An online grief support group
Healing HeArts is an online grief support group that blends soul craft and nature practices with heart centered ritual and ceremony. It is designed to engage your mind and tap into your soul’s deep knowing so that you can begin to alchemize grief you may not even be aware you’re holding.
Unlike traditional grief programs, Healing HeArts is especially for women whose grief goes beyond the death of a loved one.
Maybe you grieve the loss of yourself: the gifts you hoped to share with the world, the parts of you that you’ve damped off as a protective measure, who you used to be before kids, marriage, loss, a particular event.
Maybe you’re mourning a place in nature that has been paved over to create a parking lot. Maybe you’re carrying grief from your ancestors –either grief they inflicted or grief they experienced.
Society doesn’t encourage us to mourn this type of grief. In fact, we might even feel embarrassed or ashamed for feeling this type of grief so deeply.
Well, guess what. That’s not healthy.
In fact, a panel of medical experts recently –for the first time– recommended that doctors screen for anxiety in all adult patients under 65! This highlights the extraordinary stress and anxiety levels in the world since the start of the pandemic.
What they don’t say is that underlying this stress and anxiety can be unprocessed grief.
Science shows that unprocessed grief –and other unexpressed emotions– can get lodged in our cells and show up in our bodies as physical and emotional disease.
Most people are carrying grief, even if they’re not consciously aware of it.
Throughout history, grief wasn’t a private thing. Communities would gather together to mourn their losses.
Even though grief shows up differently for everyone, gathering in community to honor your feelings still allows your unique expression of grief the opportunity to flow through and out rather than remaining stuck inside.
I was afraid that it would feel awkward and unsafe to share my grief with strangers, but by the middle of the first 90-minute class, Kristin made me feel safe and the rest of the participants were so supportive!
More Testimonials:
My goal was to have a better ability to forgive myself for everything, stop carrying guilt, and walk with grace.
By the end of the program, I was open to letting people see the real me –not the façade of who I think I should be or who I think other people want me to be. I was also more able to let go of all the things I can’t control. I’m in a better space with all of this.
The program provided space to go deeper into my grief and I was able to release a very old story. I’m already seeing changes in how I show up in my important relationships!
This program was life changing.
I recently sent my son off to college which was harder than I thought it would be. My dad moved in with us this past year and is dealing with cancer. Plus, in the past decade, several of my mentors, my in-laws and other people I considered anchors in my life have passed away. And of course, all this in the context of the pandemic.
Through this program, I learned that grief can be dormant. It can be bundled up. It can be trapping me. I also learned life is short, so don’t sweat the small stuff. And I accepted that I am worthy.
Here’s what you can expect during the 12-weeks.
Week One – Journey Overview and Orientation to the Physiology of Emotions
According to research by Brene’ Brown, most people only recognize three emotions as they’re experiencing them: anger, happiness, and sadness. The goal of this module is to give you a deeper understanding of what’s going on inside your body –even if you’re NOT aware. And to teach you some basic tools to help you process grief and other hard emotions as they’re happening, in-the-moment and on-the-fly.
You’ll also learn why that’s so important.
Weeks Two and Three – Gate One: Processing Loss
As we tiptoe through this gate, you’ll be invited into the mysteries of love and loss, and initiated into the medicine of vulnerability. The truth is, everything is impermanent: loved ones, marriages, beloved pets and places, health. Our capacity to honor these losses is what keeps them alive in our hearts.
First week: Wednesday, March 1st.
Second week: Wednesday, March 8th.
Weeks Four and Five – Gate Two: Ancestral Grief
As we step through this gate, we are invited into the mysteries of lineage, and the transgenerational transmission of courage, endurance, and imagination. No matter where our family line originated, our ancestors went through a lot for us to still be around. In exploring this gate, we will be initiated into the medicine of wisdom and acknowledge the grief of our ancestors and the many ways we have taken on their suffering. Inside this gate, we will also face the monumental injustices of our past, the violence and systematic assaults of war, colonialism, slavery, and genocide. The long shadow of this violence persists in our psyches. Lastly, this gate offers an invitation to re-establish awareness of our roots while mourning the loss of our ancestors.
First Week: Wednesday, March 15th
Second Week: Wednesday, March 22nd
Weeks Six and Seven – Gate Three: Sorrows of the World
Walking through this great feels especially timely given the state of the world. As we enter, we are invited into the mysteries of our unshakeable bond with the Earth and one another and initiated into the medicine of entanglement. Whether we consciously recognize it or not, the daily diminishment of species, habitats, and cultures is noted in our psyches. So are the deluge of war, destruction, mass shootings, and brutality. Much of the grief we carry is not personal but shared, and communal.
First Week: Wednesday, March 29th.
Second Week: Wednesday, April 2nd.
Weeks Eight and Nine – Gate Four: What We Expected and Didn’t Receive
This threshold into sorrow calls forward the things that we may never even realize we have lost. The gate speaks to those expectations that are carried deep in our psyches. When we are born and as we pass through childhood, adolescence, and the stages of adulthood, we are designed to anticipate a certain quality of welcome, engagement, touch, and reflection. On some level, we expect what our long ago ancestors experienced as their birthright.
We are born expecting a rich and sensuous relationship with the earth, and communal rituals of celebration, grief, and healing that keep us in connection with the sacred. This is our inheritance, our birthright that has been, for the most part, lost and abandoned in western society. The absence of these requirements haunts us, even if we can’t give them a name, and we feel their loss as an ache, a vague sorrow that settles over us like a fog. This gate initiates us into the medicine of Belonging.
First Week: Wednesday, April 12th.
Second Week: Wednesday, April 19th.
Weeks Ten and Eleven – Gate Five: Places that Have Not Known Love
This final gate takes us into the territory of sorrow that occurs in the places often untouched by love. These are profoundly tender places precisely because they have lived outside of kindness, compassion, warmth, or welcome. These are the places within us that have been wrapped in shame and banished to the farthest shores of our lives. We often hate these parts of ourselves, hold them in contempt, and refuse to allow them the light of day. Yet by grieving these lost pieces of ourselves, we begin to initiate ourselves into the medicine of compassion.
First Week: April 26th
Wednesday, May 3rd.
Closing Ceremony
On May 10th, we will wrap up our 12-week journey with a closing ceremony.
Still Got Questions?