Grief Alchemy
Categories: General
Grief work is healing work
Activism is often fueled by personal experiences of suffering—and grief can support our activism. But when grief is left unaddressed, it leads to burnout, frustration, and disconnection. And until we can face, tend to, and move through the griefs we carry, we can’t fully heal…or show up in embodied community for the causes that drive us.
Download an excerpt of Grieving While Black | Learn more about Grief Alchemy™
Breeshia Wade
Breeshia—author, Zen Buddhist Chaplain, and teacher—addresses the nuances of grief in her work. She explores our fear of future loss, helping us understand the myriad connections between grief and oppression—and how unexamined grief enacts material harm on marginalized bodies.
Breeshia is the author of Grieving While Black: An Antiracist Take on Oppression and Sorrow. Her background and training as a Zen Buddhist chaplain employed by hospices and hospitals informs her approach to using grief as a tool for social transformation.
Breeshia’s work
Grieving While Black
Grieving While Black: An Antiracist Take on Oppression and Sorrow is a revelation—and an invitation to examine the threads of grief that run throughout our lives. Wade helps us better understand how different expressions of grief intersect with our relationships and communities…and why coming to terms with our grief is both a moral imperative and prerequisite for true healing.
Most of us understand grief as sorrow experienced after a loss—the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, or a change in life circumstance. Breeshia Wade approaches grief as something that is bigger than what’s already happened to us—as something that is connected to what we fear, what we love, and what we aspire toward. Drawing on stories from her own life as a Black woman and from the people she has midwifed through the end of life, she connects sorrow not only to specific incidents but also to the ongoing trauma that is part and parcel of systemic oppression.
Wade reimagines our relationship to power, accountability, and boundaries and points to the long-term work we must all do in order to address systemic trauma perpetuated within our interpersonal relationships. Each of us has a moral obligation to attend to our own grief so that we can responsibly engage with others. Wade elucidates grief in every aspect of our lives, providing a map back to ourselves and allowing the reader to heal their innate wholeness.
Download an excerpt of Grieving While Black
Grief Alchemy™
Transforming Grief into Empowerment for College Students
Empowering the next generation of leaders through healing, resilience, and social change.
Many student activists fight for causes that reflect their passion for justice, but underneath their drive lies unresolved grief—grief that has never been fully acknowledged or processed. Grief Alchemy™ aims to help students recognize and explore this grief, empowering them to heal while channeling their emotions toward creating change. By facing their pain head-on, students can gain a clearer sense of purpose and resilience, ensuring their activism is sustainable and not fueled solely by unprocessed emotions.
Support or learn more about Grief Alchemy™
About the Author
North Atlantic Books
North Atlantic Books (NAB) is an independent nonprofit publisher committed to a bold exploration of the relationships between mind, body, spirit, culture, and nature. Founded in Vermont in 1974 and operating in Berkeley since 1977, NAB has been at the forefront of publishing a diverse range of original books in bodywork and somatics, ecology and sustainability, health and healing, Indigenous cultures and anthropology, psychology and personal growth, social justice and engaged activism, and spirituality and liminality. NAB’s Blue Snake Books imprint is one of the largest sources of internal and historical martial-arts books in the world.
