Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community

“Camille Sapara Barton is a gift to all of us. ... This is what emergent strategy looks like at the precipice.” —adrienne maree brown, author of Pleasure Activism An embodied guide to being with grief individually and in community—practical exercises, decolonized rituals, and Earth-based medicines for healing and processing loss We live in a culture that suppresses our ability to truly feel our grief—deeply, safely, and on our own terms. But each person’s experience is as unique as the grief itself. Here, Camille Sapara Barton’s take on grief speaks directly to the ways that BIPOC and queer readers disproportionately experience unique constellations of loss. Deeply practical and easy to use in times of confusion, trauma, and pain, Tending Grief includes rituals, reflection prompts, and exercises that help us process and metabolize our grief—without bypassing or pushing aside what comes to the fore. Sapara Barton includes exercises that can be done both alone and in community, including: Altar practices to honor and connect with ancestors known and unknown Locating, holding, and dancing your grief Sharing circles for processing communal loss Water, fire, and nature-based rituals Honoring the survival utility of numbness—and knowing when it’s time to release it Peer support and integration Herbal medicines and plant-based healing Sapara Barton honors each and every experience: The loss of displacement from homelands, from severed lineages and ancestral ways of knowing. The grief of colonization and theft. The deep heaviness that burrows into our bodies when society tells us our bodies are wrong. Practical tools and rituals help readers feel into their grief, honor what comes up, and move forward in healing. Written specifically to center and hold the grief of BIPOC readers, Tending Grief is an invitation to reconnect to what we’ve lost, to find community in our grief, and to tend to our own suffering for our individual and collective wellbeing. Title Page Praise for Tending Grief Copyright Dedication Acknowledgments Introduction How This Book Came to Exist Lineage How to Engage with This Book 1: The Ongoing Grief of Colonization The Past as Present COVID-19 and the Aftershocks Barriers to Plant Medicine Due to the War on Drugs Reconnection as Antidote to Colonization Closing Thoughts 2: The Violence of the Void 3: Tending Grief Is Necessary within Social Movements Origins Context How Did We Get Here? Weaving Grief into Our Movements 4: A Conversation with Aisha from misery about Grief Work within the Club Context 5: A Conversation with Zachi from Dopo about Abortion Companionship as Community Grief Work 6: How to Use These Grief Rituals Using the Embodiment Practices Personal Grief Rituals Community Grief Rituals Integration Practices 7: Herbal Medicine for Grief 8: Closing Thoughts Further Reading Notes The Ongoing Grief of Colonization The Violence of the Void Tending Grief Is Necessary within Social Movements A Conversation with Aisha from misery about Grief Work within the Club Context A Conversation with Zachi from Dopo about Abortion Companionship as Community Grief Work How to Use These Grief Rituals About the Author About North Atlantic Books