#1. (Five Years of) Navigating the Wilderness

A misnomer, and An Emerging Introduction

I’ve been working on something, a tending of sorts. It started as a process, a way to find myself after earth shattering losses. It didn’t have a shape, but it did have a name. Five years have lapsed since finding that name amongst the bracken and birch of my local woodland, in a space that held me in my own grief(s). As I return this name to my practice, and stretch into a new identity for Navigating the Wilderness, I am drawn to reflect on the shaping of this practice so far.

Navigating the Wilderness: The Guiding Principle

In the preceding years, Navigating the Wilderness has meant something. It’s been in digital spaces, through Instagram, as a personal blog, a sentence speaking of something familiar. I’ve heard it at events, in friends living rooms, in introductions.

“Oh! You’re Navigating the Wilderness! You do grief stuff, right?”

At times it felt a little disjointed, tangled up in my familial grief. Still, it served as a guide. A humbling reminder to tread with care. When discomfort with grief cast shadows over my work, my relationships, my day to day life, it was a promise to stay the course. To shelter when needed. To strengthen the tools and sense of direction that had led me this far.

In 2018, I dedicated half the year to examining grief in a societal context. This peer based research culminated in a single evening showcase exhibition, talk, and written reflection, outlining the landscape of grief and grief care as I saw it. Shortly into 2019, I resigned my reading, as I welcomed a new little into my life. On the turn of 2019 into 2020, I reacquainted myself with the academic year. I found the field of Thanatology, the multidisciplinary study of death, dying, and grief. I stepped into 2020 with a commitment to nurture this work beyond myself. I braced for something resembling grief work, tying together my research, the things I had noticed, and interrogating the landscape of grief.

I’m conflicted in dating these moments, in recognising five solid years of Navigating the Wilderness, in tracking my journey as a linear, simple to follow narrative. It would have you believe that 2020 arrived and my work made sudden sense. A pandemic that brought death, would bring grief. And if you believe in the world I observed in 2018, we needed recognition of grief, a welcoming in society of the wounds we all carry, and a collective commitment to generosity in understanding and integrating grief.

2020 unfurled, as the structure of a fern reveals itself. The singular fiddlehead arches and uncurls from the stalk, the blade extends, and out folds pinnule and pinna. A wilderness cast in tallied, plural, and painful grief(s). Unlike the fern, our grief(s) unfurled into the contexts we were cemented in. Framed by systemic violence, scraps of resources, and a commodified concept of community. It is in this context, that my work, and the last five years of practice, begin to make sense.

CHM Thanatology

In noting five years of Navigating the Wilderness, I am closing a chapter of grief work that has been squeezed between the cracks of these contexts. CHM Thanatology emerged from an urgency to "do the work”. On the heels of my little’s first full year, and the cusp of the pandemic, I brought my practice into being. I had a vision, a practice of tending grief, and steps towards equitable approaches to grief care.

CHM Thanatology is an Independent Thanatology practice, specialising in developing a compassionate understanding of grief and bereavement.

I submitted proposals for PhD and social enterprise funding, I trusted peers advice, and steered towards a structure that could sustain this work. I folded Navigating the Wilderness into myself, reserving the name for my grief, and my creative practices. In building this false binary, I found myself entangled. Without that guiding principle, this practice felt untethered.

Under the banner of CHM Thanatology, I facilitated workshops for community grief, I delivered training to professional services on navigating grief in the workplace, I developed guides to grief, advised on policy, and supported numerous peers in grief. The practice took shape, but felt stunted. I noticed patterns of harm emerging in many of the places my work was proximate to. It sat in systems of ablest urgency, in work alongside trauma with no investment in psychological safety, in exploitative and transphobic academic environments. The reality of the landscapes of grief, the prevalence of disenfranchised grief and associated oppressions, and the glaring omissions in resourced grief care left my practice root bound, and had me yearning for the motion in Navigating the Wilderness.

Tending the Wilds of Grief

Five years of Navigating the Wilderness is a misnomer of sorts. CHM Thanatology, registered in May 2020, still holds the structure of Navigating the Wilderness. I can trace five clear years of practice. However, Navigating the Wilderness is just emerging. As I reinstate the name, and return to the guiding principles I began with, I want to introduce Navigating the Wilderness, a practice tending the wilds of grief.

What We Do

We cultivate and nurture spaces to hold individual and collective grief. We practice this through our exploration, education and expansion of grief literacy. We engage educators, space holders and services to make room for grief in their own context.

How We Do It

• We facilitate spaces for individual and collective grief, through one-to-one grief spaces, community workshops and grief at work support.

• We nurture grief education and grief literacy, through training, facilitation and co-production in workplaces, organisations, community and education settings.

• We engage services, space holders and practitioners to make room for grief in their own context, through consultancy, education and service design.

• In collaboration with practitioners, artists and communities, we engage and publish four active enquiries connected with grief across a cyclical, seasonal year.

Next Steps

In publishing this Substack, I commence a new intention. The words you find here come directly from me, and you can expect to hear from me around once a fortnight. I will be sharing updates from Navigating the Wilderness, reflecting on our governance as we build it, and expanding on our burgeoning rebrand. Between my notes, you will find updates on our collaborative research, open calls to participate, and publications of our findings.