THE SACRED WORK OF GRIEF
SCHEDULE 2026
Join us for our transformative weekends, groups, day-long retreats, and public talks devoted to the sacred work of grief. Below you will find our schedule, more information, registration, and details about our current offerings.
When our sorrows are witnessed and held within a community of compassion, grief can surprisingly turn to joy, to a love emboldened for all that surrounds us. Love and loss have been eternally entwined.
-Francis Weller
Where there is sorrow there is holy ground
-Oscar Wilde
SPRING 2026
THE SACRED WORK OF GRIEF
A Community Gathering and Ritual
May 1-3, 2026
Nevada City, Ca
$525-$675 Sliding Scale
~SOLD OUT~
This event has sold out, however we strongly encourage those interested in coming to sign up on our Waitlist as spaces may become available as get closer to our event.
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In May of 2026, in a beautiful natural setting in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains of Northern California, we will gather to create a sanctuary for our losses - a place where the profound gifts of grief can emerge. Together, we will reclaim the conversation on the place of grief in our lives.
Facilitators Shellee Sepko LMFT, Laurence Cole and their skilled team will be the holders of this powerful space. Shellee and Laurence, both mentored by Francis Weller and in the lineage of Sobonfu and Malidoma Somé, will offer practices to help rediscover our natural human capacity for healing that comes through song, poetry, movement, writing practices, group sharing, humor and the co-creation of a beautiful ritual.
Together, we will help to cultivate a brave, non-judgmental atmosphere in which we can express our tender hearts and our losses in community. Join us as we carry our stories of loss into the seen world where they can be held within the healing embrace of beauty, community and the sacred.
Meals included. Limited spaces available.
Some work/trade discounts available. Scholarships available for marginalized communities.
Shellee A. Sepko, MA, LMFT is a Jungian psychotherapist, grief tender and ritual facilitator mentored by Francis Weller since 2017. She lives and loves in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Northern California. Shellee is also the Executive Director of What’s Up Wellness, a community organization serving young people in Nevada and Placer Counties.
Laurence Cole is a song elder and ritualist from Port Townsend, Washington. He carries the gift of helping us rediscover the life-changing, transformative power of singing and grieving in community. Laurence is guided and inspired by the teachings of Malidoma Somé, Sobonfu Somé, Angeles Arrien, Michael Meade, James Hillman, Francis Weller, Joanna Macy and many others.
As the waters awaken and the earth begins to stir, join us as we gather for the tending of soul. This spring sanctuary invites us into the deep waters of dreaming where we may discover medicine for our journeys of loss. Together we will learn the skills of grief and discover how being in soulful community can restore vitality, imagination, and belonging.
This 6-week series is centered on developing our capacity to listen to soul through dream images, as well as developing our skills of holding grief and the sorrows of life with reverence. Throughout our time together, we’ll use writing practices, group sharing, teachings and guided explorations to deepen our connection to the inner currents shaping our lives and learning how to meet them with curiosity and care
Each week we will gather for a 2-hour live online session. Between sessions, you will receive optional invitations to deepen your practice and build community with other participants.
OUR APPROACH:
We will be working with Francis Weller’s Medicine for the Long Dark as the backbone of our series. Each week we will engage grief and awakening through:
Weeks 1-2: Friendship, Community, & The Web of Relationship
Weeks 3-4: Imagination & Beauty
Weeks 5-6: Slowing Down & Turning Towards The Callings of Soul
Concurrently we will be tending our dreams - gently strengthening our capacity to listen to the inner images that want to be known and integrated.
FACILITATORS:
Awakening The Waters
A 6-week Online Soul Journey
Sliding Scale $245 - $355
Shellee Sepko, LMFT is a Jungian psychotherapist, grief tender and ritual facilitator mentored by Francis Weller since 2017.
Lizzie Hart is a holistic coach whose work is rooted in the principles of deep ecology, depth psychology and transpersonal exploration.
MONDAY EVENINGS
5pm-7pm PST
Mar 9th - Apr 13th
TUESDAY MORNINGS
10am-12pm PST
Mar 10th - Apr 14th
Grief Rituals
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Grief rituals are where we gather together as brave, tender-hearted individuals to create a sacred space for honoring our grief.
During our time together, skilled facilitators will weave together the ritual structure and tools taught directly to us by Francis Weller, author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow, to hold this powerful space. During weekend and day long gatherings, the blessings of beauty, compassion, and reverence emerge as natural transformative gifts of grief.
This is not a space for anyone to fix you, offer advice, or cheer you up. It is a place to be held, seen, witnessed, and honored in your grief. Together, we create a space of generosity for sorrow without forcing it, without minimizing it, and without asking you to rise above it.
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Grief rituals invite us to lean into vulnerability, trust, and surrender so we can remember how to grieve together as community. Through listening to others, we find language for what once was unsayable. In ritual space, grief is destigmatized, metabolized, and freed from the weight of shame. Together, we regulate our bodies and souls in the natural ways of communitas being reminded that we do not have to carry grief alone.
Throughout our time together we will invite you into:
Writing Practices
Singing
Poetry
Movement
Embodiment practices
Listening practices
Large and small group circle sharing
A generous welcoming to whatever is moving through you—whether numbness, shame, rage, trembling, stillness, wailing, or silence—all is welcome
Community Ritual
Inspiration and guidance from Francis Weller to help support and frame our work together
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For each ritual gathering, we invite our participants to add to our central and ritual shrines. We invite you to bring what holds meaning for you in the form of personal, cultural or other sacred objects to create beauty at our Communal and Grief Shrines. We welcome fresh flowers, garden greens, stones, photos, art, flameless candles, colored cloths etc. We enourage all to be as lush and as colorful as you feel called! We welcome your additions to the vibrant beauty of these healing places.
GRIEF
An Essential Skill for Our Times
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Our times are filled with intensity and uncertainty and this may continue into our the foreseeable future. In such times, cultivating the capacity to grieve well is not optional—it is essential for our personal and communal well-being. Grieving well keeps our hearts open and tender, permeable to beauty, and resilient in the face of despair and feelings of helplessness.
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There are different doorways that lead to the communal hall of grief where we all, at some point, will meet.
Grief comes to us through personal, ancestral, and/or collective losses.
Our grief may come from:
The loss of a loved one, the loss of employment, the loss of health
The loss of the illusion of certainty
Loneliness
The suffering of others through wars, mass shootings, racism, or inequity
The destruction of the natural world: disappearing birds, wildfires, floods, extinctions, and the loss of wilderness and beauty
The unraveling of cultural life through divisiveness, polarization, or reversals of rights
Personal losses and wounds such as pregnancy loss, the death of a beloved pet, relationship struggles, regrets, or harm caused
Ancestral trauma and grief
Grief for the world we are leaving to future generations
Sometimes we grieve and are not clear what we are carrying. It can sometimes take time to untangle and understand.
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We are not meant to grieve alone.
Grief has traditionally been held in the healing embrace of community and the beauty of sacred spaces. It's only in recent history we find ourselves alone in our grief, separate from the compassionate eyes of others and the healing, sacred dimensions to sorrow.
When we come together to share our stories of loss we often feel deep in our bones that this is the medicine we’ve needed all along. Speaking from our hearts into our communal cup of sorrow loosens the heavy fiction of private suffering. We hope that you will join us.