Grieving Fire is a mixtape to the no-longer-graspable. It is an ode to the traces of what use to be. It is a space for dirty rituals and Hail Mary invitations. It is a time for wandering in stillness and wondering about all the alternative lives some other us is living.
Grieving Fire is a queer ritual space which invites participants to sit together with grief, both individual and collective. It is a space of being, drawing upon queer-lineages of survival and joy to be present with our histories, emotions and desires for those things that are lost and those that might come. Grieving Fire is a ritual for what cannot be held on to. It is a celebration of letting go. It is a way of recognizing our deeply personal relationship to grief while celebrating its ability to connect us to the fundamentally human experience of loss.
At the center we place a fire and around that we allow our grief to take up space. Through sculpture we make an honored place for those or that which we wish to invite to the gathering. This could be our ancestors, a divinity, or a physical force like gravity. We then share where we are with loss in this moment, understanding grief as a constantly shifting state of being. Finally, we take a moment to consider if there is something we need to let go of, something that has us stuck, and we offer that to the fire. It is a gentle ritual and you are welcome to participate as much or as little as you would like.
Grieving Fire started out as a practice of gathering in shared physical space which has moved into a shared digital imaginative space online. We meet regularly on Zoom to continue the work of being with and being within our grief together. In this time of mass upheaval and the terrible loss of life, it is even more important than ever to continue building rituals for personal and collective healing.
All are welcome at Grieving Fire. If you would like to join us please reach out. All grief is welcome.