When I was working on naming this project that my soul kept asking me to create, I took my time and let myself observe messages that would come through in day-to-day life. I went through a couple of other potential names and decided on Mourning Together. I had been listening to the podcast Good Mourning. And in my mind, I congratulated the founders on finding a perfect name for their work. Later, I critiqued the “good” because it is a value judgment, and we truly need to withhold judgment on ourselves and others in this liminal stage- there is no right way to grieve. But I love the double meaning of the words Mourning and Morning. It speaks to the freedom we find in clearly stating when we are in a state of mourning. Especially in a society that aggressively wants us to keep our losses private and handle them ourselves. By declaring that we are mourning and coming together, we create a new start for ourselves- a morning.

As I was defining what I wanted our online grief support community space to be, I kept coming back to community. My vision is to create a safe space where we can gently teach one another how to be the loving village we need in times of grief. Mourning Together. Immediately, I imagined us having mornings together- which inspired the name for our live sessions- Sunday Mourning Together. Mornings are so powerful when we are up and moving with intention. Like mourning, dawn is similarly a liminal state. Dawn is when we transition from our dreams (our spirit life) into our everyday life. Almost like slipping back into an outfit in the morning. As beings full of emotion, depth, and possibility, we will support one another in the Mourning Together online community.

I did pause at the natural abbreviation of MT for Mourning Together. Spoken, it sounds like empty. But the more I thought about it, the more it felt appropriate. After a loss, we often feel empty, like all our reference points have crumbled, as if standing in ruins after a devastating earthquake. And further, from Francis Weller’s “The Wild Edge of Sorrow”:

When you find a channel for your rage and deepest suffering, and there’s another hand there reaching back, what lies in the wake of it all, is finally- blessed peace. Calm. Nothing has changed about your loss…it’s still there. But your relationship with it has been greatly altered. You have been heard and held tenderly. You have been drained. And then you can open yourself up again. You can start to rebuild in that annihilated place” (Weller, p84).

How beautiful! With this feeling captured in words, it can be a guide to us to have courage in those dark and empty spaces. May this be our way forward: Listening and supporting and expressing- together.

Come join the Mourning Together community: