upcoming events
Play with your Grief
For the person wanting to befriend their grief and find a way to see what it wants to share.
This offering is an opportunity to play with our grief and its many facets. Play allows us to be curious with our grief and explore what parts of ourselves might often feel overlooked. Grief is such a complex part of living and can be accessed with creative exploration. This space is making room for that curiosity and seeing how our grief responds to an expressive outlet.
As adults we are conditioned to distance ourselves from play, this is a chance for us to reclaim play in our lives.
During our time you can choose your own adventure:
*puppet grief play
*memorial stitching
*breathwork
___________
Puppet play is an opportunity to offer the many facets of our grief actual bodies that can be seen, moved and comforted. Puppets are colorful, animated transformational creatures - they're happy to share the weight of our emotions. They offer us permission and encouragement to genuinely look at and hear parts of ourselves that might often feel overlooked, hidden, shy or ashamed. Puppets can hold our grief in ways our public, grown-up personas cannot.
Memorial stitching is creating a fabric piece that will embody a grief experience. This piece is designed and personalized by the griever - capturing the emotions of a loss that is currently present for them. This can be accomplished by using fabric that feels connected to a loved one who has passed, by depicting a story with embroidery or fabric pens or paints and/or using a specific image applique. Memorial stitching is a grief tool for those of us who cannot visit the gravesite of our loved ones, a connecter for our grief.
__________
What to expect:
We will start with a guided practice and establish what form of grief play you want to choose. Chelsea will share about their practice and hold space for your time together. You will spend the hour getting to know your grief and its many facets. We will process and end our time together with intention.
All supplies are included and no experience with puppets or fiber arts (stitching, embroidery, etc.) is necessary to participate.
Play with your Grief
Playing with Our Grief
Wed, Nov 04
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The Portland Grief House
For the person wanting to befriend their grief and find a way to see what it wants to share.
RSVP
When & Where
Nov 04, 2026, 1:30 PM – 2:00 PM PST
The Portland Grief House, 7906 N Fessenden St, Portland, OR 97203, USA
Other dates
Wed, Nov 11, 1:30 PM
Wed, Nov 18, 1:30 PM
What
This offering is an opportunity to play with our grief and its many facets. Play allows us to be curious with our grief and explore what parts of ourselves might often feel overlooked. Grief is such a complex part of living and can be accessed with creative exploration. This space is making room for that curiosity and seeing how our grief responds to an expressive outlet.
As adults we are conditioned to distance ourselves from play, this is a chance for us to reclaim play in our lives.
During our time you can choose your own adventure:
*puppet grief play
*memorial stitching
*breathwork
___________
Puppet play is an opportunity to offer the many facets of our grief actual bodies that can be seen, moved and comforted. Puppets are colorful, animated transformational creatures - they're happy to share the weight of our emotions. They offer us permission and encouragement to genuinely look at and hear parts of ourselves that might often feel overlooked, hidden, shy or ashamed. Puppets can hold our grief in ways our public, grown-up personas cannot.
Memorial stitching is creating a fabric piece that will embody a grief experience. This piece is designed and personalized by the griever - capturing the emotions of a loss that is currently present for them. This can be accomplished by using fabric that feels connected to a loved one who has passed, by depicting a story with embroidery or fabric pens or paints and/or using a specific image applique. Memorial stitching is a grief tool for those of us who cannot visit the gravesite of our loved ones, a connecter for our grief.
__________
What to expect:
We will start with a guided practice and establish what form of grief play you want to choose. Chelsea will share about their practice and hold space for your time together. You will spend the hour getting to know your grief and its many facets. We will process and end our time together with intention.
All supplies are included and no experience with puppets or fiber arts (stitching, embroidery, etc.) is necessary to participate.
Pieced Together- Community Quilt Unveiling
Pieced Together is an opportunity for people to gather and celebrate our Portland Grief House community quilt. We are honored to showcase our collective creation at the Daydreamer Cafe.
Community members have gathered monthly since October of 2025 to share our grief, memories, tears and comfort while stitching quilt squares. Each patch holds a particular story - tender, intimate and personal. Stitched together, our individual stories connect to make something wide, warm, beautiful and whole, that can comfort all grievers who come to The Grief House during difficult times.
