“Gather the keeners! For we need to sing and dance with grief. We need to wail by the ocean, dance with the drum and to step between the worlds. We need to ask the old ones for their healing so we can heal ourselves and offer healing to others. We need to sit with our grief, not hide it away within our bodies for that makes us ill. We need new rituals and ways to engage with grief rather be overcome by it. We can weave old threads into new traditions, and root them an ancient spiritual bedrock. ”
A Sacred Pilgrimage of Grief
The roots of the word pilgrimage lie in the Latin peregrinus, meaning foreigner or stranger, evoking journeys to sacred lands, where transformations may unfold. A pilgrimage is not just a physical journey, its a crossing from the known into the sacred unknown, a step into a space both unfamiliar and deeply meaningful.
In our Western culture, grief is often treated as a stranger, an unwelcome visitor. We avoid grief by silencing our emotions and keeping busy, because grief and death feel overwhelming, so we rush to move past it without truly facing it.
We avoid grief by silencing our emotions and keeping busy, because grief and death feel overwhelming, so we rush to move past it without truly facing it. We do this because grief is an unfamiliar terrain, most of us haven’t been shown how to experience it fully or walk through it with guidance. Our culture surrounds us with countless distractions to avoid grief, yet it lacks deep rooted traditions to guide us through the grieving process. Grief is not something to be feared, it is something to embraced, it is a sacred journey to be travelled.
Reclaiming Keening
This week long pilgrimage invites you on a sacred journey, of reclaiming an ancient indigenous grief ritual, using the tools of story, art and ritual. My approach honors keening not just as a vocal lament but as a multifaceted practice where story, art and ritual weave into one another.
Reclaiming keening is also a form of activism, an invitation to engage with grief collectively rather than in isolation. We were meant to grieve together, wither our grief is from social justice issues, passed down ancestral grief, as well as eco-grief and the collapse of climate systems. Grieving together helps question and remove the stigmatism around grief, challenging the societal silence around mourning. At the same time, it is a grief practice which calls for us to recognise and make time for it, for tending grief guides us toward healing, inspiration, and resistance.
Story
Telling our story allows us to make meaning of our loss. While the telling of the story can be painful it often comes with a relief, and a cathartic release.
Hearing others stories allows us to connect in our grief, it can provide a comfort and a powerful guide to hear how others have experienced, lived with, shaped, alongside many often surprising and inspiring insights which can be a guide to others having gone through similar losses.
Sharing stories evokes empathy and connection, these shared threads of grief allow us to weave a supportive and meaningful environment.
Art
Art is our oldest symbolic language, offering the power to express what words cannot and then to go far beyond them. Creating art activates different parts of the brain, helping us process complex emotions while opening a space for imagination, transformation, and healing.
It is a ritual that helps us honor loss, transforming grief into tangible expressions of resilience. Through creative acts like doll making or weaving, we give grief symbolic form, allowing us to externalize and often reshape our pain, deepening our story and making it meaningful.
Ritual
Ritual evokes a sense of reverence and purpose, allowing ground grief in sacredness. The container and structure allows for emotional expression.
Ritual creates a sacred space for engaging with grief, opening a connection to ancestral traditions and expressions, inviting us to feel and embody grief as a path to transformation.
It also allows us to place our grief within a wider story, reminding us that we do not carry it alone, we can do so in community and in our relationship with the land.
The Land
Walking the land is an integral part of our journey, pilgrimage providing a ritual leading towards healing, connection and renewal.
On our pilgrimage the land becomes a companion, anchoring us and supporting us through the rawness of grief. This weaving of grief and helps restore grief as a natural, honored part of life.
Isle of the Big Women
I’ve been visiting this little, but remarkable island, for over 25 years. The name Eigg comes from an old Norse description meaning notch or wedge, referring to the Sgurr, the tall rock formation that gives Eigg its easily identifiable profile. Its Gaelic name, Eilean Nan Bam Mora, means Isle of the Big Women, which refers to stories of female warriors and mythical giant women.
Big is also description of honour and respect and there are many threads of stories left from which might well have been a rich culture of powerful and inspiring women around these islands, and islands throughout the UK. Sadly, these stories are so threadbare that we are only left with the thinnest of threads to try and weave them back together. There is one thread which talks about the death dirge (the keen) being raised on Eigg, a story coming from the 7th century.
“Grief and love are sisters, woven together from the beginning. Their kinship reminds us that there is no love that does not contain loss and no loss that is not a reminder of the love we carry for what we once held close.”
