“Life is a growth in the art of loss.”- Jonathan O’Donahue
Community Grief Ritual
led by JoJo Phoenix and Elaine Sheff
Welcome, brave and tender soul.
What a time to be alive.
The last three years have been the warmest in recorded history. Fascism is on the rise worldwide. And the consumerism enacted by every one of us living in wealthy countries is extracting from and polluting poor communities in the global South at an unprecedented rate.
Meanwhile, we live in a death-denying and grief-phobic culture that teaches us to anesthetize our sorrow, to turn away from our pain, and to suppress our outrage.
Whether facing personal loss or the steady drip of global sorrow, most of us have lacked the communities and rituals needed to safely metabolize and move through our grief. Over time, our unprocessed grief hardens and congeals: constricting our hearts and numbing our souls.
This event invites us to hold and metabolize our grief TOGETHER.
It takes a tremendous amount of courage to approach this grief and invite it to move. Take heart: we have ritual, community, nature, two intrepid facilitators, and the ancient tools of drumming, dance, and song to help us bravely move through our pain.
While one grief ritual will not metabolize an entire lifetime of grief, it can be an incredibly supportive initiation into what our teacher, Francis Weller calls, “a lifelong apprenticeship with sorrow.” For those many years into this apprenticeship, we welcome you to this space of deepening and widening in your journey.
This ritual is for anyone experiencing any kind of grief.
This is not a clinical grief group.
This is not just for people grieving acute, specific loss.
This is community-held care for all sensitive souls.
And all forms of grief are welcome to be expressed and metabolized.
We have ritual and tradition to strengthen our container.
Throughout our day together, we will be engaging in activities that have been used in grief rituals for decades by Frances Weller, Holly Truhlar, Erin Geesaman Rabke, Carl Rabke, Alexandre Jodun, Sobonfu Some, and Malidoma Some. We will be bringing in songs, poems, and music to help us get into our bodies and process our grief with an immense amount of support and nurturance.
“This was a medicine I didn't know I was missing and needed. It was powerful, moving, connecting, and healing.”
- Participant in 2025 Missoula grief ritual
Workshop Information
Date and Time:
Sunday, June 14th, 2026 | 10am-5pm
Location
Wildlight Yurt | 11406 Wildlight Lane, Alberton, MT 59820
Wildlight Yurt: Our location for this ritual! Photo Credit: Jenna Nord
Cost:
Sliding Scale $250-$450*
(includes soup and salad lunch)
*We offer payment plans and need several partial work exchange participants. You can apply for work exchange here.
Full refund minus $20 admin fee until May 15th. Sorry, no refunds starting May 16th, although if we have a waitlist and someone else is able to take your spot, we will issue a refund minus the $20 admin fee.
Profit sharing:
In addition to acknowledging that we live, work, and grieve on the traditional lands of the Confederated Salish (Séliš), Kootenai (Ksanka) and Pend d'Oreille (Ql̓spé) Tribes, we commit to sharing 5% of our profits from our grief rituals with Native-led organizations in our area.
This grief ritual will financially support the Salish Language School in Arlee, MT.
Accessibility:
Please note that there are stairs and uneven ground to access Wildlight Yurt, which may present challenges for some visitors with mobility concerns. We're committed to doing our best to accommodate the needs of those interested in participating—please let us know in your registration if you have specific accessibility requirements.
What to expect:
Community agreements for Safety and Clarity
Everything we offer is optional
All that you share will be held in confidence
No fixing /rescuing people who are grieving
And more….
A deep yet spacious day together:
Preparation for entering into ritual space
3 hour grief ritual (give or take)
Integration post grief ritual
Multiple formats of connection:
Individual, small group, and whole group activities
Connection with nature
Lunch together (food will be provided with any dietary needs shared in your registration taken into consideration)
Activities that support grief processing:
Nature shrine creation and/or artwork
Singing and dancing
Writing and verbally sharing in communal sacred space
Meet your Facilitators
JoJo Phoenix Frank
JoJo Phoenix (they/them) is a prayerful and playful human living a life centered on connection, peace, and courage. They are the founder and facilitator of Ground Swell dance, a trauma-informed trainer, and a somatic intimacy coach and grief guide for individuals.
After decades of living in constricting fear and five acute years of chronic, unexpected loss in many realms of their life, JoJo Phoenix began engaging in weekly grief rituals. This initiated them into the most transformational healing of their lifetime. In the spring of 2024, they moved through a radical 90 day grief ritual and began facilitating individual grief rituals for their friends and individual clients.
Last year, JoJo Phoenix facilitated their first community grief ritual with Dagny Deutchman for 25 people here in Missoula and they are so humbled and honored to continue facilitating this type of community medicine with Elaine Sheff. JoJo Phoenix and Elaine are both currently engaged in an incredible 5 month online grief tending course taught by Francis Weller, author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow.
JoJo Phoenix’s style and ethos are shaped by over a decade of facilitating movement and meditation classes in incarceration settings with people in acute crisis. Through personal feedback and collaboration with incarcerated people, JoJo Phoenix learned how to be inclusive in holding a wide range of needs, perspectives, and sensitivities.
Elaine Sheff
Elaine (she/her) is a clinical herbalist who has been an apprentice to grief since her youth. Each time her heart has been broken open, she has found a deeper compassion for herself and a greater capacity to love.Over the last several years, she has felt called to midwife and honor not only her own grief, but the collective grief of her community. She is currently enrolled in Entering the Healing Ground: Grief Ritual Leadership Training, and this marks her first time co-facilitating a grief ritual.
Elaine carries a deep love for the Missoula community—the land and place she calls home. She views the Earth and the soul of the world, the Anima Mundi, as her ultimate teacher. As the co-founder of Meadowsweet Herbs and the Co-Director of Green Path Herb School, she strives to inspire and empower students and clients to reclaim their connection to the Earth, the plants, and their own healing process.
As a clinical herbalist, her primary passion is restoring the sacred relationship between humanity and the wild. Beyond her clinical practice, Elaine facilitates workshops, teaches comprehensive herb programs, and speaks at conferences both nationally and internationally. Through decades of clinical practice, she has witnessed how the physical body holds and expresses trauma. This witnessing has deepened her understanding that true healing must be pursued through holistic avenues, including emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual care.
Elaine has navigated a long voyage mothering two beautiful children, one of whom faces continuing, life-threatening medical challenges. She travels a tender journey of profound love and terror for the future of her child and finds great solace in her connection to the natural world. You can often find her bent over an herb in her gardens or whispering sweet nothings to small flowers in mountain meadows.