Rooted | Rising Through Grief

Grief Ritual Weekend at Tryon Life Community

June 28 - 29th, 2025

10am Saturday - 4pm Sunday

Does not include accommodation

The Invitation

As we cross into summer, and the light grows in our skies, we gather to honor both the shadows and illumination of our grief. In this sacred time when nature herself demonstrates the fullness of living, we come together to remember that grief, too, is an expression of our capacity to love deeply.

The grief we carry is not a burden to be shed, it is a continued expression of love and a declaration of what we long for.It speaks of the threads that connect us to all we have loved and lost—not only people, but places, dreams, identities, and ways of being that no longer exist.

What Nature Teaches

The ancient cedars and wild waters of the PNW have witnessed countless cycles of loss and renewal. They stand both rooted, and rising.

Nature does not turn away from what has fallen. Neither shall we.

In this ritual weekend, we will learn from these wild teachers. How the tree grows rings of resilience around its wounds. How the river carves new passages when old paths are blocked. How the light returns even after the longest night.

In this ritual weekend we will honor our unique and collective grief through a community grief tending ritual that has been shared with us via Sobonfu Some and has been inspired by the teachings, stories, and offerings of many others.

Community as Sacred Vessel

Grief was never meant to be carried alone. Our ancestors knew this. Indigenous cultures worldwide still practice this wisdom. The weight that breaks us in isolation becomes bearable—even transformative—when held in community.

Together we will create a sanctuary where your grief can be witnessed without shame, where your stories can be told without judgement, where feelings can be felt in their fullness.

For it is only by honoring what we have lost that we discover what cannot be taken from us.

The Work We Will Do

This weekend offers a rare opportunity to tend to the neglected territories of loss that our culture so often asks us to override, ignore, or deny:

The grief of dreams unrealized
The sorrow of ecological devastation
The ache of disconnection from community
The mourning of identities shed or stolen
The ancestral grief carried in our bloodlines
The pain of relationships altered or ended
The losses that come with aging and change
The fear and confusion of trying to make this life “work”
The epidemic of depression and anxiety
The list does not end, it is not supposed to, grief is part of the human experience

Through carefully guided ritual, time on the land, creative expression, shared meals, and the ancient medicine of being present together, we will practice the art of grief tending as an act of community resilience and cultural transformation.

What You Will Receive

Two days of grief-tending ritual, education, conversation, and care
Lunch & dinner on Saturday, lovingly prepared with local ingredients (Bring your own brown bag lunch on Sunday)
Guided grief rituals and ceremonies in the tradition of Sobonfu Some & other elders
Small group sharing circles
Solo time on the land
Space for creative expression
Community of fellow travelers on this path
Resources for integrating and continuing the work after our time together ends

Who This Is For

This retreat welcomes all who carry grief, which is to say, all of us. Whether your loss is fresh or long-carried, named or unnamed, visible to others or hidden even from yourself—there is space for you here.

You need no special knowledge, just a willingness to turn toward what aches within you with gentleness and curiosity. To remember, as Francis Weller reminds us, that "grief and gratitude are sisters, born of the same deep soul.

Facilitators

Alyssa Rose is a grief guide and life-transition doula in Portland, Oregon. She works with individuals and small groups navigating change and integrating grief. Through her work, she uniquely tends to the body, mind, and spirit of each individual and co-creates beautiful ritual spaces for the deep soul work of grieving. She hosts monthly grief rituals and annual retreats, works with clients one-to-one, and trains other practitioners to support clients in navigating loss.

With a background in Eastern and Western healing modalities, end of life work, trauma-informed coaching, animist psychology, ancestral medicine, Reiki, Craniosacral Therapy, and Integrative coaching, Alyssa is committed to creating a grief literate culture and developing resilient modern villages. Informed and inspired by the work of Sobonfu Some, Malidoma Some, Laurence Cole, Frances Weller, Stephen Jenkinson, Bill Plotkin, and many more, she studies Earth-based cultures, rituals, and grieving around the world in order to support our remembering and re-invisioning of how to honor and integrate loss as a people.