Sheela na Gig in the ruins of Kildonnan Church
Keening
Keening is an indigenous ritual lament which was performed in both Scotland and Ireland (although the traditions varied). It was a very professional role which required the mastery of difficult songs and unique motifs. It was also an exhausting role, as keening was performed throughout the days and nights of the wake. She was required to provide a fitting performance, bringing those gathered into their grief in a sincere and authentic way.
My approach with keening is taking the inspiration of this age-old indigenous ritual to make new rituals to help us engage with and process our grief today. In the Wild Edge of Sorrow Francis Weller describes that we live in a grief-phobic and death-denying culture, one which no longer has effective ways of dealing with grief.
Reclaiming keening offers space to connect with grief, to let our hands and heart process our feelings through creative projects such as making a keening doll or weaving grief while the ritual of a keening circles provides a curated musical journey which allows for expressions of all the facets of grief, from anger, to frustration and despair.
Learning About the Role of the Keening Woman
Before our week together, you’ll have opportunities to explore the role of the keening woman. These resources will help you arrive prepared, with a shared understanding to support and enrich our keening circles. These inlude:
A free pass to my mini introductory course ‘An Introduction to Keening’
A live Zoom lesson
Selected articles for you to read and bring your insights to the Zoom lesson
Keening Circles
Keening circles is where we explore different aspects of the keening woman’s rituals. Each one serves as a guide, both in reclaiming this tradition and in giving us space to engage with, give voice to, and express our grief.
Of the many prompts the keening woman offers, for this pilgrimage we will be exploring:
Tapping into our grief - Speaking our grief aloud
Salutation of the dead. Speaking to the dead and dying, telling them how much we miss them, or how much we will miss a person
Using traditional laments and chant
For this JULY pilgrimage, we will be exploring:
Tapping into our grief - Speaking our grief aloud
Salutation of the dead. Speaking to the dead and dying, telling them how much we miss them, or how much we will miss a person
Exploring the role of the Psychopomp
Divine madness / surrendering to grief
Using traditional laments and chant
for this August pilgrimage we will be exploring these motifs in keening circles and then co-creating together how we can create rituals at special sites around the island
In keening circles, I explore different aspects of the keening woman’s rituals. Each one serves as a guide, both in reclaiming this tradition and in giving us space to engage with, give voice to, and express our grief.
The keening woman offers us many doorways to explore grief in keening circles such as:
Tapping into our grief - Speaking our grief aloud
Salutation of the dead. Speaking to the dead and dying, telling them how much we miss them, or how much we will miss a person
Psychopomp
Divine madness / surrendering to grief
Using traditional laments and chant
Gathering at the Well of the Holy Women in the village of Grulin - a traditional chant which was sung at the edge of the ocean, guiding the soul of the deceased homewards, out to the setting sun and the lands beyond. - Sung by Dana Murphy
Working with the Ancestral Mothers
The Goddess Brighid
Eigg, sits in the islands of the Inner Hebrides, the Hebrides used to be referred to as the islands of Brighid. We will tap into the inspiration of Brighid, such as: Brighid as Mary of the Gael, her relationship with midwives, bringing life into the world and then midwifing the soul back home at the end of life. We will use traditional chants such as Pirilou, a chant sung at the edge of the ocean, facing west, to guide the soul on its final journey home. This is a chant which mimics the oystercatcher, a bird sacred to Brighid (clip above).
In order to arrive at the weeks pilgrimage with an overview of both Brighid and the Cailleach, you’ll receive a free pass to take:
My course on the Cailleach, exploring her through stories, art and ritual
Gathering at Brighids Hearth - an exploration of Brighid
An Cailleach
We will explore elements of the Cailleach’s stories, relating them to grief:
Her Samhain ritual of washing her plaid in the great Whirlpool of Corryvrecken
The whirlpools symbolism of renewal and baptism
The story of the the women who tended to the Stones of Cailleach’s Shrine in Glen Cailleach, Perthshire
Her renewal under water
Sacred Sites
Walking the land is an essential part of our pilgrimage, not just visiting sites, but the journey itself. We will take time to submerge ourselves in the feeling of place and engaging with our spiritual senses.
All walks are done at a medium pace, we take several breaks to explore plants and take in the view. If you have questions on the walking there is a detailed description of all the walks outlined via the link below.
