Soulful Grieving

Welcome to the Soulful Grieving Newsletter! I’ll be offering poems, questions, stories, meanderings, research, helpful resources, community grief rituals, about being human and grieving and loving in this beautiful, difficult existence on earth, interwoven with the cosmos.

With the loss of my first child at 8 days old, I was lost in the realm of Grief. I didn’t really know what grief was. My partner and I were shattered, and when people told us we needed to grieve it sounded like a prison sentence… grief wasn’t in the language of our lives and culture. I did not know what colors, what important places, grief would take us to. We painstakingly found our way with our underworld sorrow, one literal step at a time. Slowly, slowly, through miles of walking through nature, through quiet and laying on the earth at night, meditating and praying, we began to walk a winding path with and through our new lives, our sorrow-love, and it continues.

I am now a Grief and Trauma psychotherapist in Santa Rosa, California, and I am also a grief tender of my own deep loves and losses. Grief is what led me to become a therapist, and leads me to so many potent, tender, painful, full-of-life places; places that have shaped me and continue to beckon me to deeper caverns of the world and my own soul.

It feels wonderful to me to offer stepping stones that may be helpful to those who are feeling alone in this journey of grief and loss. And to hear about what you have found and tend on your journey. Grief is necessary for so many things, be for a for a loved one in death, for the loss of a beloved pet, for the earth’s suffering, for a job or a marriage, for people pummeled by war. All grief needs attention. And tending.

I have been a part of a Soulful Life Community online with the wonderful Francis Weller, Holly Truhlar, Alexandre Jodun and Erin Geeseman Rabke and Carl Rabke for the past 3 years, and have been so healed by being a part of a group who can hold and work with grief in a soulful way. I want to offer some of this belonging to you.

 This all stems from love. I look forward to hearing your thoughts, insights and heart-stirrings.

 I will be sharing on Instagram and Facebook, so please feel free to leave your thoughts and questions in comments. If you would like to receive these posts in your inbox, please sign up for news and events on the contact page.

I send you blessings for your grief walk.