The Art of Grief Tending
A compassionate, inspiring and practical programme for those feeling called to hold space for grief in their work, family and community.
Next cohort will be in 2027 as Nici is on maternity leave.
We envision a world where every village, community and organisation has someone confident to hold space for grief and able to offer a grief ritual where needed.
The calling
why have we created this programme?
We are in turbulent times, both individually and collectively.
Grief and loss touch us all and yet as a collective we are so ill-equipped to navigate this difficult terrain.
This foundational lack of grief literacy is the aftermath of centuries of colonisation and forgotten indigenous ways. But slowly the embers are reigniting.
Embracing and reclaiming grief rituals will be essential for navigating ecological change and humanitarian crises, alongside healing our own personal and ancestral grief and traumas.
This work has never been more needed.
We are remembering the lost art of grief tending. A way of being and relating in community, ceremony and song that was once deep in our bones.
We are finding our way back to welcoming grief as an inevitable part of being human and cultivating the elders, guides and stewards to hold people through these deep initiations.
We need you – the healing practitioners, facilitators, therapists, death doulas, artists and activists – to bring grief tending to your clients, colleagues, family and friends.
Together we can create a space to grieve in every community.
The invitation
is this course for you?
Practitioners, space-holders, coaches, and therapists who are curious to integrate grief tending practices into their existing offerings, communities and workplaces
Dreamers, visionaries, and activists who feel the potency of these times and want to deepen their understanding of grief work for collective healing
Curious self-healers, mothers, fathers and friends who are looking to share the practice of grief tending with their closest loved ones
Is this for you? We imagine this offering is for...
“If the world is to be healed through human efforts, I am convinced it will be by ordinary people, people whose love for this life is even greater than their fear.”
- Joanna Macy
The programme
what can you expect?
Overview
Core container
20x online live sessions with a mix of teaching content, ritual practice and experiential grief tending (recordings available)
Includes 6x experiential grief tending rituals for each of Francis Weller’s gates of grief
Includes 6 guest teachers and workshops
Next programme starts 2027, dates to be confirmed in January
Community platform to connect and collaborate with others
Additional support (included)
Weekly facilitated integration calls
100+ page written guidebook to support you craft your offering
Abundant and alive online portal with resources, rituals and opportunity for connection and collaboration
3-year access to recordings of all the sessions
Ritual practices and guidance
Curated reading, listening, and watching resources
Ongoing alumni community who meet monthly (now over 120 people)
Course details
Click on the panels below to expand each section
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Anchor into your unique calling to this work and land in this programme alongside other grief tenders
Explore the history of grief tending and learn about the lineage of this work including the shoulders on which we stand
Understand the foundations of holding sacred space and the importance of the container for the depth and safety of expression
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Learn how to hold and create a ritual including preparation and after care
Call on and connect with the more than human world to create soul-crafting rituals for life
Experience and explore rituals for both individual and collective healing
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Dive deeper into Francis Weller's gates of grief to deepen your own apprenticeship with sorrow and explore how to weave themes into your offerings
Receive a framework to help you design your own grief tending circle and events, including preparation and integration materials
Lean how to hold trauma informed circles, weaving in tools and practices to embed regulation and create a ‘safe enough’ environment
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Learn simple techniques for regulating and supporting yourself and the group
Make space for the shadow side of grief so we can hold space for rage, anger, shame and guilt
Learn how to navigate challenges, projections and conflict while finding compassion and holding clear boundaries
Consider how to look after yourself in grief work, how to protect your energy and avoid burnout
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Explore the origins of true leadership and uncover your unique medicine and true expression
Connect to your vision and inspiration. Explore where you feel called to bring grief work forward and how you can take the first step.
