A guided walk where grief of all kinds is welcomed and expressed with nature’s holding, closing around the fire.

The summer energy can often appear as aliveness, happiness and lightness, and yet our grief may still be very present, which can feel jarring or out of place somehow. For this reason, we are called to offer a space to welcome our grief this summer. With the expansive long evenings of midsummer, we’ll walk together with intention, giving space to parts of us that might struggle to be heard and witnessing one another in our full humanity.

What to expect:
🌱Gentle landing with a bring-your-own picnic
🌱Guided nature connection practises to drop into your environment and feelings
🌱 Walking side by side with others
🌱 Solo time 
🌱A space to express your grief and be witnessed
🌱Soothing our nervous systems with a fire, song and collective ritual 

“Grieving is a natural process, allowing the expression of sadness, loneliness, anger, despair and other feelings. The more we open ourselves to love others, to celebrate the beauty of our world, to long for peace or justice, the more we open ourselves to the pain of losing what we love, or feeling the destruction and the inequality in the world around us.” - Sophy Banks 

In grief tending practice we welcome in the many forms of grief and losses; from the death of a loved one, a relationship breakdown, the life paths we hoped for but did not receive, the state of our world and planet. Francis Weller’s “5 Gates to Grief” gives us a helpful framework in honouring grief from whichever branch of our humanity it arises. 

We believe that it is through creating meaningful, connecting and safe space to ritualise and express our grief in the collective, that we can begin to tend to our pain and our love at the same time. Grief tending can often feel surprisingly life affirming and, to us, this is the soul work we want to offer in community.

Christina and Nikki have both been on powerful journeys with their grief and have been apprenticing to grief and holding grief spaces over the last few years. They are now coming together through their life experiences and passion for community and ritual to offer a grief tending space. Our intention for this work is to build a Brighton grief tending village, so we can be with and learn from our grief as a collective. 

Nikki is a home educating mother, an integral coach, facilitator, wellbeing and trauma informed practitioner and forest school leader. In her spare time you will find her dancing or in nature! Nikki’s craft  creating meaningful and safe spaces for people to come as they are, and together to remember old ways; sitting around fires, in circles  exploring big life questions through ritual. 

She has been working with young people and educators over the last 20 years, supporting their wellbeing through connecting them to nature and their agency through personal development and self discovery. Her dedicated work with young people focuses teaching emotional wellbeing, mental health, embodied leadership and positive psychology. 

Grief work is her soul work, having experienced the loss of a parent herself. Nikki designed, facilitated and trained The Grief Guides, launched by Apart of Me. The Grief Guides is peer-based model to support young people experiencing grief, challenging the societal tendencies to turn away from death and instead facing the experience not head on but palm out, held in the hands of those living through the same thing. She recently joined the The FireFly project team, supporting proactive grief education and creating grief aware and grief welcome spaces. 

Christina is a Brighton-based programme designer and facilitator, song-sharer, sea swimmer and proud aunt. She has spent the last 15 years designing and delivering educational programmes for young people and adults ranging from mental health and wellbeing, climate action, women’s empowerment and creative arts. 

Christina came to grief work in 2022 when she embarked upon the Host Fellowship with Huddlecraft. Bereaved as a child, she wanted to explore her own grief and created the “Death x Life Huddle” - a creative exploration of our relationship with death, loss and grief for 12 curious mortals. In 2023 she trained in Grief Tending on Sophy Bank’s “Apprenticing to Grief” programme and has since been offering regular group grief journeys with The Slow Work Garden. Christina is a deeply caring facilitator, committed to creating tender and joyful spaces for our grief and our love in equal measure.

https://www.theslowworkgarden.com/what-if-we-learnt-to-grieve-together