THE SACRED WORK OF GRIEF

SCHEDULE 2025

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

Join us for our transformative weekends, 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.

November 7-9, 2025

Grief Ritual Weekend

$345 - $495

Sliding Scale

Golden Empire Grange

11363 Grange Ct
Grass Valley, CA 95945

This November, at the Golden Empire Grange in Grass Valley, Ca, we will come together for a restorative weekend to reclaim the conversation on the place of grief in our lives.

During our time together, our skilled facilitation team will weave together tools from Francis Weller, author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow, that include powerful writing practices, singing, poetry, movement, embodiment practices and ritual.

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.

Information and Event Registration
Contact Us For More Info

Your Grief Ritual Team

  • Older woman with long gray hair taking a selfie on a beach at sunset, with pink clouds and white capped waves in the background.

    Judy Lay, PhD, Rev.

    Ritual Facilitator

    Judy Lay, PhD, Rev. is a Certified Death Doula and teaches End of Life and Death Care trainings. Judy is a Hospice Volunteer and facilitator of grief support groups. Retired after 38 years in family private practice, Judy is committed to bringing the place of Elder into community for the well being of all.

  • A woman with curly blonde hair and a floral dress sitting in tall dry grass during sunset with a background of rolling hills and trees.

    Shellee Sepko, MA, LMFT

    Lead Ritual Facilitator

    Shellee A. Sepko, MA, LMFT is a Jungian psychotherapist, grief tender and ritual facilitator mentored by Francis Weller since 2017. Shellee is devoted to the healing power of community, the arts, soul-work and our connection to the sacred. Shellee is the Executive Director of What’s Up Wellness, a youth-serving organization in Nevada and Placer Counties. Click here for more info about Shellee and explore Imagine.

  • A woman with curly hair takes a selfie on a sandy beach at sunset, with sunlight illuminating her face.

    Rebecca Seary

    Ritual Facilitator

    Rebecca Seary is trained in grief ritual facilitation, is certified in somatic attachment therapy and a practitioner of somatic trauma healing, transpersonal psychology and group therapy. Rebecca brings a deep love and curiosity for the depth of the human experience and a belief in the healing potential of group and ritual.

  • Mike Wofchuck

    Ritual Musician

    Mike Wofchuck sees music as the through line to the central heart of humanity. He has been studying, participating, and facilitating music for performance, rituals and ceremonies for many years. He has been a professional musician for the last 35 years with bands such as Mamuse, Peia, Wolfthump, the Ganga Giri band and many others. Being inspired and guided by Joanna Macy, Malidoma Some and Laurence Cole, Mike fully supports people moving through grief and using the power of ritual gatherings to help fully feel the world around us with all of its joy and sorrow.

Grief Rituals

Collage of a flaming heart, a human hand, and a whale tail emerging from ocean waves, with a small boat nearby.

  • 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.

  • 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

  • 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

A woman with long hair dressed in vintage clothing holds a large bird of prey with outstretched wings in an artistically painted grassy landscape with a pink and green background.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.