Tending Grief Quotes

“This control of emotions and altered states can be referred to as mental health oppression—the ways we suppress our emotions or embodied responses because we are, understandably, afraid of having our autonomy taken away, of being institutionalized for displaying signs of emotionality that can be interpreted as ‘madness.’ Some of these embodied expressions can include prolonged laughing, crying, screaming, shaking, or trembling. When we express ourselves in these ways, often to regulate or move through the state we are in, we are at risk of being pathologized and labeled as someone who is mad or ill. In the paradigm of pathology, it is rare for our experiences, hurts, or social or environmental conditions to be taken into account as causes or catalysts for our distress, and need for catharsis.”
― Camille Sapara Barton, Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community

“I sense that learning to be with my grief will be a lifelong process of repatterning old ways of being and consciously practicing what I would like to embody.”
― Camille Sapara Barton, Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community

“Part of my grief was realizing that if I lived in a different economic reality, I would have had a lot more choice.”
― Camille Sapara Barton, Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community

“Tending grief can support us to feel more choice and support us to resolve conflicts, build trust, and engage in somatic transformation as a group—changing ways of being that have become automatic. These are all factors that create supportive conditions for relationships as well as sustained movement work.”
― Camille Sapara Barton, Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community

“When we acknowledge the historical processes our lives have been shaped by, and when we touch into this on an embodied level, we can cultivate the agency to repattern behavior from old wounds and create new stories and ways of being, rather than unconsciously reproducing the violence of the Void.”
― Camille Sapara Barton, Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community

“We need to feel. To slow down and sense what is happening. To grieve and understand what has been lost so that we can begin to assess how to move in a different direction, not simply repeat the behaviors that have led us to this space.”
― Camille Sapara Barton, Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community