Dark Woods of Grief Presents
Community Grief & Praise Ritual
a Wake for Our Collective Sorrows
Tuesday, March 3rd @4pm pacific time // 7pm EST // 12am UK time
By Donation
In the Irish tradition, a wake (faire) is a gathering after death to honour life – with tears and laughter, stories and songs, and wild humor (craic) being integral parts.
It’s a grief ritual – but not somber mourning – instead, it’s a celebration that feeds life itself.
Spaces where we honour grief have always been a part of traditional culture. We need these spaces now more than ever as so many horrific truths are coming into the light to be reckoned with.
And yet, as our known world seemingly falls apart, it is also more vital than ever to remember that gratitude, joy & celebration are what feeds life, alongside our tears & sacred rage.
Thus, we gather for a community Grief & Praise Ritual to wake what is dying in our world, and to feed life with our full-hearted presence and celebration.
This ritual is open to everyone & will be modelled after the Grief & Praise sessions we regularly hold inside of our Dark Woods Grief Support Group Community.
We will offer a collective (non-denominational) prayer & meditation, writing & somatic practices, followed by a somatic movement practice, aka, dance.
There will be opportunities to share, express & be witnessed. Each person is invited to share & participate to the degree that is right for them – all practices are invitational.
This is a by donation event & all proceeds go to our scholarship fund to support solidarity pricing for our programs & trainings for folks living & working in underserved communities…(primarily Black, Indigenous & People of Colour, single parents, disabled & caregivers living on limited income etc)
At the end of the ritual process, we will share about our current programs open for enrollment, including & especially our Roots of Ritual Grief Tending Foundations Training & our Grief Support Group.
Meet the Team
Josea Tamira Crossley
Team Lead, Mentor & Founder of Dark Woods of Grief Community
For over 20 years, I’ve been working with grief & trauma. Through practices that work with the nervous system & rewiring the brain learned through my studies in Somatic Therapy, Attachment Theory, Deep Nature Connection, Craniosacral therapy, Shamanic Study, Tibetan Buddhism and Yoga, I’ve learned to support people to completely transform how they experience the world and themselves. As a survivor of severe childhood abuse, learning these skills was a matter of necessity.
In terms of walking through the dark woods and returning with gifts, I am a living, breathing example, and this work is my offering to you.
It is my mission to create spaces in this world where people can experience enough safety & belonging, and can gain enough skillfulness to be able to heal.
The body does the rest.
I am deeply and forever grateful to my mentors Elizabeth Claire Burr & Sonara Medicine Wolf, and for my teachers Francis Weller (author of the Wild Edge of Sorrow), Mariah Moser (Opening to Grace Relational Somatic Psychotherapy), Peter Levine & Diane Poole Heller, Irene Lyon, Jon Young, and for the influence of Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Martin Prechtel, Gabor Mate & Robert Moss.
I currently live, respectfully, as an uninvited guest in the seaside mountain town of qathet, BC, on the traditional territory of the Tla’amin people.
Jane Spielman
Team Elder & LGTBQ2S Community Lead
Jane worked as an educator for 50 years, but is still deeply excited by and involved in focusing on creating educational spaces where students are immersed in rich natural environments that encourage their own questions and ways of knowing to drive curriculum. She helped build trauma and healing informed school programs all over New York City that got to the root of what was in the way of student’s learning. When her wife of over 3 decades fell ill, she began her study of caregiving and grief. Jane believes that learning how to grieve and face trauma in safe-enough spaces is essential to physical, emotional and spiritual life; and is absolutely essential in the process of discovering the gifts we have to offer the world.
Jane has studied with Zen and Tibetan Buddhist masters, hospice providers and is a graduating student in the Dark Woods Grief Tending & Ritual Facilitation Training. Her work is grounded in these lineages as well as Somatic tools, Internal Family Systems work & Reiki.
Jane is a Jewish anti-Zionist who believes we were born for these times, and a lifelong activist, with a focus on allyship in anti-colonist struggles. She is also a proud lesbian who has always represented and collaborated with other LGBTQ2S folx.
Jane has built her own active practice in Sow the Seeds of Healing to support individuals as well as groups in somatic grief and trauma work.