With a community of grievers and dreamers, we are building a ship in the New Mexico desert. A vessel designed to sail through the uncertain and treacherous waters of grief and loss towards the beauty and wonder of our vulnerability and imagination.

Of Grief & Dreams is a project of healing which offers a tangible space for anyone to come and navigate the shores of their sorrow and be invited to imagine their most sacred dreams. When completed people can board the vessel. There they can engage in experiences designed to offer an occasion and space to honor their grief, while also giving reverence to dreams by creating an artistic record of their existence. With these records we will weave together an archive of dreams, a repository for people to feel and be seen.

Even though our vessel is being built in Albuquerque, the possibility envisioned by this work is available to everyone. Using the metaphor of a ship as a portal, we are creating an Open for Dreaming Kit designed to enable people to create their own vessel, wherever they may be.

The act of bringing community together to build this vessel is integral to shaping the collaborative, healing, shared space it will become. Once the build is complete, the ship will be open for programming. While that programming is certain to evolve as the project moves forward, it will always remain in service of the ships purpose, which is to offer a place for grieving, dreaming and healing.

How we learn to live with our grief, and how we allow it to shape our dreams, is how we will survive. This ship, and this work, is in service to our personal and collective emotional survival.