If you're mourning a relationship, a dream, or the state of the world, please come sit next to us

An invitation to join today's caregiver circle at 10:30 EST on Zoom

Oct 28, 2025

This morning, we’ll be hosting our monthly In Tending circle, at 10:30am EST. Our topic this time around is: Clearing Space for Grief.

If this topic is relevant to you at this time, then you’re in good company. I’m reading Francis Weller’s beautiful book, The Wild Edge of Sorrow, and he points out that while losing a loved one is one widely-recognized source of grief, we have many others that often go unmarked in our culture, forms of grief that impact us all.

In my first interview for this newsletter, my friend Ashley and I talked about what it was like to lose her “chosen mom,” Judy, and the ways in which she continues to keep Judy’s memory alive in her life.

More personal losses that often go unmarked can include the loss of a relationship, a job, or a state of health. They can also include:

The places that have not known love. By this, Weller is referring to the parts of us that our caregivers did not appreciate or see. In Internal Family Systems terms, our inner Orphans.
What we expected and did not receive. Meaning, the things we imagined our future selves would enjoy (dreams, love, children, community), but that we currently do not have and may not get. Our culture resists narratives with this kind of an ache at the center of them, or frames them as “tests” — but as grief group facilitator Jess Van Wyn points out in this interview, this view often leads to “self-flagellation and additional harm. Or even flagellating others who are walking with us — believing like we’re a teacher and we’re motivating them.” Instead, she asks, “What if we just let ourselves exist?”
The sorrows of the world. Many of us feel enormous grief that stems from our awareness of the bigger collective challenges that humanity is facing, like war and climate change, and that the earth herself is facing alongside us. These forms of grief are nearly impossible to face alone; for this, we need a community strong enough to hold it.
Ancestral grief. The challenges faced by our ancestors had impacts on them that still ripple down through the generations, impacting us as well. These include the loss of what many of us call “the village,” and the grief, anger and fear that comes with the work of rebuilding it.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of a person who can’t relate to this list of sorrows.

That said, if this topic doesn’t call to you this time around, but you know someone else who might benefit from a circle-style Zoom gathering on clearing space for grief, please feel free to direct them to this form, which will put them on the email list to receive the link:

tinyurl.com/tendersangha

If you plan to join, I’d like to invite you to bring along a special object that’s easy to hold, and that brings you comfort, to support you on the call.

Some ideas: