Between the Sea & ME: A grief ritual for modern humans

Between the Sea & ME: a grief ritual for modern humans

This event, and the sliding scale ticket pricing to make it accessible to our community, is made possible by a generous grant from the Onion Foundation as well as our partner and host site, the beautiful Wells Reserve at Laudholm.

Black & White Photo Credit: “Dawn at Ordione” by Carl Austin Hyatt

There is a lot of grief working its way through the world at large right now as well as right here in our own little community - grief as well as anger, fear, anxiety, exhaustion, and numbness, to name a few other feelings.

Division in our discourse mirrors division in our news sources, in our own minds and bodies, in our families and friendships, and in our experience of the very land that supports all of us.

So we do something new that is actually very old - we call for a grief ritual to help our community process what it is experiencing and re-connect to what is important and life-giving. We come together so we can re-connect with each other. We re-connect with our breath and our bodies, with our emotions. We reconnect with our voices by journaling and sharing, by singing and dancing. And we re-connect to the land we are blessed to call home with a final ritual on the beach at beautiful Wells Reserve.

This event will include:

• the chance for you to share a place that is important to you through a photo or story
• poetry and song
• an invocation to the unseen world through spoken word and drumming
• time to grieve and have that grieving witnessed and held
• grounding somatic movement practices to help us find deep support as we unwind and soften the bracing in our bodies
• the creation of a beautiful shrine
• micro-rituals of guided writing practices that include an opportunity to share and witness in small groups
• culminating in a powerful community grief ritual on the beach by the ocean
• dancing together to let our feelings move through us and back into the world

Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, “If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us all weep for the world we are breaking apart so we can love it back to wholeness again.’"

WHO IS THIS EVENT FOR?

• People who are deeply concerned for the current state of the world and what can be done in our community
• People who are experiencing feelings of loneliness and disconnect from community
• People who are experiencing feelings of disconnect from the land and all the support the physical world has to offer
• People who are experiencing feelings of sadness, grief, anger, anxiety, fear, numbness, pain, or overall disconnect
• People who are looking for ways to process their feelings
• People who are looking to build community with others who share similar feelings
• People who work in ecology and/or well-being and would like support in their work and the interconnections between ecology and well-being

WHAT DO WE HOPE YOU WILL TAKE AWAY FROM THIS EXPERIENCE?

• Awareness of the power and importance of gathering as a community to witness and express deep feelings
• Respect and gratitude for grief and other deep feelings and the important role they plays in our lives
• Approaches for navigating and comfort with processing grief and other deep feelings individually and as a community
• Recognition that we are not alone in bearing these feelings

ABOUT HOGFISH

The climate is changing. Temperatures and tensions are rising in our environment, our communities, and ourselves. Industrialization and the digital world have lifted billions out of poverty, and yet, with the rise of wealth has also come the rise of inequality, toxic carbon levels, fraught public discourse, and sedentary lifestyles. Hogfish is inspired by heroes, sung and unsung, working to restore wellness to global, social, and personal realms.

Hogfish believes that applying the principles of regenerative agriculture to the arts provides a unique opportunity to holistically restore every layer of the human experience. We are on a quest to build an artistic sanctuary and body of work to restore a healthier dynamic balance between our planet, the stories we tell, and the way we live.

ABOUT THE VENUE

The Wells Reserve at Laudholm is dedicated to understanding, protecting, and restoring coastal ecosystems through research, stewardship, environmental learning, and community outreach. As a public-private partnership between the federally-supported Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve and the Maine nonprofit Laudholm Trust, together, we promote science, education, and conservation around the Gulf of Maine, maintain restored historic buildings, and steward protected wildlife habitats. The reserve is open every day from 7amto sunset for outdoor recreation, with seven miles of trails and many public programs. Learn more at wellsreserve.org.

Info: Check-in, be greeted and welcomed into the ritual. We ask that participants observe silence for this settling time to allow themselves to arrive and process. Smudging & Reiki healing are available. Participants are invited to bring items that connect them to their own personal grief to the communal altar at this time. (Participants will take these objects home with them at the end of the ritual).

Info: Join Hogfish co-founder & director Matt Cahill in a gentle series of somatic exercises that will guide participants to calm their nervous systems, release excess tensions that block sensory and emotional experience, and arrive fully in the present moment. Matt's work weaves together exercises from the performing arts, Alexander Technique, EFT Tapping, Brain Gym, Reiki, Meditation, and other modalities.

Info: Land Acknowledgement, description of ritual, an invocation, and teaching of a communal round and movement that we will use for our walk to the ocean later that afternoon.

Info: Choose your own healing adventure. We offer journaling, shamanic and reiki healing, listening to beautiful music, time at the altar, and art therapy. You can visit all stations or stay at one or two as long as you like.

Info: A chance to allow the seeds of your personal grief to continue to be watered, seen, and heard. Inspired by the work of Francis Weller, participants will form groups of 5-8 and will write for ten minutes to a selection of writing prompts ("I want to linger", "I remember", "I didn't get to", etc.) with time after the writing to read their words to each other, and have them held and witnessed in the space without comment or advice.

Info: Move or sit with all that is coming up for you, whether at the grief & gratitude altar or outside. Use the facilities before the walk to and ritual at the ocean. We will carry the grief & gratitude altar together, singing, and moving in community through the beautiful pathways at Wells Reserve to the ocean.

Info: A communal ritual reconnecting us to the support and love from the land with local shaman healers Carl Austin Hyatt and Ma Chonon Quena. We will be on the beach with the afternoon sun, singing and weaving together threads from several shamanic practices.

Info: The ritual is over. Time to walk back to campus. Light refreshments of tea and cookies will be served for those who would like to transition out of the ritual in community.

Host or Publisher Hogfish