Grief Awareness Week

For all our sophistication, our cities, our therapies, and our tidy, civilised ways of discussing loss, we remain—at our core—creatures of the earth. And the earth, if we allow it, becomes our most patient teacher. Nature understands what many of us resist: that grief is not a problem to be solved, but a season to be lived. A wisdom to be metabolised. A sacred guest crossing the threshold of the heart.

Grief is a Natural Ecosystem

Francis Weller often speaks of grief as having an “ecology,” a belonging to the wild terrain of the soul. I see grief not as a catastrophe but as a companion—an insistence from life itself that we grow larger, more resilient, more human. This work invites us back into intimacy with the world, asking us not to exile our sorrow but to compost it.

In nature, nothing is wasted.

Forest floors are littered with the fallen: leaves, branches, the long-decayed bodies of what once stood tall. Yet this is not a wasteland—it is a cradle. Everything the forest becomes begins first as something let go.

Our grief functions the same way.

We live in a culture terrified of endings. Grief phobic. Afraid of pain. Obsessed with “moving on” as quickly as possible, as though our sorrow were an embarrassing guest overstaying its welcome. But nature shows us another way: she leans in, she breaks open, she rots and renews, she transforms through loss. There is no shame in it. Only necessity.

The Hard Truth: If We Don’t Grieve, We Don’t Grow

There is something provocative—almost rebellious—about embracing grief in a world that keeps telling us to “stay positive.” But positivity does not lead us back to wholeness. Presence does. Honesty does. Sitting down in the dark woods of ourselves and daring to feel what is true—that is what builds the root system of healing.

Grief metabolised becomes wisdom.

Grief unspoken becomes wildfire.

When we refuse to grieve, we become spiritually constipated—stuck, swollen, brittle, unable to receive the next season of our lives. We chase distractions, armour ourselves with busyness, and wonder why nothing feels vibrant or meaningful anymore. We forget that living things must break in order to grow. Seeds rupture. Chrysalises split. Trees crack open under the pressure of new rings forming.

And so do we.

Let the Earth Mirror You.

Take yourself to the water. Watch how the river takes every leaf, every branch, every fallen thing, and carries it without resistance. The river does not cling. It does not demand the leaf return to the tree it once belonged to. It accepts. It moves. It keeps flowing.

Sit beneath a tree whose trunk knows storms you’ve never seen. Let it remind you that survival does not require perfection, only resilience.

Walk through a winter field where everything has died back.

Notice that there is no panic in the landscape—only rest. Only a necessary quiet. Grief is a wintering of the soul, not a failure of it.

Nature is not here to cheer us up.

She is here to tell the truth.

And she tells it gently, fiercely, and without apology.

We Need a Communal Forest, Not Private Suffering

In traditional cultures, grief was shared. Witnessed. Held in circles, not hidden behind closed doors. Indigenous wisdom speaks of “village grief”—the collective tending of sorrow. In my experience with individuals and groups, grief becomes bearable when we realise it is not a private shame but a shared human inheritance.

We need one another the way trees need a forest: not for decoration but survival. Underground, the mycelium network carries nutrients from one tree to another. The strong feed the weakened. The dying make space. The living rise taller.

Imagine if we grieved like that: interconnected, generous, unafraid to nourish one another through our broken places.

Let Nature Show Us How to Begin Again

Every part of the natural world models a truth our souls ache to remember:

• Grief is movement, not stagnation.

• Transformation requires dissolution.

• Life begins again precisely where something ended.

We are meant to grieve. And through that grieving, we are meant to grow—not despite our losses, but because of them.

As we walk through Grief Awareness Week 2026, may we step back into relationship with the oldest therapist we know—the earth beneath our feet. May we let the forest teach us how to fall apart without fear. May we let the rivers model how to release what we cannot keep. And may we let the seasons show us that every death in our lives, no matter how unspeakably painful, is woven into a larger, wilder rhythm of renewal.

Grief is not the end of the story.

It is the turning of the soil.

And something, even now, waits to grow.

Our Free Grief Walks will begin again in March 2026 – please sign up to be notified of the dates here:  www.thewillowtreefoundation.com