Ancestor Grief Ritual

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There are some rituals that change us not through insight, but through contact - contact with our grief, our ancestors, our community, and the hidden places within us that have been waiting to be tended.
As Kedar teaches, “We live in a culture skewed to the expression of joy and enthusiasm and avoidant of grief and emotions considered ‘negative.’ Grief is as natural a part of the human experience as are all our emotions - just as night is to daylight. Yet grief in our culture is often run underground, hidden behind shame and denial, left to fester in the further recesses of our psyche without the same loving attention and open sharing we offer to our more jubilant emotions.

Unexpressed grief, like all forms of energy, has to move. It searches for a way out of the box in which we have attempted to lock it. Grief needs to be seen and heard, given to dance and song. Our experiences of loss acknowledged as profound rites of passage in our lives. Grief is the continued conversation of love.”

Grief is Meant to be Shared
Grief was never meant to be carried alone. Though it can feel deeply personal, humans have always relied on one another to help move the heaviness so it doesn’t settle into the body, the heart, or the lineage. Across time and across cultures, communities gathered to cry together, to release together, and to transform together, knowing that unexpressed grief becomes illness, imbalance, and patterns that echo through generations.

In many indigenous traditions, grief rituals are essential not only for the individual healing but for the wellbeing of the entire community. Tending grief is seen as a shared responsibility, a sacred act of village care. It is only in the modern world that we’ve pushed grief into isolation, forgetting what our ancestors always knew: that healing comes through connection, ceremony, and being held by others. And so we return to cultures whose rites and rituals for grief have remained intact - to remembers how to grieve in community once again.

About Kedar S. Brown
Kedar is an internationally respected ceremonialist, healer, and wilderness rites of passage guide with over 35 years of experience. His work weaves indigenous ritual, experiential psychotherapies, and deep nature-based healing. His devotion, integrity, and spiritual maturity makes him one of the most trusted ceremonial guides working today. Kedar is one of Jenn’s beloved teachers/mentors and she is grateful for the opportunity to share the gifts that flow through him with her community up north.

What is an Ancestor Grief & Gratitude Ritual? (in Kedar’s words)
The Dagara tribe are from Burkina Faso deep in West Africa. One of their respected Elders and medicine men is Malidoma Somé whose first name means ‘friend of the enemy.’ His purpose in life - ascribed to him before his birth - is to help bring the teachings of his tribe to the modern world to reconnect us with our hearts. This Grief Ritual is an adaptation of a three-day grief ritual traditional in his village. With Malidoma’s blessing, this ritual is offered to you.

During our time together, we will deepen our connection to the natural world, gather and share the stories of grief from our lives and bring them together in a ritual space for respect, honoring, and release.

This indigenous African grief ritual offers a soul cleansing rite to release grief, lighten our soul and let our true spirit be heard, deepening our sense of balance and fulfillment. Our version is a closed container that brings people together for four days in a beautiful natural setting. Here we create our own village, build community and learn to lean in towards one another like a tree thirsty for water. We come together to create the ceremonial space of the village fire, an ancestor shrine and a grief portal to the other world. That evening, through drumming and song we grieve together as a village, as a people who share a common life experience.

Dates: May 14-17
Time: Arrival 4pm, Departure 12pm
Location: Canaan, CT
Cost: $950
Payment plans are available.