why grief work matters — and how tarot can help

hello, friends. my anonymous reader survey is still live and i'd love to hear your thoughts on my work, on this very newsletter, and on things you'd love to see from me next year! i so appreciate that nearly all of the responses i've received have been incredibly kind, generous, affirming, thoughtful, and make me proud and grateful to do this work.

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thank you so much for being here!

last year, i completed a really incredible grief facilitation training program through the good grief network. this certification deeply expanded my own relationship with grief, as well as my own capacity for supporting others in managing collective and personal grief in an everyday, ongoing way. it was such a gentle, welcoming space, one that modeled for me the kinds of containers and digital spaces that i want to facilitate.

it also helped me to more clearly see the intersections between tarot work, grief work, personal reflection, and collective support systems. i think talking about grief and other heavy, intensive emotions is truly part of my personal calling, and it's really important to me to help others learn to hold space for grief in a way that feels accessible rather than intimidating. this is why i consider my tarot work grief-informed, and why i believe so firmly that tarot can give us windows and pathways into grief that make it a little easier to engage with the tough, heavy, complicated things that we might otherwise avoid.

and this is also why i want to tell you a bit about my own perspectives on grief work, offer you a new tarot spread that can help you consider how to work with grief in your own life, and share with you an upcoming container where you can begin gently engaging with grief in a supportive environment. (just like with my last container, paid newsletter subscribers get a discount — find the code at the bottom of this piece!)

grab a sip of water, stretch or shake out your body if you need to, and release any tension from your jaw, shoulders, hips, and ankles. let's get into it.

for many of us, it's easier to avoid grief altogether rather than look it squarely in the eye — and that is an extremely real and understandable coping mechanism.

even if you haven't experienced personal grief lately (a.k.a. a major loss, death, goodbye, ending, disappointment, transition, or change), we are all experiencing collective griefs at a catastrophic level every single day. collective grief comes with climate change disasters (donate here to help folks impacted by the typhoon in alaska, or here to donate to folks impacted by hurricane melissa), with fascist governments and authoritarian leaders, with pandemics, with genocides, with crashing economies and nonfunctional services, with lack of basic necessities for so many (check out this recent piece on supporting hungry community members), on and on and on. even talking about collective grief, or trying to list out the many nightmares that we are all navigating together, can be overwhelming.

we're grieving futures we thought we'd have, and possibilities we thought we could reach for. we're grieving ambitions and dreams we've had to surrender. we're grieving people that we thought shared our values, who abandoned them or us when it got uncomfortable. we're grieving for the collective pain we're witnessing and experiencing, the resources or rest we don't have access to, the challenges in getting our needs met, the longing for comfort or safety or connection that feels out of reach. we're grieving stability. we're grieving creative energy and inspiration. and we're grieving for the things we must do, for the realities we're navigating, for just how goddamn hard everything is.

i've talked to so many people who are afraid to even begin tapping into or acknowledging their grief, and i understand why — it can feel like if we look too closely at all of those heavy feelings, all of that anger or sorrow or frustration or pain, that we'll drown in it. better to keep that grief all tucked away, locked up tight, rather than risk getting swept away in something we can't control. better to stay focused, stay productive, rather than getting lost in our own internal storms.

but here's the thing: if you are engaging with this world in an authentic and open way, if you are paying attention to what is happening to your neighbors and communities both locally and worldwide, if you have an empathetic and compassionate spirit, you are also grieving — whether you acknowledge it or not.

not looking at the grief, not talking about the grief, not giving the grief any space in your life, doesn't make it go away.

i don't say any this to bum you out. i say this to acknowledge that this world is crumbling beneath our feet, that it is changing in new ways each day, and that it's an impossibly heavy weight to hold. if you're struggling to stay connected to your people, your values, or your magic, that is a wildly reasonable and deeply human response. you are not weak, or pathetic, or not trying hard to enough. you are a person, living through challenging and disruptive times, and you are grieving.

there are so many things that we can do right now to show up, to fight back, and to help bring a new world to fruition. action is often a very useful and effective antidote for helplessness or anxiety, and i'll recommend again newsletters like the white pages, chop wood carry water, prisons prose & protests, cosmic anarchy, and the anti-authoritarian playbook (to name just a few, feel free to share your favorites in the comments) for ongoing actions and trainings. these newsletters are written by people with organizing and mutual aid experience, journalists and activists who are best equipped to help you think critically about how you're navigating the world right now, who can offer you practical pathways forward, and who can point you to places that can use your skills.

i am proud to contribute to and participate in these actions offline. but when it comes to my calling, my sense of purpose, i have found that my skills are better suited for the more quiet internal work, the gentle sharings, the reflections and questions, the explorations. i love helping people get curious, get courageous, get weird, and get disruptive, harnessing strength and magic and unique gifts in order to better show up for the things they value.

you might not understand how grief work fits into all of this, and i get it. it might seem like an obnoxiously difficult thing to suggest when the world is already so goddamn hard and and heavy and painful and unstable.

