This week on the blog I told the story of Z, the woman who hired me in her 90s, taught me what the work actually was, and named me Taboo Doula before she died. If you haven't read it yet, that's the place to start: What Z Taught Me at the Sink.

The line of hers that I quote every time I introduce myself came from a kitchen floor, where I was wiping up water I'd dripped while doing her dishes. She said, with the kind of nonchalance you only earn by living almost a century, that sex and death are two places we should have the most autonomy, and they're often the two places where our voices get the most lost, and it left me speechless.

She was right. I've watched it happen at both ends of life. Women are taught, often through subconscious cues, that their pleasure doesn't matter. Society, if not immediate family, shows young people of all genders that it's something to be ashamed of, that our bodies are something to be ashamed of. Older people are told they don't get a say in their own dying, in their own last chapter of life. Same silencing, different decades. All grounded in the same refusal of authority over the self. In the same fears built into our culture for generations.

What Z did, in her last years, was take that authority back. Not just for herself. She built rooms where other women could practice taking it back too. Then she invited their daughters in. Then their sons. The work she started outlived her.

I'm still working on what she started. Some of that work is the writing and the gatherings. Some of it is one-on-one. And starting June 23rd, some of it is going to look like a small container of ten people who are living inside loss right now and need somewhere to put their voices. Because grief is another place that gets silenced. We're given timelines, appropriate behaviors, told to smile through the tears.

Living Alongside Loss is a six-week group I'm running this summer for people who are either anticipating a major loss or sitting inside one already. Ninety minutes a week, virtual, ten-person maximum, sliding scale with a $250 floor. There's intentional space inside it for anticipatory grief and post-loss grief both. Registration closes June 19th. We start June 23rd.

If Z's story landed somewhere in you, you already know what kind of room I'm building. Register for Living Alongside Loss.

What's coming up:

Queer Grief Circle // Thursday, May 22nd, 6 to 8pm At Reading in Public in Valley Junction. Queer-specific, free-will donation, no agenda except the one the room brings. If the standard grief narrative was never built for your life, come.

This week's affirmation:

When they tell you what your pleasure, your death, your grief... hell, your life should look like, just smile sweetly and remind them where they can stick their shame.

See you next time.

Erika
Rosemary Raven Hearth
rosemaryravenhearth.com