Unearthing Grief: Honoring What Love Misses with Susannah Mars and Julia Francis

Week of October 17, 2026

Explore loss through creative expression and honoring of the land. Sing, write and walk the path of grief and praise.

Susannah Mars and Julia Francis collaborate to offer three creative experiential workshops culminating in a ceremonial musical performance for all that includes the contributions of workshop participants and opens the door to collective healing and growth.

 

Exploring Your Voice Through Your Ancestors (1 hour)
Join us for a powerful sound-based workshop and explore vocal practices that welcome grief expression, attune our vibrational fields, and facilitate collective healing across time and space. Accompanied by crystal singing bowls, we will explore our inner landscape, moving between harmony and dissonance to shake loose old stories and patterns that no longer serve us.

Grief Journaling (up to 2 hours)
Some of us have grief stories that we long to share. Using our voices to tell them helps heal us and others. Lean into a path of deep listening and unearth pieces of your story that have whispered in your ear but have remained underground. We will give voice to these whispers, illuminating the invisible threads between ourselves, our loved ones, and community. Come with a pre-written, one-page grief story to share. Then we will welcome the beauty of the unexpected, crafting new stories informed by the group, your parents, ancestors, and/or the Great Mystery.

Grief Walk…. (up to 2 hours)
We will gather with Mt. Kuchumaa in view, acknowledging and inviting the land to work with us. Walking together in silence, we will feel into the landscape and open to what it has to offer. Incorporating sound-making and writing into our journey, we practice the art of giving, receiving and healing.

Concert
Julia and Susannah will lead a celebratory hour-long concert, weaving together live vocals, guitar accompaniment, pre-recorded vocal tracks, and live looping. This experience invites deep listening and community with joyful and optional audience participation. Guests who attended any of Julia and Susannah’s earlier classes will have the opportunity to share emotionally resonant contributions from their respective journeys, resulting in a co-created sacred soundscape and altar honoring the space of our ancestors. Guests will leave with laughter and loving songs in their hearts.

 

 

Susannah Mars has been a theater artist for over 50 years. She grew up with actor Kenneth Mars, who passed of pancreatic cancer in 2011. Since then, Susannah’s work has woven in and out of her grief journey, from playing Diana in Next to Normal, to writing her one-woman show, Good Grief. She hosted the podcast “Adventures In Artslandia” for five years, culminating in one of her favorite episodes, which featured one of her father’s collaborators, Mel Brooks. She’s been an Arts Envoy to Cairo, Egypt, and now resides in Damascus, Oregon, with her husband and the sweetest dog ever, Shyla.

 

Julia Francis is a sound therapy artist, vocal coach and singer-songwriter. She believes in the power of the voice to create space in the body for emotional transformation and healing. A life-long disciple of the vocal and expressive arts, Julia has studied with wisdom keepers across the globe to understand the power of the unseen. With her voice, crystal alchemy bowls and guitar, Julia provides sacred sound experiences through public performances, retreats and private sessions. Her passion is facilitating the practice of sacred sound and story making for processing grief and working with the ancestors.