This month's Men's Grief Ritual will focus on our relationship with sex, intimacy, and desire. The male erotic has been wounded for many generations, and subsequently, caused much harm in the world and to other's bodies. There are deep wounds here that need to be tended to and healed—shadows and stories that need the light of love; exiled parts that need belonging and care; boundaries crossed that need healing and restorative, compassionate accountability.

At this one-night Grieving Man, we will tend to these pains—from the harms we've caused ourselves and others, to the shames, insecurities, and fears that have shaped our sexuality. From the ways this culture damaged how we developed our relationships to sex, our bodies, and pleasure, to how its shaped how we relate to desire, attraction, performance, and worthiness. This will be a space to hold it all and work to heal our relationship with Eros in our selves, our relationships, and our communities.

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We welcome you men.

We welcome you to a gathering of brotherhood to release, remember, and reroot into our deepest truths.

We welcome all of you, all your wholeness—your dark and your light.

We welcome your grief, rage, and pain; alongside your gratitude, praise, and joy. We welcome your softness and your strength—your tenderness, fears, and shames, alongside your dreams, hopes, and gifts.

We celebrate you in all that you do and all the ways you support those around you. And, we honor you for just being—for having your needs, for feeling your feelings, for embracing your desires—for loving, caring, and being human in all your ways.

More than ever, our families and communities, our land and all its life, our ancestors and descendants, need us. They need us to heal and show up—to rise as heart-centered, embodied, and integrated men in presence with what is here now, in care and devotion to what this world is needing.

In that deep yearning, for what brotherhood can be and do, we invite you to the healing grounds of Sacred Groves for this month's Grieving Man One Night Ritual.

While this gathering is directly inspired by a grief ritual created by Joanna Macy, we also honor the lineages and wisdom of so many others who have influenced our personal and communal grief work—Malidoma and Sobonfu Somé, Francis Weller, Martín Prechtel, Bayo Akomolafe, and of course our dearest elders in community—Collin Brown, Laurence Cole, Thérèse Charvet, Tere Carranza, and many more.

PLEASE ARRIVE BETWEEN 4PM AND 5PM. We will begin in circle promptly at 5pm and end around 10:30pm "spirit time". After the ritual you will be nourished with a delicious home-cooked feast cooked by Chef Jordan after the ritual too.

Reciprocity: To ensure this work is valued and tended to in sustainable, regenerative ways, we are now asking for an upfront contribution for the space tenders and land to cover the work, food, land upkeep, supplies, and investment of energy, learning, and time spent dedicated to this work.

Ticketing Tiers:

$120 - Supporting Tier - This tier supports your community by allowing more need-based and BIPOC scholarships to be offered. Additionally, it helps cover the holistic costs of running this ritual by supporting fair wages for the facilitators and greater program accessibility through sliding scale options. Please select this tier if you are able to comfortably meet all of your basic needs and have the means to contribute towards greater economic and racial justice in this way. Thank you for supporting this work!
$80 - Sustaining Tier (General Admission) - This tier covers the full costs of running this ritual by supporting fair wages for the facilitators and greater program accessibility through sliding scale options. Please register at this tier if you are able to comfortably meet all of your basic needs. If you have the means to contribute more towards greater economic and racial justice by enabling more need-based and BIPOC scholarships to be offered, please consider registering at the Supporting Tier above. Thank you for your support.
$40 - Supported Tier - This tier covers the direct, but not full costs of running this retreat. As a guide, this tier may be right for you if you stress about meeting your basic needs (food, housing, etc.) but still regularly achieve them. If you are able to comfortably meet your needs, please register at the Sustaining or Supporting Tiers above, which covers the full costs of running our ritual.

Alongside the sliding scale tiered ticketing options, to continue making this accessible for everyone, we have scholarships available for those in need. Please email jordan.s.lyon@gmail.com if you're interested.

Refund Policy: Partial refunds of 50% are available up to 14 days prior to the event date. After this period, refunds are no longer available. This policy helps to hold us all accountable and creates some protection for the facilitators and organizers. We ask that you notify as soon as possible if you are no longer able to attend.

Whether you can join us or not, thank you for honoring yourself and showing up in all the ways you do. And if you are feeling this call, we hope you can join us. Thank you!

— Jordan

*This is a cocreated container and we welcome your leadership. As we each continue to learn and grow in our individual space holding skills for this type of community healing, we know that this is a collective effort no matter what and that we can't do it alone. So please let us know if you would like to help us plan, add ingredients, stir the pot and bring your own magic to our cocreated ritual.

**This gathering is for anyone who has been socialized as a man/male, who does or has ever identified as a man/male, or even any one who is simply doing the work to heal their ancestral lineage of those that have identified as either of those.

Grieving Man donates 5% of net revenue towards building infrastructure for healthy water access for the Dagara Tribes of Burkina Faso, West Africa in reciprocity for the ripples of communal grief work Sobonfu + Malidoma Somé brought to the west in the 80's + 90's as an antidote to colonialism.