Grief and the Body:
Holding What We Carry
Our bodies hold stories we may have never spoken aloud.
They carry losses we were never taught to grieve.
This workshop creates space to tend to that grief—
not to fix it, but to witness it with tenderness and care.
If you have felt grief living in your flesh, your bones, your breath
we see you. We are you. In a culture that treats the body as a project to be perfected, a problem to be solved, or a resource to be exploited, we rarely pause to honor the grief that lives in our bodies. The tightness in the chest, the heaviness in the limbs, the exhaustion that no sleep can cure.
Our society has not made space
for grief to be held as a physical experience. Body grief is often invisible, unwitnessed, carried alone. The aging body. The body marked by trauma. The body that is chronically ill or disabled. The body we hoped for but didn't get. The body that carried or lost pregnancy, that couldn't conceive, that chose a different path. These losses accumulate in our tissues, reshape our breathing, our posture, our capacity to feel pleasure or safety.
Grief is a solitary journey that we cannot do alone,
says Francis Weller, author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow. When grief is shared, when we have a deepened experience of entanglement with one another and the animate world, something wildly beautiful and necessary begins to alchemize. This is especially true for body grief—the losses we carry in our very flesh.
Does This Sound Like You?
- You carry grief in your body that has never been fully witnessed or named.
- You live with chronic illness or disability and the ongoing reorganization of your life.
- You are navigating the losses that come with aging—the accumulation of years, the changes you see in the mirror, the body that is not what it once was.
- You grieve the body you hoped for but didn't get—the dream of thinness, the body that would have matched your gender, the features you longed for.
- Your body carries the marks of gendered violence, trauma, or the slow accumulation of living under patriarchy—the grief of lost safety, lost trust, lost years of presence in your own skin.
- You are holding loss related to pregnancy, infertility, or reproductive paths not taken—the body that carried or lost pregnancy, the body that couldn't conceive, the body forever changed by birth.
- You are a therapist or healthcare worker witnessing and holding body grief in others, and need space to tend to your own.You seek something radically different than mainstream grief discourse—something that honors the body not as it should be, but as it is.
- So many of us are holding space for other people's sorrows, and need a soul-centered space to unfold into our own care. So many of us carry body grief that has nowhere to go.
Have We Met?
This work is facilitated by Carmen Cool and Hilary Kinavey.
We have taught and written together for over a decade. We have accompanied each other through deep sorrows and loss with reverence, love, compassionate curiosity, and humor (ask us about our haikus). In this offering, we will be using the six gates of grief as our guide, as taught by Francis Weller. Both us have been trained by him as grief ritual facilitators.
Carmen Cool (she/her) is a queer, politicized and poeticized psychotherapist, psychedelic integration therapist, and certified mindfulness instructor. For over 20 years, I have been working at the intersection of eating disorders and weight stigma, activism in psychotherapy, and supporting youth leaders. Lately, my soul urgings have been taking me in the direction of earth-based practices, creative expression, and bringing love and magic back into the field of psychotherapy. I am constantly on the lookout for sensory joy. I love to cook, to read poetry, to sing under the bones, and I go out of my way to pet all the dogs.
Hilary Kinavey (she/her) is the co-founder of Center for Body Trust, where her work as a therapist, healthcare consultant, facilitator and writer, has been a study of what interrupts our sense of wholeness and how we can return to ourselves in a culture that profits from fragmentation. She is the co-author of the book Reclaiming Body Trust. She has worked as a therapist for over 25 years and works at the intersection of therapy and activism.
We are so glad
that you're here.
How will we work together?
We meet over 7 two-hour sessions. One of these sessions will be a devoted grief vigil. Recordings of sessions with the exception of the vigil will be available in our class forum, where we can stay in touch between sessions.
Our gathering dates are on Sundays, from 9-11am PST on Zoom:
February 8, 2026
February 15, 2026
March 1, 2026
March 8, 2026
March 15, 2026
March 22, 2026
March 29, 2026
All sessions, except for the vigil, will be recorded (so it is okay if you can't make it to all the sessions).
- All session recordings, transcripts, outlines and resources will be uploaded to a course platform.
- Resources include: shared poetry and music, writing prompts, embodiment practices & reading/listening recommendations
- You will have access to all course materials for 6 months.
We will explore six thresholds where body and grief meet:
The Way Grief Lives in the Body – Grief is not just an emotion but a physical experience. The way sorrow settles into our tissues, the way loss reshapes our breathing, our posture, our capacity to feel pleasure or safety.
The Aging Body – The accumulation of years, the changes we see in the mirror, the losses of capacity and vitality, the grief of becoming someone we didn't imagine we'd be.
Chronic Illness and Disability – Living with bodies that are in pain, that require accommodation, that are misunderstood or dismissed. The ongoing losses, the life reorganized, the futures reimagined.
The Body We Hoped For But Didn't Get – The dream of thinness, the body that would have matched our gender, the features we longed for, the abilities we were supposed to have. Grieving the gap between expectation and embodied reality.
Gendered Violence and Trauma – Bodies marked by assault, harassment, and the slow accumulation of living under patriarchy. The grief of lost safety, lost trust, lost years of presence in our own skin.
Pregnancy, Infertility, and Paths Not Taken – The body that carried or lost pregnancy, the body that couldn't conceive, the body that chose not to bear children, the body forever changed by birth. Mourning what was, what wasn't, and what will never be.
These gates are not separate chambers but overlapping thresholds. Your grief may live in one or move through all six. There is no hierarchy here, no right way to grieve. There is only the truth of what you carry and the radical act of allowing it to be witnessed.
We will be weaving teachings and perspectives on grief work, along with body-based practices, poetry, writing, and music to support our ongoing engagement with body grief.
You will be accompanied, supported, and offered buoyancy as we deepen into this part of what it means to be deeply alive.
This exploration will be personal, but will impact how you hold and respond to grief in all of your relationships and your work in the world.
Grief is inseparable from love.
Whether it is the body that ages, the body that is ill, the body that carries trauma, the body we wished for, or the body forever changed by what it has carried or lost – these sorrows accumulate and deserve to be felt, witnessed and expressed. The world needs our nuanced presence in the midst of so much darkness.
We practice something our culture rarely permits:
being with our bodies not as they should be, but as they are. Honoring not just what they do, but what they've survived. Acknowledging not just their strength, but their vulnerability, their weariness, their longing. This is grief work. This is body work. This is the work of coming home.
-Hilary & Carmen
What are participants saying?
"If you want to tend to your grief, on a journey facilitated by master teachers who are compassionate, open, caring and wise - you must sign up for TENDING with Hillary and Carmen. The community they cultivate facilitate your deep dive into the depths of your grief and allow you to emerge to a healing space where you feel less overwhelmed, less alone, and able to face the challenges that come up around anniversaries of loss of loved one or other type of loss. You will be giving the opportunity to experience embodied presence and body trust within the space cultivated for healing and growth. Highly Recommend."
Anonymous Participant
"Carmen and Hilary are more than just teachers; their vulnerability and raw honesty give you the sense that they are truly walking alongside you in this grief journey."-Anonymous Participant
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Frequently Asked Questions
Will you offer this program again?
Will the sessions be recorded?
Who are the teachers you have learned from?
Do I have to be grieving the loss of someone to be in this course??
Do you have equity pricing?
"Everything is beautiful
and I am so sad.
This is how the heart makes a duet of wonder and grief."
~ Mark Nepo, Adrift
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