At various park gates, participants stopped and reflected — going over a grief framework.
“One of the things that we do is walk people through a framework for grief that was given by psychotherapist Francis Weller,” Francis said. “So it’s really an opportunity to name and acknowledge some of the griefs that we don’t get to in our everyday lives.”
Laughter, tears and silence filled the air at different times during the walk.
Megan Dwyer, an organizer with Salt Trails Philly, led a grounding ritual. Participants were encouraged to observe the surrounding nature, ground their feet in the grass and practice mindful breathing.
“If it ever gets tough on the inside, can you ever bring yourself to the outside to find something good or beautiful to look at or feel?” she asked.
Bouquets around the gathering site encouraged event attendees to see the beauty around them, said organizer Meghan Dwyer. (Violet Comber-Wilen/WHYY)
The group then processed weaving in and around Germantown’s Vernon Park.
Francis explained previous processionals are always guided by the participants who show up, and the kinds of grief they are experiencing.
“We’re living in very intense times, and so we may come [to the event] and we arrive with a plan, and we know what we’re going to do, but so much also can be shaped by who shows up and how people engage and how they participate,” she said.
For Francis, one of the most special parts of the experiences are seeing people feeling validated in all the forms of grief they may feel.
“Some of us are grieving the way that our lives have turned out,” she said. “ Maybe the disappointments or the expectations that we had that never came to fruition. Some of us are grieving things that have been passed down through our ancestral line and this doesn’t even cover the broad swath of griefs that people could bring into this space.”
Francis said the organization aims to normalize all grief, even when it shows up in unconventional ways.
“I will say one of the things that tends to get people a lot is what we expected and did not get,” she said. “I think that’s a grief that almost anybody can relate to, but we don’t really get room to express that in this society. We’re not allowed to grieve the way our lives have turned out, or all the things that we thought would happen to us and they didn’t, or the lost dreams and the lost hopes. There’s still such a limited perception of what we’re allowed to grieve, limited permission given to what we’re allowed to grieve.”