creative grief processing
through quilting and ritual
live on zoom
fall 2024 cohort
to be announced
welcome to your five week grief and art-making retreat :
exploring the magic of textiles as a way to do grief differently with others ✂️
the unravelly bits of yourself are calling ~
we’re making things with our hands to make things feel less terrible!
Two Cohorts
Team Big Death
this group is for my people weathering the death of a loved one, this is high octane acute loss
Team Little Death
this group is for those of us surfing the waves of life’s cruel turbulence, deep aches and agonizing disappointments : global death, climate grief, loss of a job, a relationship ending, friend estrangement, loss of a dream, loss of identity, the grief you can’t name but you feel in your bones
each group is small, max 12 people
grief is weird and hard and gnarly to weather on our own.
we need the people.
we need inspired rituals that are of real substance and depth.
You’ll bring the fabric that’s related to the grief you’ve experienced, and use it as a secret side door for entering the inner landscape of loss.
think: the sacred family heirlooms, the familiar dish towel that always hung in your grandmother’s kitchen, the dress your mother wore on her first date with your dad, clothes from another time in your life
THEN WE’LL CUT EVERYTHING UP!
CAN YOU FREAKING BELIEVE IT??
We’ll reassemble and restitch these potent textiles into a cherished work of art, embedded with all we’re carrying.
Each week, you’ll learn a new textile collaging technique.
Then you get to decide what you want to make -
🌀 maybe you’ll make a quilt (I’ll help you with that)
🌀 maybe you’ll make something to hang on your wall and admire daily
🌀 maybe you’ll stitch your collage to a favorite jacket to wear as a protective spell
🌀 maybe you’ll make a micro fashion line of grief capes and submit them to a group exhibition at a fancy european gallery for others to see and heal their relationship to grief.
🌀 maybe you’ll just come to class and hold fabric in your hands and listen to other people talk, and that will be just right too.
we'll write, we'll breathe, we'll meditate, tell stories, get lost in ritual, and we’ll sew.
when we start making things with our hands, our internal world shifts. There’s movement. There’s flow and new information available to us.
we’re transmuting the heavier things we’ve been carrying into something buoyant, and MY GOD MAYBE EVEN BEAUTIFUL
“Honestly, I just loved the whole experience. It was amazing. I knew I was going to love class, but it just exceeded my expectations. It gave me a good space to process and grow as a person, and was a safe space to explore and get back into my sewing. I just can’t stop talking about it, I've told everyone.”
🖤 Chaney, Grief Threads participant
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If you’re like, wow ok this looks cool and different but I dunno I feel so tender with all my Big Feelings, I don’t know if I wanna be around strangers ~ this is what our time will look like:
💧 In our opening zoom call, we’ll meet each other and share what’s ripe to be shared in a guided format.
🧵 We'll uncover the stories in our materials
🕯 We'll talk tearing our fabric as a grief ritual
🧵 We'll have patchwork demonstrations, exploring different methods for sewing our scraps back together.
💧 You’ll be guided through grounding techniques to be more IN your body, and more available to the embodied wisdom grief wants to share with you.
🕯 We’ll talk about work spaces as altars, and creative practice as ritual devotion to your life.
🧵 We'll learn different appliqué techniques and share what we've made with each other.
💧 Our time will be split equally between opportunities for personal sharing, skill learning and quiet sewing time together.
🕯 The closing live call will be our show and tell time - a space to share revelations, aha’s and your gorgeous, gorgeous art.
Workshop Cost: $340
🧵 10 hours of live community learning and sharing in an intimate, magical container
🧵 Recordings of all classes and bonus materials, in case you can't show up live
🧵 Curated mood board for inspiration
I have a few cost-free spots per cohort designated for BIPOC students
Please email hello@melissaword.com to reserve a ticket.
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“I have been fortunate enough to experience a number of forms of grief support, but Grief Threads invited and allowed me to approach the story — the literal and figurative fabric — of my grief afresh. To tear and fold and juxtapose and stitch the story of grief until it actually resembled the loss and the yearning that have been so difficult to share. I will treasure the time I’ve spent around Melissa’s campfire with this gang of shiny grief explorers.”
🖤 Rina, participant
“Trying to better understand and process my own grief, the advice from my therapist was to seek a “threshold event” - some kind of ritual or observance. Hours later a friend posted info about the Grief Threads workshop and it felt like a bit of synchronicity. Melissa’s workshop was a safe space to share and move through grief, all while using a creative outlet to celebrate a personal rebirth of sorts. Such a memorable experience that I couldn’t recommend more.”
