Braiding Grief
Braiding Grief: Fire Horse Edition is a 6-week ritual container that will support you in cultivating a conscious, skillful relationship with grief and rage in community.
Guided by the alchemical stages of transformation, you'll create your own grief braid — a physical expression of the love, losses, and longings in your heart that acts as a sacred artifact of healing and a power item for resourcing in destabilizing times.
Cohort 5 Details
Sundays 3/1, 3/8, 3/15, 3/22, 3/29, 4/5
1-3:30pm PT / 4-6:30pm ET
Replay access for 30 days
Sliding scale pricing $300-$900 with payment plans and reduced-rate spots available (prioritizing those impacted by systemic oppression)
If price is a barrier, please email [email protected] and let’s see what we can figure out!
What People Are Saying
“Cassandra is a skillful facilitator, leading from her heart, and creating space for us all to be more tender with ourselves and our grief. Whether you are grieving the loss of a loved one or are navigating your righteous rage at the state of the world, Braiding Grief offers a beautiful container to honour and feel it all.”
— Cohort 4 Participant“The tenderness and permission that this group provided for me has been so helpful. It reminded me that grief is fluid and that is okay - it gave permission or reminded me that I will continue to live a meaningful life while continuing to process all the grief I have been holding. It was just a reminder that I really needed.”
— Cohort 1 Participant“This was such a beautiful and attuning experience to be in this group, tending grief in this slow and intentional way. The ritual of braiding grief was so tender and healing. Being able to hold my braid and sit with my grief with something tangible to represent it has helped move my grief in significant ways.”
— Cohort 4 Participant“Cassandra did an incredible job as host and guide and facilitator. Thank you SO SO much for this opportunity to grow and share and be vulnerable in this safe community container, alongside Grief. It was very much soul-enriching.
— Cohort 3 Participant“This space helped me feel how healing and transformative grief can be when I grieve in community, connect with my ancestors, and open up my broken heart to make room for more love and connection, as painful as it can be at times. I’m so grateful for this space- it came during a time of so much grief and loss in my life, and it gave me a community that I really needed in my life.”
— Cohort 1 Participant“It was so healing to be in a space where I felt safe enough to grieve openly and to just be held in my grief and heartbreak. I don’t have very many people in my life who can do that for me, so I am so grateful to have had this space where I can grieve in community.”
— Cohort 2 ParticipantWho is this for?
This is for all grievers – whether your grief is fresh or ancestral, clear or unspoken, flowing or shrouded by numbness.
This is for those who are tired of holding back how they really feel and crave spaces where their truths, contradictions, and big emotions are welcomed.
This is for those wanting to metabolize and release rage & grief, so they can access clarity and take aligned action rooted in their values.
This is for those who want to recover a sense of aliveness, access deeper spiritual resourcing, and embody authentic leadership amidst immense personal and political unrest.
This is for those who want to engage in somatic & spiritual practices to cultivate strong life force energy in service to their path and collective liberation.
Learn how to
Somatically express and transmute rage and grief, so you can think, move, and act with precision, clarity & alignment to your values
Connect with your ancestors for protection, guidance, and support
Fortify your mind, body, and soul, so you can be resilient & responsive to the times
Strengthen your intuition & discernment
Embody both softness / tenderness and strength / fierceness in service to collective liberation
Our Journey
Guided by the alchemical stages of transformation, you’ll engage with teachings, spiritual / somatic / creative practices, and community care to process grief.
We’ll also create grief braids — physical expressions of the love, losses, and longings in our hearts that will act as a sacred artifact of healing and a power item for resourcing in destabilizing times.
Week 1: Opening Ceremony
Week 2: Nigredo (Blackening) – The initiatory descent into the dark, the realm of soul where rest and unrest co-exist; inviting grief and rage as teachers
Week 3: Albedo (Whitening) – Purification through preparation of the materials for our grief braids; shedding, cleansing, and clarifying
Week 4: Citrinitas (Yellowing) – Braiding as a gesture of care, continuity, and meaning-making; alchemy of creation; nourishing life force energy
Week 5: Rubedo (Reddening) – The return to aliveness and connection; allowing grief and rage to lead us to aligned action; awakened purpose and leadership
Week 6: Closing Ceremony
These stages will anchor our process, inviting us to honor grief not as something to endure, but as a catalyst for growth, creativity, and rebirth.
What you’ll receive
Six 2 hour community rituals with optional office hours (30 mins) at the close of each session
Somatic, creative, and spiritual practices to resource the soma (integrated mind, body, and soul) for encounters with rage, grief, and rest
A robust Braiding Grief Handbook featuring grief education, resources, practices, and tips for aftercare
Guidance through the sacred art of grief braiding
A soulfully politicized container to navigate the terrain of grief, loss, and rage amidst polycrisis
A rest-affirming culture that promotes slowness, reflection, and connection to heal internalized capitalism/ableism and sustain our efforts towards justice
Option to book 1:1 grief support with Cassandra at a sliding scale price exclusive to Braiding Grief participants
Why ritual?
Through ritual, we step into a time outside of time and collaborate with the unseen realms (ancestors, spirit, the land, the universe) to transmute suffering into clarity and pain into power.
Held by a community that understands the depth of this work, we can open our hearts to feeling and allow our bodies to express what’s gone unspoken.
Things that weren't possible or were difficult to shift in our day-to-day rhythms get an extra boost of support in ritual. This alchemical process restores meaning, returns us to joy and gratitude, and matures us into people capable of birthing new worlds.
By returning to our rightful place in the eternal dance of life-death-rebirth, we show up in our day-to-day lives wiser, rooted in a fuller understanding of what living well means to us. Our feet are rooted more firmly in place and our souls find steadiness amidst chaos.
With the right lens, we remember and feel how all of it — rage, grief, suffering — serves to guide us towards love.
“Remember that grief is the growing up of the heart that bursts boundaries like an old skin or a finished life. That grief is gratitude. That water seeks scale, that even your tears seek the recognition of community. That the heart is a front line and the fight is to feel in a world of distraction.”
— adrienne maree brown
Community Grief Artifacts
This community gallery shares art created by Braiding Grief participants. The intention of hosting these art-ifacts permanently on the website is to interrupt the invisibilization of grief and honor how grieving brings us back to life, beauty and creativity.
Illustration by Astrid Lem
Illustration by Mara Wilkes
Illustration by Ariel Zhang
Grief Braid by Lindsay
Grief Braid by Lucero
Illustration by Azral P.
Grief Braid by Angel
