Making Space For Grief

Making Space For Grief is at Oxford City Farm on Sunday 1 November, from 2:00 to 5:00pm. It's a community gathering run by shamanic healer Jackie Singer, and the whole afternoon is built around the grief we all carry but usually keep hidden. It's not a talk or a workshop in the usual sense; it's a space to acknowledge loss rather than a place to fix it.

Singer leads the session with storytelling, music and ceremonies. The afternoon works through breath and awareness practices, song, movement and ritual, and the aim is to increase your capacity to express and live alongside strong feelings, and to leave with tools for emotional resilience. It's framed around a quote by Francis Ward Weller: 'The work of a mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them.'

This isn't a one-off. For several years, Lucie Mayer and Jackie Singer have held a gathering like this around this time of year, coinciding with All Souls' Day and the Mexican Day of the Dead, as an annual revisiting of loss and remembrance. It's an afternoon for those who find it hard to talk about grief in everyday life, and for anyone who wants to sit with it in the company of others.

It runs from 2:00 to 5:00pm at Oxford City Farm, Cornwallis Road, Oxford OX4 3NH, and tickets are £40.