Events, 10-Steps, FLOW Facilitator Training, and so much more for 2025!
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Dear Good Griever,
No doubt about it - the strands are unraveling: the life-shattering fires in LA**, global storms & floods, upcoming US Presidential inauguration, ongoing mass murders, billionaire hoarders buying up the political process.... the ongoing collective and personal traumas just keep coming. We're in the thick of a collective unweaving process. It's difficult and painful but not entirely bad. With every unweaving comes a new form. There is possibility in unraveling. Until we're in these new forms, we're challenged to endure this harsh moment of unpalatable truths and destabilizing experiences. I'm thinking of the quote by Flannery O'Conner, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it." If you're like us at GGN and you feel the urge to lean in, stay awake and engaged, offer support, and help transform & heal, then please sustain yourself! We know one way to do that is by finding and nurturing your community. We have to attend to our hurting, scared, grief-filled inner worlds, and this is the work that is best done in community.
Our GGN community has grown and strengthened as we are held by the courageous Good Grievers that show up and breathe, meditate, journal, listen, witness, cry, laugh, care, flow, tend, and simply be with us. Along the way, we've been engaging big questions about how to best serve YOU, our beloved community, in these disruptive times. One thing has been clear for us from the start, none of us can survive this time alone. Mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically, we need each other. As the forces in the world work to separate and disconnect, we will continue to stretch, grow, listen, and reconnect. Reconnect. Reconnect.
We have a number of upcoming offerings for you. Programs like our "FLOW facilitation training" starting in mid February where you learn tools, techniques, and philosophy for hosting life-changing peer support healing sessions in your local communities, or our "10 Steps to Resilience & Empowerment in a Chaotic Climate" program which helps you reduce feelings of isolation, reframe our current predicament, and start to regain a sense of agency in this clusterf*ck moment.
We're also starting to lay out our 2025 events. Right now, we're looking forward to hosting a space for elders to gather, connect, and support one another. We'll also host a We Choose Connection: An Alternative Inauguration event. GGN is also partnering with the BTS center and Mirabai Starr for some powerful offerings too. Scroll down if any of this is of interest to you.
But first, grounding is a critical component of what we teach in any of our events and programming. We invite you into a practice we teach and share:
4, 7, 8 Breathing
This conscious breathing pattern was developed by Dr. Andrew Weil and helps to reduce anxiety and bring us back into the present moment. Breathing in this way brings fresh oxygen to our organs and tissues. I use this exercise when I'm caught projecting into a fear-filled future or cannot sleep at night. I hope it is a good tool for your toolbox.
What I am about to offer are suggestions, if the steps of this exercise feel nourishing to you, great! If what I offer feels activating or like it doesn't serve you, I invite you to find an exercise that brings a sense of calm to you.
In a comfortable seated position or lying on your back, exhale all the air from your lungs with a whoosh sound.
With your mouth closed, INHALE for a count of 4 through your nose. HOLD your breath for a count of 7. EXHALE through your mouth for a count of 8, making a whoosh sound again.
Repeat this exercise for a few minutes at a time: INHALE through the nose for 4, HOLD for 7, EXHALE through the mouth for 8. Give yourself a moment to come back to your normal breathing before standing as the breathing exercise may make you dizzy.
**If you have the means to help or offer support to those people and animals who have been impacted by the fires, please check out this link curated by Allswell, Intersectionalist Environmentalist, and Beaker, which is full of resources and mutual aid opportunities.
10-Steps to Resilience and Empowerment in a Chaotic Climate
If you are feeling overwhelmed, angry, exhausted, grief-stricken and/or isolated by the climate crisis, political breakdown, systemic racism, mass murders, we hear you and welcome all of you. This program is an opportunity for personal sharing, reflection, healing and growth. Each person is invited, though not required, to share what’s on their heart and how each step lives through them.
Our 10 week peer support group is here for you and we are so excited to offer two options to choose from for early 2025. Even if you have taken a 10-Step program before, we invite you to come back and feel held by the good grievers that bravely show up for our community. You are welcome here and we will continue to offer a spot for you.
Your community needs you. Join us for this 12 week intensive course where you’ll learn how to hold spaces for collective healing and connection in unraveling times. We’ll explore the inner and outer work of these times, embodiment, grounding, reclaiming our personal agency, conflict resolution techniques, and alternative perspectives to collapse.
By the end of our time together, you’ll feel empowered to organize and run our 10 week resilience-building program, climate cafes, or other peer support offerings.
“Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.” — bell hooks
After completing the training, you’ll also be enrolled in our 12 month facilitation membership program to connect with our global network of facilitators, additional trainings, and ongoing support and opportunities to collaborate.
There are two sessions of this training that will run concurrently.
We will meet for 3 hours per week, over the course of 12 weeks (13 weeks with one break). You will need to factor in another 1-3 hours for resources and out of course connection.
Apply to either of the following course sessions:
Sundays: 16 February - 11 May, 5-8pm Eastern Time (U.S.). Skipping 20 April 2025. (Every Time Zone)
or
Tuesdays: 18 February - 13 May from 1-4pm Eastern Time (U.S.) Skipping 22 April 2025. (Every Time Zone)
Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis until the course fills or starts.
BRAND NEW! Join our heart-centered, non-judgmental, peer support offering for elders, on the first Monday of the month, as we gather to explore our roles in the polycrisis and in an age of collapse.
If you identify as an elder, an aspiring elder, or if you are just curious about eldership, you are welcome to join this circle, any time or on a regular basis.
An opportunity to collectively reclaim the status and relevance of elders, dive into traditions of wisdom in these dark times, bridge between different cultural views of elders, and hopefully reignite intergenerational conversations and work in our communities.
Registration now open for Mondays 3rd Feb, 3rd March, and 7th April 2025 9-11am PT / 12-2pm ET (check your time zone)
**For this week only, get 25% off of registration fees by using code: JANOFFER25
We Choose Connection: An Alternative Inauguration Event
FREE! Are you filled with grief, terror, rage or overwhelm more generally at the upcoming second Trump term? Us too. To manage these painful feelings, we're offering space to connect, reflect, and find some clarity. Join us from 9-11:30 PT/ 12-1:30pm ET on 20 January 2025 for this special event.
In Partnership with the BTS Center: Lament with Earth
Wednesday, 05 February 2025, 7:30-8:30pm ET
A dedicated space to express our sorrow, fear, sadness, and despair about our future in a climate-changed world. To create space for these feelings, The BTS Center, The Many, and LaUra Schmidt will facilitate Lament with Earth — a seasonal event featuring original music, poetry, rituals, images, scripture and videos to reflect different seasons of loss through the liturgical year.
We are committed to hosting peer support spaces in these painful times. But we need your support to continue our work. If you've been positively impacted by GGN and one of our programs or events, share some love. Click the link below to donate $5, $15, or $500 today to ensure that our work lives on.
Good Grief Network is excited to announce more ways to give! We are now accepting stock gifts, endowments, and Donor Advised Fund Grants. **All cash donations over $500 automatically reserve 4.22% into an endowment.
You are not alone in these really disconnecting, fragmenting times. Please reach out to someone for a chat, a hug, or a cup of tea. The only way through is together. Slowly. Intentionally. We hope to see you in one or more of our upcoming events and programs. Until we connect again....
