free gathering
GRIEF & POETRY
A live, community conversation with Luke Saunders, founder of the Lighthouse Project
In 2024, after losing a friend to suicide, Luke spent 3 hermetic days in a recording studio crafting music to hold his grief. This dive into grief art marked the beginning of what came to be the Lighthouse Project; an experiment in human connection wherein Luke set out to handwrite a poem for each and every soul who came across his online space. A few months later, over 400 poems and counting have spread across the globe, weaving us all together through grief, poetry, and music. As we come together this month, we celebrate the momentous Lighthouse Project, and the release of Luke’s first, full-length album Glide, Little Labyrinths, Glide, which, as he describes it “traces the parabola of love and the ceaseless pendulum of grief.”
Join us to meet Luke, explore the meeting point of poetry, connection, music, and grief, and gush over our shared love of cats and Nick Cave.
Co-led by:
Lauren Carroll
november 25 at 6pm mt
held on Zoom
recording available
Your FACILITATORS
Lauren Seeley
Lauren Seeley is an artist, death and grief doula, and death educator whose work weaves together death literacy, spiritual practice, and end-of-life care. Her interests and research span the tender edges of both human and pet end-of-life care, LGBTQIA+ and trans-centered deathwork, memory care, ritual and ceremony, and the many ways we honor the dead through funerary and disposition practices. Lauren currently works at a funeral home in Brooklyn, NY, where she holds space for the living and the dead, and facilitates the Silent Book Club of Death, Brooklyn’s quiet little refuge for readers who aren’t afraid to sit with the big questions.
Lauren Carroll
Lauren Carroll, co-founder of La Mort, is a Death Educator & Holistic Funeral Director who is passionate about weaving community and family back into the death space. Her work centers around re-aligning our culture with Mother Earth and helping humans remember how to love one another. She is a former board member for the National Home Funeral Alliance and co-founded The Deathwives. She lives on an urban farm at the base of a mountain where she tends to her animals, raises her two children, and dances around bonfires on the full moon with friends while listening to Nick Cave.
Our Teaching / Learning / Creating Style at La Mort
We leave behind the polished, gate-keepy approach to education. We teach in ways that carry story and experience. We listen. We laugh (a lot). We go off-script sometimes. We cry (with you)(for those you’ve loved)(for those we’ve loved). We like science and studies and logical frameworks, but also mysticism and poetry and all that stuff. We really love to honor history and those who came before. We move through some serious curricula, but don’t take anything too seriously. We dedicate ourselves to seeing you, and want you to feel seen. We deeply honor our intuition and yours. We lead with integrity (always). And we welcome the odd-balls and misfits, because it takes one to know one.