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Wild Grief



I went to visit my mother where she's buried in the wilderness

I brought some things back. I'll share them with you.

 

1. There were cougar prints.

2. I decided cougar could kill me. I'll have a death - that seems like one I might look back on fondly.

3. Nonetheless, I put rocks into my pockets.

 

4. I napped by her grave.

5. I almost never nap.

6. The first place I laid was on an ant hill - they swarmed my legs but didn't bite me. I wondered if they know my mother.

 

7. Three trees were a stand together - two had fallen sometime, at once or one by one. One was standing, but near falling.

8. I walked on the fallen trees.

9. I liked how my feet held on.

 

10. I felt brave walking from their root to their top.

11. Their tops rose higher from the ground, because almost living branches held them up.

12. Their tops were low compared to the top of the standing, dying one because height is relative and impermanent.

13. This is all obvious and surprising.

 

14. I noticed the meadow that was once the forest floor.

15. It was soft.

 

16 When I left I said goodby to my dead mother, who seems to be there, ongoing.

17 When I left I think my mother came along with me.

 

I don't know how or where my mother is or isn't dead.




Wild Grief Creature Encounters starring Jana DeCristofaro of the Dougy Center

In this special episode Sascha, Jana and I search out and approach our wild grief creatures.

 

They are lava monsters, and scared things trapped behind sliding doors. They are vaporous, shocked, frozen and misunderstood. 

 

They grieve death, separation, abandonment and things unknown. They are adrift and anchored and swimming strongly in their own and a big communal river of loss.   

We'd love you to crouch with us and try to catch a glimpse. We'd love to crouch and catch a glimpse of yours.



 
 
 

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Finding Us

The Atlanta Grief House Nickerson Cottage at Legacy Park Decatur 500 S. Columbia Dr, Decatur, GA 30030 Notes on finding us: GPS will take you to the center of Legacy Park. The Nickerson Cottage is a stone building with raised bed gardens on the south side of Legacy Park's campus. If you enter campus through the south entrance it will be the first cottage you come to. You can park in any of the surrounding lots. If coming in the evening you will see the string lights on our front porch. Nickerson Cottage is largely wheelchair accessible.

The Portland Grief House 7906 N Fessenden St, Portland, OR 97203 Notes on finding us: We are the green house on the corner of N Fessenden & N Allegheny Ave. Enter through the gate at the corner.

Wilderings, operating as The Grief House, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (EIN  84-4336786) and all donations are tax deductible. 

The Grief House works on and serves communities on land that is the unceeded territory of the Muskogee, Cherokee and Creek peoples in Georgia and the Clackamas, Stl’pulmsh, Cayuse, Umatilla, Walla Walla and Siletz peoples in Oregon.

 

We honor them as we live, work and serve grievers on these unceeded lands. 

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