ADEC’s 2026 Annual Conference
Baltimore, Maryland, USA
2026 Specialty Workshop AM (No CEs)
BeFriending Grief: Re-Membering, Ritual, and Conjuring Our Way to Resurrection
Jamie Eaddy, DMin, FT
Wednesday, March 4, 2026
9:00am-12:15pm ET/Baltimore Time Zone
IN-PERSON ONLY
Grief is more than sorrow—it is a portal. This workshop reframes grief as a sacred companion and creative threshold through which individuals and communities may re-imagine, re-create, and conjure aliveness after rupture. Drawing from process theology,
African and Indigenous ritual teachings, and contemporary grief theory, participants will explore grief at micro (personal), mezzo (communal), and macro (institutional) levels. Through embodied practice, ritual, and dialogue, participants will
learn to befriend grief as a guide toward transformation. Attendees will leave with tools for cultivating resilience, justice, and life-affirming futures (new worlds) through grief’s generative power. Presentation Level: Intermediate.
Learning Objectives:
- Reframe grief as a dynamic portal of change (resonant with Butler’s “God is Change”) and identify how this reframing opens possibilities for re-imagining, re-creation, and conjuring aliveness.
- Demonstrate at least two embodied or ritual practices (influenced by African and Indigenous teachings, process theology, and grief scholarship) for befriending grief at personal and communal levels.
- Apply the Re-Membering Process® to assess and support grief at micro, mezzo, and macro levels, integrating justice-centered and trauma-informed approaches into professional practice.
- Evaluate how befriended grief can catalyze justice, resilience, and life-affirming futures in communities and systems.
About the Presenter:
Jamie Eaddy, DMin, FT is a thanatologist and pastoral theologian whose work integrates process theology, ritual, and justice-centered care. She earned her Doctor of Ministry degree from Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, where
her research centered on grief and liberative pastoral practice. She now serves as Director of Counseling & Wellness Services at the Anti-Violence Partnership of Philadelphia, developing grief-informed, trauma-responsive programs for survivors
of violence and their families. She is also the founder of Thoughtful Transitions and The Ratchet Grief Project®, initiatives that train death doulas, grief companions, clergy, and clinicians to accompany dying and grieving persons with cultural
humility and liberative practices.
Dr. Eaddy is a Fellow in Thanatology (ADEC) with more than twenty years of experience in pastoral care, clinical support, and community education. Her forthcoming book, Re-Membering the Self: A Womanist
Guide to Grief Care (WIPF & Stock 2026), explores grief as sacred and transformative. She has presented nationally and internationally on grief, trauma, spirituality, and community healing, and her frameworks—including the Re-Membering Process®
and Sacred Care as Liberative Praxis—are used in classrooms, congregations, and grassroots settings.
Her work is rooted in the conviction that grief, when befriended, becomes a portal to re-imagining, re-creation, resilience, and the conjuring
of life-affirming futures.
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