How are we already in July? It feels strangely surreal, doesn’t it? From this point onwards, we are moving towards the end of the year… how does that even make sense?
Time is weird when you're processing grief.
Time loops as grief loops and you forget where you are again and again. You expect all else to stop but when it doesn’t, and you come up for air, it always feels like so much has passed on without you.
It’s scary that millions of millions of people have died in the last few years from COVID …or even in Congo for the last few decades… I first found out about the horrors of Congo through Slavoj Zizek essays hypothesizing our human relationship to violence over a decade ago - but what has stopped since and who has mobilized it? Are we powerless amidst this violence?
How are we expected to metabolize this level of destruction?
We only mourn some people’s death but what we are collectively realizing is that this unwitnessing, this lack of witnessing, will eventually hurt you in other places. Whether it’s a loss of your heart or soul… if we don’t process these times, I worry about our collective future.
This is really how Grief Studies was born… it was through my own struggle with grief that pummeled me—activated by the genocide in Gaza, but other personal things as well. By the time I created this class, it was almost like I had made something specifically to face my own grief and learn how to restore the pain and emotion…
After months of processing my last, beautiful class… I’m finally ready to teach it again.
Which brings me to the details of this special container…
Introducting Grief Studies, an 8-week writing + grief processing class.
In the first five classes, we will focus on one of the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) alongside the five stages of decolonization (rediscovery/recovery, mourning, dreaming, commitment, and action). The last three classes will focus on “finding meaning,” “restoration” and “resilience.”
A lot of this work was sourced from my own findings while writing Who Is Wellness For? As I wrote the book, I started to see this relationship between how grief was undoubtedly an indicator of so much, it was like a current that moved through our bodies, charging certain part of who are—generally without our full comprehension. Yet, I realized, in my own life, the more you enquired after your grief, the more that was revealed, and the easier it was to get to know yourself.
Then, after further inquiry, I realized the grief stages are strangely synced with the decolonization steps… which is apt. We, all, collectively, heal through decolonizing.
This class is designed for that.
I will be using writing prompts and works by Billy-Ray Belcourt, Aracelis Girmay, Hala Alyan, Agha Shahid Ali, Mosab Abu Toha, Hanif Abdurraqib and Noor Hindi (to name a few of the brilliant writers whose work we will be reading every week) to let theirs (and other’s) works guide us to the center of our own grief.
This workshop is for anyone who wants something to participate in something that will push them through some of the stagnation of sadness and onwards to liberation.
More information:
When: We will meet for 8 weeks every week from July 21st (right at the end of Cancer season) 9 am PST - 12 pm PST to September 8th (right into Virgo season… I like to use astrology as a tool…duh)
Where: Zoom (I’ll send a link)
Will this be recorded? Yes.
Limited Space is Available:
I really wasn’t expecting to teach this class again but when 75 students signed up for the first one… and I had to turn people away… I realized this might just have to be an ongoing offering.
This time, there is half the availability.
How much is it?
It’s $650 for the 8 weeks
There’s a sliding scale rate of $500 for Black, Indigenous, and Palestinian folks as well as working class and disabled folks and CSA survivors - please ask for a code if you’re interested. I know I also have a lot of readers in the Global South, if you ever want to take a class please reach out and I will try and figure something out.
If you want this, please reach out for a code at mofhasan@gmail.com
There are a few partial scholarships as well, email me
There are 5 full scholarship spaces, if interested please let me know why you want to take this class & why you’d like/need a scholarship.
I also take payment plan - once you go to pay, you choose that option for yourself!
The workshops I teach are a place of care and radicality.
I prioritize the voices that are silenced in this everyday white supremacist, Zionist, ableist, anti-Black, Islamophobic, anti-Arab/Palestinian, transphobic, queerphobic world and so these workshops are an attempt to create a space where we can acknowledge that these systems of oppression exist, and understand that it’s our responsibility to unlearn these things, especially when (and while) we are in community. If you are a privileged-bodied person, please move with that understanding.
I don’t tolerate harmful language, at the same time, I endeavor to create a space of accountability and witnessing. This is hard work, grief work requires ego work, if you are willing to do this work, and are hungry to be in space with others who want to do this work, please reach out.
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My dear friend the brilliant Yumi Sakugawa and I have been developing different ways of engaging with our shared, overlapping communities.
Now as a full-time organizer working with a lot of students and young people I am beginning to understand:
a) what the people need
b) what I, or my friends, all the witches I know, have to offer to fulfill that need…
So, with a lot of the findings from the Grief Studies class (and in tandem with the decolonization methods I’ve been familiarizing myself with), Yumi and I have come up with one class and three different containers!
The class: “HOW TO DECOLONIZE & RADICALIZE YOUR CREATIVE PRACTICE TOWARDS COLLECTIVE LIBERATION!”
First container:
We will be hosting an in-person version of this class at a private residence in Los Angeles/ Tongva Land on July 14th!
Both of us will be using our specific practices to hold the space and move through the work together, weaving meditation, visualization and writing prompts.
As a part of our “decolonization principles,” I’ll also be cooking us an Ayurvedic meal that we will enjoy and eat together. I want to cook more as an offering and it’s my dream one day to have a makeshift restaurant where I can feed people these wacky (but I think tasty!) anti-inflammatory meals. I have dreamt of wanting to create them into a little cookbook but am really excited to bring food into the fold.
The workshop will also include:
Guided meditation to root yourself into your body, mind, and heart
Learning and discussing the five phases of decolonization, and how that relates to your creative practice
Self-inquiry and reflection journaling prompts on who and why you are creating for
Excavating the invisible inner colonizer that limits us as well as the inner liberator that shows us our true purpose
Guided visualization for making tangible the future visions we dare to dream for our communities and the world at large
Roadmapping new pathways for our creative practice and the roles we step into in our communities as artists and creators committed to decolonization
If you are interested and would like to know more, here’s more information!
Second offering:
We will also be teaching the exact same class on August 4th, with scholarships and early bird prices available. So that’s another option.
Third offering:
Early next year, we will also be co-facilitating a 5 part series on this class. So stay tuned! There’s a lot more to come.
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I hope to see you soon… until then… may all empires collapse.