Mother’s Day Is an Unhappy Day for Millions – One West Philly Woman Wants to Help
How Meirav Ong's "grief weaving" may give you some much needed solace.
Meirav Ong, who leads grief weaving workshops in Philadelphia (photo by Anwar Ali)
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For many, Mother’s Day means brunch, Hallmark cards, and beautiful bouquets. But for others, it’s far from a happy occasion. This was a fact to which I was admittedly ignorant until several years ago when, on Mother’s Day, the pastor at my West Philly Presbyterian church shared the following prayer, which I’ve since shared every year on social media:
Prayers on this Mother’s Day are complicated. Mother’s Day is a joyous day for some, and a deeply hard day for others. Today, when you get a chance, I ask you to pray for those who have had an amazing relationship with their mother and for those who have had an amazing relationship with their children. But also pray for those mothers who have lost their children. And pray for those children who have lost their mothers.
Pray for those who are estranged from their mothers. And pray for those mothers who are estranged from their children. Pray for those whose relationship with their mother is marked by trauma.
Pray for those who are on the cusp of being a mother by virtue of birth. And pray for those who are on the cusp of being a mother by virtue of adoption. Pray for those yearning to be a mother. Pray for those who have chosen not to be a mother. Pray for single mothers. Pray for families with two mothers. And pray for people with no mothers.
“Mother’s Day can be one of the most emotionally loaded times of the year,” says Temple University psychiatric nurse Laura Sinko, whose research centers on the healing journey we go on after experiencing different types of trauma. “This can be for many different reasons, whether it’s the grief held by parents who have lost a child or those who have lost their mother, or those whose who are estranged from their mothers, or those whose mothers may have been abusive, and also the grief of people struggling with infertility.”
It was the loss of her mother that led West Philadelphia textile artist and self-described “grief tender” Meirav Ong to launch a “grief weaving” series of workshops at her studio near Clark Park, where she leads other weaving workshops such as Weaving 101 and a weaving and stitching camp for kids over the summer. Her next grief weaving workshop is on May 9th, the day before Mother’s Day, and is specifically focused on the grief that people can have surrounding that holiday. It’s called Grief Weaving: Dead Mom Club Edition.
“I joined the dead mom club eleven years ago, when I was 25,” Ong explains. “It’s the worst club you can ever join. She had gastric cancer and died within 14 months of her diagnosis.”
Ong says she found that the process of weaving, which includes working with your hands and lots of repetitive motions, all while creating a piece of art, helped her deal with her grief, something that Sinko says makes perfect sense to her.
“There’s a power in physical movement, particularly physical movement with a repetitive nature, that can really help you externalize anxiety,” she explains. “And art can be a very beautiful way to share what you cannot or do not feel comfortable saying with words.”
Plus, she says, an event like Ong’s grief weaving workshop allows you to be around others who are grieving, but where you are are working on a project like creating art, as opposed to sitting around in a circle talking about your grief. “It’s all about the community, being around others,” she observes. “You don’t feel as alone. You have this companionship of people who have a shared experience.”
Ong begins the grief-weaving workshops with vocal toning, a common meditation technique where all of the attendees hum together in a way designed to create vibrations throughout their bodies.
“Through your exhalations, you vocalize different vowel sounds associated with different parts of your body,” Ong says. “It’s an audible exhalation that I like to think clears the sticky junk out of your body on a cellular level through vibrations. It’s like ‘shaking it out.’ And it’s something really powerful when you do it in a resonant harmony with others.”
Then it’s off to weave. Each attendee gets their own frame loom, which is similar to those looms you might have made potholders on when you were a kid, but larger.
An attendee at one of Ong’s previous grief weaving workshops in Philadelphia
Ong provides the yarn and other materials, and also suggests that each attendee bring supplemental materials and ephemera related in some way to their grief; those materials are worked in with the yarn. “The idea is that you will leave with a piece of wall art that you created out of your grief.”
For West Philadelphia resident Brook Chambers, who attended one of Ong’s workshops in December, those supplemental materials were pieces of clothing worn by her grandfather, who died last August, as well as the shirt she wore to his funeral.
“There’s this part of the workshop where we all ripped our fabrics into long strips, and that was a really energetic release for me,” Chambers recalls. “Meirav really helped me transform my grief into a comforting object that has an energy all its own. It’s a manifestation of this heartbreak and distress, taking those ripped pieces and making something beautiful.”
The wall art that Brook Chambers made at the grief weaving workshop in December (photo courtesy Brook Chambers)
Northampton, Massachusetts-based marriage and family therapist Ellie Lotan met Ong at Melacha U’Vracha, a retreat in Vermont that centers on Jewish ancestral skills, and invited her to Northampton to lead a grief-weaving workshop. Lotan wasn’t grieving the death of a loved one, at least not in the normal meaning of that phrase.
“My daughter is getting older, and for me, it’s all about the grief that comes with that, the grief of having your baby not be a baby anymore,” Lotan tells me. “So I gathered things from her babyhood — pajamas that didn’t fit her anymore, a baby blanket — and created a beautiful piece of work using those. It’s now hanging in my daughter’s room.”
Ong’s grief-weaving workshops last for four hours or so, and she says that if you’re not one who wants to openly talk about your grief, this is the place for you. “The workshops are all about sharing in a creative way, but they are not rooted in talking,” she says. “I personally find that ‘grief spaces’ that are very focused on verbal sharing to be really exhausting, and so my hope is to create a space where you can quiet your mind and use your hands for making, allowing you to be with whatever comes up in that making process.”
The cost for the workshop is $225 (or $350 for two people) and space is very limited. You can register here. More grief-weaving workshops are scheduled for June, July and September.