Practice leading grief work from your own authentic expression and anchor into your vision and offering
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Learn how to express your voice, craft your vision and discover your unique medicine - all with practical steps to get started
Receive guidance on how to maximise social media and newsletter channels with joy and ease
Anchor into your vision and mission to become a torcher bearer for generations to come
Build community, share resources and support each other as we venture forward together
Your teachers
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Nici Moon
Your guide and mentor throughout the programme
Nici is a grief tending facilitator, writer and speaker. She founded The Grief Space in 2019 as a place to explore the duet of wonder and grief. This training has emerged from years of facilitating grief rituals, and offering grief tending practices. She believes passionately that now is the time to gather and cultivate a community of grief tenders.
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Nicola Duffell
Your co-facilitator and ritual guide
Nicola is a Grief and Soul Activist. Nicola knows the deepest, darkest heartbreak that comes from experiencing loss and death. And still she's someone who fiercely believes in the beauty of this life. Nicola offers a place of belonging during the dark waters of life - tending the initiations of life through compassion, love and ritual. Nicola is also an apprentice of Francis Weller.
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Camille Sapara Barton
Weaving embodied social justice, grief and somatics
Camille Sapara Barton is a writer, embodiment facilitator and movement artist that supports organisations to flow through transitions. Their work creates relational wellbeing by increasing connection to the body, care practices, grief and imagination. Camille is the author of Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community (2024).
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Jewels Wingfield
Sitting in the fears and shadows of grief work
Jewels is a powerful catalyst for human evolution through her deep embodied wisdom. She has been holding grief ceremonies for many years having trained with Joanna Macy, Sobonfu Some and Francis Weller. Jewels can meet the wild edges of transformation both personally and collectively – she knows the landscapes that lie on the other side of such a shift.
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Isla Macleod
Create soul-crafting ritual for life
Isla Macleod is a ceremonialist, ritual designer, author and companion at thresholds, supporting others through life transitions and creating a soulful life. Her work is devoted to restoring the Sacred and healing our relationship with the more-than-human world. Isla was inspired to facilitate grief tending ceremonies after her own journey with grief revealed its power and potential to awaken more love and gratitude.
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Holiday Phillips
Cultivate your own unique expression of leadership
Holiday is an expert in leadership, inclusion and belonging. Her work is devoted to understanding and creating the conditions for bridging differences, healing polarisation and moving from conflict to connection. She is co-Founder of Human Work, an initiation experience for adults. She has been featured on TEDx with her talk - ‘Grief as Activism’ .
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Alice Carder
Step into your power and lead a soulful business
Alice supports soul-led leaders to grow their businesses, wealth and themselves in a way that prioritises financial and embodied freedom, and serves people and planet. Alice has walked a path of deep personal initiation, which is reflected in the space she holds for individual and collective evolution.
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Holly Truhlar
Grief and liberation in the context of the long dark
Holly is a collapse psychologist, politicised grief tender, and soul activist. Her work is a remembering and revisioning of what it means to be people of potency and culture. She mentors and facilitates through ritual, storytelling, imagination, creative practices, and Deep Democracy work. She holds a Doctorate in Law and Masters in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology. She has co-facilitated two grief ritual trainings with Francis Weller.
– Charlotte Hueso
This is more than another course or programme, it really is something far deeper. You can feel the care and devotion stitched into every part of it. It’s an initiation. It’s an apprenticeship with life, with grief, with beauty. It’s alchemy. A tender, powerful unraveling and remembering. I was transformed.
– Leah Davies
The art of grief tending is unlike any other training I've attended. It is full of information, knowledge and wisdom from so many teachers, and yet it doesn't feel like a 'training course'. It's a lived experience that is now in my whole being. Nici and all the teachers are so experienced and also so human. It felt like we could ask anything and we explored grief from so many different perspectives. My connection to my grief work has deepened and I am so grateful to have had this experience with Nici, the other teachers and the group.
– Flor Macias
Nici’s grief tending course was a tender, powerful experience. What stayed with me most was the sense of shared humanity—grieving alongside each other, each of us exploring different forms of expression, holding, and release. I felt seen, softened, and reminded that grief is not something to carry alone. I’m leaving with new rituals, deep connections, and a more loving way of being with grief.
