Melancholy & Music
Lessons Learned From Letting the Song Cry
Black people have always grieved through music. Before we had words for the loss, we had the song.
Melancholy & Music is a five-part Black Music Month series exploring the ways music holds grief, memory, heartbreak, longing, survival, joy, and re-imagination. Together, we will listen deeply to the songs that shaped us and the songs that carried us when language failed.
This series invites participants into conversation, reflection, storytelling, and communal witnessing through music. Each session centers a different grief theme while engaging the emotional, spiritual, cultural, and embodied dimensions of loss and healing.
Come with a song that holds something you have not yet been able to say.
Dates: Mondays in June 2025
June 1, 8, 15, 22, and 29
Time: 7–8 PM Eastern
Location: Zoom
Cost: $20.26 per session
Scholarship and community accessibility pricing available.
A Ratchet Grief Project® offering
Reclaiming Rest, Imagination and Pleasure
Presented by The Ratchet Grief Project®
August 26–28, 2026 | St. Francis Springs Prayer Center | Stoneville, NC
Capacity Full
There is a particular kind of tired that doesn't go away with sleep.
It lives in the body. It shows up in the way you answer "I'm fine" before anyone even finishes the question. It is the weight of carrying grief — yours and everyone else's — without ever being asked how you are holding up. It is joy that has gone quiet. Pleasure that feels like something you have to earn. Rest that always seems to come after everything else.
If you know this truth, this retreat is for you.
Re-Member. Reimagine. Rest. is three days on sacred land in North Carolina — land that holds trails and a labyrinth and a glass chapel and the kind of silence that actually heals. It is a small, intentional gathering of no more than 13 Black women ready to return to themselves. Not to be fixed. Not to perform their healing. But to gather the scattered pieces and remember who they are underneath everything they have been carrying.
You do not have to be in crisis to come. You do not have to be okay to come either. You just have to be ready to show up — for yourself, for the women in the room, and for whatever wants to emerge when you finally give it space.
We will grieve. We will laugh. We will rest. We will remember.
What's Included
Everything you need is here. You arrive, you receive, you rest.
All meals — dinner Wednesday evening through lunch Friday afternoon
Snacks
Private room, double or triple with private bath per suite — all rooms are on the ground floor
Retreat workbook created by Dr. Jamie Eaddy
Care and ritual kit — including handcrafted nut-free, lavender body butter, crystals, and more
Access to the full St. Francis Springs property — trails, labyrinth, glass chapel, gardens, and grottos
Facilitated grief work, ritual, and embodied practice with Dr. Jamie
Community — the irreplaceable gift of being in a room with women who understand
Investment
Space is limited to 13 participants. This retreat will fill.
Occupancy Investment
Single (private room)$795
Double (shared room)$675 per person
Triple (shared room)$550 per person
A $200 deposit reserves your space. Full payment is due July 1, 2026.
Cancellation Policy: Cancellations after June 1 forfeit 25% of the total balance. Cancellations after July 1 forfeit 50% of the total balance. No refunds after July 26, 2026.