TGW Grief Stories
An 8-week guided study exploring the narratives we hold about loss
We are all carrying grief, yet here in our Western society we are lacking the support, tools, and resources to engage with loss in meaningful ways. When loss is supported through being with grief and sharing experiences with others to witness, we are invited into healing.
January 6th to February 24th
Gathering online each Monday evening
from 5:30 - 7:00pm
Course Price: $300
(includes Grief Stories Kinship Journal)
In The Grief Well (TGW) Grief Stories, facilitators will hold the space for participants to explore stories about grief through mind, body, and spirit. This space is created to encourage participants to listen to self, and others with an open mind and an open heart. There is time during each gathering for individuals to share their lived experience with grief, if they choose. The facilitator will use poetry, passages, quotes, story, writing prompts, sharing, and silence to support a kinship with grief. These gatherings are intentionally intimate with no more than 12 participants in each 8 week session.
When grief becomes complicated, that is, when there is not a gradual ease in the heavy emotions associated with loss, or when individuals feel stuck in their grief, it is recommended that folks seek professional help. This is common when trauma and grief stem from an experience of loss. These gatherings are not a substitute for spiritual, energetic, emotional, cognitive or physical support offered by a qualified therapist or practitioner. Should any participants experience strong reactions, it is best practice to reach out for additional support.
TGW Grief Stories offering has been reviewed by an advisory board of mental, spiritual, and somatic health care specialists including clinical counselors, therapists, and spiritual care advisors.
These gatherings are built through a trauma informed lens and each opportunity for group participation is offered as an invitation. There is no pressure to share or engage. At TGW we honour that some people are comfortable speaking while others are more quiet and private by nature. All is welcome.
Gathering Format
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Entering In
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Poem / passage
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Discussion
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Journaling (writing prompts offered)
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Witnessing Grief (time to share thoughts / experiences with the group if desired)
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Silence
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Farewell (Gratitude practice)
Weekly Stories
Week 1: Welcoming in & Introduction
Week 2: Grief + Story
Week 3: Grief + Culture
Week 4: Grief + Gifts
Week 5: Grief + Wilderness
Week 6: Grief + Body
Week 7: Grief + Joy (and anger too)
Week 8: Grief + Kinship
Visit the Grief Stories guided study registration page for full weekly overview & details.
Included in the Grief Stories guided study is TGW Grief Stories Kinship Journal
The Grief Well Kinship Journal has been created to support our Grief Stories framework, and it can be used as a stand alone grief resource as well.
The intention of this journal is to tenderly guide readers to question the stories they hold about grief and to facilitate a kinship with grief. TGW Kinship Journal supports both death related loss and non-death related loss. In addition to honouring the emotional experience of grief, TGW Kinship journal acknowledges that grief affects us physically, cognitively, socially, and spiritually. To support this notion, The Grief Well Kinship Journal includes poetry, quotes, kinship practices, grief rituals, and writing prompts. There is ample space for reflections and expression of the experience of loss.
This journal is intentionally roomy to guide individuals to find their way by honouring natural wisdom. Grief asks us to be present and groundless, that is to be with what arises from moment to moment without fixating on a future destination. Our culture of knowing and control doesn’t often support this way of being, so for many this can be challenging. TGW Kinship Journal is a companion for navigating loss, it is our hope that it will inspire readers to dream into different possibilities about how to fully live through integrating a lifetime of loss.
Grief Stories
Facilitator Training
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Join our waitlist below and we will inform you when the next facilitator training becomes available.
The role of facilitator includes:
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Inviting the group together, finding an appropriate space if held in person
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Offering radical hospitality
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Creating a supportive container for people to share - TGWs 5 tenets to be well together
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Facilitating group conversation
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Honoring time, being sure the gathering begin and end on time and managing time throughout the gathering
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Providing additional grief resources
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Leaning out for support if needed
At The Grief Well we believe:
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That each person is the expert in their grief experience, to tend to our grief effectively we must tune into our innate wisdom. This requires people to slow down and listen to self
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By slowing down and tuning into what is arising in the moment people can be guided to how to connect with their grief, express their grief in a way appropriate for them, and be guided as to how to best care for themselves
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That by sharing our grief we don’t become more sad, rather we see ourselves in the experience of others. This normalizes the grief experience and communicates to people that they are not alone
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It is through connecting with our grief, and sharing it with others when appropriate that we can be witnessed in our grief, we can be seen, heard and cared for. This witnessing is the medicine for grief
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Most grief can be tended to by listening to the self and sharing grief with trusted others
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When grief gets complicated, people get stuck, connecting with a mental health care professional is recommended
"We will, in truth, spend many of our hours alone with our grief. In the cover of our solitude, we encounter another layer in our apprenticeship with sorrow. Here we are asked to hold an extended vigil with loss in the well of silence, slowly ripening our sorrow into something dense and gifting to the world. Our ability to drop into this interior world and do the difficult work of metabolizing sorrow is dependent on the community that surrounds us. Even when we are alone, it is necessary to feel the tethers of concern and kindness holding us as we step off into the unknown and encounter the wild edge of sorrow.”
― Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow