Help Z Griss create a film on Grief and Eros

In these tender times how do we tremble open, and not closed?

What does intact village look and feel like?

Help us make this film that teaches us how to grieve and how to love life!

This film carries forth the legacy of grief ritualist Sobonfu Somé. She brought grief ritual from the Dagara people of Burkina Faso to turtle island (the U.S..) This film honors and carries forth her legacy so those of us in the West may continue to heal through grief ritual. This film grows intact village through healing retreats where groups watch the film and are guided through a similar ritual arc. The intention is to embody more love together, to express our devotion to each others’ healing and transform trauma so future generations may inherit more solidarity, generosity, and joy.

Our goal:

$95,000 by July 1

Here's a sneak peak of our cast on set after filming!

Who this film will serve:

1. Social justice activists and visionary liberation leaders who have lost hope, feel compassion fatigue, long for joy, or feel alone. This film offers healing and inspiration. It centers intimacy between luscious vibrant bodies across race and gender experiences who are willing to tremble open, connect, and heal. It calls us home to our hearts, to create more relational resilience, joy, awe, and pleasure in our liberation movements.

2. Directors of sexuality conferences, festivals, and professional training who want to create more awareness, diversity, and heart-centered inclusivity in the sexuality field. This film shows how sexual energy can be devoted to collective liberation as a resource for transforming trauma. It is a welcoming and generous way to bring more awareness to communities that may be isolated or privileged. It calls us to uplift our collective from a more integrated place.

3. People with tender hearts who are learning about grief rituals for the first time. It inspires people to see a new way to heal, to join their first ritual, and sense the world as a friendlier place.

4. Participants at future rituals to have a more transformational experience. It centers bodies who are often unseen and unheard. It locates us inside a more truthful diverse collective healing. It shows how our bodies are designed to heal through grief and eros.

What’s in this film?

We will gather for 1 week to create and film 4 rituals. Each day we will create an altar for one theme below. We will move through what wants to heal and what wants to be danced. We will bring you with us into sacred witnessing through the camera.

1. Secure attachment & village: healing from abandonment including ruptures and discontinuity in family, ancestry, and community

2. Intimacy & eros: reclaiming eros and sacred sexuality as part of our nature, our divinity, and a community resource

3. Healing from racism: expressing rage and grief to spiritually cleanse ourselves from the violence and distortion of white supremacy, to reclaim our humanity and healthy relationship with our cultural roots

4. Healing from sexism and the gender binary: freeing ourselves from gender conditioning, transphobia, systemic and internalized patriarchy, to restore the magic of our gender expression as a homecoming, a euphoric and spiritual act of liberation

Rest:

We will pause to take a day of rest midweek.

Our team:

We are dancers, lovers, filmmakers, ritualists, visionaries and healers. Three of us have been guiding grief rituals for years. Three of us worked directly with Sobonfu Somé. One of us, Coby, has been connecting with the Dagara people including the families of Sobonfu and Malidoma Somé through frequent visits to Burkina Faso. We are grateful and generous humans who will be honoring our ancestral heritage. Coby will prepare the food our ancestors ate so we may offer this healing to those who came before us, and those to come.

Z Griss (they/them) grief & eros ritualist, dancer, love coach, kink & gender educator for collective liberation. www.EmbodyMoreLove.com

Victor Warring (he/him) somatic sexuality educator, erotic activist, coach, dancer. www.ReWildEros.com

Bernadette Pleasant (she/her) grief ritualist, dancer, founder of the Emotional Institute & 400 years, a somatic based anti-racism program. www.theEmotionalInstitute.com

KJ Dahlaw (they/them) dance artist, founder of Unruly Body Tanztheater, queer eco-somatic dance theater. www.UnrulyBodyTanztheater.com

Coby Leibman (he/him/they) somatic practitioner, grief ritualist, bridge holder with Dagara culture, devotion through nourishing foods. www.CobyLeibman.com

Mer Al Dao (she/her) film as process, ritual & relationship www.Gualina.com

Where the money goes:

Bare Bones

Dream

Please note our financial goals may evolve as new needs arise.

Best ways you can help:

1. Donate

2. Invite your friends to donate

3. Be a super donor and match donations

4. Connect us with donors, visibility allies, and hosts

How Z first discovered grief ritual

Note on Sobonfu’s wishes for the legacy of this work and reciprocity:

At every grief ritual I attended with Sobonfu a white person would ask if we had her blessing to share this work. Sobonfu repeatedly encouraged us to share this work, all of us including white people. She said we in the West need it more than her own village. She also asked us to credit the Dagara Tribe. "If you use your neighbor’s pot to cook a meal, enjoy the meal and tell everyone you used your neighbor’s pot to make it.”

Sobonfu asked us to donate proceeds from each grief ritual to Wisdom Spring. She played a part in forming this organization to support access to drinking water as well as honor and preserve the wisdom of indigenous cultures. We discovered after Sobonfu’s death that Wisdom Spring is no longer sending our donations to the Dagara Tribe or working in her area of Burkina Faso. Coby is in the process of creating a new funding program for us and other grief ritualists to directly support the Dagara Tribe. While this program is developing we are sending donations directly to Sobonfu’s family and her village.

Music credits for the trailer:

"Healing" by Sampa the Great

"There's a reason for today" by Heritage O.P.

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