This month's Men's Grief Ritual will focus on our relationship with sex, desire, and erotic responsibility. The male erotic has been wounded for many generations, and subsequently, caused much harm in the world and to other's bodies. There are deep wounds here that need to be tended to and healed—shadows and stories that need the light of love; exiled parts that need belonging and care; boundaries crossed that need healing and restorative, compassionate accountability.

At the same time, erotic aliveness, wholeness, and desire is a powerful, life-giving energy that can guide us to deeper intimacy, love, and connection when harnessed in embodied, consensual, right relational ways.

At this one-night Grieving Man, we will tend to these pains—from the harms we've caused ourselves and others, to the shames, insecurities, and fears that have shaped our sexuality, alongside honoring the life-giving power our Eros brings us. From the ways this culture damaged how we developed our relationships to sex, our bodies, and pleasure, to how its shaped how we relate to desire, attraction, performance, and worthiness. This will be a space to hold it all and work to heal our relationship with Eros in our selves, our relationships, and our communities.

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We welcome you men.

We welcome you to a gathering of brotherhood to release, remember, and reroot into the deeper currents and feelings of our lives.

As beings socialized as men, most of us were taught at an early age not to show certain emotions. But the truth is, we do feel deeply. We are sensitive beings. We experience loss, love and sorrow. We feel our shames and fears. We are moved by beauty. We hold anger and rage that isn’t inherently destructive, but is a deep cry of the heart. Grieving Man is a space to dive deep into the waters of collective depth, attunement and belonging, together.

Within this container we will explore and expand the edges of what is possible for the transformation and healing of the masculine. We will work to cultivate a community of men that show up, support, and hold each other accountable as we continue to remember and become the men we are meant to be.

This is a place to try things out, unlock our hearts and encourage one another to explore our depths as men. Through us gathering, in presence and emergence, we will cocreate a space together that leans into the collective intelligence of the group for its wisdom and direction. Through land-based practices, emergent ritual, collaborative singing, music, rhythm, nourishing food, embodied movement, and more we will access and express our grief, our joy, our desire, and the many emotional currents that move in our depths but are so often ignored, rejected or shamed in our pre-dominant monoculture.

We do this tender work so that we can show up for ourselves, our families and our communities with more fullness and presence. We do this with the intention of learning how to acknowledge and transform our personal and global grief into something that opens us up to the true preciousness of life—something that is beautiful, generative and nourishing for each of us, our loved ones and the greater web of life of which we are all a part.

In this deep longing, we invite you to the healing grounds of Sacred Groves for this month's Grieving Man One Night Ritual.

While this gathering is directly inspired by a grief ritual created by Joanna Macy, we also honor the lineages and wisdom of so many others who have influenced our personal and communal grief work—Malidoma and Sobonfu Somé, Francis Weller, Martín Prechtel, Bayo Akomolafe, and of course our dearest elders and lineage carriers in community—Laurence Cole, Thérèse Charvet, Tere Carranza, ahlay blakely, and many more.

PLEASE ARRIVE BETWEEN 4PM AND 4:45PM. We will begin in circle promptly at 5pm and end around 10pm "spirit time". After the ritual you will be nourished with a delicious home-cooked feast cooked by Chef Jordan.

Reciprocity: To ensure this work is valued and tended to in sustainable, regenerative ways, we are now asking for an upfront contribution for the space tenders and land to cover the work, food, land upkeep, supplies, and investment of energy, learning, and time spent dedicated to this work.

Ticketing Tiers:

• $120 - Supporting Tier - This tier supports your community by allowing more need-based and BIPOC scholarships to be offered. Additionally, it helps cover the holistic costs of running this ritual by supporting fair wages for the facilitators and greater program accessibility through sliding scale options. Please select this tier if you are able to comfortably meet all of your basic needs and have the means to contribute towards greater economic and racial justice in this way. Thank you for supporting this work!
  
  
• $80 - Sustaining Tier (General Admission) - This tier covers the full costs of running this ritual by supporting fair wages for the facilitators and greater program accessibility through sliding scale options. Please register at this tier if you are able to comfortably meet all of your basic needs. If you have the means to contribute more towards greater economic and racial justice by enabling more need-based and BIPOC scholarships to be offered, please consider registering at the Supporting Tier above. Thank you for your support.
  
  
• $40 - Supported Tier - This tier covers the direct, but not full costs of running this retreat. As a guide, this tier may be right for you if you stress about meeting your basic needs (food, housing, etc.) but still regularly achieve them. If you are able to comfortably meet your needs, please register at the Sustaining or Supporting Tiers above, which covers the full costs of running our ritual.
  
  

Alongside the sliding scale tiered ticketing options, to continue making this accessible for everyone, we have scholarships available for those in need. Please email [email protected] if you're interested.

The sliding scale framework used here is based on a model developed by Siena Tenisci of Northwest Grief Tending, designed to make programs more accessible and support economic justice.

Refund Policy: Partial refunds of 50% are available up to 14 days prior to the event date. After this period, refunds are no longer available. This policy helps to hold us all accountable and creates some protection for the facilitators and organizers. We ask that you notify as soon as possible if you are no longer able to attend.

Whether you can join us or not, thank you for honoring yourself and showing up in all the ways you do. And if you are feeling this call, we hope to see you then. Thank you!

— Jordan Lyon

*This is a cocreated container and we welcome your leadership. As we each continue to learn and grow in our individual space holding skills for this type of community healing, we know that this is a collective effort no matter what and that we can't do it alone. So please let us know if you would like to help us plan, add ingredients, stir the pot and bring your own magic to our cocreated ritual.

**This gathering is for anyone who has been socialized as a man/male, who does or has ever identified as a man/male, or even any one who is simply doing the work to heal their ancestral lineage of those that have identified as either of those.

Grieving Man donates 5% of net revenue towards building infrastructure for healthy water access for the Dagara Tribes of Burkina Faso, West Africa in reciprocity for the ripples of communal grief work Sobonfu + Malidoma Somé brought to the west in the 80's + 90's as an antidote to colonialism.

We also what to acknowledge our teachers and those on our Integrity Council, especially ahlay blakely and Holly Truhlar, for their advisement and words in offering these rituals in right relationship—specifically in how we honor the lineages of this work, how we handle money, and how we navigate conflict. Our language around tithing and refund accountability reflect learnings and are direct words written from these cultural lineage carriers, especialy ahlay, in doing this collective healing "soul work" in integrity.