This pilgrimage we will enage in ritual at each of the sites:
Kildonnan Bay (shawl ritual)
Laig Bay - The Hill of the Cailleach
Forest
Singing Sands - The Eye of the Cailleach / an option to submerge yourself under the waves
Caves - Singing a lament in the Massacre cave
Well of the Holy Woman - Visiting the cleared village of Grulin and the beginning of our coffin walk. Asking the Holy Women for a blessing
Sheela na Gig - Walking the coffin road
Optional walk - Loch of the Holy Women, a ritual of renewal
Walking the Coffin Road
Our grief pilgrimage walks a coffin road the dead would have been carried. Walking in silence each person has their own space. Held by the land, each foot step becomes a prayer, the rhythm bringing us into place where we can drop down into our own emotions. We end our pilgrimage at an old roofless church where a Sheela na Gig sits, protected from the elements by a glass plate las she looks out to a congregation of tall (healing) weeds swaying in the breeze as a chorus of bees and insects collecting pollen sing old hymns to the earth. Our pilgrimage ends with this ancient female who gives life and takes that life, for when we die we travel through the same portal we came into the world through. We return back into the place of beginning, the place of reforming - the great mystery, the womb of the goddess, the cosmos.
Shawl Ritual
A shawl offers warmth and comfort it also connects us to a long linage of ancestors who wrapped woven or knitted shawls or furs around them. On our first evening on the island we will sit in a special bay, wrap or shawls around us as we sink into the silence of place. We will also use it in our keening ritual as well as exploring the notion of ‘Taking up the mantle’ however you interprete this.
The Well of the Holy Women
We gather at the Well of the Holy Women in the village of Grulin, whose inhabitants were forcibly removed in the Highland Clearances. In gathering we ask the Holy Women for a blessing, remembering that we too have the power to give blessings for the power doesn’t life in the person rather who they are blessing with, such as the living waters bubbling up from deep aquifers, or a blessing made by the sun, rain, eagle or expansive views out to the Atlantic.
Singing Sands & Eye of the Cailleach
You are invited to climb through the Eye of the Cailleach - a great eye shaped hagstone in a cliff. The surrounding beach is called the Singing Sands (or Chirping Sands in Gaelic), a white quartz beach which chirps slightly when you walk on dry sand. We will create a figure on the beach adding seaweed and stones, whatever natural materials we find - creating an old woman, Cailleach figure which will represent those we mourn the loss of and celebrate their lives. There is also time to for an old ritual, for it is said that if you spend time on this beach under a full moon you are granted the opportunity to speak to a loved one who has died.
Cathedral & Massacre Cave
We will visit to the large and open Cathedral Cave (if the tide allows) and the smaller, dark Massacre Cave and sing a Gaelic lament we will learn together, honouring those who lost their lives in the massacre.
Weaving Grief
You’ll create a circular weaving with wool and natural materials collected from our walks.
Explore grief through the shape and colour of natural materials
Reference the story of the Cailleach & her cauldron (the whirlpool of Corryvrecken)
Our creative project will be Weaving Grief, with a circular loom, adding natural materials from our walks to sites around the island,
Who is this Pilgrimage For?
This pilgrimage is for those wishing to go deeper in their experience of keening circles & engaging with ritual at sites on the land
Those wishing to reclaim the indigenous tradition of keening not just through the voice, but through engaging with story, art and ritual
Adventurous spirits - confident in navigating their own physical journey to the island (guidance provided)
Comfortable with communal living - shared accommodation and shared responsibilities such as kitchen tasks
Able to engage with moderate walks over uneven, stony, and potentially muddy terrain
Willing to explore grief, with a deep engagement and an interest in meaningful transformation
Those interested in exploring grief beyond the silence of Western cultural silence, as embrace it as a natural, honored, and sacred part of human life.
The Gather the Keeners pilgrimage is a profound pilgrimage of understanding what it means to embody our Big Woman self. As the Isle of Eigg is known as the Isle of the Big Woman, we too spent the week learning about the Keening Woman, Brighid, the history of the Isle of Eigg, walking the Coffin Roads, making grief dolls while witnessing and holding the stirrings of grief present within us and each other. Throughout the week, the conversations in our small group, the keening circles, with the land, our inner dialogues and each other filled my spirit in ways I haven’t felt in a long time. Jude is an amazing facilitator, organizer and gently welcomes you to explore the facets of grief and what reclaiming the Keening Woman looks like within this Day and Age.
Carolyn Egan, Seattle, USA. 2025. Gather the Keeners.
Thank you for your careful facilitation of ritual, of women gathering and of magical intention. Thanks you for the skilled balance of looseness and structure of rest and practice, or earth time and fireside stories. Thanks you for opening and holding the space to reclaim ancient ways while knowing we have to meet the ancestors halfway; we have to feel into it. I grieved and witnessed grief. I learned so much. Forever grateful for this time of deepening
Alex. Florida, USA. Gather the Keeners.
