The Healing Hub Residency: Grief in Action Series at The Festival Center
I’m delighted to share that I will be the Healer-in-Residence at The Festival Center for the month of August.
The Healing Hub Residency was created by House of Kindred and The Festival Center and seeks to to create a shared, trusted space for care, connection, and practice here in D.C., where we can come together, slow down a bit, and be in a different kind of space—one where we can experience healing practices in community, reflect on the connection between healing and justice, and begin building relationships that can actually hold us over time.
During my healing residency at the Festival Center I will support and hold space for folks to practice curiosity and vulnerability in the exploration of death, dying, and grief. We will begin with a public Death Café and spend the rest of the month in various small group sessions where we will move through parts of Grief in Action—a curriculum and popular education series that’s grounded in liberation, and a trauma informed and culturally responsive approach that explores various facets of grief, such as illness, death, violence, shame, oppression. We will explore what becomes possible when communities are brought more healthfully to grief and how we can learn to carry and metabolize it collectively.
PUBLIC DEATH CAFE
Together, we will practice curiosity and vulnerability in the exploration of death, dying, and grief. The main goal of Death Cafe’s is to promote open discussion about death and dying, allowing people to stand in their full humanity and truly own and explore the all-encompassing beauty of the human experience. The spaces are always co-created, and often are no-agenda, casual discussions. See you there!
Tuesday, August 4th, 6:00-8:30 PM / The Festival Center (Cosby Hall)
*FREE SESSION*
Small Group Sessions
at The Festival Center - The Chapel (1640 Columbia Rd NW)
Session 1 - Grief Quilt Making
August 13, 6-8 PM
Sliding Scale: $25 - $35 -$45
Together, we’ll explore the many shades and colors of grief. We will expand our understanding of grief by making a collective Grief Quilt that embodies the context and understanding of each participant.
Session 2 - Love Letters & Altar
August 19, 6-8 PM
Sliding Scale: $25 - $35 -$45
We are constantly asked to face one of life’s most difficult but essential teachings: everything is a gift, and nothing lasts. In this session, we’ll make space to tend to the sorrow that we experience with the loss of someone or something we love by writing love letters and creating a communal altar.
Session 3 - Burning Roots of Shame
August 25, 6-8 PM
Sliding Scale: $25 - $35 -$45
In this session, we will hold space for the tender parts of ourselves that need the most love. There are places within us, at the individual and communal level, that have been wrapped in shame and banished to the farthest shores of our lives. Together, we will further develop our capacity for compassion and self-compassion.
Session 4 - Reconnecting with our Lineages
September 1, 6-8 PM
Sliding Scale: $25 - $35 -$45
Through storytelling we will tend to our our connection to the land, language, imagination, rituals, songs, and stories of our ancestors. We will make space for the grief we carry in our bodies from sorrows experienced by our ancestors as well as for the grief of the loss of our connection to our ancestors.
