Many people view the act of grieving as a private affair — something to be hidden. Priscilla Tennant, associate pastor at Chestnut Hill United Church, disagrees.

“Grief is going to show up, and the more you try to tamp it down, the more you’re going to deal with the consequences of that,” Tennant said. “If you put attention and effort, especially in a way that is communal, where you can get support from other people and you know that you’re not alone, you can make space for what’s going to show up anyway.”

As an advocate for communal grieving, Tennant is a member of Salt Trails Collective, a Philadelphia-based group founded in 2021. Six healers, artists, ministers, and activists work together to offer spaces where grief is witnessed in community. Through gatherings, storytelling, rituals, and creative expression, Salt Trails aims to build resilience, connection, and healing in people.

One of the gatherings held by Salt Trails is called Singing Our Grief. This event takes place on the third Friday of every month, typically in Chestnut Hill United Church, where an average of 20-25 people attend.

During Singing Our Grief, participants are encouraged to take part in various activities focused on dismantling the isolation that often accompanies grief. People share poetry, talk about what they’re grieving, stretch and move their bodies, and, of course, sing. The songs are about grief and hope, but are mostly spiritual instead of religious. Overall, the program is nondenominational.

“I kind of think of this space as a church outside of church,” Tennant said. “There’s a lot of people who show up who probably don’t have faith communities for all kinds of reasons, but you can still be invited to do some of the things that might happen in that space.”

Another aspect of Singing Our Grief is inviting people to make sounds to express their feelings. This “sound bath” allows participants to let loose and make whatever guttural sounds emerge.

Tennant said the goal of Singing Our Grief is not to make people feel better. Instead, it’s to create a room to contain what they are dealing with and process their emotions. As a result, however, many people do walk away feeling better.

One of the misconceptions about grief is that there is only one kind: grieving the death of someone we cared about. To disprove this idea, Tennant turns to Francis Weller, a psychotherapist and author, who delineated five different “gates” of grief. These categories are 1) All that we love we will lose, 2) The places that did not receive love, 3) The sorrows of the world, 4) What we expected but did not receive, and 5) Ancestral grief.

“There are things like ancestral grief, or what happened to our predecessors and how we continue to carry that in our bodies and spirits,” Tennant said. “Or grieving the things you thought would happen and expected that never came to fruition, or grieving the parts of yourself that are hard to love.”

People experiencing all of these types of grieving are welcome at Singing Our Grief.

Grief “is a very normal part of being a human,” Tennant said. “When we do it privately, it isolates us and makes us feel alone and makes us feel like nobody can understand what we’re going through, when in fact everybody is dealing with this. … So, this is a beautiful opportunity to come together to say, ‘I’m not alone.’ I do think there’s no better way to feel close to someone than hearing their stories of heartbreak.”

The next Singing Our Grief event will take place on Sept. 18 at 7 p.m. at Chestnut Hill United Church, 8812 Germantown Ave., Chestnut Hill.

Maggie Dougherty can be reached at Margaret@chestnuthilllocal.com.