Grief and the Body: Holding What We Carry 

Grief doesn't just live in our thoughts or our stories. It lives in the body.

In the exhaustion that doesn't lift. In the heaviness, the numbness, the tension held somewhere we can't quite name. In the way the body sometimes knows what the mind hasn't caught up to yet.

Grief & the Body is a live virtual series that turns toward that knowledge — gently, without forcing, without demanding the body perform or produce.

Over seven sessions, Hilary Kinavey and Carmen Cool will create space to explore what grief carries in the body, and what the body might be asking for in return.

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.

This series is for people who:

• Carry grief in their bodies but rarely have language for it

• Feel numb, exhausted, or emotionally full without knowing why

• Work with others' bodies or emotions and rarely tend their own

• Are curious about the somatic dimensions of grief and loss

• Long for a slow, embodied approach to what they're carrying

What we'll do together:

• Somatic and embodied grief practices

• Guided reflection and inquiry

• Large and small group conversation

• Ritual, poetry, and contemplative practice

• Optional sharing and witness

• Practices for coming back into relationship with the body

What's included:

• 7 live virtual sessions with Hilary & Carmen

• Session recordings (note: the grief vigil session is not recorded)

• Access to the community space