Join us for: Awakening Our Hearts Communal Retreat December 05 & 06, 2026

*Free to anyone who lost their home in the fires and immigrant families.

We carry grief of all kinds. Joy and sorrow are a main staple of our daily life, and we are not meant to carry our suffering in isolation. Come join us for a time of cathartic release and deep connection, to end our cultural norm of isolation.

The ancient wisdom of this grief tending lineage teaches us that our culture is sick not because we grieve too much, but because we don’t grieve enough. We aren’t given permission to fully grieve.

When grief is not processed, it often gets passed down through the generations and can come out in harmful ways. But we can choose differently.  We can reclaim our natural ability to heal alongside one another.

Grief is not something to get over but to be embraced and cherished for the love that it is. It is ok to hurt, we just need each other to collectively hold that hurt and support one another to carry what we cannot carry alone. Sometimes we can get stagnate and drown in our grief because we aren’t given a way and a community to allow it to move through us.

This medicine helps us regain our interconnectivity. This being human is no easy task and part of our challenge in life is learning to be more human. To celebrate the full range of our human experience and that means our deep sorrow. But touching on that agony is often scary and why we need companions to journey with us through the tunnel of grief until we come out the other side.

The ritual includes talking circles, singing and drumming, poetry, movement, practice in sacred listening, witnessing and being witnessed, ceremony, sharing food and quiet time. The heart of the retreat is a ceremony inspired by Sobonfu Somé and shared by Harmony Woods Grief Tenders.

The work is also inspired by the Seven Gates of Grief:

• Everything we love we will lose,

• the places that have not known love,

• the sorrows of the world,

• the things we cannot even name that we ache for, or ambiguous losses

• intergenerational or ancestral grief

• the harms we’ve caused

• traumas we’ve experienced

$350 for the weekend (food not included). We try to keep the cost of these rituals as low as possible, so if you are able, please consider making a donation towards a scholarship fund to support someone else to attend. Thank you!

Early Bird Reg $299

Bring a friend and you each get $33 discount off your registration when you register on the same day.

Bring a Friend Discount

Household members receive a $50 discount off your registration when you register on the same day.

Household Discount $50

After October 31, 2206:

Regular Registration

Or you can Venmo your payment to @harmonywoods for $299 for Early Bird Registration or $317 for the Bring a Friend Discount, or $350 for regular registration or send a check and we will reserve your spot!