Artwork by Autumn Skye, “Seeker of the Sublime”
In times of profound crises, the ancient practice of tending to our grief together takes on a whole new level of importance.
I have been on my soapbox shamelessly about how critical this work is at this time, and I’m not backing down. 🖤
Here’s why…
Some astrologers are saying that the next two years – 2025 & 2026 (we are already in it!!) are forecast to be the most intense change that humanity has experienced in over 2000 years.
That is a long time, and yet with apparent fascism rising simultaneously with collective awakening globally, I believe it.
There is a word that comes from the Algonquian-speaking peoples, specifically the Cree and Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) tribes of Turtle Island. WETIKO. It’s a concept that describes a form of spiritual sickness or psychosis characterized by greed, selfishness, and consuming without regard for others.
In Cree, it’s often written as “wîhtikow,” while in Ojibwe it may appear as “windigo” or “wiindigoo.” The concept exists across various Algonquian cultures with slight variations in name and specific attributes, but generally describes a cannibalistic spirit or condition that represents destructive consumption and self-interest.
It’s sometimes used metaphorically to describe systems or mindsets that prioritize consumption and accumulation at the expense of community well-being.
The thing is – it is a very tricky energy, and while it may (and does) manifest more fully in certain political parties and nations, it can just as easily manifest in each of us in more subtle ways.
It isn’t the right or the left (politically), it’s what DIVIDES the right and the left.
It isn’t the painful things that happen (athough it can be connected to the creation of suffering), but it’s the way we deal with them (or don’t!) …
Right now, polarization is manifesting on every street corner.
This is Wetiko.
In the small town where I live, our two primary local candidates in our upcoming elections are an Indigenous woman and a guy who denies that the residential school system was a part of an intentional genocide of the Indigenous people of this land.
What. The. Heck.
I want to talk about why this work is crucial for this moment in what will eventually become history (if we are blessed to get to be around to see it.)
Why This Work Matters Now
- Collective Trauma Recovery – Our society is processing multiple shared traumas – from historical slavery and genocides, to the pandemic, to climate disasters, to political divisions to economic uncertainties – and we have virtually no emotional support systems. How do we expect to create change if we can’t even collectively regulate our nervous systems??
- Mental Health Crisis – As rates of depression, anxiety, and isolation continue to rise, (particularly in young people), grief remains an underlying factor usually unaddressed by traditional mental health approaches.
- Cultural Grief Illiteracy – Western culture provides few models for healthy grieving, leaving many without language or permission to process their losses in a healthy way.
- Grief as Connection – When properly tended, grief transforms into deeper connection, resilience, and community bonds – resources desperately needed in our fragmented society.
- Environmental Grief – As climate impacts intensify, we need support processing eco-anxiety, climate grief, and the complex emotions arising from environmental changes and disasters.
- Ritual Deficit – Our communities hunger for meaningful rituals to mark transitions and losses – we desperately need ceremonial containers that honour the full spectrum of human experience.
- Intergenerational Healing – Grief tending creates space to address historical and intergenerational trauma that continues to affect us personally and our local communities.
- Embodied Wisdom – This work (especially the Somatic Grief work we teach at Dark Woods!) reconnects us with embodied wisdom and emotional intelligence that counterbalances our hyper-cognitive, productivity-focused culture.
- Preventative Care – Community-based grief tending serves as preventative mental health care, reducing the burden on clinical services while reaching people who might never access formal therapy.
- Resilience Building – Communities skilled in grief tending develop greater collective resilience, enabling better responses to future (and current!) challenges and crises.
We need more people willing to bear the collective load of facilitating grief tending spaces. The more of us who join hands in this work, the lighter the load.
And I believe we will soon reach a critical mass of grief tending spaces and humans doing this work together in a good way, and that will allow us to carry each other through the storm of this time.
Francis Weller calls the time we are in, ‘The Long Dark.’
It is not about to get easier, but we can hold each other through this.
We can allow this time to be not only filled with pain and suffering, but to be deep medicine for the evolution of our collective humanity, so we come out the other side with something so beautiful we can’t even imagine it yet.
The cool thing is, everything is on the table right now. Unless we are being willfully ignorant, (Wetiko loves this), there is no denying the systems of oppression we have been living under collectively for hundreds (or thousands?) of years.
We have the choice now, and it’s more subtle work than we might initially perceive.
Whether you are ready to step into tending these collective grief spaces, or you are participating by doing your own personal grieving work (this transforms everything too!!) I am so grateful to have you in our Dark Woods Community.
With Love and Unwavering Commitment,
Josea & the Dark Woods Team
