Community Grief Retreat
Honoring Our Grief & Gratitude with Rituals of Renewal
Ages 18+ | Bothell, WA | Sliding Scale $350-500 | Dec 5 & 6 | Register Now →
Program Description
For much of human history, and across cultures, grief was tended in community. People gathered in time-honored ways to weep, sing, move, pray, witness, and remember together. Grieving was not just something to survive. It was an essential part of how communities stayed connected to one another, to the ancestors, to the land, and to the sacred.
This retreat is an invitation to remember and practice something of that communal way of grieving together. Over two days, we’ll honor our grief and gratitude through talking circles, song, poetry, movement, sacred listening, time in nature, shared food, and ceremony. At the heart of our time together will be a communal grief ritual inspired by teachings shared in the West by Dagara elders Sobonfu Somé and Malidoma Patrice Somé.
Our work is also informed by Francis Weller’s Five Gates of Grief, which offer a framework for recognizing the many forms of grief we may carry, including:
Everything we love we will lose
The places that have not known love
The sorrows of the world
The things we cannot even name that we ache for
Intergenerational or ancestral grief
The harms we have caused (recently added)
Communal grief ritual gives us a chance to reach for one another and find the support and courage to turn toward what needs tending. By listening to others, we often find words for what has felt difficult to name. And when grief has somewhere to go—when it can be witnessed and held in community—it can begin to move.
This offering is experiential and embodied. Rather than trying to analyze or explain our grief, we’ll practice staying close to what is happening in our hearts and bodies. Grief may show up as tears, numbness, anger, shame, trembling, silence, stillness, laughter, wailing, or something else entirely. There is no right way to grieve here, and no grief too big or too small to be welcomed.
Participation is always invitational. There is no expectation that your grief look or sound a particular way, and you will always have choice about how deeply you participate. You may express, witness, rest, receive support, step back, or simply be present.
Our ritual is held within an earth-honoring spiritual framework that recognizes relationship with the natural world, our ancestors, and the unseen. Song, rhythm, beauty-making, time on the land, and communal ritual help support this container. You do not need to hold any particular spiritual or religious beliefs to participate.
Logistical Details
When is it? Saturday, Dec 5 from 9am-9pm and Sunday, Dec 6 from 9:30am to 5pm.
Where is it? Rite of Passage Journey’s Basecamp in Bothell, WA. View our directions & accessibility information.
Who can attend? Open to anyone ages 18 and above. Group size will be between 14-20 participants.
How much does it cost? This series is offered on a sliding scale of $350-500. Learn more about how sliding scale works.
Meals & Lodging: Please note that meals and lodging are not included. Attendees will be responsible for their own overnight accommodations and bringing personal meals, a dish for a community potluck, and community snacks.
Land & Accessibility: Our gathering will take place at Rite of Passage Journey’s Basecamp, a rustic retreat set on 11 acres of wooded hillside, gardens, and meadow, located in a semi-rural area next to the Songaia CoHousing community. The main gathering space is a cozy yurt, with a kitchen and tea station situated in a covered outdoor area about 20 feet away. A nearby porta- potty and handwashing station provide basic amenities. Outdoors, there’s a fire pit, a large grassy meadow, and wooded walking paths—we plan to integrate some time in nature throughout our retreat. For accessibility, the site has flat dirt paths connecting the various areas, and there are three steps leading up to the yurt.
Reciprocity Gift: Our communal grief work has been deeply inspired by Dagara elders Sobonfu Somé and Malidoma Patrice Somé, who shared teachings and practices from Burkina Faso with Western communities.
As a practice of reciprocity and gratitude for what we have received, a portion of facilitator compensation from this retreat will be donated to The Sonder Project’s Water Reciprocity Fund. The fund was created specifically with followers of Malidoma and Sobonfu to bring sustainable clean water to Dagara communities in Burkina Faso. So far, it has funded five completed wells, with a sixth underway, and also supports the training of local well mechanics to help sustain access to clean water over time.
Questions? To learn more before registering, or if you have a question about your registration or your payment arrangement, please contact us.
Retreat Schedule
Saturday, Dec 5 : 9am until Late Evening
In the morning, we’ll begin by slowly building our community container: sharing, creating agreements, calling in support, and crafting beauty together. As Martin Prechtel reminds us, “Spirit eats beauty” – so when we grieve together, we get on our knees to create a feast. We call in help through beauty offerings of song, poems, altars, flowers, tears, and other creative expressions.
In the afternoon, we’ll sit with whatever is alive in our hearts, connecting in small groups and spending time in nature. The flow of the day will guide us deeper into our hearts and community connection in preparation for the evening grief ritual.
The evening will be devoted to our communal grief ritual— a space where grief can be expressed more fully than it often can in everyday life, held by song, drumming, a grief shrine, and the presence of others. For many, there is something deeply powerful about grieving in this way: witnessing one another, offering our voices and presence in support, and allowing our body’s natural expressions of grief and fury to belong within something ancient and beautiful.
We’ll invite you to listen inwardly and notice how your grief wants to move when it is given permission and space—something rarely offered in our culture. This may take the form of tears, movement, dancing, wailing, anger, silence, stillness, or something else entirely. We’ll offer guidance, grounding, and containment through this process, and participation is always invitational.
Sunday, Dec 6 : 9:30am until 5pm
On Sunday, we’ll have time to share and make meaning of our experiences from the evening ritual, with additional opportunities to visit the grief shrine.
We’ll gradually turn toward reintegration through practices that help us transition out of ritual space and carry forward what we’ve received from our time together.
Late that afternoon, we’ll come together to “clean-up” the spaces we used, honoring the grief that was felt within them and creating a chance to move forward without leaving threads unravelled.
Honoring Our Mentors
Excerpted from NW Grief Tending’s Website
While there are many teachers who inform our approach to grief rituals, it is particularly important to us to honor the lineage of Malidoma Somé, Sobonfu Somé, and the elders of the Dagara tribe of Dano, Burkina Faso, West Africa.
Without their generous teachings, the community grief tending movement that’s emerging in the Pacific Northwest would not be happening. For those who have benefited from grief rituals connected to this teaching lineage, we ask you to learn about their stories and give back by donation through the Dagara Water Empowerment Project.
Meet The Facilitators
Siena Tenisci
Siena Tenisci, MA, LMHC, is a therapist, community organizer, and founder of Northwest Grief Tending. She is a descendant of Abruzzese and Celtic peoples - lineages where keening women once held dedicated and respected roles in society as vocal rituals who supported communal grief work…
Jordan Lyon
Jordan Lyon is a chef, grief tender, writer and facilitator. His passions and work guide him towards cultivating community through all the ways he creates, weaves, and lives. Primarily through food - a love language of his that nourishes community doing deep work together; through ritual…