Winter Solstice Grief Studio this Monday: The Luminous Dark
What to bring & zoom link inside!
Our Winter Solstice Grief Studio is this upcoming Monday, December 16th, from 6-8pm eastern time. We’ll be exploring the themes of dreaming and resting in the luminous dark, and making art about it. ❤️🔥
As
shares, it is in the depths of winter “when most stories and songs are created.” There is something about the cold and the dark of this season that shrinks and expands our sense of the world at the same time, as if “the shimmering darkness around us gives us more imaginative space” (Little Christmas: December Almanac - Fair Folk Podcast).Some of the questions we’ll be sitting with:
What is the importance of night, of darkness, of disorientation? What does darkness make space for? What role does darkness play in your life?
What connections do you see between darkness, life, grief, and death? between darkness, imagination, and creativity?
What supports you in feeling rested? in dreaming?
What allies can be found in the dark?
These studios are for paid subscribers and are spaces to dialogue with, make, and share your own art and writing alongside other grievers. For $16-20 per month, you both support this publication and your creative practice too! You’ll also access monthly creative prompts and other paid posts!
What to bring:
🕯️💐Set the space: Please find a comfortable, quiet place for our meeting. Set this space for yourself in any way that feels most supportive for you, whether bringing in pillows, candles, flowers, photos of any of your beloved dead, drawing a tarot card, creating an altar of some kind, bringing in scents and textures you enjoy, or simply making sure you have a spacious and comfortable space.
🍉🫖Bring nourishment: Please bring water, tea, any beverages, fruits, or snacks you'd like to bring for our time together.
🎨📒Bring art supplies, a pen and paper or something to write with, or if there is a more pleasurable or accessible form of reflection you like to do, bring materials for that…Markers, colored pencils, paints, collaging supplies, your phone to record voice memos... There will be time set aside to free-write/create/reflect using whichever mediums work best for you.
🧚♀️🌊Disrupt perfectionism and come as you are. You do not need to be "on" in order to show up to this space. Let however you're arriving be enough.
Structure for Grief Studios*:
Welcome & Grounding
Small group discussion around a particular theme, tarot card, plant, or text related to grief
Intention Setting for your creative practice
Creative Exploration/Studio time: Undirected, parallel play/creative exploration using whatever mediums/materials you feel called to, with the understanding that all of life can be lived as art, and that our artmaking gets to be a practice of attunement to ourselves and the world around us. Studio time can include anything from painting, collaging, dusting off your apothecary shelves, making tea, making music, rearranging your room, casting a spell, cooking a meal, or simply laying down and allowing yourself to rest as a creative practice…
Reflection: Set aside time to free-write/reflect on your creative process, and witness and dialogue with your own art/creative process as if it were animate and speaking to you.
Witnessing one another: Time to share our art and reflections with one another, without the intentions to critique or comment. Here we are simply in the magic of witness - hearing ourselves share, feeling ourselves be heard and received by one another.
Sessions (not including break out rooms!) will be recorded for those unable to make them live ✨
*This structure is adapted from the lineage of the Jewish Studio Process, whose two year Creative Facilitator Training Fellowship I am currently in and deeply grateful for!