'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. Where you can discover the gold that often lies underneath.
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, our souls are calling us to return to our 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, sharing circles, working with nature, 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.
When you register, you will also receive a 14-page Sacred Grief Work Guidebook {in both English and Dutch}, with poems, principles, ongoing practices and resources to support your process.
Beyond this one-day workshop, this is an invitation for us to create a more life-enhancing culture around how we hold our grief - personally and collectively.
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.
- listening and sharing in whole group + smaller circles.
- movement + embodiment practices.
- working with the wisdom of nature.
- welcoming whatever moves through you - numbness, shame, rage, trembling, stillness, wailing, or silence.
- community ritual + shrines.
Like a river needs river banks, your grief needs a strong container so it can flow without flooding or overwhelming you. The group space and these practices are designed to do that.
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, rather than try to get rid of it. To turn towards it, give it space, give it voice, move with it.
To find the gold buried in the dark soil of your grief. When we learn to trust our grief, we discover the initiation it invites us into.
Grief has an intelligence that shapes you into a more mature, loving and wise human. It can help you to find meaning and align with your soul's path.
When you read about this workshop, you might think: “Now I can 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 unfolds in its own timing. This workshop helps you release some layers, and also understand the wisdom of your grief.
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 - Friday 4 Sept 2026
Venue: Isis Sofia, Dalfsen, Netherlands
- Time: 9.30-17.30
- tea, coffee, snacks + vegetarian lunch provided.
- Small group workshop {limited to 12 people}
- Sacred Grief Work Guidebook - in English and Dutch.
- Bonus online integration call Wed 23 Sept 19.30-21.00
- Cost: €220 incl BTW.
- optional evening meal available (not included).
Can't make this date?
The next Sacred Grief Work day is
Sunday 15 Nov 2026, Isis Sofia, Dalfsen
+ online integration call Wed 2 Dec 19.30-21.00.
Sign up here
Refund Policy: If you cancel 2 weeks before the workshop, 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.
Here's what others have found ...
"The ‘Sacred Grief’ workshop is a gift to yourself. Over the past few years, I’ve been carrying a sense that there is unresolved grief within me. So I didn’t hesitate for a moment about whether to take this workshop and signed up straight away. I didn’t really have any idea what to expect. In a previous workshop with Ríonach, I had already experienced the power of poetry. In my mind, it would be a combination of magical, healing poems and, presumably, plenty of tears. But this journey went much deeper. Beyond the tears; being able to make a shift on a much deeper level. To be able to embrace the ‘grief’ and to feel and experience what lies hidden behind or beneath it. When, finally, after all these years, you are able to see and use the ‘gold dust’... Then you have experienced an unforgettable workshop. And that’s exactly what it was!"
~ Tom
"I experienced the Sacred Grief Work day as a very strong container that gave me a very safe and "seen" feeling. Like a warm bath of transforming energy. Everything was an invitation; no result or specific actions were expected. Ríonach and Ineke know how grief works - they understood where each person was in their process. The way the group listened and shared, resonating with each person’s wisdom, was so strengthening. I felt waves of energy go through us after this sharing; in these silences, the most transformative work happened. The sound healing brought beautiful integration - everyone received a personal sound and healing tones. I also felt a large, supportive field of ancestors, guides, and energies that helped carry us. This workshop helped me realize how grief enhances so much. It is the necessary fuel to help you move through loss and make way for a new you and a new relationship to everything around you. A rebirth. This work is so necessary, especially in our culture where hiding and discarding grief is so common. Ineke and Ríonach are a beautiful combination, very complementary to each other. It was a gift to be there and bathe in it. Thank you!"
~ Monica
"The Sacred Grief Work workshop is highly recommended. I went with some hesitation because I expected it to be an intense, deep dive into all that sadness, and that I would drown in it. Fortunately, it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. Ríonach and Ineke created a powerful space to guide participants through the many facets of grief. The power of poetry was a surprise to me—it’s amazing what can happen just by reading a poem. I found it a wonderful experience. Combined with the beautiful contribution of Ineke’s singing bowls and her voice, this workshop is definitely worth experiencing.”
~ Angela Lauwers
"A powerful workshop that magically fosters vulnerable connections. Highly recommended for those who dare to dive deep, guided by two magical women who give voice to something truly beautiful and precious. In a world where people forget how important—and sacred—genuine grief is. There’s gold to be discovered.”
~ Veronique
"“I found the Sacred Grief workshop to be a warm and healing experience. Ineke and Ríonach create an atmosphere of trust and safety where anything can be said and where all the time needed is taken. Ríonach’s poetry and Ineke’s sounds help me to delve deep within myself. The whole day was a special experience that I’d recommend to everyone.”
~ Annette
"Space to give room to your own grieving processes. So important. The day after the workshop, I feel lighter and more grounded. Ríonach and Ineke complement each other beautifully."
~ Marry
"Ineke and Ríonach create a safe environment in which space is created for deep processes in a gentle way. After the workshop I felt more alive. In the days that followed, more playfulness was released in me, which made me feel freer and easier to connect with others."
~ Rikkert