Through the Dark Woods of Grief

 I invited Silvia to do this episode with me because I wanted to explore the grief of the loss of place - our sense of home and ancestral connection with the land. 

I think you will find our conversation both mind & heart opening.

Silvia was born and raised in Argentina. She was forced to leave Argentina as a teenager due to the violent political climate, along with her refugee parents and siblings. She lived in Venezuela for 25 years before immigrating to Canada. 

She worked in Canada for 10 years as an employment counsellor and coach for refugees and immigrants. 

She is a Permaculturist, Facilitator & Coordinator and currently works for three different organizations: Gaia Education, The Work That Reconnects Network and the Capra Course (by Fritjof Capra).

Rachel has spent more than 5,000 hours in private sessions helping animals who are sick from diseases, old age, injuries, or suffering from trauma. In addition to the private sessions she offers, I have pre-recorded healings that have healed thousands of animals.
She created the EmPAWer App that helps PAWrents go from doom to bloom, offers free classes, spells, healings, and the option to uplevel as a Crowned Creatrix.
She also teaches international online courses where guardians learn how to be more involved in their beloved best friend's health which can prevent disease, extend life spans, and increase the quality of life. 

She's also a hardcore science nerd who is madly in love with all things mystical. I LOVE HELPing people with their sick animals and I yearn to offer rays of hope when it seems there aren't any.

You can find out more about Rachel at https://www.rachelaugusta.com/

In this episode Dawn and I have a witchy kitchen table conversation about ceremony, rites of passage, sacred time keeping, grief, healing etc... Dawn Dancing Otter (DDO) is a mother, scholar, writer, poet, storyteller, sacred rites and psychedelic ceremonialist, healer, crone, and activist. She is an internationally recognized teacher of ceremonial arts & is learning to live in good relationship as a settler in unceded Lekwungen traditional territories. She is the creatrix of the WeaveWork School of Soul Recovery, the Wildwood Witch School, & a Plant Medicine Ceremonialist Apprenticeship. She recently completed her master's thesis on Grief Ritual for Therapists in Dark Times and will be soon publishing her first book, "The 4 Basic Needs of Belonging."

Ning is a published poet, grief guide, spiritual healer and dream yogi specializing in the intersection of the healing power of dreams, rituals, and spiritual constellations as potent tools for helping the bereaved evolve and continue their relationship with their dead loved one, learn how to grieve in a new way, and launch into a new and more expansive phase of their life that is full of purpose, creativity, and their unique contribution to the world. Born in Cameroon, Africa, she experienced how powerful and valuable her communities traditional grief rituals were after her mother died. Returning to the US showed her how incredibly isolating coping with grief after loss is in the Western World. She now supports others who have experienced major loss to reconnect with their dead loved ones using dream work in a 12 week 1:1 Mentorship program called "Dream Reunions." You can find out more about her work at https://www.ningtendo.com/ or on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ning_tendo

In this episode we discuss the fallacy of "self" care, and the potential for powerful healing when we get really vulnerable and ask for care from our community rather than trying to do it all alone. We discussed how our need and the vulnerability attached to it contains the gift of bringing people together as a community when we're having a hard time, rather than isolating into "self-reliance," during times of great difficulty or conflict.

For over a decade, Tad has found himself drawn to conversations about how we might tend to the harm that's done in communities in ways that leave the community stronger and more whole at the end - not more shattered. 

Tad currently lives in Edmonton, Alberta (traditionally known, in the local indigenous language of the Cree, as Amiskwaciy (Beaver Hill) and later Amiskwaciwaskihegan (Beaver Hill House) and his ancestors come primarily from Scotland with some from the Ukraine as well. He is drawn to conversations around politics, history, ancestry, healing and how those all intersect.

You can find out more about Tad @ www.marketingforhippies.com

You can find me (Josea) & sign up for my mailing list to be the first to know when we have a new episode @ www.joseatamiracrossley.com

Note: I chose to leave this episode unedited even though I had a moment of going completely blank in the beginning :) Truth: I'm a perfectionist, and so leaving this unedited is an act of allowing that part of me to take a vacation :) I also wanted to give you, listener, the opportunity to see me in a moment of vulnerability and how our "mis-takes" when held with compassion become a part of the fabric of the beauty we weave. 

In this episode we discuss adult rites of passage, rough initiation vs. being initiated in the village, and how grief & trauma work connects through the layers of all of it. We talk about the art of building a village around us - not physical houses but through the web of connections - elders, mentors, allies & anchors. 

John Wolfstone is a filmmaker, ritualist, wilderness rites-of-passage guide, emergence facilitator and sacred clown focused on the work of cultural redemption. Over the past 15 years, he has wielded these tools in service to restorative justice, ancestral healing and peace building in conflict zones from rural Guatemalan villages, to Middle Eastern refugee camps and inner cities in the U.S. He has studied intensively the 8 Shields Cultural Regeneration model, been a scholar at the Orphan Wisdom School, trained with Weaving Earth Relational Education, and been a long-term student, and trainee of the Tamera Love School and Healing Biotope Education. He has four times been awarded Moishe House grants to facilitate Jewish community gatherings on Ancestry, Love, and recollecting the Village. In addition, he has been producing new paradigm films and events through his media collaborative, Re/Culture Media. 

Chris has been in the fast-paced field of emergency medicine for over 17 years. He's a frontline worker, and a dad, and was kind of a normal guy -  scientific-minded and skeptical of grief work, but willing to give it a try. He took a deep dive with us this past spring in Through the Dark Woods - Real Life Skills for Navigating Grief & Trauma. He shares his story of going from numbness to a sense of full aliveness and the ripples through both his work and relationships that doing this work has had. 

Polly Orr is the community coordinator for Moss Rock Farm on Salt Spring Island, a radical permaculture project specializing in living soil food production with the intention of both living and demonstrating how we can, as humans, live in deep harmony with the land and each other in a carbon neutral lifestyle. Polly also participated in the last Through the Dark Woods ~ Real Life Skills for Navigating Grief and Trauma and shares her story of how grief work as impacted her life both personally and in her role as community coordinator. 

You can find out more about the Through the Dark Woods sessions @ www.joseatamiracrossley.com/dark-woods/ 

or sign up for the next free intro session (September 20th 2021) @ www.joseatamiracrossley.com/into-the-ashes