Dagara Style Day-Long Grief Ritual

Join us for a day-long deep dive into Dagara-style ritual,

as taught to Wendy and Beth by beloved Dagara elders-now-ancestors, Malidoma and Sobonfu Somé.

For more information, email  griefritual2023@gmail.com. 

Ritual is a balm for the grief we carry.

This form of ritual offers connection to community, to the land, to rhythm and song, to the ancestors, to our personal and collective grief. Grief can manifest in many ways--rage, numbness, distractibility, irritability, depression--the list goes on. Without regular practices to help unburden ourselves, we can easily to become bogged down, overwhelmed, and isolated. Join us for a short-but-profound day-long experience of the Dagara-style ritual, guided by Wendy Kaas and Beth Erlander.

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A core part of Malidoma's and Sobonfu's soul's missions were to expose the Western world to the ancestral wisdom of the Dagara--a people who understand deeply how to ritualize emotion and connect to the animate world. Their teachings aimed to alleviate many of the ills caused by modernity. Therefore, this ritual offering is not only in service to healing our own grief, but to honor the tireless hours Malidoma and Sobonfu dedicated to helping heal the Western psyche. Offering this ritual is not something we take lightly as white women. The racial and cultural complexities are vast, and we step into leadership with humility, openness, and solidarity with BIPOC people from all walks of life.

Wendy Kaas, MDiv, is a ritual leader, teacher, drummer, healer, singer, griever, and listener. A queer Ashkenazi Jew, Wendy was a student of Malidoma's from 2009-2020, completing his Ritual Leadership Training and receiving his blessing to be a carrier of Dagara-style ritual. She had the good fortune of attending a grief ritual with Sobonfu in 2015.

She has been on the path to support people in their grief through ritual for over a decade. She is dedicated to the healing alchemy that occurs in the emotional and energetic realms, and honors the profound healing gifts she has received from her teachers, the ancestors, and the elements. 

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Beth Erlander comes from Swedish and German ancestors. She's a therapist and is currently pursuing a healing path through deep connections with the ancestors, the land, living ritual and the creative arts. She's a grief worker that knows that the best way to access more life energy is through an active grief practice. She is trained as a transpersonal art therapist from Naropa University. But her main training comes from being pulled into an apprenticeship with grief when her life partner became a quadriplegic. That's how she found Sobonfu and the Dagara grief ritual. She did three grief rituals with Sobonfu and then began leading these herself and later with Wendy. In 2019 she was honored to train with Elder Malidoma in his cowry shell divination program. She now proudly offers these divinations for others to connect to their own ancestors and find more clarity to live their lives.