and yet — i believe that it is more important than ever for us to understand how grief can weigh on us, slow us down, or leave us feeling deeply isolated, especially in a moment of history where the powers that be desperately want us to stay tired, exhausted, helpless, and lonely. when we recognize how our grief, and our patterns and coping mechanisms around grief, are impacting our ability to dream of different futures, connect with community, or make real change, it can open up all kinds of possibility for us as individuals and as collectives.

grief work is resilience work. grief practices are resilience practices. and grief spaces are spaces where resilience is cultivated, refined, and deepened.

this work is not easy. it's uncomfortable, and strange, can be wildly different than other kinds of work, which is why i'm so grateful that the tarot can give us gentle entry points and companions of support to help us make our way. when we navigate grief using tools like the tarot, either privately or within the context of community spaces, we can find one way of holding space for all of those big feelings. rather than going numb as a coping mechanism, or cutting ourselves off from our natural empathy, grief work with the tarot encourages us to get more comfortable with uncertainty, which is wildly important for navigating this tricky, complicated world.

i want you to be resilient, and courageous, and able to engage with hard things. grief work with the tarot can build those skills, one day at a time.

when we have an unexpected run-in with our grief, it can feel like it hits us in waves. it can feel like we're drowning. it can feel like we're getting dragged around by a current, or it can feel like we're floating, suspended in something so much bigger than we can possibly fathom.

in a recent offering, jessica dore reminded us that metaphors for grief often lean on water ("that oceanic feeling"), and she's right — the weight, the currents, the flow, the force of water can be an apt reminder of the heaviness, the power, and the helplessness of intense grief. water can be medicine for our grief, but it can also help us find the language for how we feel when engaging with that grief.

sometimes grief is an ocean. but i prefer to think of grief as a river, one that flows and stagnates, floods and dries, expands and contracts. some days the river feels easy to cross or accessible in its stillness, while other days the river might be rough and fast, moving too quickly or harnessing too much power to even consider. your grief gets to be changeable, mutable, which means that the ways that you work with your grief need to flex and shift too.

no matter how quickly the waters are pouring through your rivers of personal and collective grief, if we move thoughtfully and patiently we can find stepping stones that will help give us a bit of grounding, a bit of stability. and with tools like the tarot, like community support, like personal practices, like reflections and introspections, we can dip our toes into the water and get a little bit more comfortable exploring these feelings.

if we choose to engage with our grief, instead of just waiting for our grief to show up unexpectedly, it can be a little easier to figure out how to breathe, how to move, how to listen.

the tarot can make this entire process easier — because the tarot is filled with figures and archetypes and cycles and stories of death and rebirth, of grief and grieving, of letting things go and finding ways to say goodbye. it's said that grief has stages, but these stages aren't linear, and often they repeat. just as we shuffle up our deck of tarot cards and jumble up our stories, grief has a way of dropping us into a moment, plunging us into the depths, that tarot can help us orient ourselves within.

if grief is a river, the tarot can be our ferryman.

this work isn't about crossing the river of grief as quickly and efficiently as possible. it's about learning to sit on the banks of that river, to be with and understand our grief, to respect it, to learn from it. and when you're ready, you might feel a bit more equipped to find your footing in the ferryman's boat, and begin a great crossing with a little more courage.

with the tarot as our guide, we can meet at the mouth of the river (styx), and begin to slowly consider how we want to proceed.

if this sounds like something you're ready for, and if this is something you want to do in a community setting, i've got just the thing.

introducing styx & stones: a two-week tarot container for gently wading into the river of grief, starting on november 9th. each day, i'll offer a series of questions and reflections, a prompt for you to use with your tarot deck, and a spread or practice that you can use to engage with your grief in slow, intentional, mindful ways. we'll share ideas and observations, use tarot to communicate emotions and experiences, and gradually build the beginnings of a personal grief practice that can help us each navigate this difficult work from a more grief-informed place.

together, we will begin to dip our toes into the waters of grief. together, we will meet the tarot as ferryman, our guide and companion. and together, we will use the cards to help us ground our grief work, so that we can be better equipped to engage with this impossible world day by day.

if you've been feeling unmoored or lost, if you're eager to slowly begin engaging with your grief in a supported space, styx & stones is for you. and if you're a paid newsletter subscriber, scroll all the way down for a discount code!

some of you may remember that i've been working on a larger offering, a ten-week journaling and community grief program called the river styx. divination has been loud that this program is best suited for january/february of next year, which is why i'm hosting this smaller, shorter, more affordable experience in november. these are distinct and different programs so if you're craving grief support or have been eagerly awaiting river styx, i highly recommend beginning here as a gentle introduction to this kind of practice.

and if you're interested in grief work but this doesn't feel like the vibe for you right now, you can also check out my grief workbook, dark days digital tarot spread collection, or my free tarot spreads over on instagram.

whether you can join us for styx & stones or not, i sincerely encourage you to begin considering your relationship with grief, and to give yourself some space for reflection, honesty, and release. grief can be so heavy to carry, but it also has wisdom, power, and even beauty to offer us, if we're willing and able to listen.

sending you courage, power, authenticity, and grace, friends. more soon.