Attribution of credit for the framework used in this workshop:

• Francis Weller’s Five Gates of Grief, outlined in his book The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief

• RAW Grief, Holly Truhlar

• Holly Truhlar & Desiree Coutinho’s workshop on Grief and Repair

I learned this somatic centering practice from Staci Haines, co-founder of Generative Somatics.

The poem I shared is an excerpt from Coleman’s Bed by David Whyte, included in River Flow: New and Selected Poems

In this segment I mentioned somatic tracking. You can find a short guided practice here.

I’ve learned about practicing showing up for ourselves with kindness and compassion when small things bring up disappointment, frustration or sorrow so that we build capacity to show up for the big things from Lama Rod Owens. Here’s a short video where he talks about it.

The ambiguous loss framework is from Pauline Boss. You can learn more here.

The quote “Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses is” from Martin Prechtel’s book The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise.

The shuttles or prompts for the writing practice I’ve offered for this segment are: I’m grieving…; Don’t ask…; I remember…

You can download the written instructions for the practice, as well as more shuttles for writing, by clicking here.

Tara Brach teaches radical acceptance and radical compassion to come out of the trance of unworthiness and separation.

The Moving into Wholeness practice is from Michelle Cassandra Johnson’s book Finding Refuge: Heart Work for Healing Collective Grief.

The quote “Even when we make mistakes, harm each other, lose our way, we are worthy […] Even at my worst, I am worthy, so I will grow.” is from Adrienne Maree Brown. You can find the full text here.

You may wish to do a writing practice with the instructions shared in Part 6 of this workshop. Some suggested shuttles or prompts are: I regret…; I’m sorry…; I forgive…; I vow…

Phrase from Paul Shepard, as quoted by Francis Weller: “The grief and sense of loss that we often interpret as a failure in our personality, is actually a feeling of emptiness where a beautiful and strange otherness should have been encountered.”

Suggested shuttles or prompts for writing are: I will not pretend…; I feel deeply…; I say it matters…; I yearn for…

“Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.” Clarissa Pinkola Estes, You Were Made for This.

“I believe in the possibility of a world where our interconnection is a deeply known and motivating force, where no one is left out, where the innate dignity of every person is acknowledged, and where hatred and fear and greed can be tempered. I believe in a world where change might be hard but is always seen as possible, however stuck we might feel in any given moment. I believe in a world where we can have wisdom to guide us, we can have love to propel us, and we can have the support of one another to try to accomplish a vision of inclusion and care. I also believe in justice, in a world where actions have consequences, where people are held accountable even as we try to take care of one another. And I believe in a world where the fluidity and softness of love might superficially seem like the weakest thing of all, but lo and behold, it is indomitable.” Sharon Salzberg, Real Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and the World

“Somewhere inside us, we all have ancestral memory of what it’s like to live connected, interdependent lives. We may be cut off or too far away from those traditions to claim them or access them, but I think we can find our way back to them by listening deeply to our longings for belonging, for purpose and for wholeness. We can learn a way of being in the world that honors and makes tangible our connections to one another, to nature and to spirit.” Mia Birdsong, read the full text here, where she talks about her book How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community.

This practice is from Tara Brach. You can download the full text, where she talks about her own experience with illness, pain and fatigue and how the practice of RAIN helped her here.

I only briefly touched on the topic of epigenetics. If you’d like to learn more, you might like this podcast episode. Krista Tippet interviews Rachel Yehuda on how trauma and resilience cross generations, exploring how we can flourish beyond the traumas large and small that mark each of our lives and those of our families and communities.

Not to make loss beautiful,
But to make loss the place
Where beauty starts. Where
the heart understands
For the first time
The nature of its journey.

From Not to Make Loss Beautiful by Gregory Orr, excerpted from Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved.

Thank you for engaging in this introductory exploration of the gates of grief with me.

May the energy devoted to your grief tending benefit all beings.