Grief workshop canceled because of grief

Yup - I had a Kinship in Grief workshop scheduled for mid-November on the weekend before Thanksgiving. I canceled it a few weeks before. True it had very few sign-ups (only one actually) but that wasn't why. It was that I was IN my grief and not open about it. At least not with most people. But I realized that if I didn't have space for my own grief that it would likely leave me little room to hold space for others. So that's that.

I'll bring the idea back but I am going to rework it. The title I am considering is: Yoga, Poetry and Grief. My mother had written in the year before she died: "It all comes down to poetry." She meant it. Poetry was everything to her. That's where we'll go in my next workshop.

Here is a favorite poem, one of the last I read aloud to her.

I Am Of Ireland by William Butler Yeats

'I am of Ireland,

And the Holy Land of Ireland,

And time runs on,' cried she.

'Come out of charity,

Come dance with me in Ireland.'

One man, one man alone

In that outlandish gear,

One solitary man

Of all that rambled there

Had turned his stately head.

That is a long way off,

And time runs on,' he said,

'And the night grows rough.'

'I am of Ireland,

And the Holy Land of Ireland,

And time runs on,' cried she.

'Come out of charity

And dance with me in Ireland.'

'The fiddlers are all thumbs,

Or the fiddle-string accursed,

The drums and the kettledrums

And the trumpets all are burst,

And the trombone,' cried he,

'The trumpet and trombone,'

And cocked a malicious eye,

'But time runs on, runs on.'

I am of Ireland,

And the Holy Land of Ireland,

And time runs on,' cried she.

"Come out of charity

And dance with me in Ireland.'