To birth the impossible, don't do it alone.
A lesson from grief tending and caregiving from within collapse
Dear Shapeshifters,
As we face this upcoming year, it can seem impossible to sense our way through what might come.
One of the biggest lessons I'm carrying with me from this past year:
What seems impossible is often only impossible if we seek to do it alone.
This time last year, I was getting ready for my first ever year offering: Grief Magic. I had a rough idea of what it would consist of - but the shape of the course was emergent.
Right before the course was about to begin, I suddenly found myself as the sole caregiver for a loved one in ongoing mental health crisis without stable housing.
I didn't know how they would make it through. I didn't know how I would make it through.
It felt like a series of impossibilities- being able to show up well for my loved one, them being surviving in a society that leaves so many without even the bare minimum of support, and me being able to birth this course and hold this year long container amidst feeling completely overwhelmed and beyond my capacity in my role as a caregiver.
Somehow, they made it through, and so did I, and so did this course.
The only way we made it through was by not doing it alone, and refusing to abandon these seemingly impossible dreams.
I had to understand that my biggest priority as a “sole” caregiver was to make sure that I wasn’t a “sole” caregiver as quickly as possible. We needed to build a robust team of providers. I also quickly fell into a deeper and more consistent magical practice and relationship with ancestors. There was simply no way I could show up without them.
Later this year, Hurricane Helene devastated our region. Weathering this storm required an immense amount of coming together and mutual support.
I also knew that I couldn’t hold this year long container alone.
I had to call in other guest instructors and facilitators, meet with mentors and friends to and students to think through and dream up the shape of the course together.
I also had to understand myself as a "participant-facilitator" - as both someone participating in the grief space and holding it. I had to ask myself, "what do I need? what would feel nourishing, supportive, easy, joyous for me as a facilitator of this container?" (thanks Jewish studio project for this framework!)
So many of y’all helped hold and shape this container last year (those who participated as students, facilitators, some of both, and guest instructors!). I am so grateful that the class is now something I hope to offer each year - in collaboration with other grief tenders, story tellers, facilitators, and artists...
It's more magical than I could have imagined.
It is so easy to fall into the trap of thinking we must carry the weight of this world on our own. That we must figure out the puzzle on our own. That we must know how to do it and survive it and find a way through all on our own.
The feeling of impossibility we get in these moments is hinting at something:
Doing it alone doesn't work.
Learning and healing happens in relationship.
So....try not doing it alone.
Not doing it alone is a MUSCLE.
It is also one that these times demands of us.
Not doing it alone can look as simple as calling up a friend, having a community dialogue or practice, opening space for feedback, or simply remembering that we are supported by a rich web of life--the brilliance of our universe, bodies, ancestors--and finding ways to lean on these supports.
Not doing it alone doesn't mean we don't also get to have solitude, in fact it often means we find ways to protect each others solitude and rest. Solitude is not the same as trying to take on something that actually requires an ecosystem of support. And often, being in "solitude" isn't a place of disconnection from the world or being "alone", but a place of re-connection to ourselves, our breath, our bodies, our ancestors, the more than human world, what inspires and enlivens us.
An exercise...
If these questions feel supportive, take even a few minutes to sit with them:
What are some of the things you feel deeply called to do that simultaneously feel most impossible right now?
Where are some of the places in your life that you are trying to do it alone?
Where do those overlap?
What would it look like for you to try something else, to try not doing it alone? To take even one tiny step in that direction? and then another?
Imagine what it might feel like, in as vivid detail as possible, if you found yourself truly supported in facing these impossibilities. How does it feel?
If you’d like to journal and discuss in the magic of company, join us this Saturday, April 5th from 12-1:30pm ! RSVP here. The event is free.
AND
If you are looking for a learning community to feel, dream, create, think, attune to ourselves and our ecosystems, wonder at the magic of being alive in these times, grieve and ride the winds of change as they come this year, registration is now open for Grief Magic 2025-2026.
A cohort of magicians, dreamers, creators, and grievers awaits.
The course is also discounted 20% for those who sign up by March 31. Find details below!
Grief Magic: Time-bending, Shapeshifting, and Becoming Multitudes
Meet our Guest Instructors/Magicians✨ Each of these beings has contributed so much to my own understandings and practices of grief magic, and I’m so deeply grateful that they will be holding this container with us.
A Grief Welcoming Wheel-of-the-Year Course
This class emerges from a desire to sense ourselves in these times differently, to sense time and place themselves differently—to find ways of living that are more attuned to our bodies, our ecosystems, and our communities—while simultaneously allowing us to access something beyond urgency that actually enables us to continue showing up.
Think of it as a grief welcoming - wheel of the year - course.
Or a wheel of the year course that seeks to disrupt the ways that colonialism has tried to repress/deny grief as it attempts to flatten our sense of ourselves and the world.
Grief Magic seeks to remember grief as a part of our every day lives—rather than something that is somehow separate from lives steeped in loss.
In addition to exploring the above themes, we will also be exploring the following:
Ancestral Stories, Myths, and Timekeeping: Myths, Magic, and Folklore connected to the seasons and grief*
Tarot’s Major Arcana as guides for grief and creative process
Imagination Spells: Envisioning and Practicing Living Futures
Art, imagination, and grief as collaborators and ecological processes
Grief as Time Travel: Exploring constructions and experiences of space and time
Grief, Shapeshifting, De/Constructions of the self: becoming multitudes
The Politics of Enchantment: Mundane Magic, Care, and Enchantment in the Everyday
*While I’ll be drawing largely on European myth, folklore, and magic, students are encouraged to explore their own ancestral stories and practices.
Discounted through March 31st✨✨✨
Registration is now open for Grief Magic 2025-2026 which begins in just 1 month, and it's discounted 20% for those who sign up by March 31!
Not interested in a cohort but want access to the course materials and guest workshops?
There is also a self paced study version of this course for those not interested in the cohort model! Learn more here.
Scholarship Forms Open through 4/3
Full and partial scholarships for low income and BIPOC students are available for the Grief Magic Cohort. Please complete an interest form by 4/3 for this next round of Grief Magic. 💖