What Grief Teaches Us About Love (And Life)❤️
“Seeing the end of something precious to you gives you the chance of loving it well.
Loving and grieving are joined at the hip, for all the beauty, soul, and travail that brings.
Grief is a way of loving what has slipped from view.
Love is a way of grieving that which has not yet done so.
We would do well to say this aloud for many days, to help get it learned:
Grief is a way of loving, love is a way of grieving. They need each other in order to be themselves.”
—Stephen Jenkinson, Die Wise
PURPOSE
Life is fraught with endings.
We all know, at least conceptually, that anything which begins, eventually comes to a close, including life itself.
And yet, this truth is rarely spoken of, and even less frequently experienced viscerally — in the body and the soul.
This is in part cultural, and in part practical🌍.
The norm, at least in the Western world, is to ignore this reality. Or at the very least, pretend it isn’t so.
The reason being that acknowledging we are, at all times, on the brink of loss, on the verge of heartbreak, is unpleasant.
Recognizing that without exception, it is the fate of all things to come to an end is unnerving, to say the least.
This can all sound rather bleak. And it likely would be, were it not for the gift of grief.
As Stephen Jenkinson alludes above, there is a relationship between grief and love❤️
.
And also, I believe, between sorrow and joy.
A willingness to experience one creates a greater capacity for the other.
And though they seem to be on opposite ends of the spectrum, they often show up together, holding hands.
There is an inherent ecstasy in grief💫.
You can cry tears of sadness, and tears of joy, at the very same time.
PRACTICE
In this series, we will explore grief, death, and endings together, in community.
You’ll be led through a series of exercises and explorations that will invite you to get in touch with, and then express, your grief, fear, resistance, or whatever else shows up✨.
Most of us are practiced in ejecting and dissociating when unpleasant sensations, thoughts, or feelings arise, and understandably so.
Being uncomfortable isn’t all that fun. It is, however, worth the ache.
The role of the facilitators in this workshop will not be to “teach” you anything per se, but instead to support you in fully experiencing your experience.
We will repeatedly invite you back into your body, back to your sensational experience, because that’s where the gold is✨💛.
We have found over and over again that when you stick with your experience and ride the wave of discomfort, relief, and aliveness show up on the other side.
I have a nagging suspicion that most of us are weighed down, unknowingly, by a tremendous backlog of un-experienced grief.
I also suspect that if we are willing to take the plunge and touch into our grief reserves, we will reclaim the energy that was expended keeping the feelings at bay.
This series is a chance to do just that, and to do so with the support of trained facilitators and a community of other brave folks looking to bring their sorrow, fear, joy, and love, out from the shadows and into view.
LOGISTICS
This series will feature four, 2-hour Zoom calls at 9 am PST; 12 pm EST; 6 pm CET on the following Saturdays:
🗓️March 22 & 29
🗓️April 5 &19
Please be aware that there is a one-week break between the final two sessions.
Attendance for every session is encouraged but not required.
The exchange for four sessions with two facilitators, plus self-study assignments, and check-ins between calls is $350 if you sign up by February 28th. Afterwards, the cost is $400.
✨ BIPOC / Trans / Disability Scholarships are offered for $200.
Lindsay St. Antoine has been a certified Radical Honesty Trainer since 2017. She is dedicated to supporting those who are working to build honest, authentic, relationships and communities, and is especially interested in working with folks in the Queer community and couples in “alternative” relationships. She is passionate about empowering people to stick with themselves (and each other) in vulnerable and often uncomfortable spaces and coaching them through fully experiencing their whole experience, so that they may come to know themselves, and share themselves fully with others.
Upcoming Workshops led by Lindsay:
