Tending the Heart: A Communal Grief Ritual (London)

Tending the Heart: A Community Grief Ritual

The Old School Rooms @ the Round Chapel, E5

 with Embracing Grief Team & Sophy Banks

Join Sophy Banks, Sarah & Tony Pletts, Bilal Nasim, Aama Sade, and a wider circle of experienced space holders for a powerful, large-scale Grief Tending event.

This is an invitation to come together in community - to honour our losses, express our grief, and reconnect with life through shared ritual, song, and deep witnessing.

Unlike our smaller, more intimate workshops, this larger gathering offers a rare opportunity to experience the collective power of grieving together in a spacious, supportive environment. Whether you're new to Grief Tending or have journeyed with us before, you're warmly welcome. Grief for any reason has a place here - personal, ancestral, global - all of it is welcome.

Together, we’ll move through a guided process, beginning with grounding and resourcing practices to help you feel safe and supported. We’ll gently invite the surfacing of emotions - sadness, rage, fear, numbness, gratitude - in a way that honours your needs. There will be optional paired sharing, space for expression, and a central grief ritual where tears, sound, and movement are held in community. Everything is offered as an invitation - nothing is required.

Live drumming and group singing will support the ritual arc, helping us return from the depths of expression to a sense of connection, warmth, and belonging. We’ll close with soothing integration time, allowing space to gently land before departing.

This 4-hour session serves as both a powerful introduction to Grief Tending and a potent short-form experience. For those seeking a slower, more spacious dive into this work, Embracing Grief also hosts regular one- and two-day events, while Grief Tending in Community offers immersive retreats with Sophy Banks and others.

Grief Tending: A Path to Aliveness

Grief is not something to fix - it is something to feel. In the face of heartbreak, loss, disconnection, or overwhelm, Grief Tending offers a supported space to meet whatever is true for you. 

Inspired by the work of Sobonfu Somé, Malidoma Somé, Joanna Macy, Francis Weller, Martin Prechtel, and Maeve Gavin, Grief Tending weaves together ancient wisdom and contemporary practice. It helps us remember how to be human - feeling, connected, alive - in the presence of others.

This event is for you if you're seeking support with grief in any form - whether you're navigating the loss of a loved one, the pain of disconnection, fears for the future, or a grief that has no name. Shared grief spaces can stir up a lot of feelings, and we don’t recommend them for people who have grief which is very raw, or who are feeling fragile. If you’re not sure, please email welcome@loveandloss.co.uk.

Accessibility at the venue - The venue has steps at the main entrance, but there is a side ramp and a lift for access if needed. 

To see more about what happens in a Grief Tending workshop, and the practice of Grief Tending for grief support, there are a series of short animations HERE.

If you have any questions, please email Sarah welcome@loveandloss.co.uk .

ABOUT YOUR FACILITATORS

The team are all experienced Grief Tenders who regularly hold grief tending events in London, Devon and online. They bring a wealth of embodied practices to work with grief – both personal and collective.

Embracing Grief website: https://www.griefsupport.org.uk/
Grief Tending in Community website: https://grieftending.org/

Sarah Pletts (she/her) is an experienced facilitator. She has spent hundreds of hours sitting alongside people finding their way with grief. She brings an embodied understanding of mortality and consent to the practice of Grief Tending. She has come through chronic illness, been a care-giver, and has a deep connection with the natural world. As an artist-maker she designs experiences that inspire, and creates beauty through ritual (www.loveandloss.co.uk). You can find her hand-drawn animations at www.griefsupport.org.uk/videos. She regularly co-facilitates with Tony Pletts, Bilal Nasim, Aama Sade, Sophy Banks and others. She lives in Hackney with partners, chosen family and friendly squirrels. 

Sophy Banks (she/her)  Sophy’s eclectic life has included time as a therapist, family constellator, radical footballer, community activist,  engineer, computer trainer, and more.

Sophy’s understanding of the importance of shared grief work started through attending workshops of Joanna Macy and Sobonfu Some and continued in more recent work with Maeve Gavin. Since 2013 she has been growing Grief Tending in Community to seed and spread the practices of tending grief together, through offering talks, workshops in many formats, and supporting facilitators of grief work in the Apprenticing programme and beyond.

She is deeply committed to creating healthy human culture at all levels of scale, and sees that shared practices to express and hear our grief is a fundamental part of what brings us to right relationship to ourselves and those around us. This work of surfacing, witnessing and making meaning of our pain is crucial to transforming the systems of harm that abound in our world – and creating healthy relationships with ourselves, other people, and the wider living systems of the planet. You can find out more about Sophy’s work on Healthy Human Culture here.

Tony Pletts founded his art direction and construction company Einstein’s Octopus in 1987, a flexible business that's allowed him to pursue other creative paths. Tony’s made radio programmes for BBC Radio 4 (his North Korean mini series was nominated for a SONY) and has just finished his first book, Love To The Power Of Three. Tony is also a trustee for the charity WAYout, a free at the point of use creative ‘University of the Street’ that works with street youth in Sierra Leone. Here he teaches both online and in person when he has the opportunity to visit. A rich and varied life has frequently exposed Tony to the teachings of grief and he started facilitating workshops with Sarah in 2019.

Bilal Nasim is a facilitator, trainer and artist exploring what it means to be alive and our relationship with death. Bilal is an experienced Grief Tender and has been holding grief spaces since 2018, including workshops aimed specifically for POC and those identifying as men. Bilal hosts workshops on confronting death, Death Cafe‘s, and is training as a death doula with Red Tent End Of Life Doulas. Bilal is a senior leader at Mycelium, delivering award winning programmes on personal resilience, inclusive leadership and workplace culture.

Aama Sade a gifted shamanic celebrant and facilitator will be part of the team. See more about her work here: https://treecircleceremonies.co.uk

Embracing Grief Ethics Statement:
https://www.loveandloss.co.uk/ethics-statement/

EARLY BIRD PRICES
Low Waged £35
Standard £45
Higher Waged £60
Supporter £75

LATE PRICES
Low Waged £40
Standard £50
Higher Waged £65
Supporter £80