Date/Time
Date(s) - 09/13/2025
1:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Location
Humboldt Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
A Community Grief Ritual For Collective Healing
Join us for an open, accessible, and donation-based Community Grief Ritual, a sacred space where we can come together to honor, express, and transform the grief we carry — both personally and collectively. Inspired by the work of Francis Weller and his Five Gates of Grief , this gathering offers a place for our hearts to be held and witnessed in community.
Through land-based altars, we will root ourselves in the beauty and presence of the Earth, offering our tears, prayers, songs and gratitude back to the land. A song circle will invite us to voice our sorrow and longing, metabolizing grief through sound and harmony. Gentle movement and guided meditation will help us enter the body’s wisdom, accessing the layers of grief that words cannot reach.
This work is nourished by the tender truth that “grief is love that has nowhere to go.” Together, we will give that love somewhere to go — into the hands, hearts, and presence of our community — where it can be honored, held, and transformed.
All are welcome. Whether you come with a specific loss, a quiet ache, or simply a wish to tend the sorrows of the world, you will find a place here. No prior experience is needed — only your open heart.
$10-$40 suggested donation. NOTAFLOF
*Join us for part or all of this open offering. Schedule listed below:
1 pm: Tea & Anointing in the Fellowship foyer. Followed by Opening Song Circle, led by Maggie McKnight in the Sanctuary. Journey through the Memorial Garden and the 5 Gates of Grief, guided by your own pace and needs.
- Everything We Love We Will Lose
- The Places That Have Not Known Love
- The Sorrows of the World
- What We Expected and Did Not Receive
- Ancestral Grief
2 pm: Guided Meditation & Movement, offered by Hanna Nielsen & Amy Day in the Field.
3 pm: Composting Our Grief Closing Workshop with Alissa Pattison in the Grove