Grief School Summer Camp
an in-person daytime program
in Brooklyn, NY for adults of all ages
guided by Ari & Kwonyin
June 24-28 2024
Join us in-person in Brooklyn, NY for Grief School: Summer Camp! A week of letting loose, unplugging, and purposeful play through the realms of grief, loss, and love.
Grief is our body, mind, and spirit asking for spaciousness. But making this space can be really challenging: What do I say? How can I help? How do we collectively honor loss? How can I bear all this? How do I make time? What’s my role to play? For many, it’s rare to feel confident about how to handle loss-filled situations. And yet we are swimming amidst a sea of loss all the time. To work with the fear, shame, avoidance, and pain that get in the way of showing up for grief, we need some play, pausing, and practice.
Grief School Summer Camp is our shared refueling station. For five days, as summer gets underway, we’ll get together and drop in to how we support communities, loved ones, and ourselves through the unavoidables and this-is-what-is’s.
With kwonyin (CATHARSIS) and Ari Simon (Grief at Work) as your camp counselors, you will receive teachings, gentle guidance, and group practices. Activities include guided meditations, cathartic exercise, end-of-life and memorialization basics, art-making and creative writing, trips to the swimming pool of sorrow, group lunchtime, and more.
Grief School Summer Camp is happening in-person at Madhura Studios in Brooklyn, NY for adult humans of all ages from June 24-28 2024.
June 24-28 2024
10am-3pm ET
Madhura Studios
61 B 9th Street
Brooklyn, NY
Cost: $234
Sliding scale and
limited scholarships are available
Camp curriculum
Below are some overarching themes we will explore each day, alongside some example activities. Each day will include time for lunch, meditation, and gentle exercise.
Monday - Grief asks us to trust (ourselves, each other, and that we know what to do)
Connection practice to ourselves, each other, and nature
Sharing what brings us here
Embodiment work for trusting our bodies
Tuesday - Grief reveals the mess
What we’ve suppressed to survive
Parts work & shadow work
Honoring our pain
Wednesday - Grieving towards wholeness
Catharsis and yin yielding
What we need in order to grieve
Creative grief planning
Thursday - Tending to endings (and welcoming renewal)
End-of-life basics and care training
Death meditation and rest ritual
Swimming into renewal
Friday - Happy birth day!
Being awake to the world
Meditating with the elements
Celebrating being alive
Meet your
camp counselors
KwonYin (she/her) is a channel of Pearl Consciousness, the wisdom of the emotional irritant creating iridescence
She offers her transmissions through the written word, performance art, and music.
She is the creatrix of CATHARSIS, a guided deep dive to heal internalized oppression and self-repression through shadow integration, inner childcare, ancestral pattern interrupts, parts work, and deep yin embodiment practices.
Ari Simon (they/them) is a facilitator, coach, grief care worker, climate policy convener, and founder of Grief at Work – tools and teachings in grief & loss competency for teams and communities.
Through a loss-centering practice, Ari convenes people at intersections of ecological health & climate adaptation, mental & emotional wellbeing, queerness, and grief, death & loss. Ari weaves a background in policy and planning with training in applied buddhism, mindfulness, and end-of-life care.
“I’ve told many people about the class and hope you continue to offer it. Thanks for holding the space for it all, and it each.”
- ELEANOR
“Allowing myself a soft and quiet approach for my grief meant it could come to the surface with out knocking me out. I could sit with it and listen gently. I no longer need to fix it, I could befriend it.”
- GRETCHEN
“Although I am most comfortable processing grief alone, I appreciated how much hearing others discussing similar stories helped me process some of the grief I have been feeling. I also really appreciated the duo Kwonyin and Ari holding space for us to be silent or contribute without any pressure or haste.”
- KAYLA
“Grief School helped me feel more comfortable expressing grief to more people and in more ways.”
- MAXWELL
“Ari and kwonyin are wonderful instructors that offer a safe space to explore an incredibly tender topic. I am grateful for their guidance and would recommend the course for anyone who’s curious about exploring their grief.”
- LILIAN
FYIs
The primary goals of Grief School Summer Camp are to expand our capacity to show up for grief & loss, better support our circles of care, and explore play through amongst the more difficult aspects of being alive. While all are welcome, we advise that this is not a counseling group, and may not offer what’s often needed for those acutely experiencing sudden loss. This is not a replacement for psychological and clinical health services.
We are so excited to present this at Madhura Studios in Brooklyn, NY. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the building they make home, the space is not wheelchair accessible and will require using two flights of stairs. If you need special accommodations or assistance, please reach out to us and we will explore all possibilities to enable your practicing with us.