Tending grief through singing (with The Unthanks)

To say that The Unthanks are a folk band from Northumberland is technically true but wildly inadequate. If you are not familiar with them, the best place to start is here and then go and explore the rest of their website and the whole of their back catalogue.

For me they are a much-loved band, and the vocal harmonies of Becky and Rachel make my heart simultaneously sing with joy and break with agony. Which is a wonderful thing when you are an End of Life Doula – a treasure map to the essence of what matters, and to accessing deep emotions.

One of the many gifts The Unthanks give as a band are their residential singing weekends, where no matter what your level of talent or experience, you are invited to spend time in their company, learning a range of songs and then singing them in interesting places.

I am just back from my second residential and I am reflecting on the opportunities I took to tend my grief over the weekend. For me tending grief means gently turning towards my experience of loss, feeling the feelings and letting them pass through. It is allowing my heart and soul time to breathe and to be congruent. Taking off the armour of self-consciousness and allowing what will come to come. It is holding tenderly both the euphoria and the sorrow and not questioning how they co-exist.

Liminal space

I experience the weekends with The Unthanks as a liminal space. They stop short of calling it a retreat – it is not restful. I came away enriched and depleted in equal measure! It begins with making a journey. I’m lucky to live in the North East so the furthest I have to travel is an hour by car. Others came from London, Ireland and beyond, and about 70% are returnees – a testament to what this space gives and means to people.

Leaving home and driving up the A1, crawling along in Friday afternoon traffic, marvelling at a buzzard flying low above us, remembering the similar drive I made 15 months ago to my first residential. Dad was still alive then. He wasn’t even unwell – just a bit less steady on his feet and losing his voice. I hadn’t got married yet. I hadn’t quit my job to start my training as a Doula. It is poignant, recognising the passing of time, and what passes with it. What we choose or are forced to let go of.

I mindfully invited dad along with me, to show up over the weekend, to be there. I knew from the previous year that my heart would open, and my soul would be touched. I invited him to be part of that.

As soon I entered the space and sat down to have coffee and cake with strangers I realised I was amongst people with similar intentions and passions, who were willing to by-pass small talk and share their joys and sorrows through deep conversations. This alone is a gift when in normal life I can lack opportunities to get beyond the superficial in my interactions. People spoke the names of their loved ones to me, bringing them into the room, and I in turn spoke of my dad, feeling my heart fill through the exchange.

Belonging

Part of the magic for me in these weekends comes from feeling as if I have stepped inside something that I can usually only see from the outside as an audience member. It is beyond going behind the scenes. It is being invited in to become part of the scene. In a sense this is the opposite of how my grief has felt, which at times has made me feel separate from everyone else, looking at life going on around me and feeling as if I am separated from it by a wall of glass. We used to grieve more communally but this has become gradually more private and insular. Hidden. Apologised for if it leaks out. I don’t think this helps me, feeling as if I need to supress what I am feeling and package up into something more palatable.

Research suggests that when we sing together as a group, our heart beats synchronise, speeding up and slowing down in unison, connected to our breath. It was incredible to experience how quickly Becky and Rachel got the 60+ of us singing well in harmony, filling the room with sound. Helping new folks settle in and feel welcome. Building the confidence of those of us who know we can’t sing very well and giving the more confident and talented people opportunities to shine.

And then there is the wrap-around care provided by the rest of the band and their extended families, providing us with homecooked food and making everything run smoothly. Talking, laughing, singing, walking and eating together, with a synchronised heartbeat – the very essence of belonging. As a group of people singing, we have to tune in to the community – listening to each other, working collaboratively with the other parts, watching the conducting, and tuning in most to those singing our part. Co-creating the energy in the room, around the fire, in the pub. Fun and light-heartedness balanced with an attention to accuracy. And shared moments of poignancy that are held lightly.

Light and dark

As a genre, folk songs really explore both the darkest and most joyful parts of being human, a form of storytelling passing on tradition and legacy, never shying away from the most brutal aspects of human nature and our sorrows, joy, griefs, love and loss. There were lyrics too poignant and painful for me to sing. I was unable to breathe at those moments, and instead I listened to the beautiful harmonies created by everyone else and just allowed them to hold me in that moment.

Collective grief

Part of our weekend involved walking along to Sycamore Gap to sing at the place where a much beloved tree was senselessly felled. The stump, although sprouting, still bears the scars of the chainsaw that cut it down. While people’s response to this event varied, there were enough people who were touched deeply by the loss of something they held dear to make me wonder about our collective grief. How do we respond to something that touches so many of us so deeply? What rituals do we have to process what this means to us? Singing next to the stump was, for me, a lament. An act of witnessing the violence that people around the world and the planet itself are experiencing. Grieving for this. Honouring. The tree, as it was, has gone. But the relationship with the place continues, and there is hope and resistance in that.

Ritual

There is a structure to the weekends that is recognisable to anyone who chooses to return after their first experience. Elements of the itinerary that I sense have taken on special significance over the years. Dr Martin Shaw wrote “we make things holy by the kind of attention we give them”. Singing in the pub, cheese on Saturday night, the Sunday morning song and the parting song are all examples of this on an Unthanks residential. The latter two especially have meaning for me. Dimitri Xygalatas explains that rituals imbue life with meaning by making certain things special. Ritual creates a domain of the sacred, separating it from the mundanity of everyday life. When the group sings Bright Morning Star on Sunday morning, freely experimenting with harmony, I am transported to the domain of the sacred. I knew as I drove up the A1 that this would be a moment of deep grief and also deep love. I simply stood in it and let it be, grateful for the way it broke my heart open.

Parting song

And all too quickly the weekend was over. I was hugging people who had been strangers 48 hours previously, swapping details and making plans to meet again. We are continually faced with endings, some more significant than others. Marking endings is a way to process not just the ending right in front of us, but the other things in our life that are no longer. The impermanence of everything and the pain of being a human hardwired for attachment. Joining together to sing a parting song is the ritual of closing the weekend. It is both thanks and acknowledgement. We will never be right here in this moment again. Dear Companions on the In Winter album, for me, is the perfect parting song with the endlessly honest lyric “dear companions, now and ever, will live on in songs we sing”. And so, we sing.

And I sing all the way home in the car.

You can sign up to hear when booking for The Unthanks 2026 residentials open here.