A Ritual for Grief: Gifted by Dr Malidoma Somé

WHAT IS A GRIEF RITUAL?

Grief is a natural part of life, but too often we carry it alone. This Grief Ritual offers a sacred, communal space to honor loss, release sorrow, and reconnect with joy. We gather as a community to witness and support one another in this one-day journey.

“People need to grieve but have no culture in which to really do it” Martín Prechtel

We wrangle big griefs, everyday griefs, climate griefs, ancestral/generational griefs, and sometimes-life-is-just-hard grief. Grief can sit on top of everything, often squashing our feelings or making us numb, even angry. 

A RITUAL FOR GRIEF. A SHARED COMMUNAL PLACE TO WEEP.

We offer a day of intense healing for broken hearts and bruised spirits. A day spent in the company of others, where you can grieve as part of a community, committing to support one another. Here we build an understanding of the nature of grief and enable the sharing of experiences, before creating a physical space for grief to flow.

This is a place for everybody, through song and dance, tears and each personal expression, to offer up whatever is weighing them down. This activity has a natural flow and we find our body knows how to grieve. When done communally this process is not so overwhelming.

This ritual was originally brought to the UK by Dr Malidoma Somé of the Dagara tribe in Burkina Faso.

‘Communal grieving offers something we cannot get when we grieve by ourselves. Through validation, acknowledgement, and witnessing, communal grieving allows us to experience a level of healing that is deeply and profoundly freeing. (Dagara teacher, Sobonfu Somé)

Grief is a natural response to loss. The more we love someone or something, the deeper we feel the loss. But don’t weep alone. Be supported in ritual.

‘Grief takes us to the top of the hill and then lets us walk back down slowly, peacefully. It helps relieve the person who is in sorrow and leads them towards acceptance of the phenomenon of death, separation and love.’ (Malidoma Somé, Dagara Elder).

OUR RITUAL FACILITATORS:

Kathryn Edwards had a life-changing encounter with Dr Malidoma Somé when she learned – experientially – how ritual creates and sustains community. She studied Dagara wisdom, including the theory and practice of ritual, with Malidoma for two decades in the US and in Europe. Kathryn was frequently invited to visit his village in Burkina Faso, West Africa, and eventually acted as co-tour-manager for Western study groups there.

Kathryn was particularly inspired by the beauty and healing effects of Dagara funerals. Her spontaneous childhood practice had been to bury dead birds in a shoebox with pomp and flowers, so becoming a funeral celebrant for humans was a natural progression. She apprenticed herself to a progressive undertaker, to be better informed about the care of the dead. She went to weep at Malidoma’s own funeral in Burkina Faso in 2022.

Kathryn believes that working with ritual technology will fortify us, as modernity unravels in the face of the climate emergency.

kathrynedwards50@gmail.com

JOHN SCAIFE has studied and practised extensively with Dagara teachers Malidoma and Sobonfu Somé in the UK, also with Martin Prechtel in the UK and at his ‘Bolad’s Kitchen’ school in New Mexico, having been introduced to them by poet and ‘men’s movement’ leaders, poet Robert Bly and mythologist Michael Meade, in the 90’s. During this time he also learnt from James Hillman and Robert Moore. He is an experienced ritualist, (especially rites of passage for men and women, and in grief work), a cowrie shell diviner and accomplished story teller. 

www.recastpath.life