“Gather the keeners, for we need new rituals. We need each other, we need the tears, laughter, and love. We need the magic and lamenting as the world unravels. ”
Raising her arms to the sky, invoking the great Bear Goddess, Breejah, (a priestess of the people of the Bear) performs the age-old grief ritual for her community. They gather to mourn the dead of a father in their clan, Breejah guiding them through their grief - the body laid out wrapped n a bear skin. as she steps between the worlds to guide the soul of their beloved home.
It is an evocative scene, the community singing, drums playing, to call on the great She-Bear - the body at the centre of their circle, wrapped in a bear skin. It is their way to perform this ritual at twilight, torches flickering illuminating ochre painted faces, streaked with tears. Breejah dancing between the worlds, calling on the Grandmothers and guiding the soul of their brother home.
This is just one scene of an ancient keening woman, for the keeners of Gaelic lands are part of a long linage stretching back through many ages, and through many cultures back into the mists of time. I have found the thought of such a linage healing for it awakens our imagination, kindles our creativity and even that in itself can inspire healing.
Ancient Spiritual Bedrock
Gather the keeners! For we need to sing and dance with grief. We need to wail by the ocean, dance with the drum and to step between the worlds. We need to ask the old ones for their healing so we can heal ourselves and offer healing to others. We need to sit with our grief, not hide it away within our bodies for that makes us ill. We need new rituals and ways to engage with grief rather be overcome by it. We can weave old threads into new traditions, and root them an ancient spiritual bedrock.
Between The Worlds
Whether we step into a keening circle or chose to make art, engage in ritual or sing laments - each has the potential to bring us into liminal space. We will seek out these liminal spaces, the hidden places on the island, the dark places (both within and without) for it’s here we often meet healing. Healing takes many forms, a shift, a change, a different perspective or the words or presence of an ancestor. The keening woman worked throughout history worked in these liminal spaces, guiding the community through their grief and guiding the soul of the dead home.
An Hebridean Retreat
You are invited to join me on the Isle of Eigg, in the Inner Hebrides - referred to as the Isles of Brighid. In a world whose ecological, social, and political systems are unravelling you are invited to join me for a week-long retreat dedicated to practicing and exploring the language of grief.
Who is this Retreat For?
This retreat is for anyone who wishes to engage with grief rituals and create new ones. Rituals which are inspired by the keening woman and weave in ancestors and land.
It’s a retreat if you wish to be engaging with your own personal grief and just as relevant for those working as death doulas or those who focus on grief. There is a wonderful element of co-creating within the retreat as each person bring their stills, knowledge and insight.
For those wishing to learn to create your own keening circle. We will have two keening circles - one which I hold and a second in which we co-create together, which allows for each person to bring their skills, experience and inspiration
It's also an opportunity to explore the differences between how keening was practiced in Scotland compared to Ireland.
Gathering at the Well of the Holy Women in the village of Grulin - a traditional chant which was sung at the edge of the ocean, guiding the soul of the deceased homewards, out to the setting sun and the lands beyond. - Sung by Dana Murphy
My approach with keening is taking the inspiration of this age-old ritual to make new rituals to help us engage with and process our grief today. In the Wild Edge of Sorrow Francis Weller describes that we live in a grief-phobic and death-denying culture, one which no longer has effective ways of dealing with grief, and swiftly sweeps our beloved dead to be prepared by the industrial funeral industry.
Re-envisioning offers space to connect with grief, to let our hands and heart process our feelings through creative projects such as making a keening doll or weaving grief while the ritual of a keening circles provides a curated musical journey which allows for expressions of all the facets of grief, from anger, to frustration and despair.
Keening With the Land
Throughout the week we will visit sites on the island where we will perform grief rituals such as singing in the great Cathedral Cave and an invitation to speak to a beloved ancestor with an old tradition on the Singing Sands.
Scotland offers long lingering twilights at this time of year, hours of enchanted light after the sun has set that feel between the worlds. This quality of light paints the land so you can clearly see the face in the cliff and the outline of the woman in the land.
Spiritual Senses & Inspiring Conversations
Your week on the island is an invitation to engage with your spiritual senses. You’ll build your own relationship with the island - from the sight of an eagle, an otter on the shore or even a dolphin. A plant walk will introduce some of the local flowers and herbs, we’ll explore their tradition use as well as gathering rushes to make a Brighid’s cross.
Around a beach fire we will share our perceptions on death, and what, if anything, comes next to how do you perceive the Otherworld.
