Grief Honouring Rituals

A monthly monthly gathering in Stroud

We'll come together as a held group monthly _for 3 months on Sundays from 09.30am-1pm in Sladebank Woods _

**● Sunday 19th April ● Sunday 10th May ●Sunday 14th June **

We believe that the times we're living in call for a reconnection with our hearts and community. We'd love to invite you.

As this is created as a shared journey, you are expected to join all three dates, and this offers the intimacy and continuity that supports this work.

You will receive a welcome questionnaire and will have the opportunity for a one-to-one call before the group begins.

**This gathering could be for you if you: **
_- have grieved in silence _
_- want to create space for grief to move _
_- never felt you had the tools, space or permission to grieve _
_- long to be witnessed, not fixed _
_- carry sorrow that feels too much to bear alone _
_- ache for something unnamed _
- want to remember how grief and love live side by side

Grief is an expression of love. If we love deeply, we grieve deeply.
Francis Weller describes grief as an initiation - a threshold that needs ritual and community. Without grief, the world cannot renew itself. Grief revives and reshapes us, and ritual is essential for healthy integration. It is a sacred act.
Yet, modern Western culture has forgotten this. We’re often taught to hide grief, compress it or carry it in silence. Many of us grieve in isolation, believing our sorrow is too much, too personal or unwelcome in the world.

In our work, we invite people who have never spoken their grief out loud in a group before.
But grief is not meant to be exiled. It’s meant to be tended, ritualised and witnessed - together.
In older cultures, grief was communal. Mourning was ritualised, embodied and woven into the cycles of daily life. There were songs for grief. There were fires. There were arms to hold you. Grief was never meant to be walked alone.

This group is a space to begin remembering that. To allow ritual to hold us through grief’s initiation.
Grief can arise from many places - death, endings, ancestral pain, unmet love, ecological loss, and the parts of ourselves we’ve abandoned or forgotten.
However it shows up, grief is a teacher. If we meet it, it changes us. If we
honour it, it softens us. If we walk with it together, it connects us.

**Each ritual will last 3.5 hours, moving as an arc, and involve: **

• _Arrival - Gathering together in either the roundhouse or woodhenge in _
  _Sladebank Woods (directions will be provided in advance) _
  _- Welcome and grounding - Introductions, framing and intentions _
  _followed by a guided meditation, conscious breath or gentle movement _
  _- Meeting grief — Gentle guided experiences to help us connect with ourselves and one another in grief, giving expression to what has been carried silently. _
  _- Ritual - Intentional communal practices to express grief and be _
  _witnessed, such as story-sharing, song, offerings to earth and fire, _
  _elemental connection and creative expression. Each monthly ritual will _
  _be different, shaped by the season and group, and could be either _
  _indoors or outside. _
  _- Integration - Sharing or reflections on what was discovered, felt or _
  _shifted _
  _- Closing and preparing to return - Aftercare to re-enter daily life, _
  _carrying grief differently _

Together through this arc, we arrive into presence, call in unseen support, honour what needs to be felt, and find ways to integrate and return.

_These rituals draw inspiration from grief-honouring traditions across _
cultures, especially indigenous and ancestral lineages, while staying rooted in our own intuitive relationship with the land, ourselves, and one another.

These include: Water rituals, praise offerings, story-sharing, nature connection, song and
chanting, fire ceremony, witnessing, shared silence, clay work, breathwork, and visualisation meditation.
This is not therapy. It’s not performance. It’s not a place to fix or be fixed.

This is a space to come as you are, and to be met there. A space to listen and be in presence with grief, held by a container that's
bigger than any one of us. To remember that it is sacred. And that you are not alone.
The rituals are also inspired by Veronica and Nika’s individual intimate
journeys walking with grief. They created this group from a passion and
reverence for grief honouring, having both discovered the profound power of
grief’s teachings.

If something in you has been waiting for a place where your full humanity is welcome, this may be for you.

About the facilitators

Nika Shoot (Veronika Shoot) is a multifaceted artist, pianist and somatic facilitator whose work integrates music, energy work and embodied practices into innovative approaches to healing and human expression. This body of work grew out of her early training and performing life as a concert pianist.

Nika’s passion lies in dissolving the boundaries between different modalities, drawing from her life, professional training and lived experience, including energy work, somatic exploration, yoga, breathwork, sound healing and shamanic integration. She has also spent time in India studying in traditional ashram settings and living with communities in the Peruvian Amazon, experiences that have quietly informed the depth and sensitivity of her work.

Working at the meeting point of music, movement, breath and energy, she supports people back into connection with their bodies, their emotional landscape and their innate aliveness, meeting each person where they are.
She has developed an intuitive somatic flow approach to yoga, grounded in nervous system care and embodied awareness. Her sessions are supported by the Earth’s natural grounding frequencies, creating a subtle yet powerful environment for restoration, cellular renewal and energetic balance.

In addition to her classical music background, Nika holds space for music as a devotional and healing practice, whether through Kirtan, medicine music, classical performance or improvisation. She also facilitates grief-honouring spaces and rituals, supporting individuals and groups to meet grief with presence, care and community. Her work in these areas serves to bring people together, offering a shared experience of connection and presence.

veronikashoot@thebalancedartist.org

Veronica (Veronica Frances) is a Grief Practitioner and Breathwork Facilitator, whose creates grounded and heart-centred spaces where you are allowed to simply be human. In her grief practice, Veronica supports clients on their journey with grief through one-to-one support and community-based group spaces - work she came to through her own personal experience with grief. In her life and work, Veronica is devoted to building loving, balanced relationships with ourselves, with others and with the natural world. Now based in Stroud, Veronica also carries a deep connection to Peru and Mexico, where she previously lived.

www.veronicafrances.co.uk