Gather.

Participate in weekly 90-minute gatherings at our virtual hearth via Zoom. We will do individual check-ins, discuss the theme of the week, participate in writing and artmaking prompts, and breakout rooms to connect with others. This is the heart of the group — please try not to miss these!

Choose.

This course honors where you are at. Participate in just the activities that resonate for you in the moment. To honor the preciousness of your time, all optional offerings, in addition to the weekly 90-min online gathering, will take up no more than twenty minutes per week.

Create.

Receive art materials for the program mailed right to your door, and engage in creative offerings to help you make meaning of the loss you’re experiencing. Aside from what will be mailed, whatever supplies you have can work — even if all you have is a paper bag and a pen, we can make it work.

Deepen.

Alongside the support of the circle, a 45-minute one-on-one meeting with Amy is included in the program. This is a time where you can integrate any learnings, ask questions, and seek support around areas that feel stuck or could use more space and attention to be felt and processed.

Learn.

Receive short weekly videos to watch over your morning coffee that offer guidance and support around grief in its many shapes and forms. You will be invited to engage with the theme with an art, writing, somatic, or reflection prompt to play with during the week.

Tend.

Receive invitations to monthly free Grief Medicine Art Hour virtual gatherings. These are held for current participants and alums to gather in community for an hour each month. Continue to work with the material from the course, bring out the art supplies and dedicate time and space for grief tending in a creative way held in community.

Weeks 1 + 2: Centering In Our Individual + Collective Bodies

To make room for our grief, we need to bring our bodies with us. Grief is a physical experience; our shoulders slump, our heads feel cloudy, tears fall down our cheeks. As we arrive into the circle, we will bring awareness to our bodies and listen to the ways our grief speaks through them. We will take time to get familiar with the art supplies and access body-based resources to regulate our nervous systems. We will explore what it means to be in apprenticeship with our grief, look at the Gates of Grief as taught by Francis Weller, and build the container of our circle that we are creating together for the weeks to come.

Weeks 3 + 4: Befriending the Unknown

In grief, things fall apart. To be in relationship with grief, we are tasked with dismantling the myth that we are in control. We will explore the meaning of the Zen saying, “not knowing is most intimate.” Being with the unknown can be intolerable and sometimes terrifying to experience alone, but together, with the use of art and social connection, we can offer ourselves space try on a new way of being. Here we will bear witness to the feral nature of grief, and be in the dark waters of the unknown, together.

Weeks 5 + 6: Regret, Remorse, and Collective Liberation

This week we will focus upon the grief over harms we have caused ourselves and others, and harms we are complicit in. So often, regret, remorse, and shame can show up in the story we tell ourselves about our loss and this week is to help us untangle our feelings and grieve what needs to be grieved to bring more clarity and insight. We will explore how grief work is a critical element to dismantling the legacies of oppression, and envision what it means to wage beauty in these heartbreaking times, and create a narrative for the world we are dreaming of for our future generations.

Weeks 7 + 8: Grief As Initiation 

In our society there are rarely opportunities where we mark threshold moments in our lives yet they are so helpful to mark the end of something and the beginning of something else. As we come to the end of our time together, we will acknowledge and grieve the parts of us we have lost, the parts that will never be the same, and bring curiosity and compassion to who we are now. We will reflect on how we want to show up in the world as someone who has been touched by grief, see the responsibility that comes with it, and create a narrative for the world we are dreaming of for our future generations.