Jude is an excellent facilitator and space holder. The building up of the week of keening circles, crafting, walking and being with others eventually culminated in releasing waves of grief I didn’t even know I was holding.
This happened on the ritual of walking the coffin road. The tears once shed by people who throughout history walked this road supported me in letting tears flow. I no longer felt isolated in my grief. Instead I felt connected in my grief, alongside those who walked before me. Thank you Jude for holding this very valuable space and bringing this work of keening forward as an anct of activism. Its sorley needed today.
Alison McLaren. Isle of Skye, Scotland. Gather the Keeners.
What an incredible experience! Jude’s connection to the land and her ability to listen and hear its stories are only the beginning of the magic of this pilgrimage. From the moment this sacred offering found me, I could feel the loving container being woven for those who were called to the island of Eigg. Those called to come together to be with grief and develop and deepen a relationship with keening, with self and with life. Jude’s warmth, wisdom, curiosity, humor and clarity are a refreshing combination. Her ability to deeply connect, listen and feel into the stories ready for a voice invites those in her presence to listen, too. I have such gratitude for the island of Eigg for holding us during our time together, for Jude and her skilled helpers for building a solid and supportive container for this work and for all of the gorgeous beings who were present during our powerful and magical week together.
Erica Johnson, Oregon, USA.
This week has brought me many blessings and awakenings. The beauty of the Isle of Eigg has been astonishing. These lands have really enabled me to come home to myself. After 60 years of life this land has reminded me to connect and slow down. It has also re-kendled my love of walking and allowed me to shed limiting beliefs about my physical abilities.
The highlight was been the doll making. Such a deep process in accepting help, as well as receiving the dolls story, one of survivial and preparedness.
The reasons for me coming here turned into another type of learning bither to unimagined. I have grown as I have stratched myself, and now see the way ahead so much clearer.
Joy Horner, Glastonbury, UK. Gather the Keeners.
This retreat was exactly what I needed as a caregiver and a mental health worker – a break from rushing around and a chance to connect more fully with myself, my surroundings, and the people in my life. There were many unexpected moments of laughter and playfulness – I I even had the chance to fly a tiny kite by the Loch of the Big Women. I arrived home with a full heart and a handful of tiny shells.
Rebekah P, USA. Gather the Keeners.
There's something about crossing the sea and stepping on to an island that gives you perspective on your life. The retreat provided a perfect balance of reflective time and sharing, exploring and experiencing the land and creative time to process emotion. The time dedicated to grief rituals was invaluable. The carrying of the names from the cleared village to the church along the coffin road felt really important and sacred. The keening ritual was an opportunity for me to tend to my grief in multiple different ways leaving me with tools to use in future and to find what worked best for me. Each member of the group brought their unique perspective to the mix creating a rich and deep experience. Deeply nourishing with delicious food for the body, mind and soul. And our little rabbit friend who came to die outside was the greatest teacher of all.
Morag Donald, Northern Ireland, UK. Gather the Keeners.
A wonderful retreat blending wild Scottish landscape, and a spiritual exploration. Powerful dreams and visions gained through this work and land enabled me to carry out a ritual which I feel in my bones healed a deep scarring in my female linage. I am still connected to the stone I planted in the islands soil and on challenging days I see through its eyes and am reminded of who I really am. Lengthy walks, delicious eating, and sincere mindful women made this a life-changing experience.
Gayle Mair, Asheville, NC, USA. The Ancestral Mothers of Scotland Retreat.
Jude’s depth of understanding and passion of the ancestral mothers inspired me to want to know more and connect more deeply with them. As the retreat progressed, I felt myself connecting more and more with each passing day. I particularly enjoyed connecting with the Big Women through making my doll, feeling her come alive more and more to where I felt the spirit of the ancestral mothers both in her and myself. The retreat offered me a richer and deeper understanding of where I’ve been and new inspiration and vision for where I want to go
Katherine Daniels, Texas, USA. The Ancestral Mothers of Scotland Retreat.
Jude is an excellent facilitator leading us on a journey to meet the ancestral mothers and to find their strength within ourselves. Through journeying, hill walking, storytelling and doll making her style is gentle and the schedule relaxed. The food was nutritious and fortifying to enable our exploration of the island. The women were each amazing and a delight to be with from the first moment to the last. I made connections to the land and nature on Eigg. I knew this retreat would be life changing but I didn’t know how. I find that I have much more confidence and determination with the ability to handle higher levels of stress in a clam way than I did before. This is a life changing adventure that you don’t want to miss.
