As we approach the longest day of the year in the Northern hemisphere, there’s something both luminous and liminal about this threshold time.
And of course, a blessed Winter Solstice to those of you in the Southern hemisphere – also a time of deep pause and liminality!
Summer solstice holds the paradox of peak light while simultaneously marking the slow turn back toward darkness.
Much like grief itself – holding both the brightness of love and the depths of loss in the same breath.
In this season of fullness, I find myself thinking about the wild autonomy that grief demands of us.
How it refuses to be domesticated into neat timelines or well-mannered expressions.
How it calls us away from the voices that tell us to “pull up our bootstraps” and toward something far more ancient and untamed.
There’s a particular kind of courage that emerges when we stop trying to manage our grief and start learning to trust it.
Not the courage of pushing through or staying strong, but the courage of following grief’s own mysterious timing – even when it looks like disobedience to everyone around us.
I saw one of my favorite bumper stickers ever yesterday. It read: “Why be normal?”
LOL….perfection.
Our culture loves the story of recovery, of moving through stages and arriving somewhere tidier than where we began.
But what if grief isn’t asking us to recover?
What if it’s asking us to remember something we’ve forgotten about what it means to be fully alive?
This is the wild song that Francis Weller speaks of when he writes that “Grief serves a Wild God & does not comply with conformity or well-mannered lives.”
It’s the soul’s refusal to pretend that love doesn’t cost us everything, or that being human doesn’t break our hearts open again and again.
Something beautiful happens when we learn to trust grief’s initiation process.
Not because we’ve “gotten over” our losses, but because we’ve developed the capacity to dive deeper when the soul calls.
Like baby seals that have grown and moved from shallow water to ocean depths – not because the shallows weren’t real, but because experience has taught us we can trust our ability to both dive deep and make our way back to the surface as needed.
When I am training people to support others through grief, it is with this understanding:
In grief tending work, the credentials aren’t degrees or certifications, but rather the continued willingness to say, “YES,” to our own unfolding.
I want them to bring not the sterile professionalism of someone who’s moved beyond messiness, but the spacious presence of someone who’s learned that every wave of grief carries medicine – for ourselves, our ancestors, and the world.
This creates something rare: spaces where both the newly broken and the long-initiated can meet in authentic presence.
Where fresh rawness and seasoned depth recognize each other as necessary parts of the same mysterious process.
These spaces don’t happen by accident – they require intention, timing, and the courage to gather when the soul calls.
Solstice Announcements from the Dark Woods ✨
Dark Woods of Grief on Substack – A New Chapter
My writing will now live on our Substack! I will continue to share my writings here on our website as well though.
Eventually, paid subscribers will get exclusive access to chapters from my upcoming book as I write it. For now, everything is free as we build this new community together.
You can subscribe now at: darkwoodsofgrief.substack.com
Soul Song Retreat – Early Bird Registration Now Open
Our fall retreat – Soul Song: Return to Love – will take place October 3rd-6th at Halfmoon Haven on BC’s Sunshine Coast. This four-day immersion is both a homecoming retreat for grievers (all types of grief are welcome here) and the prerequisite for our Level 2 professional training.
We gather at that perfect threshold time – October’s invitation into the deeper seasons, when the natural world models the kind of letting go our souls are always being asked to practice.
Just seven spots remain, with early bird pricing available until July 1st.
This retreat welcomes all forms of grief – personal loss, collective trauma, the unnamed sorrows that live in our bones. It’s designed for anyone whose soul is calling them toward something more authentic than “staying positive” or “looking on the bright side.”
Whether you’re in the raw early stages of loss or you’re a seasoned grief tender who knows that depth work never truly ends, you belong in this circle.
You can learn more about this retreat and register here: https://darkwoodsofgrief.com/retreat/
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The wild roses are blooming here in the Pacific Northwest, their brief fierce beauty a reminder that the most tender things often carry thorns. May we learn from them – how to be both soft and protected, how to bloom fully even knowing our season is brief.
I’m harvesting rose petals from our incredible heritage roses for our fall retreat/rituals, holding you in my mind & heart. 🌹
With LOVE & sea-sprayed roses,
Josea & the Dark Woods Team
