Sacred Grief Work

'Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.' ~ Oscar Wilde

Grief is something we all experience, but often behind closed doors. Rarely together.

This workshop is for you if you know you are walking with grief.

Or if you sense you have grieving parts you put away, consciously or unconsciously.

It’s easy to push down, avoid or numb your grief.
To find it hard to access on your own.
To be overwhelmed by the pressures of life.

You may feel that your sadness is not okay, too much, too messy.
You may notice that expressing grief often stops conversations, creates discomfort, is not always welcome.
It's not unusual to feel ashamed, to secretly think there’s something wrong with you.

You might feel that it’s not okay to talk about your pain, to burden others.
Or to need to keep talking about it, when everyone else seems to have moved on.

Perhaps you think that it doesn’t make sense, even to you.
Or wonder where it all comes from.

If you are ready to feel and release some layers of grief, and you would like to work with that in a group, we invite you to come together to explore your grief in community.

To create a sacred space where you don't have to carry the weight of grief alone.

Grief comes in many forms.

You may walk with the loss of a partner, parent, child, sibling, family member, friend, pregnancy, animal friend.

The loss of a relationship, marriage, friendship, job, home, role, family, place, culture.

The loss of health, ability, part of your body, or capacity.

You may walk with lost dreams, relationship struggles, loneliness, regrets.

You may walk with collective grief at the state of our world.

At the violence, hatred, divisions, discrimination, environmental destruction, loss of security and stability, and growing chaos.

You may walk with the grief of disillusionment, as so many hidden shadows keep coming to light. Including from within yourself.

The loss of the illusion of certainty and comfort.

You may walk with ancestral grief, from trauma or the loss of your peoples’ ancient wisdom traditions.

You are welcome with all your grief.

Including the guilt, shame, anger and rage that often walks beside it.
You don’t even have to know where it comes from.
Sometimes it takes time to surface and be understood.

This is sacred work.

There is wisdom in your grief that, when fully honoured, brings healing and relief.
The intelligence of grief guides you home to who you are as a whole and soulful human.

These are increasingly intense times.
Cultivating our capacity to grieve, individually and collectively, is an essential skill to stay well as uncertainty and chaos continues.

Grieving keeps your heart open and tender.
It keeps you resilient.
It helps you move with waves of despair without going under.

It helps us all to move through collective layers of ancestral trauma that are coming up for healing in our world.
An act of service.

Who we are

Ineke Hoogland

Hi, I’m Ineke. It feels as if my whole life has prepared me to hold space for grief work. I’ve experienced a lot of loss in my life, including the death of my beloved partner when I was only 39. And also several people that were important to me.

In the end, those losses actually taught me a lot. It helps to bring a lot of humour to lighten the weight of loss. Even with grief, there can be laughter and appreciation for good things.

Another gift I bring is sacred voice work. I have the capacity to give sound to the unexpressed feelings of those around me. To echo, amplify, translate and express emotions through sound.

In many ancestral and indigenous traditions, there were people whose role it was to give voice to the grief of a community. To help people to access and move through their grief in healthy ways. I am grateful to be able to do this work here and now.

I work as an Emotional Coach trained by Vera Helleman, author of The Encyclopaedia of Emotions. And I’ve worked for years with her. So I understand the deep intelligence of emotions and how they are an inner compass, guiding you back to alignment.

Ríonach Aiken

Hi, I’m Ríonach. I lived with a lot of sadness growing up and was often called a cry baby. Eventually I learned to put it away, but it created tension in my body and nervous system.

I still need to grieve a lot as part of my own healing. I often wonder where it all comes from.

It makes me very sensitive to collective grief. For years, I’ve helped people heal collective, ancestral and past-life wounds of persecution and patriarchy. And to reclaim the gifts buried underneath.

Another gift I bring to this work is sacred poetry. A deep way of working with poems that helps you hold space for your whole humanity. Your grief and your love, your vulnerability and your power, your rage and your sacred beauty.

I come from Ireland, where poetry is sacred and grief is honoured. When someone dies, a wake, big funeral and communal expressions of grief are part of the culture.

In this time of great disillusionment and hidden shadows coming to light, your soul may be calling you to return to your ancestral wisdom of grieving and healing together.

We are not meant to grieve alone.

This workshop is an opportunity to come together in a group where you can meet and express your grief, hold each other and be held in sacred grief rituals.

Where you can have an experience of being welcomed as you are.

