Women & Femmes Grief Ritual Weekend

Grief as a portlan to vitality.

Gathering the ashes.

Tending the embers.

Reigniting the flame.

Tryon Life Community Farm | October 17 & 18

10am - 10pm Saturday

10am - 4pm Sunday

Does not include accommodation

the gathering

This weekend grief ritual is a space to gather with all that weighs heavily on our hearts. It’s a place to set down some of what we feel we are walking with alone, sort through what has been lost here, and focus ourselves on the fire that we now choose to tend.

Grief is not something that is wrong with us nor is it something we get over or fix. Our grief undoes us, reveals us, and re-creates us - this was never meant to be a clean process. This was never meant to be something we could control or predict. Grief is a wild animal, like us, and we must learn how to surrender to it. Through turning toward, rather than away from our grief, we can learn to build trust with ourselves, with each other, and with the natural cycles of birth, life, death, and decay. Through turning to the work together, we can begin to create a village to support this work.

This two-day ceremony is a place to come together to receive what has fallen, to hold what is tender, to transform what has died into what will live again. We gather as women (more on this below) to grieve together, to own where we’ve harmed ourselves and each other, to name where we’ve been hurt by each other and the larger systems we move in, and to build a fire to illuminate a new and ancient way of being together.

Held on the living ground of Tryon Life Community Farm, we will gather for two days in Ceremony inspired by Sobonfu Some, Joanna Macy, Francis Weller, Terese Charvet, Tere Carranza, Laurence Cole, and many more.

This is a day-use gathering. We will not be sleeping on the land.

who this is for

This space is open to those who:

Currently or have ever identified as women
Have ever been socialized or conditioned as female
Are healing the feminine lineage of their ancestry — including those doing ancestral healing work across generations of patriarchal wounding
Have a deep desire to speak honestly about and tend lovingly to sister wounds

a note on inclusion

We are two white, cisgender women, and we hold this offering with as much care and honesty as we can. Part of that honesty is this: we are still learning. We are actively working to become more inclusive and educated facilitators, and we are committed to harm reduction above all else.

At this time, we feel the gaps in our training, in our understanding, and we need to name that here. If you’re trans or non-binary, you are welcome here, AND we want to keep doing better at making and holding a strong space for you. If you’re feeling called to be with us but also feeling unsure, email us directly, and we will set up a time for a conversation beforehand.

If you prefer a grief ritual or community space held by/for trans or non-binary folks we direct you toward the following resources:

Queer Death Club — A virtual community making space for death, dying, and grief through connection, ritual, and resource sharing, centering queer and trans experiences. queerdeathclub.com

"Less Fear | More Fierce: Queer End-of-Life Planning" — An ongoing virtual LGBTQ+-centric discussion series meeting on the 2nd Wednesdays, 1–2:30 PM ET, through June 2026, holding space for queer and trans grief, including disenfranchised losses like family estrangement, identity erasure, and community loss. TalkDeath talkdeath.com

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 to expect

Two days of grief-tending ritual, education, conversation, and care on 7 acres in SW Portland
Guided grief ceremonies in the tradition of Sobonfu Some & others
Small group sharing circles
Solo time on the land
Space for creative expression
Community connection beyond this weekend
Resources for integrating and continuing the work after our time together ends
Optional sauna provided by the community (more information will come via email).

facilitators

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.

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 envisioning of how to honor and integrate loss as a people.

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.

Supporter: $400
Sustainer: $300
Supported: 5 spots $200
People of the global majority & QLGBTIA+: By donation*

We believe grief work should be accessible. Our tiered pricing is offered in trust. Please, choose the tier that honestly reflects your current resources.

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 People of the Global Majority 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 go ahead and purchase your donation based ticket here if this applies to you. Please consider emailing us if you have questions 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

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

Contact the host of Women & Femmes Grief Ritual Weekend