Grief Spells for Collective Grief: Returning to one another

Dear Shapeshifters,

Scorpio season’s festivals of death invite us to honor our dead and the unknown in particular ways that feel unique from the rest of the year. It is a time of feeding and welcoming our dead, a time of collective grief and shapeshifting rituals, a time when we turn towards what haunts us.

And we are so deeply haunted by weaponized grief and trauma, by the ideologies that say some lives are worth more than others, that say there is no other way than mass destruction of lives. We are haunted by the ongoing horror of the genocide in Gaza, and the deaths of Israelis who were killed in the Hamas attacks, and all lives lost at the hands of settler colonialism. Our hearts are big enough to break for all of them, to hold the complexity of this and yet also the simplicity in this moment: cease-fire.

I went to a vigil for all lives lost and the ongoing genocide last week and was reminded again of the power of grief to bring us back to one another. I hugged people I hadn’t seen in a while who I love deeply. I saw many people I’d never seen before, and we gathered around an altar, lit candles, said the Mourner’s Kaddish, and sang together.

No one there moved with an air of certainty on how to do this kind of unraveling, and yet still this coming together to be with grief and uncertainty and fear felt deeply humanizing and transformative.

It reminded me of Joanna Macy’s words, about the role of collective grief in collective transformation:

“We must learn again, together, to fall apart. It is an essential process for evolutionary and psychological transformation.” (Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self)

“Grief is brought forth by the safety and holding capacity of the ‘communal nervous system’. We cannot, and should not, do it all alone. We have evolved to open together and to carry each other into the places that scare us, just as we have evolved to sing and praise and dance and grow together.” (Flor and Indira - The Joyful Lament: On Pain for the World)

The systems of settler colonialism and border imperialism condition those of us with varying degrees of privilege away from this collective nervous system of communal care in the name of our “safety”— instead conditioning us to stay activated, hypervigilant, fearful of others, clinging to old structures, comforts, and an armed life boat mentality that perpetuate death for others- and cuts us away from our own hearts.

But collective grief has the power to push through this conditioning if we let it, and to bring us back to one another.

“i will not let my heart

shrink to the size of my oppressor’s

i will stay soft…

here is how i practice

in war i keep the dead unsegregated

dreaming together their spirits 

who know what flesh cannot…”

(from The Border is A Wound by adrienne maree brown)

This season reminds us that staying soft and feeling our grief for the world is a radical act. There is much unraveling of oppressive systems that this grief can do. This season invites us to be transformed by our grief, together, even and especially if we don’t know how. We get to reach for each other.

Zine Release - Grieving as Shapeshifting: Spells for Coming Undone

Thank you all so much for your patience as putting this zine together ended taking much longer than anticipated (originally supposed to be released in the Spring of this year!), with over 300 submissions.

Thank you so much to all our contributors who shared such tender and incredible pieces with us. The process of moving through your submissions felt like being invited to a collective altar.

I know that this is a time of deep collective loss, grief, activation, and rage, and though the work of this zine doesn’t speak directly about the current genocide in Palestine, or the Israeli deaths from Hamas’s attacks, or the nuance of that longstanding conflict and violence, I know that all the art, prayers, blessings, and spells for transformation through grief are needed right now.

Click here to download a free copy of the zine.

A spell for returning to one another

May the gravity of our grief bring us back to each other, ourselves, our bodies, the plants, the land, the water, the animals, our ancestors, and future generations.

May the welling in our chests remind us of how expansive our capacity is to hold and be held, of the deep well of love and nourishment in which there is enough for everyone, for every child.

May our breaking break patterns that need breaking, and break us open to even deeper capacity for making beauty, love, and magic where it seems impossible, for making honey at the places of rupture inside and between us.

May our grief make us into delicious libations for worlds in which we all belong.

Yours,

Mara

P.S. Grief spells is a monthly creative project/love letter/newsletter for fellow grieflings. Sign up here. You’ll receive love notes like this one, resources, and updates on offerings.