Kat Toebes, USA. The Ancestral Mothers of Scotland Retreat.
Jude is so much more than tour guide and retreat leader. Her connection to Eigg – the island and its residents – deepened and grounded my soul-expanding experience. All the while, Jude deftly handled the practical and complex tasks of leading a retreat, while providing a relaxed, trustworthy container throughout the week where personal transformation, and even magic, took place.
Our stay on Eigg was a satisfying balance of communal time and individual contemplative time. Through Jude’s weaving of academic and mythopoetic history – derived from years of study and her creative re-imagining of old stories and song into our contemporary world – the island becomes imbued with the feeling that the Ancestral Mothers on Eigg are alive and energetically powerful, and sometimes mischievous.
Caroline Mason, Asheville, NC, USA. The Ancestral Mothers of Scotland Retreat.
On the train ride from Glasgow to Mallaig (where you get the ferry to Eigg) you'll travel on one of the most spectacular train journeys in the world - the West Highland Way. The train travels through the inspiring scenery of Rannoch Moor and travels across the Glenfinnan Viaduct featured in the Harry Potter films
The Hearth
Our home for the week is Glebe Barn, a converted 19th-century building which offers wonderful views over to the mainland. It’s perfectly situated in the middle of the island - a great location for our trips to visit local sites and within one mile of the harbor which offers a cafe, shop and craft shop.
The kitchen, dining room, gathering room and sunroom are all on the ground floor. An entrance hall offers storage for coats and walking boots and there is also a laundry room with washer and dryer, and a shower room (with toilet) and a second toilet.
There are two accommodation options (there are no single rooms avalible):
Single beds - Two rooms with three single beds, on the second floor.
Bunk bed - Two rooms on the first floor. One room has three bunks while the second larger room has four bunk beds. You will have both the upper and lower bed to yourself.
The second floor is accessible by stairs, there is no lift in the building. The bathroom (with shower) on the second floor is located between the two bedrooms. The first floor hosts two shower rooms and two toilets - with hairdryers in the corridors. The are two toilets on the ground floor, one has a shower.
The retreat cost is £1499. If you are accepted onto the retreat you will receive an acceptance letter with a deposit invoice plus details of an optional payment plan. Retreat registration closes on 25th march 2026.
What is included in the price?
Seven nights’ accommodation at Glebe Barn
Meals: Dinner on arrival day, daily breakfast, lunch, and dinner
All materials for art projects
Personal care and attention from the pilgrimage facilitator
Pre-pilgrimage materials - dedicated zoom lesson,
free pass to my keening course, and relevant articles
What is not included in the price?
Travel costs to the Isle of Eigg
Travel insurance (recommended)
Meals or drinks not specified above
Any medical treatment costs
Application Process
As this is a small group retreat (seven participants and two staff), we ask that you complete a brief application. This ensures that the pilgrimage is a right fit for you and helps creates a supportive and well-matched group experience for everyone.
Procedure:
Fill out the application via the button below
Receive notification of application received
Receive acceptance email if successful - within three weeks
Ensure you have read all the Terms & Conditions
Pay deposit, full amount or start payment plan to reserve your place
Pay final balance and fill in Pilgrimage Agreement Form to secure booking
Your Guide
Your Guide
Jude has been visiting the Isle of Eigg for over 25 years, forming deep connections with both the land and the island community. As an artist and writer with a background in Human Ecology her work explores the intersection of story, art and ritual can nurture a strong relationship with place, and also provide a map to our grieving process.
Reclaiming keening is inspired an age-old old indigenous grief ritual. Jude’s approach is taking the threads of the keening woman’s ritual and exploring them in dedicated keening circles. Over time these separate rituals can be woven together to create a keening circle which helps make space for, explore and transform grief.
Reclaiming keening isn’t a practice just using the voice, it also employs art projects such as doll making or weaving. As a doll maker her work through dolls connects to the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland, as well as the process of doll making providing healing and ways to express our grief symbolically.
Reclaiming Keening is also an act of resistance. Patriarchy thrives on control, which includes the control of grief through limiting how emotions are expressed, the medicalisation of death, and the loss of communal mourning. When grief is silenced it becomes a tool of social control. To reclaim grief is a form of activism. It allows us to reconnect with indigenous grief traditions, to normalise grief as part of life, and to challenge the stigma around emotional expression.
She gained her MSc Masters Degree in Human Ecology at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow and lives on the West Coast of Scotland on the banks of the River Clyde, near Loch Lomond. She is currently writing her first book, Walking the Path of the Ancestral Mothers.