Our grief pilgrimage begins in the village of Grulin, whose inhabitants were forcibly moved under the Highland clearances. Our journey is a grief pilgrimage, walking in silence with each person having their own space. Held by the land, each foot step becomes a prayer, the rhythm bringing us into place where we can drop down into our own emotions. This was also the same route, the last journey those in the village would have walked before boarding the ship that would have taken them to Nova Scotia.
Changing of consciousness through dance into trance is one of humanities most ancient spiritual traditions. A trance dance offers us the opportunity to engage with the island on a different level. You’ll have an opportunity to set your intentions and with gestures of ritual we will dance between the worlds, asking the ancestors of place and the Ancestral Mothers for their wisdom. We will take time to share our insights and experiences.
A grief doll is a conversation with the land, made with natural materials, created from whatever the earth gifts you - a shell, feather or bone. Assembling your grief doll is a ritual, from your intention and symbolism of the materials of creation, and the magic of doll making to help focus guidance and inspiration.
In the stories of the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland the women of the Bear Clan have a ritual of making small clay figurines. One is buried in the earth and dreams with the earth and the great She-Bear as she journeys the cosmos. The second doll, a sister doll you take home.
Making these dolls is a ritual and I’ll share the story with drumming, inviting you to meet the Bear Grandmothers. We will bury our dolls in a wild uninhabited part of the island, which looks over to the Isle of Skye.
Throughout the week you are encouraged to select wool and natural materials you have gathered such as feathers or a shell - all which speak to different threads of grief you carry.
We will use these in a weaving project (personal and communal) where we will share our stories represented by chosen threads that are woven into the loom.
The keening circle is a larger ritual which allows for a full expression of the range of emotions of grief from anger and rage, to despair. It is a musical journey guiding us through the emotions but offers opportunities to sink down into your grief - which can be expressed by sound or movement. A cathartic ritual which can bring healing and the strength to work through grief.
This retreat was exactly what I needed as a caregiver and a mental health worker – a break from rushing around and a chance to connect more fully with myself, my surroundings, and the people in my life. There were many unexpected moments of laughter and playfulness – I I even had the chance to fly a tiny kite by the Loch of the Big Women. I arrived home with a full heart and a handful of tiny shells.
Rebekah P, USA.
There's something about crossing the sea and stepping on to an island that gives you perspective on your life. The retreat provided a perfect balance of reflective time and sharing, exploring and experiencing the land and creative time to process emotion. The time dedicated to grief rituals was invaluable. The carrying of the names from the cleared village to the church along the coffin road felt really important and sacred. The keening ritual was an opportunity for me to tend to my grief in multiple different ways leaving me with tools to use in future and to find what worked best for me. Each member of the group brought their unique perspective to the mix creating a rich and deep experience. Deeply nourishing with delicious food for the body, mind and soul. And our little rabbit friend who came to die outside was the greatest teacher of all.
Morag D, Northern Ireland
A wonderful retreat blending wild Scottish landscape, and a spiritual exploration. Powerful dreams and visions gained through this work and land enabled me to carry out a ritual which I feel in my bones healed a deep scarring in my female linage. I am still connected to the stone I planted in the islands soil and on challenging days I see through its eyes and am reminded of who I really am. Lengthy walks, delicious eating, and sincere mindful women made this a life-changing experience.
Gayle Mair, Asheville, NC, USA
Jude’s depth of understanding and passion of the ancestral mothers inspired me to want to know more and connect more deeply with them. As the retreat progressed, I felt myself connecting more and more with each passing day. I particularly enjoyed connecting with the Big Women through making my doll, feeling her come alive more and more to where I felt the spirit of the ancestral mothers both in her and myself. The retreat offered me a richer and deeper understanding of where I’ve been and new inspiration and vision for where I want to go
Katherine Daniels, Texas, USA
Jude is an excellent facilitator leading us on a journey to meet the ancestral mothers and to find their strength within ourselves. Through journeying, hill walking, storytelling and doll making her style is gentle and the schedule relaxed. The food was nutritious and fortifying to enable our exploration of the island. The women were each amazing and a delight to be with from the first moment to the last. I made connections to the land and nature on Eigg. I knew this retreat would be life changing but I didn’t know how. I find that I have much more confidence and determination with the ability to handle higher levels of stress in a clam way than I did before. This is a life changing adventure that you don’t want to miss.
Kat Toebes, USA
Jude is so much more than tour guide and retreat leader. Her connection to Eigg – the island and its residents – deepened and grounded my soul-expanding experience. All the while, Jude deftly handled the practical and complex tasks of leading a retreat, while providing a relaxed, trustworthy container throughout the week where personal transformation, and even magic, took place.
