grief tending

Truth Fairy and Dr. T welcome Cami Barton, author and practitioner dedicated to social change through embodied practices, to the show. Truth Fairy reads a poem on pain by Kahlil Gibran that emphasizes the intertwining of pain and joy, suggesting that embracing pain can lead to a deeper understanding of life, which highlights many of the themes of Cami’s work.

Cami discusses their work in psychedelic therapy, grief, pleasure, and drug policy, rooted in black feminism and harm reduction. They share personal experiences, including an abortion in 2017 that sparked the project for their upcoming book, "Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community". The book explores grief and healing rituals, drawing from Cami's journey and broader societal patterns.

The conversation delves into Cami's work in designing a master's program, teaching psychedelic therapy, and collaborating with MAPS to ensure accessibility to MDMA psychotherapy for marginalized communities. Truth Fairy and Dr. T discuss various aspects of Cami's expertise and personal journey, including childhood trauma and the surfacing of dissociated memories during their healing process. It is a meditation on grief and healing that holds deep insight to benefit all listeners.

“And so the Dagara people are indigenous to what we now call Burkina Faso in West Africa. And they have a very specific relationship to communal grief tending, where everyone in the community is expected to tend their grief in the communal ritual once a month because there's an understanding in their cosmology that unattended grief will actually become harm in the society. So rather than being taboo as it is in the West to grieve publicly and be with that, it's actually taboo to avoid your grief in the Dagara context.” - Cami 

Resources discussed in this episode:

• On Pain by Kahlil Gibran
• “Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community” by Camille Sapara Barton
• Website: CamilleSaparaBarton.com

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Punk Therapy: website |email

Seth Hughes is driven by a determination to remind humans of their intrinsic relationship with the natural world.  He believes passionately that the modern human is both lost and disempowered, suffering from a kind of collective amnesia about their roots - but that they have an opportunity now to reconnect with the knowledge - and the simple joy - of our indigenous ancestors.

Seth's professional background is in filmmaking but more recently he decided to adapt these skills for his own brand of digital storytelling. Sharing stories on social media of our ancestors - of foraging, of folklore and of the pleasure to be had exercising in wilder places, his videos have struck an emotional chord, frequently garnering millions of views.

Seth also runs a men's group in Cornwall, where they connect with each other through Natural Lifestyle practices, such as barefoot running, tree climbing and movement play - helping men to emotionally ground themselves in nature.

Seth is a special guest on our year-long slow study course Deepen Your Roots where he’ll be joining us during the module ‘Courting your local flora and fauna’ where we’ll explore:

• Deepening intimacy with the edible and medicinal beings within your bioregion
• Re-enchanting our ancestral threads through Folkloric foraging
• Apprenticing with a chosen plant or fungi ally 
• Finding the songs and stories woven within the stems and roots

Deepen Your Roots spans 13 moon cycles, weaving deep ecology, ‘the work that reconnects’, and a folkloric, animistic exploration into the ecological self rewoven with place. It is an intergenerational calling into bioregional guardianship and the cultivation of profound belonging. Throughout the programme you will have the opportunity to explore and develop offerings to nourish your ecological-niche and bring your medicine forth into the world.  Use the code DEEPEN10 at checkout for 10% off until Imbolc.

And we are returning this summer with our gathering ANCESTRAL, where we embody the ancient ways of our indigenous ancestors - the ones who lived in full relationship with the landscapes - and through roundhouse councils, ceremonies and intimate village life, we access their wisdom and guidance for these turbulent times with new and ancient eyes.

Read Lyla June's article 'Reclaiming our Indigenous European roots'

Explore our other gatherings and psilocybin retreats.

Connect with us / gift your music.

Music in this episode: Songs from Bonnie Medicine's latest album Wide Open.

In this episode I am joined with Nici Harrison, our first ever repeat guest, which marks 2 years of the podcast.  After our first ever episode, ‘the art of grief tending’ back in 2021, I have taken part in one of Nici’s online 3 month apprenticeship programmes, and more recently we have worked together on her grief retreat this year and have become dear friends… we are now merging our work into an exciting new collaboration next year.  

We dive into more nuanced topics, exploring how collective grief relates to our own sorrows, the psychedelic or liminal nature of deep grief and the relationship between grief and plant or fungi medicine ceremonies. This conversation will give you a sense of why we have formed this new partnership and a glimpse into the potential psilocybin has to support the tending of our grief. 

Nici is a beloved grief worker, speaker and founder of The Grief Space. Through her own deep experiences of loss, she came to recognise that our modern culture has forgotten how to grieve. Over the years, Nici has been blessed to learn from great teachers, experience beautiful grief rituals and familiarise herself with traditions and practices of tending to grief. Her work is built on the foundation that grief is sacred and is a radical gateway to a deeper appreciation of life. 

