Grief & Gratitude Ceremony and Celebration

Grief & Gratitude Ceremony and Celebration
Hosted by The Sacred Death Centre
🕒 Sunday, 6th July, 3–7pm
📍 Butleigh Church Room, St Leonard’s Church, High Street, Butleigh

Join us for a powerful, heart-led gathering as we honour the sacred threads of grief and gratitude—two sides of the same precious coin.

This ceremony marks a year in the life of the Sacred Death Centre: a community initiative dedicated to creating a healthier culture around death, dying, and grief. Together, we are reclaiming these natural rites of passage and bringing them home, into community, into conversation, and into connection.

🖤 The first part of the ceremony will centre around a Grief Ritual, inspired by Gate 4 of Francis Weller’s Five Gates of Grief—“What we expected and did not receive.” We will explore how the absence of village, elders, and right relationship with the natural world leaves an ache in our hearts. Through reflection, spoken word, and a simple stone ritual, we will offer space for these sorrows to be acknowledged, expressed, and released.

🌾 The second part will move into a Gratitude Ceremony, weaving stories and myths from indigenous traditions that echo through time into our modern longing for belonging. We'll explore how gratitude has been held in community and offer our own thanks to the land in a ritual of reciprocity. A dance of giving and receiving, honouring the breath of life, death, and everything in between.

🎉 This is also a celebration of all that has unfolded through the Sacred Death Centre in it's first year—our griefs, our growth, and the collective soul that has carried us.

💫 Please bring a small offering of fruit, cake or nourishing food to share in a communal feast afterwards. Vegan, gluten-free, or sugar-free options are especially welcome as part of a shared field of plenty.

✨ All are welcome. Come as you are, with your sorrows and your songs, your tears and your thanksgiving. Let us remember forward—together.

This is a free event, all donations are welcome.  Any offering of flowers will also be gratefully received.

We look forward to sharing this time with you. 

Love Lucy & Hannah