Making Beauty Out of Grief: Earth Altars

Grief is another way of loving what has been lost and love is another way of grieving what hasn’t yet left us. Yet, in our modern culture, we are grief-illiterate and death-phobic. We don’t know how to mark loss so that we can grieve-well and, therefore, love-well. Instead, our culture tells us to only value growth so many of us suppress, bypass or get stuck in our grief.

Grief must be metabolized and processed so that it can feed our life. Nature, art and ritual are three ways cultures around the world have been transforming grief into beauty for thousands of years. Separately, they open our hearts, bring us back to our center and connect us back into what’s meaningful. But TOGETHER, they become a resource and skill so we can feel human again.

Morning Altars is a 7-step practice of creating impermanent earth altars made from nature, akin to mandalas, that is a time-tested mindfulness practice to express grief, memory, love and prayers through nature, art and ritual.

In this workshop, we will dive-deep into the story of who we are grieving — be it the passing of a friend, the loss of a relationship or a major life change — and create impermanent earth art devoted to who we are letting go of. We will learn new ways to grieve through skills such as wonder, creativity, prayer, community and impermanence. This is a simple yet highly-effective practice for any stage of life, because learning to grieve-well is also learning to live-well.

Join Day Schildkret, internationally renowned earth artist and author of “Morning Altars” for a hands-on practice that BuzzFeed calls, “a celebration of life and nature.” This workshop will give you a much-needed digital detox that will calm your mind, connect you back to the wisdom of the earth and give you the tools and teachings to turn your grief into beauty.