In this episode I am joined with Nici Harrison, our first ever repeat guest, which marks 2 years of the podcast.  After our first ever episode, ‘the art of grief tending’ back in 2021, I have taken part in one of Nici’s online 3 month apprenticeship programmes, and more recently we have worked together on her grief retreat this year and have become dear friends… we are now merging our work into an exciting new collaboration next year.  

We dive into more nuanced topics, exploring how collective grief relates to our own sorrows, the psychedelic or liminal nature of deep grief and the relationship between grief and plant or fungi medicine ceremonies. This conversation will give you a sense of why we have formed this new partnership and a glimpse into the potential psilocybin has to support the tending of our grief. 

Nici is a beloved grief worker, speaker and founder of The Grief Space. Through her own deep experiences of loss, she came to recognise that our modern culture has forgotten how to grieve. Over the years, Nici has been blessed to learn from great teachers, experience beautiful grief rituals and familiarise herself with traditions and practices of tending to grief. Her work is built on the foundation that grief is sacred and is a radical gateway to a deeper appreciation of life. 

Originating from the root word ‘tenderness’, grief tending invites us to bring compassion to our grief, as we would to a small child or a wild garden. Grief tending is the understanding that to be human is to know loss. It is the practice of welcoming grief so that we can keep our hearts open to life. It is coming home to the recognition that we all have grief, whether it’s for the losses in our lives, the unmet longings or the sorrows of the world.

Grief tending is the understanding that our earth needs us to grieve, just as it needs us to pay attention. It is the trust that when we grieve and allow ourselves to be vulnerable, we open ourselves to connection, authenticity and intimacy. As we remember the lost art of grief tending where all is welcomed, we restore our connection to each other, ourselves and the earth. We emerge with the capacity to hold it all; love and loss, grief and gratitude; life and death.

The collaboration we are referring to is the mergence of our signature psilocybin retreat ‘Earth Medicine’ with the art of grief tending.  So in May next year - 2024, we are holding this first alchemised marriage of work that feels so naturally suited.  If you are curious and would like to learn more, head to rootedhealing.org/earth-medicine-grief-tending.

Nici is also a special guest on our upcoming  ‘Deepen Your Roots’ course,  which is our year-long slow-study weaving deep ecology, ‘the work that reconnects’, and a folkloric, animistic exploration into the ecological self rewoven with place. Head to rootedhealing.org/deepen to learn more.

The music in this episode was by Mike Howe and Ruth Blake.  

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