❤️‍🩹 Grief Gardens: Ritual Spaces for What We’ve Lost (and What We’re Growing)

Some losses aren’t meant to be moved on from.

They’re meant to be tended. Watered. Witnessed. Planted into the ground like a seed.

What if grief didn’t have to be navigated alone? What if the garden could hold some of it with you?

That’s what grief gardening is for.

Pieta, Woodcut by Insa

This piece depicts a part in the individuation process—mourning the loss of self. Who we are becoming, grieves who we once were.

You can find prints in my shop here

Why I Offer This Work

In the hardest seasons of my life, it was the garden that held me. When I had no words, the soil still listened.

When I couldn’t “fix” the ache, I could at least kneel beside it. Compost it. Witness something grow beside the loss.

Grief doesn’t ask for a solution. It asks for presence.

That’s what I now offer others ~ a way to process through presence, ritual, and earth.

This isn’t traditional garden coaching.

It’s grief tending through sacred space, symbols, and seasonal rhythm unique to you. A space to be with what’s been lost, and slowly, gently, begin to shape something sacred in its place.

What Is a Grief Garden?

A dahlia in its autumn chapter of life.

It’s not about productivity or perfect design.
It’s about meaning. Connection. Presence.
We work together to co-create a ritual garden space for remembrance, for healing, for honoring something or someone you’ve lost.

Each session blends intuition, gentle guidance, somatic support, and seasonal wisdom. You don’t need to know what it should look like yet. That’s part of the journey.
A grief garden is a symbolic or literal space created to honor someone (or something) you’ve lost.
It might hold memory.
It might hold a prayer.
It might hold nothing but breath, silence, and soil.

A grief garden isn’t just a physical space. It’s a living altar.
It can be a single pot on your balcony, a patch of ground, or even just the magic we create between our presence.

We use the language of the garden to gently process grief ~ rooting, pruning, composting, blooming,.
But it’s also spiritual. It’s presence work. It’s emotional holding.

I guide you through that space with breath, visioning, intuitive questions, and grounded practices.
You don’t need to know what ritual means or how to do it right.
All you need is the willingness to show up and let something sacred take shape.

New to ritual, grief work, or gardening? You’re welcome here.
You don’t need experience. You don’t need to come prepared.

This is not a performance. It’s a process.
I’ll guide you intuitively, based on what feels meaningful to you.

We move slowly. There’s no one right way.
Only your way.

📍 How it Works

• Virtual (Zoom, email or phone. Whatever feels safe and accessible for you)

• Three sessions, spaced 1–3 weeks apart

• Includes custom garden prompts, visualization meditations, and gentle follow-up

• Can include practical design help, symbolic guidance, and optional product tie-ins

• No gardening experience needed

This work is especially suited for folks who are neurodivergent, highly sensitive, or moving through life transitions.

You don’t need a garden to work with me.

You don’t need land. You don’t even need plants.
A grief garden can be a single pot, a photograph, a memory, or even just the sacred space we make together through conversation, breath, and ritual.

It’s not about what you grow.
It’s about what we tend.

🌱 What a Session Feels Like

"It felt like a shift from guilt to connection. I had a good little cry... It was gentle, grounding, and exactly what I needed."

I currently offer a 3-session grief garden journey, designed to move from vision to creation to tending.

But there’s no pressure to commit to that up front.
You can begin with a single session, explore what’s rising, and we can go from there.
This work meets you where you are.

You can also book a single session. Or return seasonally as you feel called.

We begin with presence.
Breath. Listening.

I guide you through a gentle visualization, then we explore what's coming up.
What you're holding. Who you're missing. What you want this space to feel like.

Together, we begin to shape it. Emotion into vision. Vision into form. Form into ritual.

It’s not therapy.
But it is healing.

🌕 This Offering Is for You If...

• You’ve experienced a loss of a person, a relationship, a season of life, or a version of yourself

• You crave sacred space, but don’t know how to begin

• You want a garden that means more than flowers. One that holds feeling, memory, and ritual

• You’re a sensitive, spiritual, neurodivergent, or deeply feeling person who wants connection with the earth as a mirror

🌼 A Client’s Experience

That was during a ritual we co-created together.
It didn’t require elaborate tools.
Just presence. Intention.
And a space to say, “This mattered.”

“Burying the note and putting the headstone over it felt super meaningful. I had a good little cry. I felt a shift from guilt to connection. Insa’s coaching is legit and it helps a lot.”

— Grief Garden Client

More Than Grief

This offering also supports those:

• Interested in Ancestor altars

• Pet memorial spaces

• Meditation gardens

• Moon gardens or sacred seasonal nooks

And those in the process of:

• Healing gardens for transitions, initiations, or letting go

• Deconstructing from religion

• Growing a growth-oriented mindset from a fixed one

If the garden is a place where you feel closest to spirit, this is for you.

Closing Thoughts

You don’t have to move on.
You can plant a space where memory lives, breath by breath, bloom by bloom.
A place that changes with the seasons, just like you.

Let’s begin with what hurts.
Let’s build something beautiful there,

together.

✨ Want to Learn More?

If you’re grieving and don’t know where to begin, I’d be honored to walk with you through it.

You can read more details and book a session here: Garden Coaching

If you're not sure where to start, a simple consultation is a beautiful first step.

I’m dreaming into some future offerings to support this work like grief journals with unique prompts, printable altar designs, and custom memorial garden signs.

If you’d like to be the first to know when they’re ready, you can join The Grove for early access and behind-the-scenes updates.

Lost in reflection while witnessing the ancient lands of the Algonquin