Welcome,
You’re most likely here to find a path to help you grieve.
Our culture offers few tools to truly grieve. Instead, we are taught to distract ourselves, to numb our feelings, and to avoid grief as if it was a problem to be fixed. This suppression of grief makes us ill. Many traditional ways of healing and grieving have been deliberately silenced and forgotten, leaving us disconnected from the processes we deeply need. Grief is only present where love existed, and so expressing it is a sacred way of honoring that love.
Keening is an indigenous grief practice of Scotland and Ireland, mirrored by many mourning traditions around the world. The keening woman was a guide who led the community through their grief, by tapping into her own sorrow so she could cry and wail, she did so in order to invite the community to join her in grieving. Keening itself was a very highly skilled ritual which began when a person died and was placed in a coffin in their home, she facilitated the ceremony throughout the days and nights of the wake, and then accompanied the coffin on the journey to the cemetery.
IYou can read more about reclaiming keening, important to reclaim grief for as Francis Weller notes ours s very much a greif phobic culture.
While keening existed in a very different culture, my inspiration of reclaiming keening aims to offer 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 keening circles provide a curated musical journey which allows for expressions such as anger, frustration or despair.
In todays society reclaiming grief feels like a radical act, especially in a culture which Francis Weller describes as both grief-phobic and death-denying.
“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”
“Grief is subversive, undermining the quiet agreement to behave and be in control of our emotions. It is an act of protest that declares our refusal to live numb and small. There is something feral about grief, something essentially outside the ordained and sanctioned behaviors of our culture. Because of that, grief is necessary to the vitality of the soul. Contrary to our fears, grief is suffused with life-force.... It is not a state of deadness or emotional flatness. Grief is alive, wild, untamed and cannot be domesticated. It resists the demands to remain passive and still. We move in jangled, unsettled, and riotous ways when grief takes hold of us. It is truly an emotion that rises from the soul.”
These are some suggested instructions for a simple keening space. WHats important is to hold this space, mark it out from everyday space, giving it a beginning, a middle and an end.
Beginning - a simple gesture of ritual. Ritual simple means a way of doing something - much like brushing your teeth and having breakfast are morning rituals. This keening ritual is a way to help us express grief.
The Purpose of Keening
Keening is a way to express grief. The music provides the role of guiding us, helping us move through our emotions. It allows us to embody anger, to get down on our hands and knees when despair overwhelms us. The cathartic role of keening acts much like waves, it allows us to express strong emotions, our voice expressing them with the rising and then falling crest. It provides a cleansing and purging role. The point isn’t to erase grief, but to express it. It is the expressing and engaging with grief which helps with healing.
It’s important to honour whatever arises, to welcome whatever arises in us and express it fully. The music is there to guide you through this process: move with it, dance to it, kick, cradle yourself, or simply lie down and be held by it.
Setting up your space
Writing - there is an invitation to sit and write. Let the words stream out, they don’t need to make sense, just let your emotions flow
Do you want to put a note on the door saying private, and let others know you’d like to have this time so you can really sink into the emotion of this and know that you’re not going to be interrupted?
How is your space set up? Make room so you can move to the music, dance out your emotions
Beginning
Begin with something simple. Perhaps you have a favourite poem, or one your beloved enjoyed.
Light a candle. Say something to why you are doing this
If it feels right, ask others to join you - God, Gods or Goddesses or ancestors
Middle
The music is curated to take you on a journey, beginning with a track that invites you to feel anger, which is very much an emotion of grief.
Move to the music, lean into the melody, follow it. I know it might feel awkward, but move with the music, and as you do, begin to use your voice, hum, tone and copy the song. This is how we begin to reclaim keening, by following the music.
The playlist is a musical journey, taking you from the shore into the water, safe and supported. The middle song builds to a great crescendo, this marks the liminal place in this musical journey. Just like the keening woman would enter a liminal space, bringing the community with her. This is the place where healing can begin.
It’s an invitation to really let go and, without judgment, allow ourselves to feel what we need to feel and express it through voice and movement.
Click on the image above for the Keening Circle musical journey - Hosted on YouTube
This page is an evolving page - there might be adverts in the playlist, just take time to breathe, before the next track starts. Eventually I will have one long playlist without interruptions.
The music:
1. Tanya Tagaq – Teeth Agape
A song from an Inuit artist, inviting us to express anger, which is very much a valid grief emotion.
2. Karen Matheson & Donald Shaw – Ailein Duinn
A Scottish lament from the perspective of a woman whose fiancée died at sea as his boat was shipwrecked as he left the isle of Lewis in the Outer Hrbrides to visit her.
3. Dzūkiška laidotuvių rauda (Lithuanian funeral lament)
A song of an old woman expressing her grief
4. Keen for a Dead Child sung by Kitty Gallagher
A traditional keening song
5. Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard Sorrow music by Hans Zimmer and sung by Lisa Gerrard
This is the liminal song, which crescendos in great waves of music and emotion
6. Isobel Ann Martin - Martyrs/St Mary's
A song sung in the tradition style of Free Church psalm singing
7. Gabhaim Molta Bríghde Sung by Aoife Ní Fhearraigh
A song to honour Brighid, who in the Irish tradition is said to have brought keening to the world at the death of her son.
8. Lost Words Blessing
A final song to surrender to, to lie down and let the song wash over you
Ending
The last song is an invitation to just lie down, let the music wash over you. As you well know the depth of our grief, is only marked by the depth of our love. The music has taken you on a journey. I hope some of it has helped you to express some of what you are feeling.
Perhaps you’d like to end by giving thanks to whom you are missing, the source of your love as well as anyone else you invited to be with you, such as God, or Goddess.
The last song is an invitation to lie down and let the music wash over you. As you know, the depth of our grief is only marked by the depth of our love. The music has taken you on a journey, and I hope some of it has helped you express the grief that you are carrying.
Before you blow out your candle, perhaps you’d like to give thanks to the one you’re missing, the source of your love, and to anyone else you invited to be with you, such as God or Goddess.
Be gentle with yourself for the rest of the day. Perhaps end with something to eat and drink. Grieving through keening can be deeply cathartic and even renewing, but it can also leave us feeling exhausted. If anything comes up that feels jarring or too much, don’t hold it alone, either speak in person or phone someone to talk it over. Make space for your feelings and offer yourself the support you need.
Feedback
This is a gentle keening circle, guided by a musical playlist. Of course, keening circles can go far deeper, moving away from relying on the music, especially when in community with others. Adding gestures of ritual also deepens the experience and the healing.
Feel free to get in touch and share any insights.
Many thanks,
