The Heart is a Frontline: 4-Day Liberatory Grief Ritual

Tending Grief in Times of Collapse ~ Loveland, Colorado ~ August 13th–16th

Apr 22, 2026

“You will not survive by self-care and self-love alone. Who will hold you? Who will remember you? You, who are something to behold. You, who are flawed and mysterious and needy and good. Belonging is not too great an ask. Find your sacred company. And may they find and cherish you.” —Cole Arthur Riley, Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human

The Heart is a Frontline: 4-Day Liberatory Grief Ritual
Thursday, August 13th - Sunday, August 16th

We’ll gather for four days of grief, gratitude, rhythm, song, and co-creation. During our time together we will honor our Ancestors, explore the depths of our grief and holy outrage, connect with each other, and call in the beyond-human world. We’ll weave personal and collective grief with liberation, asking: what and who is our grief in service to?

Facilitated by Tajah Schall, Naila Francis, Aminah Jessi Radovich, and Holly Truhlar, we’ll center our grieving hearts and those most impacted by loss and injustice, while working with Soul and listening to the Dreaming Earth. We’ll move through the Six Gates of Grief using imaginal practices, writing shuttles, rhythm, and song. We’ll meet in the commons of the heart, rooting in dignity, belonging, and care.

Join Us

Our Approach to Grief Work

Grief is not something to fix or rush through but a sacred force that’s alchemizing us, as a people, as a planet, toward needed revelation and transformation. Our work is to hold it together, in relationship with land, lineage, beyond-human beings, and each other.

Grief brings us closer to the truth, deeper into Soul. It’s a natural, living response to loss in a world unraveling under empire, extraction, and disconnection. It’s also what brings us into the commons of the heart, where we can feel the mutuality of our suffering and sorrow, where we take action for who we love and want to protect.

In this ritual space, we will welcome grief in all its forms. The personal losses: deaths, breakups, identity shifts, illness, dyspotentia. The ancestral wounds: colonization, displacement, domination. The collective heartbreak: mass extinction, ecocide, genocide, the disappearance of village. The harms we’ve done and been complicit in. And, the everyday aches of living in an overculture that refuses to witness, hold, and honor what is sacred.

Rhythm, Expression, and Relational Presence

This ritual will be held in a living field of rhythm and co-creative expression.

There will be live drumming led by Tajah Schall and T. Carlis Roberts, a composer, sound designer, and performer who engages sound as a tool for liberation. Their rhythms will offer a steady heartbeat for the ritual, keeping the space warm and inviting grief to move through us.

Song and voice will be woven throughout our time together, led by Naila Francis and Jessi Rado. We’ll practice community singing, song catching, and poetic expression as pathways into grief, connection, and belonging.

Alongside these practices, the ritual is guided with attention to the communal field, including Holly Truhlar’s work with power and impact, rupture and repair, and ritual facilitation. Through Deep Democracy principles, shared imagination, and co-creation, we’ll engage grief not only as personal, but as something shaped in relationship and culture.

Together, these elements support a space where truth can be revealed, complexity can be co-held, and grief can be carried, expressed, and moved.

Practicing Village

We’ll be staying together at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, Colorado. We’ll eat our meals together, with delicious, farm-to-table meals, mostly grown at Sunrise Ranch. Dietary requests can be made.

There are several options for lodging, including individual rooms, shared rooms, outdoor tent camping, and commuting from a nearby location (this requires a commuter’s fee). We look forward to waking up and sharing food and dreams, making offerings to the land together, and holding each other in a container of care for the full four-days.

Gathering in Grief for a Liberatory Future

In our grief is our aliveness, our care, our liberation. Bring your broken open hearts, your outcast parts, your sacred rage, your despair and hope. All of it, and all of you are welcome.

When we let our grief move us, we begin to feel what wants to be dreamt through us, what we want for our children and Future Ones. Grief is what guides us back to living culture and a liberatory future.

Grief ripens us into the adults and elders that we need to meet these times. Let’s remember, grieve, imagine, tend, molt, and liberate together.

General Schedule

Thursday (arrival by 4pm): Welcome, introductions, and ancestral invocation
Friday: Deepening through rhythm, song, writing, and practice
Saturday: Entering the healing ground, grief offerings and ritual
Sunday (departing at 2pm): Integration, closing and goodbyes

Overview, Travel, and Health Info

Facilitators: Tajah Schall, Naila Francis, Aminah Jessi Radovich, Holly Truhlar
Where: Sunrise Ranch, Loveland, Colorado
When: Thursday, August 13th - Sunday, August 16th
Cost: Tuition $800 (can be done in three monthly payments) + cost of accommodations and meals through Sunrise Ranch

Travel Information
The closest major airport is Denver International Airport (approximately a 75-minute drive to our location). Please plan to arrive at Sunrise Ranch between 2-4pm on Thursday, August 13th. The gathering will end by 2pm on Sunday, August 16th.

Covid Cautious Gathering
As part of building a space of belonging, and welcoming the most vulnerable, we will be practicing Covid cautiousness and community care. This will include masking while in indoor community spaces, testing the first two days, gathering outside when possible, and ventilating our indoor gathering space. We will be practicing disability justice values as much as possible. We will provide more updates about accessibility and inclusive ritual space as the event nears.

In order to register, please fill out this registration form and make a payment. Please note you will also need to register and pay for meals and accommodations (or a commuter’s fee) through Sunrise Ranch.

Registration Form & Payment