It has been a very full and fulfilling few weeks here at Dark Woods of Grief, as we began our 2025 Grief Tending & Ritual Facilitation Training & inaugural Roots of Ritual Training last week.
I am over the moon as we welcomed fourteen women, stepping across the threshold towards their gifts as initiated Grief Tenders.
This is no small task, as I’m sure you can imagine, to mentor folks in the sacred art of grief tending.
It is a big thing to be able to sit with the depth of pain and suffering of grievers and to be able to stay steady in ourselves.
People often find themselves feeling deeply alone & isolated after a major loss, and this precisely because so few people know how to be present with grief.
At a time in the world when the level of suffering & unprocessed collective grief is rising like floodwaters, we need (exponentially!) more people training in this sacred art.
Whether you are acutely inside your own personal journey with grief, or perhaps you are experienced in the terrain of the dark woods of grief, I think we are ALL feeling the collective upheaval and crisis we are in.
Yet is is critical that we remember at this time that often, what appears as devastation in a forest – a wildfire that consumes everything visible – actually initiates an essential cycle of renewal.
The intense heat cracks open certain seedpods that can only germinate through fire, while the ash nourishes the soil for new growth that couldn’t otherwise emerge.
This is such an important understanding and perspective.
What looks like complete destruction creates the exact conditions needed for regeneration and life to flourish.
This is such an important understanding and perspective.
I believe we are going through a collective awakening, and the awakening process is difficult and painful.
Yet despite the pain of awakening, it is a necessary thing.
We cannot stay numb forever.
The butterfly cannot remain caterpillar forever, and yet if you were a butterfly and someone told you,
“Now you are going to lose your body as you know it and completely dissolve into a slimy, gooey, liquid mush before becoming who you truly are….”
Who wouldn’t resist that…???!!! What human would go gracefully?? Not many of us, I guarantee you.
So what is it about the butterfly that allows her to go with so much grace?
She intuitively – instinctually – knows exactly what she needs to do – weave a cocoon around herself and STAY PUT.
DO NOTHING.
REST.
ALLOW.
And slowly, she becomes.
As humans living in modernity, for better or for worse, most of us are pretty bad at slowing down, resting, just BEING and allowing ourselves to just FEEL – to just ALLOW the emotions to flow and be what they are.
To do this goes completely against the grain of our modern culture.
Many traditional people’s had (and have!) practices and a whole lot of CULTURE that has been carefully co-created with a deep understanding of what it takes to grow a fully ripe human being.
Mostly, we’ve lost that culture in the West. (or to be more accurate, it has been systematically destroyed…!)
This is what we are aiming to bring back at Dark Woods of Grief.
We are co-creating a culture that understands the grief process as more than just feeling really bad.
We see grief and loss as an opportunity for the ripening of the Soul – a doorway to the deeper Self.
We help grievers build their own metaphorical cocoons to protect and make Sacred the journey of complete dissolution that grieving can be.
And we support you to come out of your cocoon when the time is right.
It is said that the flap of a butterfly’s wings can change the weather thousands of miles away.
The butterfly reminds us that transformation isn’t just about emerging on the other side – it’s about honouring the sacred space of dissolution where all becoming begins.
Whether you’re guiding others through this journey or navigating your own personal dark woods, remember that you’re participating in an ancient wisdom that understands: there is no true metamorphosis without first creating a safe container.
With Love and a little wing flapping,
Josea & the Dark Woods Team
