Water, Salt, & Ash: 
A Community Grief-Tending Ritual
Sunday February 23, 2020  10am-6pm
The Little Church 5138 NE 23rd, Portland Oregon

Broken relationships, death, ecological devastation, ancestral trauma, lost dreams…When we do not have the support to fully grieve our losses, we can feel great heaviness in our lives.

Together in a safe container of Earth-honoring ceremony, we will grow our capacity to grieve with the presence and support of community. Through sharing story, song, rhythm, altar building, food, and feeling, we will practice being deeply human together. We all cry in the same language. When we enter this sacred work of grieving simultaneously, there is no audience but instead a village where everyone can flow in and out of grieving and space-holding as called. As we strengthen our grieving muscles, we can begin to metabolize our sorrows into sources of gratitude, joy, and resilience, and we can show up more fully to life. 

The Ritual will be led by Cealila Komalam and a crew of assistants and musicians. Cealila is a mother, garden artist, writer, & maker of strong prayer who lives in Portland, Oregon. A twenty-plus year apprentice of ceremonial healing arts with several gifted teachers, Cealila began attending Grief Ritual regularly with Sobonfu Somé in 2007 and has been assisting Grief Rituals since 2018. She bows with gratitude to Sobonfu for her guidance; this Ritual is an offering to both deeply respect her teachings as well as to step toward creating bio-regionally authentic grief-tending practices. Cealila is inspired to cultivate local grief literacy and to grow grief-tending communities that support individuals and groups to respond to loss with skills and resilience.

Reciprocity –  $60-120 sliding scale – Space is limited to 28 participants.
(10% of all proceeds will be donated to Wisdom Spring, a nonprofit cofounded by Sobonfu Somé to build wells and education for girls in Burkina Faso;
if $ is a barrier; contact for more information.)