To remember that sound is how grief travels

This is not about grieving the “right” way.
It’s about letting your grief move—through your breath, your voice, your body.

Keening is an ancient ritual of lament.
The Bean Chaointe—The Keening Woman—wailed for the dead, not quietly, but publicly, guiding the community through mourning with her voice stretched between the worlds. She didn’t just cry for the people, she cried with them.
Her grief made space for everyone else’s.
Her voice made grief a shared place.

My relationship with grief changed when I stopped hiding it.
It started in circles with women where tears weren’t fixed, but witnessed.
Where I learned to let the ache in my chest sound out loud.
Where the underworld stopped being a place I avoided, and started becoming the fertile ground of my voice.

Later, in Scotland, that thread deepened.
At the Callanish Stones, we stood in the wind, keening together.
People passed by—some pretending not to see us, some asking if we were okay.
That moment stayed with me.
How far we’ve pushed grief from view.
How rarely we’re given space to tend it together.

But grief is still here.
In the quiet heartbreak of climate collapse.
In the overwhelm of polycrisis.
In the personal and collective losses that don’t always get a funeral.

Grief needs somewhere to go. Voice gives it shape.

This is a space to practice that.
To give grief a voice again.
To let it be relational, rhythmic, and real.