Welcome,
You’re most likely here to find a path to help you grieve.
Our culture doesn’t teach us how to grieve, instead it teaches us how to distract ourselves, to numb numb ourselves and push our pain and grief into the shadows. That buried grief makes us ill. Grief only exists where love once lived, and although it hurts expressing our grief is a way of honouring that love.
Keening is an indigenous grief practice of Scotland and Ireland, echoed by mourning traditions around the world. The keening woman was a guide who led the community through their grief, tapping into her own sorrow so she could cry and wail, and do so in a fitting manner so the community could join her in grieving.
Keening itself was a very highly skilled ritual which began when a person died and was placed in a coffin, throughout the days and nights of the wake, and then the journey to the cemetery.
You can read more about reclaiming keening, important to reclaim grief for as Francis Weller notes ours s very much a greif phobic culture.
In todays society keening , and reclaiming grief, feels a radical act in a culture which Francis Weller describes as both grief-phobic.
“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”
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.
“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.”
What is the point of keening
To express grief. Having the music helps us - we can move to the music, enbody any anger, get down on your ahnds and knees when you’re feeling over come in desoair, but as is the way with grief none of this lats. It’s much like waves, crying and wailing can lead us to peace and a smaile of gratitude before the waves comes back in again and everything changes.
Honour what arises, it can be cathartic. We aren’t looking to get rid of or erase the grief,
Welcome whatever arises, what needs to be expressed - there is a track to express your anger. The music is there to guide you and help express grief - move to it, dance to it, kick, cradle and lie down with it.
Setting your space.
Writing - there is an invitation to sit and write. Let the words stream out, they don’t need to make sense.
Do you want to put a note on the door saying private, 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? You might want to move to this music, dance out your emotions.
Beginning
A way of beginning is something simple:
Light a candle. Say something to why you are doing this - speak to your beloved or speak to why you are doing this. Stating your intentions. If you beleive in God, Gods or Goddesses - ask them to come close, to be here with you in this ritual. Or ask an ancestor to come close.
Middle
The music is curated to take you on a musical journey. Beginning with a track which invites you to feel anger, which is very much a grief emotion.
Ending