Hearts Broken Open: Grief as a Sacred Path to Reconnection and Resilience

Online Retreat with Melody LeBaron, Dionne Ruff-Sloan, & Dean Walker

Some losses simply CANNOT be metabolized alone. Western culture tells us that grief is private, linear, and time-limited. After a major loss, we are expected to grieve alone and bounce back after a month or two, a year at most. But some losses can’t be metabolized alone. We need a community of grievers in order to complete the grief cycle.

We are living in times of global collapse of Earth and Human systems. Humanity, particularly those of privilege, wealth and power, is still reluctant to be fully aware of this collapse, much less to be responsible for it. The calling of our times is to reconnect with the sources of meaning and belonging in human life – sources and sensitivities we have all forfeited in order to participate in and benefit from, our Business as Usual Human Operating System. The immense costs of our collective disconnection from the web of life and the sources of meaning in life: Deeper Self, Other Beings and Earth herself, have become painfully obvious in every aspect of life on Earth. We are an adolescent culture that appears to have invited in shadow, trauma and addiction where humans once carried our birthright sense of interbeing with the miraculous Web of Life.