Ellen’s writing class is extraordinary. Her beautiful & skillful facilitation offers the space to move through some deep grief. The most unexpected part is how uplifting the experience has felt for me. I’ve loved writing within an intimate circle of people and continue to take her classes.
— Emily G.

GRIEF BECOMES US: Navigating Loss & Sorrow Through Storytelling **
An online 5-week writing group that honors the different kinds of losses we carry

-including: relationship change/loss, life transitions, health changes, addressing losses/heartbreaks from long ago, ambiguous sense of loss, environmental grief, as well as anticipatory grief and/or ongoing grief due to the death of a loved one.

Being alive in such a fleeting and tenuous world requires us to grapple with losses of all kinds. Our hearts get broken in ways that can’t be easily mended. Whatever sorrows you are carrying it’s possible to know more about how you are living inside new losses or old ones. How do you live this? What is loss, grief, sorrow like for you—what is it like in your bones, breath, heart, mind?

One of the ways that can help us navigate the unpredictable turns of loss is creative expression—using writing as a healing practice that names, honors and recognizes grief while also tethering us to our inner resourcefulness and wisdom. Grief Becomes Us offers a gathering place for those wanting to experiment with writing as a practice to traverse losses of all kinds. No previous writing experience required. In this 5-week program, we’ll gather once-weekly to deepen our connection to the narratives of loss we carry. At each gathering we will open and close with a short meditation, we’ll write from a poetry prompt, share our work (optional) and have time to reflect on the experience and anything that’s come up through our writing. Caring for ourselves through loss and sorrow can be an intense, intimate, deep experience and when shared, perhaps we can welcome our whole-hearted selves a little more fully.

This class is not a grief repair vision or a loss and sorrow mending workshop. But just because you can’t fix grief doesn’t mean there is something more to know about and to offer tenderness and care to parts of ourselves that may feel tremendous sorrow. This writing immersion is an opportunity to be intimate with ourselves. In this course there is an opportunity to be with what we know and what we don't know yet. When we shift from fixing to tending to grief, loss and sorrow there is something perhaps that has gone unknown or invisible that can now be made more visible and known. 

In this 5-week virtual writing intensive there will be: 

• a short guided meditation
• brief check-in 
• writing prompt of a poem (and/or other prompts) and time to write
• opportunity to share your writing if it feels right
• follow-up email and writing prompt for week

Fall Dates: TBD

Now Accepting Registrations! Please reach out if you are interested in the next offering.
Fee:
$300-385 sliding scale, limited partial scholarships available

NOTE: Individual therapy may be a helpful support alongside this group. This group is not psychotherapy and therefore is not reimbursable by insurance. A 15-minute orientation phone call is required prior to registration to ensure that it is the right fit for you. To schedule a call, please fill out the form below and in the message box, let me know that you are interested in the “Grief Becomes Us” class. After orientation call, payment for the class can be made through Venmo.

** This immersion series was first developed in collaboration with my friend and colleague Maya Stein, who served as editor of “Grief Becomes You,” a collection of writings and photographs on the subject of loss from more than 60 contributors.