Originating from the root word ‘tenderness’, grief tending invites us to bring compassion to our grief, as we would to a small child or a wild garden. Grief tending is the understanding that to be human is to know loss. It is the practice of welcoming grief so that we can keep our hearts open to life. It is coming home to the recognition that we all have grief, whether it’s for the losses in our lives, the unmet longings or the sorrows of the world.

Grief tending is the understanding that our earth needs us to grieve, just as it needs us to pay attention. It is the trust that when we grieve and allow ourselves to be vulnerable, we open ourselves to connection, authenticity and intimacy. As we remember the lost art of grief tending where all is welcomed, we restore our connection to each other, ourselves and the earth. We emerge with the capacity to hold it all; love and loss, grief and gratitude; life and death.

The collaboration we are referring to is the mergence of our signature psilocybin retreat ‘Earth Medicine’ with the art of grief tending.  So in May next year - 2024, we are holding this first alchemised marriage of work that feels so naturally suited.  If you are curious and would like to learn more, head to rootedhealing.org/earth-medicine-grief-tending.

Nici is also a special guest on our upcoming  ‘Deepen Your Roots’ course,  which is our year-long slow-study weaving deep ecology, ‘the work that reconnects’, and a folkloric, animistic exploration into the ecological self rewoven with place. Head to rootedhealing.org/deepen to learn more.

The music in this episode was by Mike Howe and Ruth Blake.  

Nici Harrison, founder of The Grief Space, chats with us about the lost art of grief tending. We explore how to live with and support those experiencing not just grief due to a bereavement, but the grief that comes with changes in relationships, health and shifting life circumstances. 

Nici is a grief tending facilitator, writer and speaker. She founded The Grief Space as a platform to shift the narrative on grief, inspire healing and bring people together at a time when we can feel most alone. 

Nici set us a beautiful challenge that everyone can do, regardless of your life experience, so kick off your shoes and head to the nearest patch of grass that you can find and let nature help carry your troubles away!

To find out more about Nici and The Grief Space head to thegriefspace.com

In the episode, we also mention the below episodes of Right Up My Podcast:

Ep.6 - Grounding: https://rightupmy.buzzsprout.com/1337593/6517003-ep-6-grounding-earthing

Ep.27 - Ecstatic Dance: https://rightupmy.buzzsprout.com/1337593/10783032-ep-27-ecstatic-dance-with-luisa-bradshaw-white

Thank you to our team:
Editor - Sam Seager
Music - Andrew Grimes
Artwork - Erica Frances George

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In a world of uncertainty, transformation and potential catastrophe, how can we find our own truth and, from there, speak with authenticity to the children and young people in our lives about the world that is coming?  Louis Weinstock is a celebrated psychotherapist who finds ways to help people of all ages connect with their own truth and share it.  In this episode, we explore our attitudes to death, loss - and the climate emergency - and how we can hold the conversations that need to happen. 

Louis Weinstock is a remarkable man - a deeply committed therapist who does his best to make his skills available to as many children and young people as need them - and so many do.  He focuses on grief and loss, initially around death and diagnoses of fatal illness, but increasingly the existential grief of our dying ecosystem and the despair, rage and frustration at a world that is not acting as it could or should.  

In this profoundly moving podcast, we talk in depth about how all of us can exist with our grief and despair, how we can hold them tenderly, and how, from these places of resilience and strength, we can hold the conversations that need to happen in our widening circles. 

About Louis: 
Louis works with children, and the child inside us all, the one that wants to be loved, the one that wants to cry, the one that knows what it wants, the one that really does dance like no-one’s watching, the one that spends timeless hours looking at bugs under a piece of bark, the one that keeps getting back up no matter how many times they fall down.

He helps people find a light in the darkness, especially in grief, in the shadow, in the things that are unseen, unheard, unspoken. Her sees death as our greatest teacher, and avoidance of it our biggest mistake. He made an audio course all about death and life here: it will help you become more fully alive in your everyday existence. 

He runs Magic Power of Grief circles at festivals, and in other spaces and places.

He believes the body is deeply intelligent, and our ‘symptoms’ are just fragments of our soul seeking wholeness. Rumi once said “What is the body? That shadow of a shadow of your love, that somehow contains the entire universe”.

He loves using design, collaboration and creativity to solve big, meaningful problems. One way he does this is by helping to run a charity – Apart of Me – that helps kids transform their grief into compassion. This project also has two side projects which are focused on helping younger children grow into emotionally empowered leaders: Earthlings and Bounce Works.

Making a home for experience in words is his favourite spiritual craft. You can check out some of his writing here. His book about How The World Is Making Our Children Mad And What To Do About It - is available now. See also Episode 131 of the podcast where we talk to Louis about it.

Louis Weinstock: https://louisweinstock.com/
A Part of Me https://www.apartofme.app/
Wider Horizons Summer Festival: https://widerhorizons.events/