Your grief, your rage, your guilt, your numbness.
All your complex, messy feelings that make no sense, but are real and valid.

Where you can bring the parts of you that need to be felt, expressed and witnessed. Even if you don’t have words.

Together, we will gently invite any parts of you that have been stuck, buried, unseen, unheard to come forward and be witnessed.

No pushing. Step by gentle step.
Honouring your own sacred process.

This work helps you to:

develop skills to hold grief with compassion and reverence, trusting its sacred wisdom.
understand your emotions as an intelligence that guides you home to who you are as a soulful, whole human.
let go of old stories that no longer serve you.
allow sadness, guilt, shame, silence, and anger to move through you, returning you to the natural flow of life.
create a new healthier culture where sorrow is honoured, rather than shamed and silenced.

"As a human being, we cannot accept a part of ourselves that we haven't shared with another human being and had validated, rather than violated." ~ Kurt Wright

What to expect

Grief rituals invite us to lean into vulnerability, trust, and surrender so we can remember how to grieve together as a community.

Through poetry, sound healing and sharing circles, we give voice to what needs to be expressed - in words, or sounds, or movement.

In sacred space, grief is freed from the weight of silence and shame, and transforms into tender-hearted compassion and reverence.

The workshop will unfold according to the needs of each unique group.

We will invite you to experience some or all of the following:

sacred sound + sound healing.
poem work + writing practices.
movement + embodiment practices.
listening and sharing in whole group + smaller circles.
welcoming whatever moves through you - numbness, shame, rage, trembling, stillness, wailing, or silence.
community ritual + shrines.

Everything we offer is an invitation, not a requirement. All you need to do is be present and share what you are carrying, to the best of your ability.

This is not a space for anyone to fix you, offer advice, or cheer you up. It is a place to be held, seen, witnessed, and honoured in your grief and your complex wholeness.

It is a space to make friends with grief. Turn towards it, give it space, give it voice, move with it.

To find beauty, meaning and love through the wisdom of your grief.

When you read about this workshop, you might think: “Yes, this is where I can finally let go of all my sadness!” But it’s a process that can’t be forced.

There are many layers to grief. It happens step by step, and each step comes at exactly the right moment. This workshop creates such a moment and helps you process your sadness and move forward with it.

Recent significant loss: If you have experienced a significant or traumatic loss within the last three months, feel in your body if you are ready for this. If you need to wait for another workshop, trust that too.

If you’re not sure, please reach out to speak with a facilitator before registering. Contact Rionach here or Ineke here.

How it works

1-DAY IN-PERSON WORKSHOP - Sunday 7 June 2026

Venue: Yurt Meeting, Terschuur, central Nederland {near Amersfoort}.

Time: 9.30-17.00
Bring lunch to share. Tea, coffee, snacks + hot soup is provided.
Small group workshop {limited to 12 people}
Cost: €180 incl BTW. {This is a starter price as this is our first workshop together.}

Can't make this date?
The next Sacred Grief Work day is Sunday 5 July 2026, Isis Sofia, Dalfsen, Netherlands. Cost €240 incl. BTW. Book here.

Sign up here

pay-in-full

€180

(incl. BTW)

2 monthly payments

€90/m

(incl. BTW)

Refund Policy: Before 28 May, you get a full refund, minus a 10% admin fee. After that date, no refund is possible.

We want this work to be available to those who need it, where possible. As well as a payment plan, there is one low-cost space available in each workshop.

If you need this in order to attend, or if you have any questions about anything else, please get in touch.

Why this matters

You may have an inner knowing that grief work is the medicine you need right now. And you are ready to turn towards it, rather than keep putting it away for another time.

As you release layers of grief, you feel freer, lighter, relieved and unburdened. You let go of heaviness you may have been carrying without even realising it.

Grief is the other side of love. The deep waters of grief can soften places that became numb or hardened. And help you cherish your love alongside your loss.

As you release layers of grief, you open channels for joy, connection and soulful creativity to flow more easily. You feel more like yourself, more engaged and on track in your life.

When you grow your capacity to hold space for your own grief, you have greater capacity to hold space for the grief of others and for our world, without being triggered or overwhelmed.

You become someone who helps to alleviate the great burden of unprocessed collective grief that is creating so much damage in our world. This is one of the ways we bring healing to our world.

If you are feeling the call, we hope you will join us.

'Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.' ~ Oscar Wilde