Sitting With Death, Choosing Life Foundation Course: Transforming Grief & Loss

Sitting with Death, Choosing Life Foundation Course 

“This is a dark time, filled with suffering and uncertainty. Like living cells in a larger body, it is natural that we feel the trauma of our world. So don’t be afraid of the anguish you feel, or the anger or fear, for these responses arise from the depth of your caring and the truth of your interconnectedness with all beings. To suffer with is the literal meaning of compassion.”  ~ Joanna Macy

• Do you make time and space to face your grief, to welcome and allow it?
• Or do you try to avoid, manage or ‘deal with it’ in some way?

Perhaps you numb your feelings through addictive habits like overeating, drinking, distraction, or keeping busy? If so, I’ll be the last to judge you as this was my default self-protective mode for many decades

Do you have the right information, tools, skills, and support for coping with grief?

Do you even know where to begin?

Perhaps you’ve noticed a lot of despair, anger, judgement and blame on social media in recent times, with increasing divisions and hostilities between groups of people with opposing views? It may be that beneath all of this vitriol sits within each of us a deep pool of unexplored grief.

Anger can be a useful fuel for making change happen. And in the longer run it can also be corrosive to our own wellbeing. Rage has its place in transforming society, especially when tempered with a compassion and kindness that begins with discovering what lies deeply within our own hearts, minds and bodies.

 The Journey 

This eight-week journey is for those of us who feel drawn to facing and grieving what’s dying or has already gone from our lives and the world. It’s for those of us who sense that grieving isn’t supposed to be a private, lonely affair, but one that can flow more easily with a supportive community of fellow explorers. It's not a therapy group but one in which we share nd learn together through 'deep discovery' conversations.

The global pandemic has touched us all with some level of grief and loss - whether it’s the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, your place in the world, your friendships, or any other kind of loss. As well as the pandemic, we’re unavoidably confronted with the global backdrop of climate change, ecological breakdown, endemic social injustice and widening political divisions.

Many of us also have a backlog of unexplored, or unresolved personal grief, since we live in a dominant culture in which there’s been neither a welcome, nor eldership teachings in the ways and skills of grieving. 

Our experiences of death, dying, loss and grief are as unique as every individual and all will be given a welcome in this group.

The course will take place in a safely and gently held online space in which we can share what’s in our hearts and our wonderings and wanderings in the realms of death, grief and loss. Together we’ll learn the skills of ‘deep discovery conversations’, in which all of us and all parts of us are welcomed, and where new perspectives may emerge.

This is an opportunity to discover, explore and practice the skills of grieving, for ourselves and for our world.

“Grief is not a feeling, it is a capacity. It is not something that disables you, we are not on the receiving end of grief we are on the practising end of grief.”  ~  Stephen Jenkinson

 Details 

The course will take place over eight weekly sessions beginning in February 2022. There are just eight places available in the group, to ensure that everyone has ample time and space to speak.

The full cost of the course is £140, of which £40 is payable to Tribe in Transition for the online stimulus materials and guidebook (which you can keep for good). The remainder is the facilitation fee, payable directly to me. Please email me here (hello@beinginnature.net) for full details of how to book and pay, or with any queries you may have before committing to this journey.