Don't Build the Fire First

What to do when you are lost / grieving

Prefer to listen than read? Audio of me reading this article here:

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Hello dear ones,

I’m sitting in a bunk bed in Colorado, prepping for a workshop I’ll be giving later today at a four-day retreat called Summit Sisters. The title: Making Lemonade from the Ashes: On Restorative Grieving and Healing in Challenging Times.

So many woman have come up to me over the past few days and said things like: I can’t wait to hear your talk. I need to grieve. I have so much sorrow. I don’t know how to process it all. Thank you so much for offering this topic.

I feel the same way; I’m so grateful to be here in community to not just talk about grief but also to create ritual together to metabolize, move, honor the miracle of grief. Because grief is love. Love includes grief. To feel more love, peace, joy, gratitude, depth… means to learn the skill and make space for grieving.

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Last night I met Jessie Krebs, a wilderness therapist and who runs OWLSkills and teaches women outdoor skills. (She was also on Episode 9 of Alone, which I’m looking forward to watching!) I sat in awe as she shared the tools for how to start a fire with a bow drill and then went from drill to full on fire in approximately 2 minutes. (You bet that I’m going to learn from her as soon as I have the opportunity, maybe tonight!)

Video of Jessie starting a bow drill fire: this is after she created the coal from friction. Aren’t the ooohs and aaaahs delightful!

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One thing Jessie shared that surprised me was this: This way of lighting a fire is an ancestral skill, not a survival skill. If you are lost in the woods the first thing you want to do is NOT build a fire. There are so many other survival skills needed first, she shared. Like signaling. And finding easier ways to get warm that the time and energy needed to create and maintain a fire. I’m actually missing her talk on Five Basic Needs of a Survivor to write this love note to you, but I’ll report back with more info and probably a podcast in our future as I get to know her more.

I woke up thinking about fire, grief, and love. The ways how sometimes when we lose someone or something we love people are so quick to want to help us build a metaphorical bright fire to find our way out of the pain and sorrow. They are in a better place now. Maybe this happened for a reason. You will love again. The trees will grow back stronger. Just don’t think about it. Move on.

But sometimes what we need to more deeply love and be alive is not to build a warming fire, but to sit in the dark. To get quiet. To listen to our own heartbeat. To feel our sorrow. To journey into the wildness within.

Grief is not a wild animal to fight or fear or avoid, but a wild friend to approach gently — or let approach us — with presence, respect, compassion, and bravery.

We then tend fire not from desire to move on or avoid or make the shadows go away with the light. We understand the fire is made beautiful from sitting within the inky mystery of the unknown, the unanswerable, the jagged edges and letting the dark soften us from the inside.

This allows the beauty of life and death to penetrate our bones, the warm wisdom of the grief and gloriousness of being human to roots us in the glorious tangle of ancestors, beloved dead, current friends and loves, former friends and loves, and descendants human and nonhuman.

Grieving comes from the heart expressing love, not from the head thinking about what we wish was not. With grief there is initial shock and confusion; I’m navigating that right now after learning about the sudden dead of a dear friend last week, and another friend the month before.

As the shock wears off we want to gently turn toward the well of grief within so we don’t fill with the numb ice of avoidance. And going into that well of grief is not a one time plunge, but a willingness to dive into a salty inner ocean over and over again to be crashed by waves, to float, to breathe, to sink, to swim. We learn to trust that we can go in, that it will hurt and will feel it is all too immense to survive, and that we will emerge again more resilient, loving, and free.

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And so, on today’s New Moon in Virgo I want to remind us all (me included) to create space and structure for grieving. And celebration.

For the New Moon I’m sharing a post from Mystic Mamma; click the link below to read her full offering.

https://mysticmamma.com/new-moon-in-virgo-august-22-2025/

Mystic Mama / Mijanou writes:

dear hearts~

we have been slowly allowing for the inner transformation that has been occurring within us to continue to deepen and move its way across the spectrum of our understanding…

we have the first of two NEW MOONS in VIRGO dawning on our horizons on August 22nd…

VIRGO is ushering in a refined awareness of what is necessary for things to ameliorate, improve and work more cohesively…

we are beginning a brand new phase and the structures (physical or mental) that had held us in a certain place are dissolving…

whatever circumstances or daily habits had been previously working for us no longer are…

so we have to approach our lives from a whole new level of consciousness than we have in the past…

the same approach, the old ways are not going to work because circumstances are different all around…

so we have an opportunity to integrate what we have gleamed about living our life differently, doing our work differently, being in our relationships differently and adapt the VIRGO lens to re-assess and map a new way forward…

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Paid subscribers o’ love:
New Moon audio and recent Gathering video here:

https://heatherash.substack.com/p/sparks

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What is your new way forward? What are you ready to shed as we move towards Autumn, and what are you wanting to claim, cohese, catalyze?

What are you grieving? A beloved, a tree cut down, violence against women, the Gaza/Israel war, Sudan, the loss of a pet, something tangible or intangible?

I’d love to hear from you all; let’s share our inspiration and struggles, yearnings and stumblings.