Grief in Times of Upheaval, Turbulence, Rootedness And Change - Online

Courage & Renewal Facilitators®: Cat Greenstreet, MEd & Susan Kaplan, MSW, RYT

Do you have a trustworthy place to share this grief?

As human beings we have always grieved communally. In these times of urgency and isolation, my job as a person is to integrate my loss, and our job as a community is to hold space for both our personal and communal grief – we can’t do the work of integrating our grief alone.

These times also call us to identify and grieve our common losses and disparities that we are witnessing. When we companion each other, our communal wisdom and care allows us to be with grief - more than what we ever thought possible.

Who is this retreat for? Anyone who is experiencing personal and/or collective loss:

Personal Loss – of a person, identity, job, home, sheltering alone, professional experience of death, loss and suffering, fear of being abandoned by others during this time.

Communal Loss – due to climate disruption, COVID, health disparities, murders of People of Color by police, economic upheaval, confluence of personal and global suffering, despair.
In our time together, we are especially tested right now to find our personal and communal way.

We’ll slow down and bring awareness & compassionate presence to the layers of our grief. Through the lenses of our bodies, hearts and soul/spirit, we will cultivate our inner & collective capacity to embrace what is authentic and real. Courage & Renewal® Principles & Practices provide invitation for us to co-create a brave & trustworthy space. See registration for more info.

Inner work in solitude and community: As it should be, being on Zoom only loosely compares to being together in person. Yet our hope is that this retreat can provide an opportunity to explore our own “brokenness within our wholeness”. Our trustworthy space will be co-created with our intentions, our imaginations, and our confidential conversations.

Format of the day: Morning focus on personal loss and afternoon focus on communal loss. As invitational work, you will have opportunities for personal reflection, circle sharing, paired and small groups with Open Honest Questions to get to the heart of the matter, time to go into the outdoors, virtual walk & talks, writing and artistic expression. Again, our focus is for generous listening to self and others, stepping out of the cultural paradigm of fixing, saving, or finding “the answer”.

Retreat is based on the work of Parker J. Palmer and the Center for Courage & Renewal. The Circle of Trust® approach, described in Palmer’s book A Hidden Wholeness, focuses on cultivating our inner capacity to live a more authentic, meaningful, and engaged life. Cat and Susan bring their experiences of complicated personal grief, trauma informed yoga, Council and Council of Fear as communal grief practices, grief circles, and 22 combined years as Courage & Renewal Facilitators.

Registration Information: We usually ensure attendance through participants paying in full when they register. In this time of intentionality and providing greater access, we are asking for something more profound – your word, your commitment. When you say “yes” to this retreat, you say “yes” to a group of us committing to attend the whole retreat (unless, of course, life throws a curve ball no one can control).

This offering is our gift; your presence is yours. As an extension of your gift, we invite you to support our work as you are able, out of your gratitude and the value this work has to you.