Grief Tending 

“The Keening woman is known by many names in cultures around the world, leading the community through their grief, and guiding the soul home. 

 

Throughout the highlands and islands of Scotland and Ireland, there were the women who stepped into the role of the keening women. Liminal figures, living on the thresholds, pulling their black shawls tight around them they stepped between the worlds and let their voices express the grief of all those gathered. 

 

She held her own grief tight breathing through it and into the words she sang, her voice breaking, cracking, melodies splintering into shards of grief. Those present were invited to join her together in expressing their loss, despair and deep grief.  

 

In her liminal place, between the worlds, behind her stood all the keening woman who had ever lamented, each ancestor who mourned, back thousands of generations. With the power of all that accumulated anger, and despair the keening woman cries, roars and grieves. She keens for all the mothers, fathers and for all injustices and every wrongdoing against women and children, four-leggeds and winged, grasslands, seas, forests and mountains.       

 

We too are invited into the circle, to feel our grief and let our voices speak, for it is only through grief that we can weave ourselves back to life and become truly alive again. It offers a resilience, a rebirth for an uncertain future. 

 

Within the keen, there is a word of magic to keep the soul safe, as it moves from this world to the next. Let us utter the word and keep woman safe, keep deer and otter, salmon, seal and orca safe. Keep mountain, loch and ancient forest safe, keep standing stone and corrie safe. Let us embody the word so that our dancing and lamenting weaves protection.

 

Gather the keeners, for we need new rituals. We need each other, we need the tears, laughter and love, we need the magic and lamenting as the world unravels.”

 

-Jude Lally, excerpt from “Death is an Old Woman”