Root into the calling of our times

Certain things can only happen in darkness

This October we began our six-month training in The Art of Grief Tending.

It was a moment for me to recognise and consolidate the many teachings about the gentle and tender work of honouring grief. We embarked on our journey together, rooting ourselves in the calling of our times: the necessity to face the darkness so that we can transmute our sorrows into something generative—both for ourselves and our community.

As Francis Weller writes, “we are entering the long dark. I don’t use that term negatively at all. I use it alchemically. Certain things can only happen in darkness. We are in a time of decay, a time of collapse, a time of endings, a time of shedding. These are necessary.”

Many people struggle to grieve their bereavements, endings, longings, and generational losses, often ‘protecting’ themselves through behaviours of numbing and separation. Many have forgotten their true entanglement with all of life; and so, when (not if) grief arises, they lack the capacity and resources to navigate loss. So many are bereft of community, elders, and rituals to guide us through the initiation of death and rebirth.

Grief will be the heartbeat of this collective unfolding. We will need skilled grief tenders—those who have the capacity to sit with grief, who will dare not to turn away in the face of sorrow, but who will call others to the hearth with the whisper that this too is welcome.

As I sat in a circle with 36 people from different corners of the world, listening to their unique soul callings towards grief work, I felt hopeful, fortified, and grateful. Similarly, as the season shifts to autumn here in Britain, there is an echo of my inner experience mirrored in the nature around me.

These mornings, I walk among the trees and the slowly falling brown and orange leaves, offering a silent prayer that the world may begin to see grief as I see autumn: beautiful, humbling, and necessary.

With love,

Nici

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A few of my favourite things this week

• Reading this book – Earth Grief: The Journey Into and Through Ecological Grief by Stephen Harrod Buhner

• Listening to this song and connecting to the univeral longing not to rush through life

• Sitting in a sacred space with two of my dearest friends on Friday night – simple, heartfelt and nourishing

• Soaking in the most gorgeous October sunshine and savouring the light as the clocks change here towards darker evenings