– Holly Vitow
This journey with Nici and the circle of grief tenders has been rich and transformative. It offered sacred space to tend to my own grief, while gently guiding me in how to hold space for others. More than a training, it’s been a weaving of wisdom, care, and deep generosity. Nici holds it all with a steady hand and an open heart, sharing not only her presence but beautifully crafted resources.
Booking
£2350
We offer 3, 6 and 12 month payment plans with a small transaction fee cost. We also offer bursary places at 40% off, please read about the eligibility criteria below.
Questions
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We imagine this course is for people who fall into these categories...
Practitioners, space-holders, coaches, and therapists who are curious to integrate grief tending practices into their existing offerings
Dreamers, visionaries, and activists who feel the potency of these times and want to deepen their understanding of grief work for collective healing
Curious self-healers, mothers, fathers and friends who are looking to share the practice of grief tending with their closest loved ones
This programme is designed for people who have already explored a significant amount of personal development, healing work and emotional inquiry.
You will be expected to have some prior experience in offering emotional support and a capacity to hold space for others.
You are responsible for gathering the relevant training and experience for whichever contexts you choose to take grief tending into.
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This is not a programme for people who are seeking a space to process their own grief and trauma. Of course, healing will happen throughout this journey as you will be deepening your own practice of grief tending. But the emphasis is on how to hold grief tending spaces for others. If you feel like your own grief might be too raw, get in touch and we can explore together.
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We know coming together live creates the most vibrant experience, but we also understand life happens! Every session is recorded and safely stored in our online community space for you to revisit. While we strongly recommend that you join us live for most of our time together (especially that essential first session), you can catch up through recordings if needed. The journey is yours to shape, and ultimately the more you put in, the more you’ll get out.
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A deeper integration and connection to your own grief
Understanding of grief tending and its role in individual and collective healing
Skills and practices to hold and support others in grief
A deeper relationship with ritual and ceremony
A sense of empowerment to step into your own gifts as a facilitator
Becoming an informed practitioner with an understanding of grief in the context of inclusion and colonialism
An understanding of the nervous system and trauma informed space holding
Appreciation of how to hold clear boundaries and not over-give, while staying connected, so to take care of yourself in this work
Confidence to take this work out into the world with a grounded plan for marketing and getting started
A circle of people committed to collective healing who can become deep friends for life, beyond the end of the course
Connection to greater joy, intimacy and aliveness and the knowledge that you are contributing to the legacy of creating grief literacy for future generations
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The maximum number of people in the group will be 35.
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We completely understand the need to be practical. The way we see it, the world is asking for more facilitators who know how to hold grief.
Since I have been offering grief circles, people have joined from all over the world and the common thread is that they wish they had found this work sooner.
Once you’ve completed this course you will be able to integrate grief tending into your work and perhaps begin to offer your own groups and events - depending on your level of experience with holding people at depth. In time, offering 3-4 online group programmes or one longer retreat could recoup the cost of the training.
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Yes, our scholarship program is designed to support those who are dedicated to this path but may face financial challenges. We are committed to inclusivity and diversity, recognising the need for varied voices and experiences in this field, particularly from communities that have faced social injustice and inequality.
Eligibility - Individuals in financial need who demonstrate a commitment to grief work, in particular those from underrepresented communities (including BIPOC, LBGTQ+ and persons with disability).
Scholarship details - The bursary will cover 40% of the course fees and you can still choose a payment plan for the remainder.
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No refunds are available once you've booked your place. If you have committed to the payment plan scheme you are required to pay all instalments.
In extenuating circumstances, you might be able to pause your attendance and join another cohort.
“We have entered what could be called The Long Dark, a time of endings, decay, and dissolution. It will be a prolonged season—a generation or two—during which the earth community will undergo tremendous challenges and the cumulative losses will touch everything and everyone. Grief will be the keynote for the foreseeable future.”
— Francis Weller