Annee Berry and Olive Howland Milne

Bios

Olive works with ceremonial and nature-based practices including interspecies communication, grief tending, dance, and meditation. She has been deepening her work with women’s circles and with young people in recent years and is currently training in biodynamic craniosacral therapy and voice therapy. Nourished by a family of human and beyond-human beings, she feels deeply inspired and connected to the medicine of grief tending in community. Some of her primary teachers for this work include Sophy Banks, Jeremy Thres, and Dita Visozo.

As an older person Annee grew up in the 50s in what she thought were stable times, where life had some predictability and she believed the dominant narrative of the times. She trained as a children’s nurse and wanted to make a difference. She became a mother, a single parent in the late 80s and juggled full time work and parenting. She was in survival mode for many years working as an academic, a sociologist and finally an educator in hospices. It wasn’t until her son left home for University that the environmental crisis began to fully dawn on me, and she trained as a shamanic practitioner and healer, developing a closer understanding of our relationship and interconnectedness with the natural world. Her greatest teacher in all of this was her son, who became an eco poet. She is now a ceremonialist, a cancer mentor, death doula, a funeral celebrant, a sacred activist and an elder. She holds all of life as sacred within the opportunity of this great turning and has a commitment to the children’s fire and supporting young people on this journey of transition.

Grief as Love

We offer this space to come together and tend our grief in community. A gentle introduction to welcoming our grief and what it means to flow between being witnessed and supported in our grief, and supporting others in their grief. We will begin with building the group container and support through practices connecting us to gratitude and resources. Then we will briefly explore the ‘gateways of grief’ before moving into evoking and expressing grief (sharing and witnessing in smaller groups). We end with soothing (song and guided relaxation) and integration to reconnect with resources and close together. We will co-create this tender space to encounter the precious practice of meeting our grief and inviting flow, recognising this as life-affirming and earth-honouring medicine.

Returning to the Village: Where are our Elders?

In this time of change, chaos and crises many are questioning the dominance and damage posed by individualism, separation and isolation. Some of us are asking how did our ancestors live? Why have we lost that circle of connection and community. Who is there to support us and who can we offer support to. This workshop will be an opportunity for young and older people, perhaps elders to hear each other, to gain some understanding of what we each need and to explore and dream in our village in which we may begin to provide mutual support and reciprocity to and for each other. We will have an opportunity to speak, listen and be witnessed as a village of young ones elders and to explore together and create a new thread of connection and relationship. All are welcome, including the inbetweenies.