.
I want to writhe and howl and groan with the deep root of Life
I want to be held with such soft sweetness that
This fragile ache finally opens and lets go.
I want to be known as a depraved and holy animal
As consciousness, as infinite
As flesh and bone and skin
I want to roll on the ground and slither
I want to scream
I want to kiss where my feet have been
I want to cry and need and feel
Right. Here.
I want to explode and hold
This ancient pulsing groan of ocean that lives in me
Right Here.
Meet me here
Where the paint touches the canvas
Where the past is dead and dangling
Where the future is a vacant space
Right Here
Where this unfolding moment is the refuge of the heart
Right Here
Come with me
You are welcome here -
Clean
By Mike Schaupp
Clean
Why is it always so?
I don’t realize
Where the hell I’m going
Until I’ve gone and come back homeSo let the moonlight
Let the starlight
Let these hot tears
Wash me cleanWe spent last night
Spilling our guts
Crying in each other’s arms
Remembering why it is we loveWe let the moonlight
We let the starlight
We let these hot Tears
Wash each other cleanSo when next it starts to rain
And there ain’t a cloud in sight
I hope that you’ll remember
I never left your sideWe let the moonlight
We let the starlight
We let these hot tears
Wash each other clean -
Weight
by Mikyö Black-Wangmo
Yes the weight is heavy
Yes the subterranean rivers run deep
Yes the mystery of the Unknown lies in darkness
Awakening through embodiment is no light matter
Right relations cannot be found in transcending form, worshipping comfort, and ignoring the impact of interdependence.
Tear those colonized ways of being from your cells.
Be humbled.
Let the heartbreak bring you to your knees 100,000 times.
Let the utter confusion of the mind discombobulate all you thought you knew to be true.
Bring your womb, heart, and forehead to the cool dark earth.
Let the weight of it all crush you to oblivion.
Breathe in the soil with your last breaths and pray to be delivered Home.
Let the magnitude of grief quake your very bones till they rattle your soul awake.
In death you are reborn.

Music
Artists
-
Sarah Songbird is a singer and songwriter based in Santa Cruz, California. Her music honors the beautiful multidimensionality of the human experience and invites her listeners to feel right along with her. Sarah draws inspiration from both her inner and outer landscapes, spinning lyrical metaphors that point to the parallels between the cycles of nature and life. She offers music in rituals, celebrations, ceremonies of birth and death, and in one-on-one healings.
YouTube:
https://youtube.com/@sarahsongbirdmusic
IG @sarahsongbirdmusic
Playlists
Grief Support
Mikyö Marie Black-Wangmo Mikyö offers Empowered Living Grief Work, one on one sessions to continue to integrate and deepen in our journey with grief. They will be opening to receive 2 new clients mid April. Email Mikyö at SubrosaSanto@gmail.com if you would like to claim one of the new client openings for 2025.
You can subscribe on their website to receive information on upcoming offerings: www.SubrosaSanto.com Phone: 575.224.6611 / IG: @mikyo.black.wangmo
Bio: Mikyö Black-Wangmo lives their life in devotion to holding and tending grief medicine as a pathway to freedom and Essence. The wild, beautiful Red Willow lands known as Taos, New Mexico is their beloved home.
As a facilitator, educator, death doula, and somatic practitioner Mikyö brings deeply cultivated presence in service to the empowerment of those they work with. They are a student of the Elements and Natural world, their indigenous mexican and more-than-human Ancestors, of Grief and Death, and of their esoteric teachers and lineages.
Their positionality as a queer, 2 spirit, indigenous PoC, transracial adoptee allows them the privilege to exist and work outside of and beyond the systems of oppression we all live in and are affected by. Mikyö is dedicated to becoming more and more joyfully alive and free in service to love and life, and in supporting others to do the same.
Dr. Jane Hansen
Dr. Jane is an Ivy-League educated psychologist and personal coach, with a background in AcroYoga and Thai massage. Her approaches are grounded in the wisdom of the body, as well as Internal Family Systems (IFS), and Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT).
Jane works both online and in-person. She lives with her husband and son in Sonoma County, CA. Hilarious and warm, she is an ideal companion for all that unfolds on an embodied voyage of healing, creation, and transformation.
drjanehansen@gmail.com
Sirena Andrea
Sirena Andrea is a Master Storyteller, Ritualist and Trauma Release Breathwork Practitioner supporting clients from around the world to release grief and live into the next creative chapter of their lives. In addition, Sirena is an initiated Diviner in the Dagera tradition and brings ancient technology to open paths for participants to connect with their ancestors for love and healing.
Sirena’s Tending Grief Offerings
Jill Clifton
Jill Clifton: I work with moms who are dedicated to a healthy family culture that nourishes relationships between family members, even if that's not how they were raised. I guide moms through connecting with Nature as a resource for being a present, anchored, and an inevitably human parent. This comes with grief, often, because of the current lack of systemic support for mothering. I consistently post resources on YouTube @landscapeofmothers, and my email list and mentoring services can be found at www.LandscapeOfMothers.com.
Jillian ‘Jiji” Grace
Jillian “Jiji” GRACE is a woman of many hats, all that are useful for the central purpose of protecting and encouraging the sacred in all things. This has led her to being an herbalist, auntie, environmentalist, fire tender, ceremonialist, storyteller, songwriter, sacred clown, a student and practitioner of Traditional Medicines.
With the central heart drumbeat leading her own internal journey of alchemy and realization, and in devotional response to a communal need, she is now offering Ritual Integration Counseling. In order to support you by listening, sharing insights and practices that are effective in helping to nurture the seeds received from experiences in ceremony to their wholesomely taking root in our lives so that they serve us and the ecosystems we belong to.
Please email her at sacredfiregrace@gmail.com to learn more and set up a consultation. In service for you, and consequently all creation. Your healing, my healing, my healing, your healing. All together now.
Erin Kammerer Hen: Craniosacral Therapy
Erin Kammerer Hen has been practicing for over 20 years. She brings priceless experience and safety to the table. She currently has 2 practices, in Berkeley and Santa Cruz. Occasionally, she offers apprenticeships if it's the right fit!
Erin offers deep rest and attunement with Craniosacral Therapy. Lay down on a soft and heated mattress. Experience deep healing of your nervous system for 80 minutes. Sometimes, guided breathwork and relaxation cues are given. Towards the end, there is a 5 minute integration time with sound healing.
Erin offers support to your deepest layers and to your whole field. Your craniosacral system is comprised of your sacrum/tailbone, your spine and 22 cranial bones. Gentle touch and intentional stillness to this system brings your nervous system into balance and reminds you of the wholeness that you came from. The healing is immense. www.mindheartbodywork.com
Other Resources
Books
The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller
The Smell of Rain on Dust by Martin Prechtel
Opening to Darkness by Reverend Zenju Earthlyn Manuel
The Grieving Brain by Mary Frances O’Connor
Free Events
Grief Altar - Virtual Grief Ritual with Mikyö, April 19th, 10am-1pm pdt
Grief Tending Circle with Joanna Laws Landis and Will Rogers April 13th