Our stay on Eigg was a satisfying balance of communal time and individual contemplative time. Through Jude’s weaving of academic and mythopoetic history – derived from years of study and her creative re-imagining of old stories and song into our contemporary world – the island becomes imbued with the feeling that the Ancestral Mothers on Eigg are alive and energetically powerful, and sometimes mischievous.
Caroline Mason, Asheville, NC, USA
I’ve been visiting this little, but remarkable island, for over 25 years. The name Eigg comes from an old Norse description meaning notch or wedge, referring to the Sgurr, the tall rock formation that gives Eigg its easily identifiable profile. Its Gaelic name, Eilean Nan Bam Mora, means Isle of the Big Women, which refers to stories of female warriors and mythical giant women.
Big is also description of honour and respect and there are many threads of stories left from which might well have been a rich culture of powerful and inspiring women around these islands, and islands throughout the UK. Sadly these stories are so threadbare that we are only left with the thinnest of threads to try and weave back together.
Walking the Path of the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland
I’ll share the stories of these ‘Big Women’ as well as introducing you to the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland, the stories I have found out on the land, stories and feelings which took decades to build a relationship with and there behind the stories were figures rooted in the land. There are also stories which were shared, folk stories and traditions, stories that have come down to us today with the Cailleach and the Goddess Brighid.
Throughout the week I’ll share some stories of the Ancestral Mothers, Scotland offers long lingering twilights at this time of year, hours of enchanted light after the sun has set that feel between the worlds. This quality of light paints the land so you can clearly see the face in the cliff and the outline of the woman in the land.
Ritual With the Land
Walking the land is an essential part of this retreat to visit sites, to spend time submerging ourselves in the feeling of place and engaging with our spiritual senses.
On the train ride from Glasgow to Mallaig (where you get the ferry to Eigg) you'll travel on one of the most spectacular train journeys in the world - the West Highland Way. The train travels through the inspiring scenery of Rannoch Moor and travels across the Glenfinnan Viaduct featured in the Harry Potter films
Embodying Your Big Woman Self
Through our grief rituals, engaging with liminal space and stories of the Big Women of this Isle helps us step into and remember that we too are Big Women in the role we work with in the world, a remember and celebration.
The Well of the Holy Women
We being our time on the Island by visiting the Well of the Holy Women to ask for a blessing for our time on the island, just as people might once have - travelled to ask for a blessing. We too have the power to give blessings for it’s not the person it is what they are blessing with - the living waters bubbling up from deep aquifers, or a blessing made by the sun, rain, eagle or expansive views out to the Atlantic.
Cathedral & Massacre Cave
We will visit to the large and open Cathedral Cave and the smaller, dark Massacre Cave and sing a Gaelic lament we will learn together.
Singing Sands & Eye of the Cailleach
You are invited to climb through the Eye of the Cailleach - a great eye shaped hagstone in a cliff. The surrounding beach is called the Singing Sands, a white quartz beach which chirps slightly when the sand is dry. We will create a figure on the beach adding seaweed and stones, whatever natural materials we find - creating an old woman, Cailleach figure which will represent those we mourn the loss of and celebrate their lives. There is also time to for an old ritual, for it is said that if you spend time on this beach under a full moon you are granted the opportunity to speak to a loved one on the other-side.
On the route to this beach we will visit a Viking burial site.
The Hearth - Even although May often experiences Scotland’s hottest weather we will probably be lighting the woodstove!
Travel Details
If your traveling from outside of Scotland the nearest airport is Glasgow International
The main route of travel to the retreat is by the West Highland Line train which leaves Glasgow Queen Street, and via Fort William arrives in at the port town of Mallaig. in Mallaig.
A Calmac ferry takes you fro Mallaig to Eigg. Full details of travel will be given after booking.
Fitness Level
Retreat participants are required to have an average fitness level and be comfortable walking on all types of terrain. The longest days we might walk ten miles, ensuring everyone is comfortable with the pace, and taking breaks when needed.
What Do I Pack?
Scottish summers can see all weather in just one day. When your booked up there will be a rough guide of what to bring - from a wooly hat, to a swimsuit to good and brown in hiking boots.
Cancellation and Refunds
Refunds are available up until the 24th March. The only instance a refund is possible is if you are able to transfer your booking to another person. We do try to provide a flexible booking policy but as this retreat works on a small scale, substantial expenses are incurred well before the event. Running a retreat with insufficient bookings becomes impractical for us and can cause the cancellation of the entire retreat.
