Whew, that thing you’re carrying inside of you that feels like it has nowhere to go as everything is falling apart? It may have a name and it may be grief!

Grief is one of the most misunderstood and neglected emotions. She’s uncontrollable and unpredictable, and we need her. Grief is one of the most important companions in this thing we call living. We live within clashing worlds that are inhospitable to the global majority and toxic to the earth which sustains us. These worlds are both illusory and mythological, yet always material and real enough to affect our ability to breathe and our neighbor’s access to their next meal. There are worlds formed by death-dealing ideologies and upheld by destruction and subjugation of others that are begging to die, so that new worlds may be birthed. This is the historical moment we are experiencing. But we are so often engaged in the work of world-breaking and world-making that we do not attend to the grief who lives in between and all around. In our time together, we will welcome and speak grief present.

We will engage practices that help us to be more hospitable to grief and more loving to ourselves as we explore a political orientation of softness. This is a space where we hope to pause and bear collective witness to one another’s grief from the past year (or so) that we’re carrying in our bodies, our communities, and in our stories. It is a space of bearing witness to that which is unseen or hard to perceive—especially the grief, loss and pain that can cause us to turn away from each other.

This is a space where we hope to turn toward each other and listen deeply. Nothing will be solved in our time. That is not the intention.