⊹ G A T H E R W I T H U S ⊹ Saturday, April 20, 2024

for "Grief As Sanctuary: A Land Gathering and Fundraiser for Únashay"

This event will be at Únashay Sanctuary on Tewa lands in Abiquiu, New Mexico with Dr. Bayo Akomolafe, Únashay and Gerard’s House to explore grief as sanctuary in these times. (All in person on the land!)

It will include a live talk from Dr. Bayo Akomolafe, (Únashay Steward and Board Advisor), an open teahouse, silent auction, deep community sharing, land ritual, play and song. All proceeds will be considered unrestricted donations that Únashay's board will strategically direct towards reachable community care and sanctuary for the grieving, and the internal staffing to bring it forth.

⊹ More on us:

"Únashay is a non-profit grief sanctuary that offers reachable community care and presence for the grieving of New Mexico, and beyond, through the arts, land-based offerings and interspecies companionship; all whilst forging a new emergent culture for grief in all its many forms."

It is a living experiment, born of the disturbance of living in a world that doesn’t know how to be with what is breaking, when everything is breaking. In a culture where presence and support for the grieving is painfully out of reach⎯ we want to explore this abandoned territory by building reachable sanctuary for the grieving, where the gesture we hold is to court rather than “fix” what hurts; to listen, and travel with the Rio Abaja Rio “river beneath the river”. This vibrancy running from below, when not tended, begins to erode and turn into a thousand different arrows upon itself and the ‘other’; and when tended, flowers into a thousand different petals.

We want to tend this deeper river, and build a culture from the flowers rather than the arrows.”

- Aimee Wilson, Visionary and Executive Director of Únashay

Visit https://unashayhome.com to learn more.

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Among our emerging offerings, are:

* Regional Noria grief cafés- monthly guided and exploratory sharing of what hurts, in curious, reverent community.
* Grief and/ or Artist land residencies - for individuals, groups, and more to rest, create, and be met by grief companions according to each guests' needs (i.e. body workers, qualified therapists, artists, cooks, elders and more).
* Trained on-call 'Companion teams' (of practitioners, volunteers, artists) for everything from the acute aftermath of loss, to hosting/ tending Life Memorials, to the ongoing need for connection and care.

We deeply recognize the imbalanced scale of access for under-resourced community, which is why building free/ affordable community offerings and care for the grieving is paramount. Your attendence and contribution will help us gather support for these very needs, and ultimately build an 'every day life model' of grief sanctuary, that might perhaps be a blueprint for others.

A gift in return:

As a small thank you for your contribution, we're excited to be co-crafting a short film offering of interviews among community, song, art, grief care and visual beauty of our process. All who attend and/ or donate will be gifted this upon its completion.

*** THIS EVENT REQUIRES TICKETS PURCHASED IN ADVANCE ***

To purchase tickets, click on the orange "Donate & Tickets" button to the upper right of this page. If you'd like to make an additional donation along with your ticket, you can do so during checkout.

This communal held event will be generously held by many dear friends, neighbors, alliances, mentors, and board members including (but not limited to!) Lizzie Hart, Holly Truhlar, Jessi Rado, Dajé Ōlah, Mirabai Starr and Gerard's House.

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The following are notes from Únashay Board members on the need for grief sanctuary at this time:

"The work of making sanctuary is the work of sitting with the troubling, the unsettled, the irruption of the unexpected. As home shifts beneath our feet, we will need more than just our convictions about right action and justice to meet the moment; we might need a new sense of groundedness. New feet altogether. We might need to take up the vocation of libating the ground as a cartography of exile. And what better to use for our libations than our tears?”
- Dr. Bayo Akomolafe, Únashay Board Member

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"The beauty of a grief sanctuary such as Únashay is that the land and more-than-human world can help hold the sorrows that need to be witnessed and metabolized. And, there is an energy, a magic, that is built when we return to such a place time and time again. There’s safety in this type of sanctuary that allows us to make necessary journeys into the underworld and back. A knowing that we’re cared for, knowing that we’re welcomed and held in the threshold."
- Holly Truhlar, Únashay Board Director

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"A grief sanctuary is a space to cry aloud, to pound the earth, to face a vast landscape and begin to place one's personal sense of loss in a wider context, to sing and wail around fire, to be seen and fully met in a broken state. Únashay is a space to normalize this metamorphic phase of love-grief.” - Jessi Rado, Únashay Board Director

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"Únashay is a beacon in the desert, and will provide support to so many as they embark on their own journey through the complex landscape of grief.” - Marah Moore, Únashay Board President

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"Únashay is a place where people can take refuge from a “world-out-there”, so steeped in willful forgetting, even systematic denial, of the wisdom in grieving. Our collective wellness is the groundwater, Únashay is the well, and those who explore their grief at Únashay are those who both drink from and replenish the waters with each drop of their remembering.”
- Lizzie Hart, Únashay Board Secretary

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“We need places, like the gouged out arroyos and waterways of the desert, for grief to spill. A topography of place and presence, carved by the grief that runs through it, to allow this river to have its way. By 'grief sanctuary', I mean an attempt to build a landscape for the waters to move. A landscape that is vast enough to match the inscape of grief of our times.”
- Aimee Wilson, Listener/ Executive Director of Únashay

A transparent note:

With this "Give Butter" platform, we are asked to set a financial goal for the event campaign in its entirety, which is more of an annual goal than solely the event date (4/20/24) goal. All this to say, given all the needs for sanctuary developement, we are reaching high, knowing such resourcing could help us birth free grief residencies, nuanced community care, and bring forth the sanctuary.

Grief As Sanctuary: A Gathering and Fundraiser for Únashay

Grief as Sancutary

Team Members