🖤 Tony, participant
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We’re getting about this grief work with the verve of an artist.
A few less rules. A bit less planning. Welcoming uncertainty.
As your facilitator, I’ll be drawing on my experience as an improvisational artist and death-midwife-in-training, sharing what I know about uncertain creative action as a balm for grief.
Since 2011, I've been mapping the influence of death and loss on my art-making practices in performance, writing, drawing and voice work. You can read more HERE.
“Grief Threads was a truly special container that I still haven’t fully understood or processed even now, quite some time after its completion. To be in such a warm, accepting and joyful space as Mel Word creates, and at the same time, to open the crustiest and most abused of grief boxes was a pretty surreal experience. But I definitely believe the grief boxes must be opened. And I also believe that opening them in communion with others is an incredible way to create and nurture both ourselves and a greater community.”
🖤 Meri, Grief Threads participant
FAQ
How much of a sewing wiz do I need to be?
This class is open to all levels of sewing experience.
We’ll be learning techniques that involve both a sewing machine and involve hand-stitching. You do not need to be an expert at either. You could take this whole class and not touch a sewing machine and go pure analog with a needle and thread.
I find working with the machine and hand-stitching to each have their own healing properties, so feel it out.
There will be time to ask questions and get clarification but I will not be teaching the fundamentals of sewing during class time.
I have video tutorials on hand-sewing if you’ve literally never threaded a needle - these get shared in our class dashboard. There’s also a million youtube tutorials based on your machine to get you started.
A list of materials will be included in your welcome email after signing up for class.
So is this a class about grief or a class about sewing?
Both! We are honoring the cathartic and the generative aspects of being a human! We will spend half of our time playing with creative ways to process our *stuff* and half learning techniques for making our textile collages.
Can I make whatever I want?
This class is SPACIOUS AF, meaning there's a lot of freedom for you to follow what feels good to you within the thoughtfully curated bounds of our time together, and the sewing techniques shared.
This is choose your own adventure art camp.
I'll share examples and how-tos of what could be made with our patchwork assemblages, and about half way through our retreat, you’ll start to have a sense of what you’d like to make. The point is to follow your creative impulses. I’ll be here to guide and coach you on bringing your project to fruition.
What have past students made?
A lot of wearable art - dazzling collages stitched onto jackets, dresses, secret inside pockets to hold pictures and trinkets.
altar cloths, memory cloths, a full blown quilt, wall hangings, a tattery, raw-edged tapestry to throw over a chair.
Why this class?
Grief Threads is born from my process of learning how to quilt in 2021. Like so many of us, I come from a lineage rich with seamstresses, needlepoint artists, everyday menders, and quilters. I feel deeply connected to my ancestors and my family when I play with thread and textiles. I also find that fabric can hold SO MANY MEMORIES, and working with them brings feelings up to the surface. My process of making and sharing patchwork jackets with the world has been a deeply healing and life-affirming creative practice. I'd like to pass on the knowledge with the same generosity and spirit of care with which I learned.
Disclaimer
I am neither an expert on grief nor an expert sewist. I am not a trained therapist or mental health counselor. I am someone who has been mapping themes of death, loss, and ephemerality through my art making practice for many years. I come to you as an artist first. My expertise lies in creating vibrant, nourishing containers for people to enter and be their whole, messy selves.
We will be diving into brave territory that our dominant culture doesn't offer much of a blueprint on navigating. We'll traverse and experiment together. However you show up to class is valid and valued, and whoever arrives to this zoomscape will shape the experience for all of us.
🕯 The Creation of This Class is an Offering 🕯
To my ascended Papa, Benjamin Carrington Word,
my best friend and Spirit Coach!
Special Thanks
Big shout out to Cody Cook-Parrott and Christi Johnson who taught me to quilt.
To my Mama who taught me to sew and tried to teach me quilting back when I was too young and impatient to receive the blessing! Aunt Lee-Lee for the first jacket that inspired the Soft Armor project, and the lineage of sewing ancestors who show up when I sit down at the Singer.
This class honors and acknowledges the rich history of Black American quilters, particularly in my home states of Alabama and Georgia, who originated the art form we know as improvisational patchwork.
