Journey with Death, Lament and our Film "The Grief Astronomers"

This email contains updates on:

• 2025 Intake for Journey with Death, Death Doula Preparation Course
• 2026 Lament Retreat "Bear Awakens" with Tuomas Rounakari and Alexandra Derwen
• News of the "Grief Astronomers" Film made about our Death Doula course

Death Doula Preparation Course 2025 Intake

We have 2 intakes in 2025 for our Death Doula Preparation Course; you sign up according to which retreat you would like to attend; the retreat marks the formal start of your Journey with Death which continues online through to the end of 2026. We have two retreats this year both are filling up beautifully but still have places left on them if you are called. You can opt for either:

12th - 17th September 2025, at Rasbo Retreat Centre, Sweden

or 30th September to 5th October 2025, at Trefacwn, Pembrokeshire, South Wales

There are three core components to our Course offering:

1. Community, which you access straight away upon joining, online community calls weekly, skills shares monthly, the back catalogue of skills shares recordings and a juicy newsletter
2. Retreat, 5 nights, 4 full days in beautiful retreat centre for an immersive, powerful and transformative experience of sitting with Death as our Teacher. You are given the Journey with Death journal / workbook when we meet in person; which you fill out over the coming 12 - 18 months.
3. Online Journey with Death, monthly zooms with your cohort (the two retreat cohorts merge), accountability and support as you work through the workbook. Skilled facilitation and WhatsApp group for ideas sharing and mutual support.

Cost depends on choice of retreat; payments plans available.
Check out: https://www.journeywithdeath.com/2025-death-doula-course

2026 Bear Awakens Lament Retreat

20th - 22nd March 2026 the Bear Awakens again at Trefacwn, Pembrokeshire, South Wales. This is the third year this retreat has run and for the 4th time. Bringing together two world class lament teachers and leaders Tuomas Rounakari and Alexandra Derwen the Bear Awakens draws on the traditions and myths of Bear Feasts of Finland and Siberia. We don't have this on our website because it will sell out within the week! There are only 12 places on the retreat and we fill them on a first come first served basis. If you are called to explore your most authentic emotional landscape in a beautiful setting, with the very best lament facilitators, with art, dance, music, play, ceremony and ritual; then email sacredcirclecic@gmail.com to register your interest. The cost is £650 for a shared bunk room, £700 for a bed in twin room and £750 for single occupancy room. A deposit of £250 secures your place.

If you have attended a Bear Awakens previously then you will have already received the email about Dragon Awakens the following weekend; taking lament, dance and magic to the next level!

The Grief Astronomers Film

In September 2025, just 8 weeks after Alexandra's mother died, a film crew and some very courageous souls gathered in North Wales, at Alexandra's home to film the death doula course. We had been with the working title of "Death is our Teacher" and yet, when we convened last weekend to watch the private screening, it had a different name... "The Grief Astronomers" drawing on a line from a poem by Andrea Gibson:

A difficult life is not less worth living than a gentle one

Joy is simply easier to carry

than sorrow And your heart

could lift a city from how long

you’ve spent holding what’s been

nearly impossible to hold.

This world needs those

who know how to do that.

Those who could find a tunnel

that has no light at the end of it,

and hold it up like a telescope

to know the darkness

also contains truths that could

bring the light to its knees.

Grief astronomer, adjust the lens,

look close, tell us what you see.

The film will be taken by its director Alexis Gregorieff to film festivals through the summer before then it will be released for sharing. When it is possible to share it we will hold a screener for our wider community and announce that here, so watch this space! The film is STUNNING by the way, just a beautiful and tender exploration of the power of lament and catharsis.