We'll have opportunities for you to learn more about the stories stitched into our quilt, create your own memorial patches for a future community quilt (or as your own keepsakes), donate to the Grief House by buying delicious baked goods generously provided by Sparrow Bakery, and get to know our household and neighbors.
This will also be an opportunity to learn more about The Portland Grief House and support our efforts to build a community that is strong, connected and actively working together to weave loss into life.
We're so glad to be part of the fabric of this remarkable community. We'll be so glad to have a chance to get to know each other better and appreciate the warmth and goodness that can come from sewing together the fabric of our lives.
This project is supported by the Regional Arts Council and the City of Portland.
Talk to the Hand
We will gather & play at The Grief House with for an embodied breath and puppet practice.
Puppet play is an opportunity to offer the many facets of our grief actual bodies that can be seen, moved and comforted. Puppets are colorful, animated transformational creatures - they're happy to share the weight of our emotions. They offer us permission and encouragement to genuinely look at and hear parts of ourselves that might feel overlooked, hidden, shy or ashamed.
We will start our time together with a guided practice intended to help us come into relationship with our complex, varied grief creatures - to see and respond to their sticky/self-conscious/thorny/abrupt/direct selves and also with our own wise self - the part of us that sees our hurt bits and can hold them well and kindly.
Next, there will be an invitation to start an actual, out-loud dialogue between one hurt part of ourselves and our wise self. There will be some guidance and demonstration for this portion, which might feel a bit strange and under-practiced to many of us. Then we'll each choose a puppet (or puppets) and move to our own physically private space, so our conversations won't be overheard.
Finally we'll have a chance to let our hurt ones speak with each other's wise ones. We'll do this in pairs, taking turns giving and receiving our grief and our compassion.
Puppets can hold our grief in ways our public, grown-up personas cannot. They offer us an opportunity to witness our hurt from a different angle; to playfully share the deepest elements of the many faces of our feelings. They also offer us an opportunity to share the weight of our loss; both with them - with the magical, un-embodied, universal compassion they stand in for - and with each other.
Tender Hearts Club -Virtual Gathering
A community breathwork gathering for the deep feelers of the world. Centering our capacity for emotional depth & expansion.
Our breathing practice will be a facilitated 3 part breath; an active practice. Best done lying down or sitting comfortably in a space where you will not be disturbed.
Breathwork has the capacity to support us find clarity, release energy we've stored in our bodies that no longer serve us, and unlocking our own inner knowing.
Tender Hearts Club -Virtual Gathering
A community breathwork gathering for the deep feelers of the world. Centering our capacity for emotional depth & expansion.
Our breathing practice will be a facilitated 3 part breath; an active practice. Best done lying down or sitting comfortably in a space where you will not be disturbed.
Breathwork has the capacity to support us find clarity, release energy we've stored in our bodies that no longer serve us, and unlocking our own inner knowing.
Gathering of Roses
Join us, limited spots available!
Tune in to the roses fully with this embodied workshop. Where we will distill the roses into rose hydrosol. Do a short plant meditation using an active breathing practice to fully engage our breath with the sweetness of the season. We will also do a hands on herbal diy.
Reserve your spot by emailing info@oliveofthesea.com
This gathering is sliding scale $30-60
Community Breathwork In Person
An embodied breath practice for the deep feelers of the world. Centering our capacity for emotional depth and expansion. Community breathwork is a group space that honors the importance of healing in community. In a time when global grief is constant it's important to find ways to combat isolation.
The goal is to ground together and be a witness to the emotional capacity we each hold.
Community Breathwork
Community breathwork is a group space that honors the importance of healing in community. In a time when global grief is constant it's important to find ways to combat isolation. Although this is a virtual space the goal is to ground together before an active breathing exercise.
Our breathing practice will be a facilitated 3 part breath; an active practice. Best done lying down or sitting comfortably in a space where you will not be disturbed.
Breathwork has the capacity to support us find clarity, release energy we've stored in our bodies that no longer serve us, and unlocking our own inner knowing.