What if I the Retreat Gets Cancelled?
If the retreat is canceled for any reason then all participants will receive a full refund (minus any transaction fees)
The Retreat Agreement Form
Signing this form, after full payment has been received confirms your booking, It outlines all the Retreat terms and conditions. There will also be a separate waiver form to sign.
Travel Insurance
You are required to have travel insurance for this trip. Travel insurance covers you if in the rare event you may need medical assistance among other things depending on your policy. Please ensure you have the correct insurance to meet your requirements.
Medical Assistance on Eigg
The Small Isles Medical Practice is available for temporary residents and visitors. Please note I cannot advise anyone on insurance.
What is Included In the Price of Your Retreat?
Seven nights accommodation at Glebe Barn on the Isle of Eigg
Dinner on arrival day, breakfast, lunch and dinner each day and breakfast and a packed lunch on our departing day
All art materials and tuition for doll making
Tour of a working croft and visit to a croft museum (if schedule allows)
Personal care and attention to any issue or concerns from Jude pre-Retreat and during the Retreat
What Is Not Included in the Price of your Retreat?
Any travel costs to the isle of Eigg
Travel Insurance (which is required)
All travel to the Isle of Eigg (train and ferry journeys)
Optional taxi rides on Eigg (yes, Eigg has a taxi)
Any meals or drinks other than the meals listed above
Any medical treatment costs
When Does Registration Close?
Registration deadline is the 24th March
I’m happy to help with any queries, advise on travel connections and will provide further details after booking
Our home for the retreat is Glebe Barn which is a converted 19th-century building which offers wonderful views across the harbour and over to the Scottish mainland. It’s perfectly situated in the middle of the island - a great location for our trips to visit local sites and within one mile of the harbor which offers the a cafe, shop and craft shop.
The kitchen, dining room, gathering room & library and sunroom are all on the ground floor. An entrance hall offers storage for coats and walking boots and there is also a laundry room with washer and dryer, and a shower room (with toilet) and a second toilet.
The Glebe Barn is a hostel (we have the entire hostel booked), and offers two sleeping accommodations:
Single Beds. Two rooms with three single beds on the second floor.
Bunk bed rooms on the first floor. There are two bunk rooms one with three and the other with four bunk beds. You will have both the upper and lower bed to yourself. This room is on the first floor
The second floor is accessible by stairs, there is no lift in the building. This floor has a bathroom between the two bedrooms - with a toilet and shower. There are two more showers and toilets on the first floor and one additional shower on the ground floor.
There are also two showers on the first floor and an additional shower on the ground floor.
The cost for this retreat is £1229 (approx. USD $1590). A non refundable deposit of £399 is required to secure your booking (as organising a small group retreat requires up front payments before the retreat even launches). You can either pay your deposit of £399 ($529) or the full amount using the button below which will take you to Paypal. I will email you a payment receipt.
Please get in touch if you’d like to pay by bank transfer.
The ‘Bring a Friend Discount’ will be taken off your remaining sum payment, after deposit / Please get in touch for details of the ‘Big Woman’ Discount
You will be emailed a receipt after payment. We will meet on Zoom before the retreat takes place
Your Guide
Your Guide
Jude has been visiting the Isle of Eigg for over 20 years and has formed deep ties with the land and made friendships with the islanders. As an artist and writer with a background in Human Ecology her work explores connection to the land through art, story and ritual.
Her approach is in re-envisioning keening, being inspired by this age-old practice - taking the remaining threads and weaving them into new rituals while remaining rooted in an ancient spiritual bedrock. These new rituals can help us change our relationship with grief, to reclaim grief and find the words and expression of grief through art and ritual. This reclaiming is an act of resistance which can help us to heal and transform ourselves, work which can then become an effective tool within our communities.
Her focus centers on the liminal, the in-between and on the edge places which we experience in keening circles, art and in the land. These are the places the keening woman worked and it’s here we might find healing, or begin our journey towards healing.
She is a Radical Doll Maker viewing her art as part of a practice that stretches back to the first dolls fashioned from bones and stones – such as the Woman of Willendorf. She uses dolls as a way of connecting to ancestral figures, as well as dolls themselves as becoming part of our healing process and holding and speaking to our grief. As a painter she explores stories of the land, her images incorporating local soils.
She gained her MSc Masters Degree in Human Ecology at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow and lives on the West Coast of Scotland on the banks of the River Clyde, near Loch Lomond. She is currently writing her first book, Walking the Path of the Ancestral Mothers.