Suicide, Ancestral Healing and Community Care
Ritual care in times of rupture with Julia Hartsell and Daniel Foor
This will be live on zoom. Register even if you can’t make it, and we’ll share the recording in the days following the event.
MAY 28, 2025
12pm Vancouver | 3pm New York | 9pm Madrid
90 MINUTES
About this event
Around the world, more than one in one-hundred deaths are from suicide, despite prevalent cultural messages of shame. The main cause of death for people under age 35 is from ending one’s own life. One foundational assumption in ancestral healing work is that in some way or another, we are more than just these bodies. We are also consciousness, spirit, or soul. If someone takes their own life, what happens to their spirit? How, if at all, is their journey after life different from others who pass? And how can we meet these deaths—and the deep ruptures they leave behind—with skillfulness, compassion, and care for both the dead and the living?
More about the event
In this teaching and discussion with ritualist and community leader Julia Hartsell and Ancestral Medicine founder Daniel Foor, we’ll focus with humility and kindness on suicide, emphasizing what ancestor and Earth-honoring teachings can contribute. The approach will be pragmatic with an emphasis on helping participants to respond with greater skillfulness and care both for the one now making their way home and for the living community confronted with rupture and loss. Expect abundant time for Q&A, a non-judgmental vibe, and a guided practice to resource with your personal guidance. All who register will receive the recording afterward, no need to attend live.
If you lost someone to suicide recently, or long ago, we hope this event will offer insight and practical support towards healing. This event is also an offering for therapists, holistic healers, and death and grief workers of any tradition. Folks struggling to stay committed to being here or who have grappled with feeling suicidal in the past are also welcome provided you feel the space would be supportive.
What happens to the spirit after suicide?
In many traditions, death is seen as a transition, not an end, and those who die by suicide are still on the road to becoming ancestors even though they may need a bit of extra care on their journey. In Tibetan Buddhism, rituals are offered to assist in navigating the bardo or post-death realms, regardless of how death occurred. In Catholicism and aspects of Western esotericism, suicide is often viewed as a spiritual wound that calls for healing, support, and caring intercession rather than condemnation. Across traditions, there is a common thread: the dead, including those who die by suicide, deserve compassion, tending, and ongoing relationship rather than shame or abandonment.
How is grieving a suicide different from other kinds of loss?
In an animist and ancestral healing view, grief after suicide still honors the continuity of life beyond death. What’s different is the nature of the rupture: the spirit may need extra support to find rest, and the living may carry deeper layers of shock, shame, or confusion. Ancestral traditions call us to tend our relations, both seen and unseen, with care, to call on the ancestors for support, and to weave the loss back into the larger fabric of community and belonging. This live teaching will consider ways to do so.
How do you move forward after losing someone to suicide?
Moving forward doesn’t mean forgetting or leaving the dead behind. In animist traditions, grieving and letting go allows for maintaining a relationship with those who have passed. Healing often involves tending to the spirit of the one who died—through prayer, ritual, or remembering—and tending to your own wounded heart. Over time, with care, the sharpness of grief can soften. Through ancestral healing, a new kind of relationship can gradually emerge. Rather than “getting over” a loss, you may come to relate with your beloved dead in new ways.
Register for Suicide, Ancestral Healing and Community Care
About the hosts
Julia Hartsell
CO-FOUNDER, DIRECTOR AT HEARTWARD SANCTUARY
Dancer and ritualist, Julia has been catalyzing community around embodied practices across generations for twenty five years. With a background in world religions and performance art, she tends the cycles and seasons of the earth and human life. She is the Co-Founder and liturgist at Heartward Sanctuary–an animist temple, dance church and natural burial ground in Silk Hope, NC. Julia began training with Daniel in 2014 and is currently an ALH practitioner. Her people hail from the British Isles, Germany, Scandinavia, the Cherokee Nation and W. Africa.
Daniel Foor
Founder / Director at Ancestral Medicine
Daniel is a doctor of psychology, experienced ritualist, and the author of Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing. He is an initiate in the Òrìṣà tradition of Yoruba-speaking West Africa and has learned from teachers of Mahayana Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and the older ways of his English and German ancestors. Daniel is passionate about training aspiring leaders and change makers in the intersections of cultural healing, animist ethics, and applied ritual arts. He lives with his wife and two daughters near Granada, Spain in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
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