09 Sep Positive Shoots from the Ashes
We recently held a workshop and a ceremony at the Medicine Festival. Pitching our tent in cracked earth and parched grass, connected me with the existential threat of drought. In my role as grand-parent, anxiety about the future and the well-being of future generations feels a persistent background worry.
I often hear about people’s anxiety about the future, particularly from parents and grandparents. I also hear how people find thinking about global issues where violence, extreme weather events, wild fires, biodiversity loss, and pollution (to name a few), add an additional layer of stress on top of more personal experiences of loss, and the challenges of stretched resources and rising prices.
For many, keeping those wider concerns and anxieties out of awareness is a natural coping response. There is a school of thought that we should just focus on the positive, and screen out more unsettling feelings. And sometimes that is a necessary coping adaptation. But when the load of grief and anxiety we carry becomes too heavy, this strategy may start to crack, and feelings may spill out in unpredictable or explosive ways.
In Grief Tending, we are not holding pity parties, where pain and suffering are rewarded and wallowed in, but see what arises, encouraging a dance between grief and joy. In the workshops we hold, we value positive things too. We use them as stabilisers to face emotions, to support us to let off steam in a contained situation, where we, (and our feelings), can be held. This creates enough ground to metabolise emotions, so that we can focus on what is flourishing without needing to disconnect from our feeling selves.
One of the positive things for me, is that around 400 people participated in events we held at Medicine Festival. Grief Tending is beginning to be recognised, and more people are seeking out this approach as a way to work with grief, whatever its cause. Our intention is to work with the positive without excluding any of our feelings, or parts of our selves, as we grapple with anxiety for the future, collective as well as personal issues.
Sarah Pletts is a Grief Tender and Artist who offers workshops in London and online, sharing rituals where grief on all themes is welcome. For more information about Grief Tending events see here.
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