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Community Grief Gathering

Community Event

Community Grief Gathering 2024

What began as the 1st than-iversary of our son Julius’s death last year, we’d like to offer this year as opportunity for communal support of what so many of us have lost and endured through Helene. 
   
We’d like to offer especially to those who’ve endured profound hurricane loss a place and time to collectively honor what’s been taken away and put before you, plus community to hold you through it,
just like so many of you did for us when it was our turn with our son.  
Here’s Jenn’s love letter to those enduring Helene losses now. 

All losses and degrees of loss welcomed, including and beyond Helene.
All helpers welcomed, continuing this spirit of coming together in tragedy. 

photo of Young People's Sharing Circle, spring 2023 Julius Memorial, facilitated by Remembering Earth
 

Here’s our proposed event:

1:00-1:45pm      Potluck
for personal connection and grace with arrival time,
if sustaining significant loss, please come empty handed to be fed,
others, please bring food to share

2:00-5:30pm      Ceremony
arrive by 1:45 for 2:00 start,
opening &  creating memento altar,
musical accompaniment with Sarah Louise Henson & Ben Korta,
singing together with Danny Blose,
drumming  to drop in with Daniel Barber,
sharing circle/s: Helene Loss, Loved One Loss, Additional Grief (Relationship, Health, Professional, Political, Environmental, Generational), maybe also Young People's Circle,
​more 
drumming & release with Daniel,
closing

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We 'll host the potluck inside our Celo home. We'll host the ceremony outside in the field. Should it rain, we will figure out how to host everything inside our house.

To bring:
     
* carpool in higher-clearance vehicle , maybe 4WD, to manage our post-storm driveway
OR
park lower-clearance vehicle roadside before the bridge then walk or thumb a ride down our 0.5 gravel driveway, to protect car*

if joining potluck
       1. dish to share
       2. own dishes, utensils, drink/bottle 

if joining ceremony
       3. memento of what you’re grieving for altar
       4. own drum, optional
       5. own chair
       6.donation for musicians

To find it:
     
Set GPS to Upper Brown's Creek Rd. 
On Upper Brown’s Creek Rd, go 1.3 miles to mailboxes and Dead End sign on left.
Lower-carriage cars, park here.
Higher-carriage cars, keep going across bridge.
Stay STRAIGHT and downhill onto Piney Branch Way: a bumpy, unpaved lane.
Do NOT go left and uphill: treacherous.  
Go 0.2 miles through woods to Mountain Edible Arts sign.
Stay STRAIGHT and slightly downhill, past the 256 sign on tree, garden, and green shed, and up around curve toward our silver house on the hill.
Park on right of upper field by smoker & tree house.
Walk up to silver house for potluck.
Stay in field for ceremony.

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If you're not sure what grief you hold, aside from personal or collective hurricane loss, or from a  loved one's death,  here is a list of  possibilities all of us hold, some simply from enduring  modern  civilized living:
 
Here's  more about the list's first five, Francis Weller's
Five Gates of Grief summarized in video and
in writing from  his book  Wild Edge of Sorrow.  


Grief may worsen in isolation. 
Community may be needed for
--and the result of--
tending one another's grief.

As the old saying goes,
joy shared is multiplied,
sorrow shared is divided.


I thank Katherine Savage and her Fellowship in Grief & Death for starting me on this path  of learning the grief tending skills our society no longer teaches us, so that I knew how to dive and how to resurface once I needed to with my son's death.

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Event Date: Sunday, November 17th, 2024
1:00-5:30pm
come for some or all

Venue: land around our Celo home

Who: all welcome, even those we've not yet met

We welcome you, as you are.

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Personal or Family Ritual Option

When our family risked leaving behind all that was comfortable and familiar to our kids, when we moved from western Mass to western NC in 2018, my dear friend Amy offered to conduct a ritual on our behalf.

She walked us through and recorded on paper all the things we would have to let go and mourn with this brave relocation. That paper and this photo of us with it remained  with us through three moves and six years, prominently displayed, until in writing this we realized it was time to let it go, too.


For all of you with Helene grief now--individuals and families with both profound and minor losses--I extend this possibility of self-created ritual to you now, to do in your own time privately. Should it seem helpful, write out all you've lost--personally and collectively, literally and figuratively--to draw a line between before and after.

Should it be helpful also to perform a burial of this taking stock, to honor what's "died," so be it. Should it be helpful also to list what you hope will grow from the soil enriched by this death, so be it. If you'd like my help facilitating this ritual for your family, as my friend Amy had, it would be my honor.

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