Co-Creating Through Our Grief: an 8 week journey in eco-embodied creative space

As healers and space holders, we offer solace to others as they navigate the ever-changing landscapes of their lives. We create supportive containers. We hold space. We offer tools and gifts of healing. We companion, coach, facilitate, and birth endless ways to ease suffering.

But what about our needs for connection?

How do we nurture our own pain, our own growth, our own longings? How do we hold our own grief when we are so accustomed to holding others’?

If your answer, like so many of ours, is that you’ve had to go it alone—I hear you. I’ve been there, too.

But what if it’s time to shift that story?

What if, even though aloneness has been a lifelong companion, it is ready to change?

I believe we are being called to witness, acknowledge, and heal this cultural wound of isolation—this separation from our own inherent resources and the collective support that is always available.

I invite you to release the story of being alone and step into a circle of fellow practitioners. Together, we will honor what is changing. We will honor our grief. And we will honor our gifts and creativity in the spirit of gratitude, generosity, abundance and reciprocity with all of life. 

On this journey, I will be your guide and your fellow traveler. . .

Why This Course?

We all love, we all lose, and change is the only constant. Yet, in an individualistic society, many of us have lost the ancestral practices that once guided us through life’s transitions. This has left a deep yearning for connection, belonging, and wisdom—something we can still reclaim.

The grief we carry is not just personal; it is cultural, ancestral, and collective. It stems from historical trauma, societal disconnection, and the losses we continue to experience. But grief, when honored, can be a powerful source of transformation and creativity.

Grief as a Creative Force

Grief is not something to fix or move past—it is something to be with, to learn from, and to create with. When we allow ourselves to grieve, we are healing not just for ourselves, but for our ancestors, descendants, and the collective.

Through this process, we can release the shame and guilt often tied to our cultural wounds and instead, open ourselves to the ancestral wisdom that is still available to us. When we feel supported, we return to our bodies. When we return to our bodies, we grieve. And when we grieve, we connect and can create with all of life.

What You Will Receive

As healers, we often hold space for others in their grief. But who holds space for us? This course is designed to offer you a framework for honoring grief—your own and others’—as a multilayered experience of emotions, sensations, and stories embedded in constantly evolving relationships.

Through embodied practices, creative inquiry, and community co-creation, we will explore:

• The sacred opportunities that grief presents
• The yearnings and creative gifts emerging from our grief
• How we are being called to co-create from our grief

This journey is not about a one-size-fits-all process. It is an invitation to collaborate—with our well ancestors, the land, our bodies, and each other—to shape the future we long for, one creation at a time.

Join Us

This 8-session course is an opportunity to cultivate a co-creative community and transform grief into fertile ground for inspiration, connection, and action. Together, we will compost the past and create something new.

Are you ready to step into this journey?

The Curriculum:

April 9th – Grounding and Landing into the Grief Wheel together –  Getting to know each other, Trauma Informed Principles, Our Ancestral Legacies, Resourcing Tools, & Agreements 

April 16th:  East – Air balanced by Earth – Child/Ancestor – Rooting through Confusion – Grief Altar Creation & Crafting

April 23rd: South – Fire balanced by Water – Fool/Wild One – Flowing through Fear – Attuned Mindful Movement

April 30th: West – Water balanced by Fire – Lover/Beloved – Opening through Despair – Embodied Evolution through Deep Time

May 7th: North – Earth balanced by Air – Warrior/Adult – Taking Conscious Action through Anger – Resonant Vocal Expression

May 14th: Center – Ethers – Wisdom Keeper/Sage/Elder – Honoring our Connections and Callings – Co-Creative Collaboration

May 21st: Sharing our Creations and Creative Process – Witnessing and Honoring each other’s Creations

June 4th: Integration & Application in your life – Weaving the Web of our New Story in Relationship  

This course may be for you if you. . .

• Are a healer or space holder and feel the call to resource from your embodiment, ancestry, creativity and innate wisdom more deeply to be of service to all beings through your practice.
• Are empathic and sensitive to the collective transformation that we are in together and know that you have a calling to use your gifts to support and inspire others.
• Find that you are often most at peace in natural environments and long to unite your inner and outer experience on a more regular basis in your daily life without needing to be immersed in nature.
• Long to feel more connected to other holistic practitioners and cultural creatives and to collaborate to welcome emergent possibilities that aren’t possible when we are creating in isolation.
• Long to have more time and space that feels sacred, deep and juicy to devote to your creative gifts.

This course is not recommended for those who are in acute grief due to a very recent loss. In this case one-on-one sessions are generally more supportive. You can learn more about the Healing Through Your Grief sessions Hilary offers. If you’re curious if this course is the right fit for you, sign up for a free 30 minute discovery session to connect with Hilary. 

Through this course you will receive: 

• Trauma informed somatic tools and practices to address grief and that will support you to heal through your grieving process
• An understanding and perspective of how we are all in grief and grieving collectively
• An experience of how grieving can open us to our joy, our creativity, the beauty of life and our ability to celebrate and connect more deeply
• Learn about and practice cultivating greater awareness with nature, your ancestors, archetypes, the elements and with the land to deepen your relationship with yourself
• Resourcing your own inner wisdom through our body
• Time to create in whatever creative modality calls to you as well as invitations to explore different creative modalities 
• Connection to others who are willing to feel and create through their healing and grow together in community
• Inspiration for your own personal creative practice at home
• Resources each week if the form of creative prompts, songs, inquiry questions and movement explorations 

Each Session will generally include:

• Grounding and land acknowledgement

• Brief check ins either with whole group or in diads

• Sharing about the stages of grief through The Grief Wheel with elemental, archetypal, directional, body and Earth allies  

• Writing and reflection time

• Trauma informed somatic practice to address a direction of The Grief Wheel with allies

• Creative embodiment and/or expression practice  

• Small and/or large group sharing

• Invitation to personal practice each week

• Elemental inquiry sheet and song for each week

• Closing sharing and grounding integration

   

   

  Acknowledgements:

This journey is inspired by many traditions and lineages and is in large part from Joanna Macy, Ph.D, who is an author, teacher, scholar of Buddhism, systems theory and deep ecology. She developed The Work that Reconnects. Hilary collaborated with Grandmother Kaariina Saarinen, a student of Joanna’s colleague John Seed and a Finnish shamanic bloodline chief and pipe carrier. Hilary and Grandmother offered an online Grief Wheel Facilitation Training during the winter of 2021-2022.

There are also threads from Celtic spirituality, Tibetan Buddhism, somatics, herbalism and Earth connection including . . .

• Lama Willa Blythe Baker, Lama Elizabeth Munson, Lama Tsultrim Allione
• Sky Otter (Bill Pfeiffer), Founder of the Sacred Earth Network
• Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Founder of Body Mind Centering & Christine Cole, Founder of Somatic Body Training
• Embody Lab teachers of the Embodied Social Justice, Somatic Attachment Therapy and Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy Certifications
• Sage Mauer, Herbalist & Teacher of Gaia School of Healing
  
• Shauna Janz of Sacred Grief
• Carolyn Griffeth of Earth Keepers Wisdom School
• The teachers of the Voices of Celtic Wisdom offered by Weaving Remembrance and OBOD (Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids) studies
• All clients & students are teachers

Here’s what others are saying:

This cohort is limited to 12 participants to have an intimate and fulfilling experience for everyone.
Register early to talk about what financial option works best for you.
All payments are non-refundable as of April 9th.

You can also sign up for a free discovery call with Hilary to ask any questions and get a
better sense if this journey is right for you at this time.