We heal in relationship - to each other, to the land & to the cycles that hold us
Community Healing
Community Grief Rituals 𖣐 Men’s Grief Group 𖣐 West Coast Village Courses
Offerings
Turning Loss Into Love Through Sacred Witnessing
Grief was never meant to be carried alone behind closed doors. It's meant to be witnessed, ritualized, and transformed in community. When we gather to honor our losses together - whether recent deaths, ancestral wounds, or the collective griefs of our times - we create sacred space for healing that benefits not just ourselves, but our communities and the living world.
These ceremonies are held in the traditional lineages taught by Sobonfu Somé, Malidoma Somé, and Martín Prechtel.
NEXT GATHERING DATES
September 27th, 10-5:30pm
November 8th, 10-5:30pm
Rituals are held outdoors in Bodega, once you purchase your participation, the exact location is shared.
Get on the Waitlist | Learn More About Community Grief Rituals ࿋
Community Grief Rituals
Men’s Grief Group
Men have been taught that grief is weakness, that tears are shameful, that emotional expression is "bad for business." But unexpressed grief becomes violence, anger, and disconnection. This ongoing circle creates sacred space for men to reclaim their full emotional range and heal the wounds that patriarchy inflicts on all of us.
We gather monthly to explore grief in all its forms - personal losses, ancestral patterns, collective trauma, and the unnamed sorrows we carry in our bones. Through ritual, somatic practices, and witnessing each other's stories, we're reimagining what masculine community can look like when we stop performing strength and start embodying wholeness.
Investment & Commitment
This work requires showing up consistently to build trust and create lasting change. We ask for a 6-month commitment to allow the container to deepen and the healing to integrate. Monthly circles: $60-80 sliding scale
Ready to Join the Next Circle? Get on the Waitlist | Book a Call ࿋
This work is held by Coby and rotating guest facilitators, all trained in grief work and masculine healing. Limited to 12 participants to maintain intimacy and safety.
West Coast Village Course
Courses shared from the wisdom and knowledge of the Dagara people in Burkina Faso, in a reciprocity project benefiting their village. Stay tuned for upcoming courses.
The Grief Ritual Explained
“Any time a feeling of loss arises, there is an energy that demands ritual in order to allow reconciliation and the return to peace. Grief must be approached as a release of tension created by separation and disconnection from something that we love.”
-Malidoma Somé
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We are living in a world of so much un-metabolized grief causing war, causing divide from ourselves, our communities and the path to co-liberation for all beings.
It is time for our grief to be metabolized to be a revolutionary tool of breathing healing into what we are fleeing from and come back to what we love. Grief is one of the biggest acts of love because its an honoring of what we hold most dear, what we miss and what we want to call into being again. We welcome this ritual to come together, heal and vision as a community, how to meet these times!
When we grieve deeply, we create a clearing, an allowance for us to hold what feels unbearable. To let our grief and emotions flow, so that something else can grow from the compost of intergenerational trauma that is not ours to hold alone, it's too much for just one nervous system. This kind of work must be done collectively and with ritual to properly transform it.
Sobonfu taught grief as a collective field that needs tending in any community. Grief accumulates and must be tended on a regular basis. Whales grieve, hummingbirds grieve, it is an innate ability to grieve. We all remember how to do this as a community, its in our bones and dna.
We are the seeds of generations of love and the wildest dreams of our ancestors. We call upon all their resilience, and our guides, the elementals, and earth spirits to let our grief flow and be an offering to feed what we love.
This one-day ritual event will be held on the coast near Bodega Bay, CA, at a sacred spot at the feet of our majestic Grandmother Ocean. The ritual will be held in the healing lineages taught to Coby and Madeleina by Sobonfu Somé, Malidoma Somé, and Martín Prechtel.
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We are committed to offering a safe and open-hearted space for witnessing and letting the waves of grief express themselves as they need to, while tending to the collective community. This is a space that centers the experience and liberation of marginalized communities and those that are most deeply affected by the oppressive structures of racism, capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, the gender binary. We all need each other to do the collective work of metabolizing grief. This is a mixed identity and ancestral heritage space. If you are seeking a specific affinity space, BIPOC or Queer space we are happy to connect you to other circles.
We will mostly be expressing our grief somatically, letting the body lead us to what needs to move its way through so that we have a deeper ability to feel and to love. There will be many guided practices in the morning to help us approach our grief, We will be holding some embodied movement practices, song, writing and ancestral practices to loosen the grief in our systems.
After lunch we will move into the community grief ritual space for about three hours and close gently around 5:30pm.The grief ritual technology is a tremendous gift from the Dagara to meet the insanity of our world and it comes from long lineages of intact cultures and shrines that know how to work with intergenerational grief and trauma.
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Empowerment Water Project-
https://support.thesonderproject.org/fundraiser/4625276
Grieving Resources and Ritual pre-requisites:Sobonfu on Grieving:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtUqMwRXvhYGrief Ritual Lineage
https://m.soundcloud.com/siena-at-nw-grief-tending/dagara-grief-ritual-teaching-lineage-panel
Sobonfu on community: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R56s7KymWTk
Malidoma on prayer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHbmbTk9-lYMartín Prechtel on Grief
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUwewfPPSbE&t=22sFrom the book 'The Smell of Rain on Dust, Grief and Praise' by Martín Prechtel: (available on Audible, highly suggested)
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We always offer back to the source of this ritual magic and the indigenous communities that have taught us these tremendous gifts with 15% of proceeds from our rituals going back into these communities. For the Dagara community, we recently were able to fund a third well for fresh water in the village. It was created with the support and direction of Dagara elders and in collaboration with the Sonder Project. Thank you to all of you that have supported! We are continuing to fundraise for two more wells in neighboring Dagara villages.
Link to the project here. https://support.thesonderproject.org/fundraiser/4625276There are very few grief ritualists with a direct relationship and ongoing conversation with the Dagara people. A lot of ritual power and magic comes from being linked to these shrines and councils. It is a tremendous gift to heal our ancestral lines and our world with this ritual technology!
Please contact us directly for inquiries at communityritual@gmail.com.15% of the proceeds will go to Dagara