Megan Jeanne has been holding space in the sacred transitional veil as a birth worker for many years. As a seasoned midwife, she has traversed the myriad of emotional landscapes such work invites, walking along side families as they celebrate their greatest joys, confront uncharted territory, grapple with excruciating loss, and navigate everything in between. She is continually awed by the miracle and intimacy of the work she is honored to participate in. Following the thread of sacred transitions, the potential potency of the human experience, and the mysterious unknown, Megan has been led to study Shamanism, working specifically with the Bacsi lineage. This dive into ancient, universal energetic medicine has in some ways felt like a continuation of the space holding and beckoning forth of new(ancient) life that is midwifery. Megan was introduced to grief tending, grief ceremonies, and the importance of reawakening our connection with grief in the West, after having the ultimate honor of sitting with a family member as they chose to transition with Death With Dignity. She has since participated in a grief tending mentorship program, leaning in and developing tools with the guidance of elders and fellow edge walkers. She has attended multiple grief ritual weekends, been studying the works of Malidoma and Sobonofu Some, Francis Weller, and others as she is adding this sacred layer of intimacy into the work she is called to do. She is extremely honored to have the opportunity to meet each participant where they are at and to hold reverence and ritual together.

Ebon Ian is a lifelong multi-instrumentalist, musician, songwriter, and student of the ocean and nature. Finding fluidity in the rhythms of the sea and the natural world have shaped his understanding of life, creativity, and spirituality, teaching him lessons of balance, patience, and interconnectedness. This deep connection influences both his music and healing work.
After a profound spiritual awakening in 2019, Ebon sought clarity and guidance, which eventually led him to an apprenticeship and initiation into the Bacsi tradition of shamanism. In addition to his musical practice, he is a Reiki practitioner and has been deeply involved in grief work, offering support to those navigating loss. Ebon’s journey into grief rituals was solidified after attending a ceremony with Laurence Cole, where he discovered the transformative power of community and belonging in the grief ritual process. This experience led him to pursue a six-month grief ritual mentorship with esteemed elders Laurence Cole, Thérèse Charvet, and Mary Hart. Through all of his work, Ebon remains grounded in the belief that we are meant to walk this path together—guided by spirit, the ancestors, and the support of one another.

Registration Details

Dates: June 28 - 29th, 2025
Location: Tryon Community Life, Portland OR

Investment: We all care deeply about the accessibility of grief work and have worked to create a meaningful and affordable weekend retreat. Let’s face it, financial burdens, global resource inequity, the oppressive nature of capitalism are all part of the universal grief many individuals feel flooded with on a regular basis. As facilitators, we are working to find a balance between making these offerings accessible and continuing to make them sustainable. If you have models to share regarding this challenge, please share with us - these conversations are important as humans continue to evolve out of scarcity and fear and into creativity and generosity. We are offering a tiered approach to the financial commitment for the weekend. We trust you will choose the tier that best reflects your day-to-day spending habits and financial comfort.

Sustaining 10 spots $450
Supporting 10 spots $350
Supported 5 spots $250

Limited to 25 participants

*5 donation-based allyship spots available
We desire open dialogue regarding the imperfect but sincere effort to address the deep-rooted inequities and on-going harm caused by Eurocentric colonialism, especially its impact on marginalized communities. In an effort toward allyship and collaboration, we are offering five donation-based spots to BIPOC and/or LGBTQIA+ identifying members of our community. We realize there is far-reaching marginalization beyond these two demographics. Please help us keep this conversation alive so that together we may continue to disrupt the racist and othering patterns within our learned behaviors and social structure. Today’s political climate demands that we continue to tend to these painful realities intentionally and in honest conversation with each other.

Please reach out via email if you’re interested in one of these spots OR if you have the ability and desire to increase the number of allyship spots by covering the cost of this workshop for another. We deeply believe that tending to both individual and collective grief is a vital step in breaking patterns of separation and marginalization. By coming together in this way, we can foster a new paradigm rooted in interconnectedness, healing, and collective growth.

Meals

We are so excited to be hosting Carolyn Egan from Seattle, Washington to be sharing her gifts of nourishment with us! We will be eating some meals together and others will be brown bag lunches.

Saturday: lunch & dinner provided
Sunday: brown bag lunch

We will have a snack table and also invite people to bring and share some of their favorite snacks.

Please bring:

Snacks to share - please bring 1-2 items to share with the group over the weekend, this makes for a fun and nourishing spread during our breaks
Water bottle & mug for tea
brown bag lunch on Sunday

"The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them." — Francis Weller