A Grief Garden (AGG) is a sacred listening space. This is a deep dive into the grief you hold, in a facilitated and trauma-informed container. This is a shared container for collective healing with grief as our teacher—it is not for individual therapy, activism, or venting. You are invited to explore your edges with tenderness and curiosity, we witness you. Together we explore embodied practices, creative rituals, mindful meditations, breathwork, and grief writing prompts. It is a sanctuary for listening and being listened to, holding and being held. Together, we leverage the sheer potency of being seen and heard.

Designed for people experiencing traumatic grief, ambiguous grief, disenfranchised grief, climate grief - ALL are welcome to find solace in this Grief Garden.  Questions or concerns? Click here to connect by email.

Devorah Brous, a certified trauma-informed Compassionate Grief and Bereavement Care Counselor, an herbalist, ritualist, and deep listener leads a Grief Garden online and in-person. For over 25 years she has been creating collective healing rituals for intentional listening to hold people experiencing rupture.

Evidence-based research indicates that grief is strongly supported in a social web of care. Some grief calls for the circle. Some grief calls for the unpredictable, after the group is over. Some grief calls for a 1:1.

In Grief Garden sessions, we gather with others who carry grief and loss in their bones—naming the ache, noticing what helps, and setting down what doesn’t. This requires patience, deep listening to others, and the ability to respect a group process as we witness each other. This is not therapy. Through ritual, reflection, and reciprocal witnessing, we trace a map toward solace and increased grief literacy.  

And, sometimes grief needs space to evolve long after the support group is over. You are invited to drop-in whenever you need support. Sliding-scale sessions are available twice weekly.

Click to join a waitlist above for a specific group, or join the ongoing drop-in Grief Garden meets twice weekly: 

Wednesdays 🪴 at 7pm-8:30pm PST. (register here)

Monday Mournings 🪴at 8:30-9am PST (Pre-Register through ikar)

There is no set time frame for joining a grief support group, as grief is a personal experience with no defined timeline. While there are folks who join us just after Shiva, the first week of communal mourning, some grief support organizations recommend waiting 6 weeks to 6 months after a loss before joining a group, as this allows individuals the chance to address practical matters and begin processing their grief. 

Ultimately, the best time to join AGG is when you feel ready to share your experiences and connect with others also experiencing overwhelm and a tangled web of emotions while navigating through the landscape of grief. 

Fill out the Grief Garden Intake Form to help us both to see if this online space can be the present and thoughtful container you seek, or whether something else might be a better fit.

The participants are mostly Jew-ish, but not exclusively. All are welcome. The group is varied, intentional, and connected to religious and/or spiritual practices. Ages range from people in their 20’s and upward into their 80s. The orientation is warm, supportive, and rooted in Jewish mysticism.

Grief Garden’s are not focused specifically around cause of grief, or any identity-based qualifier. Participants come to talk about loss, to feel seen and heard. They speak to their specific loss(es), to listen, and to support others. Although there are important differences between types of loss (e.g. traumatic loss of a child; a sibling; a parent; loss related to a terminal illness; sudden and unexpected loss; anticipated loss, climate grief having lost a home etc) to grow common ground, we work with the feelings, dreams, and expressions of loss rather than the differences that set each of us apart.

I am unable to accept insurance.

Thanks to a designated and anonymous grant in support of this community-care offering, the FromSoil2Soul Grief Garden is free for Ikar members through June 2026. All others, please make a sliding-scale contribution ($36-$72) per session for Wednesday’s 90-minute Grief Garden. Your contribution supports people that are facing financial hardship. Nobody is EVER turned away for lack of funds.

Here is the payment link - I also accept all major credit cards, zelle, paypal, and venmo.

Everyone Belongs. A Grief Garden is inclusive of all kinds of people sharing personal grief. Participants are invited to share access needs. To keep the community safe, please join us with your screen on.

• Be present. Practice patience and generosity.

• Share with brevity and without assumptions. 

• Refrain from crosstalk, and advice-giving. 

• Listen to understand, not respond.

• Follow prompts intentionally.

• Speak solely from the "I." We are experts of our own lived experience.

• What’s said here stays here. What’s learned here leaves here—with consent. This space is confidential.

First, please fill out this Grief Garden Interest Form to see if are a good fit: https://forms.gle/zRTU8jExRknt2KtE6.

Second, choose a closed-session or a rolling group to join. The drop-in group gathers twice weekly online and you are warmly invited but must register first:

1) "Monday Mournings" (8:30-9am), register through Ikar to join a Grief Garden:

2) Here is the link to join a Grief Garden on Wednesday evenings, 7-8:30pm.

Third, click this sliding-scale payment link to keep this offering sustainable ($36-$72), nobody is EVER turned away for lack of funds.

Questions or concerns? Book a 1:1 call: www.cal.com/devorah-brous

Click join A Grief Garden in WhatsApp chat for collective support, reminders, poetry and song

During 1:1s, we move at the pace of trust, with a wide enough net to catch both ancestral ache and daily overwhelm. Sometimes the grief speaks of unresolved threads or other life transitions woven into the loss.

For 1:1 grief support, or to refer a friend to FromSoil2Soul, please click here: https://forms.gle/zRTU8jExRknt2KtE6