Welcome to Grief Threads
a 5 week deep dive into the mystery-teachings of grief through cloth, quilting, and art-based ritual
Live on Zoom ~ Begins February 23
Welcome to your magical art studio cave for transforming emotional intensity.
this is grief-spelunking the artist and alchemist’s way.
in spite of it’s villainous reputation, you’re grief-curious.
you see a twinkle in grief’s eye that suggests there’s a secret magic behind all the Doom and Gloom fanfare.
you’ve got a deep knowing that grief is a kind of cosmic doula herself— a guide into the deeper mysteries of being alive.
she’s got initiation codes, and is calling to those who are brave enough to lean in…
In the world of Grief Threads…
you’ll bring the fabric and cloth that hold significance to you.
think: your loved one’s old clothes, the familiar dish towel that always hung in your grandmother’s kitchen, the pillow case you’ve been crying into for the last six months, the sweater you wore the night of the break-up.
These materials are the secret side door for entering the land of grief.
Grief’s domain is the hands, it wants to be metabolized through mindful creative action.
When we move our hands with others, stitch by stitch, we say to our grief,
‘ok I’m listening, I wanna hear what you have to teach me’
so much of loss and grief is very abstract. but fabric is tangible. a needle and thread is very graspable.
So we cut our materials up together, reassemble and restitch these potent textiles into a cherished work of art, embedded with all we’re carrying. this is grief alchemy.
we act as if we don’t have all the answers, and that perhaps there’s a kind of wisdom lurking in these fibers that surround us.
Each week, we’ll gather live on zoom to sew together, talk about our materials, learn somatic tools for surfing the grief waves, and be guided by the mystery of Endings big and small.
Additionally, you’ll receive a teaching on a new sewing technique or textile collaging project. This will be recorded thank GOD so you can pause, rewind, zoom in, and take your time.
Choose your cohort:
two unique and intimate gathering spaces to support the specific loss you’re navigating
Team Big Death
This group is for my people weathering the death of a loved one ~ this is high octane acute loss
Sundays 3-5 pm EST - begins Feb 23
Team Little Death
This is for folks navigating everyday loss and turbulence : 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
Tuesdays 5-7 pm EST - begins Feb 25
In our five week journey, you’ll discover what you want to make with your materials, and I’ll be there to support and instruct you ~
♾️ 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.
At the end we’ll have the most magical show and tell where you get to basque in the freaky genius of your fellow grief-surfer art pals and what they’ve been making.
when we lose someone we love, the actual experience of death is often so shocking to our system that we get thrust into total abstraction.
wait are they gone? really?? gone where? but they were just here. how long has it been? two weeks or two years?
time stretches like wet gum and then snaps back as a cruelly slammed door. we are lost in the void of abstraction.
here, death is just a concept. ‘gone’ is just a word.
we need to touch something real.
we who get left here in the earth realm, with our very dense human bodies, need to touch material things to help move our grief along its strange, crooked path.
this is why we work with fabric.
this is why we put a needle and thread between our fingers. so we can feel something real, and teach ourselves about here and not here.
“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
“Melissa is curating a forum that’s the antithesis to old American ways of being together. It’s real community. It’s non heirarchical and non transactional. There’s nothing to consume. We’re learning to be together in radical new ways. We come together with our shit and just be with it all. It’s a real place to belong. We came for class but got each other! It’s why no one wanted to leave at the end of each class! She’s tapping into ancient wisdom here.
🖤 Lucy, Grief Threads participant
Listen, you don’t need to be an expert at sewing.
you don’t really need much experience at all.
what you DO need is a curiosity about the transformative power of needle and thread, and a suspicion that moving your hands creatively with others is a powerful act of healing.
we’ll teach you the rest.
🧵 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.
Investment:
Early Bird Pricing:
$364
Now thru Feb. 7
Full Price:
$436
after Feb. 7
🕯️ 10 hours of live community learning and sharing in an intimate, magical container
🕯️ Recorded lessons of sewing techniques
🕯️ Recordings of all classes and bonus materials in case you can't show up live
🕯️ Curated mood board for inspiration
Payment plans available - please reach out at
hello@melissaword.com for a payment plan
FAQ
Is this a hand-sewing class or a machine sewing class?
Both - this is a choose your own adventure experience. You will learn techniques for both the machine and hand-sewing. This, however, is NOT a class where you will learn to use your sewing machine if you have never used one. Students will choose a project to make based on examples given in class, and receive instruction and guidance to support their process.
when we start making things with our hands, our internal world shifts. There’s movement. There’s flow and new information becomes available to us.
“you opened up parts of me, especially artistically that are very shy without being beckoned. I feel like you help me hear the spirits in me, because I feel so safe in your containers. Thank you, thank you”
-LS
As your facilitator, I’ll be drawing on my experience as an improvisational artist and death-midwife, 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.
🕯 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.
Disclaimer: I am not a trained therapist or mental health counselor. I am however an artist and trained Death Midwife. And I am someone who has been mapping themes of death, loss, and ephemerality through my art making practice for many years. 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.
Due to the nature of this container, all sales are final.
In-studio photos by Jamie Hopper