Who Are we?
About us
Siena Tenisci
Over the past decade, Siena has walked a committed path to excavate and reclaim her village roots – much of which was lost after post-immigration assimilation. In her mother’s homeland – a rural farming region of Abruzzo, Italy – community gatherings that honored each passage through life were once the foundation of communal health and her family’s flourishing. In her father’s lineage, keening women – or mnàthan-tuirim – once held dedicated and respected roles in Gaelic society as vocal ritualists that helped move communal grief through the honoring of sound and beauty. However lost, each one of us comes from ancestral memories with teachings of how we journey through life in more connected ways. Siena has helped many claim greater wholeness in self and community by rediscovering how to tend to collectively tend to sorrow. By grieving together, we reweave our lost connection to each other.
Siena brings her background in body-based somatic healing practices, group therapy, and ceremonial work to circles. She is committed to a lifelong practice of cultural sensitivity and to dismantling systemic and internalized oppression. She completed her Masters in Counseling at Antioch University in Seattle and stands on the shoulders of many great teachers, including Sobonfu Some, Joanna Macy, Francis Weller, and many others.
Mary Hart
Early in life, Mary Hart became aware and curious about how people heal from the deep disconnection and spiritual starvation she experienced and witnessed around her. Her own deep pain, anxiety and loneliness in her teens and 20s led her to become a lifelong seeker and to explore many spiritual traditions and healing modalities. This personal sense of disconnection and isolation fueled her interest, desire and commitment to reweaving the threads of meaningful connection and community through interpersonal relationships. She brings her wholehearted authenticity and vulnerability to whatever she does. Becoming a parent was a life changing experience that led Mary to dig deeply into learning and growing personally and professionally.
She is a trained workshop facilitator, personal coach and has participated in many healing rituals over the years. She was introduced to Grief Tending in 2014 and began mentoring with Therese Chavret, Tere Carraza and Laurence Cole in 2016. Since then, she has helped to create and facilitate many healing rituals. She has sought and studied with many great teachers and has been inspired by the work of Sobonfu Some, Stephen Levine, Jon Kabbat Zin, Francis Weller, and many others.
What is a Grief Ritual?
Grief ritual is a practice of tending to and honoring the sacredness of our sorrow – a practice of allowing the expression of grief to be vital to our collective health, to bring us back to what truly matters, and to be the common thread that reconnects us to a wider web of relationships.
One thing that makes a grief ritual different than a grief support group is that we call on our ancestors and guides to help us do this, surrendering up this notion we have in our culture that we can do this alone. One way we ask for help is by creating beauty. As a teacher of mine loves to say – spirit eats beauty. And so we weave in beauty together through song, drumming, movement, candle light, and our tears.
We Thank Our Teachers
We stand on the shoulders of many wise teachers. We thank them for showing us the way and for the courageous work they are do in the world: