Grieving with Mother Earth: A 3-Day Outdoor Retreat

In many traditional cultures, grief rituals are considered the “glue” that binds a community together. They offer us one of the most powerful ways to reconnect with ourselves, each other, and the world around us. These rituals remind us of our shared humanity and help us find belonging in times of loss.

In this weekend, our focus will be to work with our grief about what's happening to our beloved Mother Earth at this time of ecocide.  As part of the healing, We will offer up our tears to her—for all the harms we as a species have caused, for all the ways we’ve lost the connection and care our ancestors had, and take time to mend our relationship with the land, the trees, plants and all the beings that call this place home. We will sing, dance, pray, grieve, rage, and express joy in ways that help us remember what it means to live in right relationship, interconnection, and reciprocity with this living world.

Communal grief rituals are about coming together as a group to be witnessed in our sorrow. By listening to others, we learn to articulate what often feels inexpressible. In this space, we aim to destigmatize grief, metabolize it, and move away from the idea that grief is pathological. This is a chance to co-regulate our nervous systems in the village and be reminded that we are not alone.

Join us as we honor the sacredness of grief and gratitude through talking circles, singing, poetry, movement, sacred listening, ceremony, sharing food, and creative expression. At the heart of our time together, we will engage in a sacred ritual inspired by the work of Sobonfu Some and Malidoma Some of the Dagara people of West Africa.

This offering is not a typical workshop or talk therapy. It is designed to be highly experiential and embodied, helping us move away from intellectualizing grief and instead stay rooted in our hearts and bodies as we navigate the unprocessed grief within us. Here, we create a space where grief can take any form—whether it’s numbness, shame, rage, trembling, stillness, wailing, or something else.

The spiritual framework for our ritual includes earth-based practices that honor the power of drumming and song, the natural world as a web of interconnectedness, and the unseen realms, including our ancestors.

You can listen to a 1-minute video of Sobonfu Some speak on Grief Recovery and Ritual, or learn more about community grief work at Sacred Groves and Northwest Grief Tending.

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Land & Accessibility: Our gathering will take place at Sacred Groves, a ten acre forest sanctuary located on Bainbridge Island, in Washington state. Sacred Groves is a small wilderness park and co-living community where you can feel the sacredness of the earth. It’s a place to settle into the quiet, listen to the birds, watch the trees sway in the wind, re-establish connection with God, Goddess, Great Spirit, Great Mystery or whatever it is you call that ineffable power that underlies all of life. We welcome people from all races and cultures who share the belief that the earth is sacred and that music, dance, prayer, ceremony, and time in the natural world are essential for personal and community health. This is a place to deepen your relationship with Mother Earth and your personal spirituality, reconnecting body, heart and mind, also with Mother Earth and Great Spirit. 

Our gathering will be outdoors, in our beautiful meadow that is only accessible by footpaths. If you use a wheel chair or have any questions about the accessibility on the land, please email Jordan at jordan.s.lyon@gmail.com

Meals & Lodging: All your meals will be deliciously cooked by a loving team of hearth tenders and chefs with local, quality ingredients. Most of the meals will be plant-based and gluten-free with meat options available for those who eat meat. We will also accommodate all dietary restrictions as best we can. Lodging options include:

• Tent camping on site
• A limited number of spaces for vehicle-camping (no RV's please, space is limited)
• Staying at home and commuting to Sacred Groves each day of the retreat
• Reserving a room nearby through AirBnb or a local motel/hotel/inn

COVID Protocol: We ask that all participants take a COVID home test the day of our event. Once gathered, each participant will be at choice as to what feels good to them in terms of masking, distancing, contact, etc. If you are COVID positive or showing any flu-like symptoms on the days of the ritual, please stay home.

Registration & Fees: 

We offer sliding scale pricing in support of economic justice, which requires your active participation in determining where you fall on the scale. We ask that you be as generous as you are able in order to increase accessibility and support facilitator well-being. 

Please read the tier descriptions closely as a guide for selecting the tier that best fits your resources and/or limitations

• $700 - 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 retreat 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!

• $550 - Sustaining Tier (General Admission) - This tier covers the full costs of running this retreat 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.

• $400 - 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 retreat.

• Scholarship Tier - We offer a limited number of scholarships to help make this work accessible to those who otherwise could not afford to join us. As a guide, this tier (or our scholarship tier) may be right for you if you frequently stress about meeting basic needs (food, housing, etc.) and don’t always achieve them. This may mean you are unemployed or underemployed, rent lower-end properties or have unstable housing, have limited access to a car, qualify for government assistance (health care, food stamps), and/or have no or very limited expendable income. This registration option is available to participants who have completed the Scholarship Application Form in the event description and received an email confirmation to proceed with the Scholarship Registration option.

Reciprocity Gift: A portion of facilitator compensation will be gifted back to the Dagara community through two initiatives led by community elders, as a way for Western communities to give back for the gifts shared by Malidoma, Sobonfu, and other Dagara elders. The Sonder Project provides sustainable drinking water through well construction, addressing a critical need, while the Lawn Ta Council, consisting of elders representing over 500 people, distributes emergency aid to combat food insecurity, housing instability, and medical shortages exacerbated by the climate crisis.

Refund policy: Partial refunds of 50% are available up to 30 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.

Questions?

For general questions, please contact Jordan at jordan.s.lyon@gmail.com.

If you’re not sure this retreat is right for you and would like to connect with organizer to learn more about the retreat details or explore fit, please just reach out to Jordan at anytime. 

Team of Facilitators and Elders:

Thérèse Charvet is the founder of Sacred Groves and has lived on that land since 1977. She began leading grief rituals in 2002 after attending several rituals, including grief rituals with her mentor Sobonfu Some. A former midwife and Program Director of Seattle Midwifery School, she has been hosting ceremonies, rituals and womens groups at Sacred Groves for over 20 years.  Read more about her here. 

Siena Tenisci, MA, LMHC, is a therapist and founder of Northwest Grief Tending, a practice dedicated to the facilitation of grief rituals and community healing. As a descendant of Abruzzese and Celtic lineages, Siena has been working to revive ancestral keening traditions, where women once held central and respected roles in helping communities metabolize grief through vocal and communal rituals. With over ten years of experience, her approach to grief work has been shaped by many teachers, including Sobonfu and Malidoma Somé, Joanna Macy, Therese Charvet, Laurence Cole, Francis Weller, and Vince Horan. Siena’s work is also grounded in her MA in Counseling from Antioch University in Seattle, integrating Internal Family Systems, body-based methods, and anti-oppression frameworks to support clients on their healing paths.

Jordan Lyon is a grief tender, ritualist, and chef. His work and life strives to cultivate relationships, communities, and cultures of healing, transformation, and reconnection with this living world and her natural rhythms and spirit. He shares his love of food and nourishing others by tending the hearth. He cocreates prayerful rituals to honor cycles of life, death, and rebirth in each of our journeys to heal, love, and express our gifts in the world. He tends to individual and collective grief as our deepest teacher and guide in this time of the Great Unraveling and Great Turning. Learn more at jordanlyon.com.