I move at what I call a savorist’s pace, making space for what I cannot control in my body, in my relationships, and in the world. Grief literacy is a way to try to live: staying honest about what we’ve lost while learning to trust the wisdom of our tender places.
— Akilah S. Richards
Most of us were never taught to recognize grief unless someone died. But grief also lives in the ending of a friendship, a body that changed, a role we can no longer inhabit, and the distance between the future we expected and the life we are actually living.
Grief literacy helps us notice where a meaningful ending may still be influencing us, then gives us language and practices for tending what changed. My role is to accompany that noticing. I offer questions and places to practice, with enough context to help people listen to grief without treating themselves as a problem to solve.
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START HERE: The ILID Practice
ILID — I Let It Die — is a four-part grief literacy practice for tending endings, especially the ones that never received a funeral, a witness, or a clear name.
The practice begins with a moment when something in you pauses, aches, resists, or finally notices. From there, ILID helps you investigate what brought you there, look for the losses inside the change, come closer to what the loss may be asking, and decide on one act of Death Care that feels good enough for now.
The ILID Practice
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Grief is in more rooms than we were taught to notice.
You may be grieving something you chose to end, or something that changed without your consent. You may understand why it happened and still miss what the old form gave you. Grief does not need to be dramatic to be real, and it does not become more legitimate because you can explain it neatly.
Grief may be present in…
- A friendship that still exists in your phone but no longer lives in your life the same way
- The body you had before surgery, illness, menopause, aging, birth, or recovery
- Work that once gave you identity and now asks something different of you
- A family role, belief, community, home, or future you can no longer return to
What changed may still be influencing how you live.
When we can name what was lost, something often exhales. The grief may remain, but we have a different relationship with it. We can begin asking what needs release and what wants remembrance, then choose how to care for what mattered.
This work grew from liberation work (click arrow to open)
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Practice grief literacy in community
Each month, I facilitate an online grief circle through Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health. We gather to slow down around what is present, practice listening without rushing toward repair, and make room for grief to be witnessed in community.
You do not need the right words or a particular kind of loss to come. You can arrive with what is true for you that day.
See upcoming Grief, Grace & Grounding circles at Kripalu →
Events and Classes led by Akilah S Richards
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Stay close to the work.