Lydia Violet Harutoonian

Climate Grief and Joanna Macy's Work- 

As each day we face the news of climate chaos, political warfare, species extinction, and ecological and social suffering, we are asked to reconcile these collective traumas with all that is breaking in our hearts. It is natural in our time to feel despair, overwhelm, and grief. Joanna Macy's "Work That Reconnects" is an incredibly powerful form of group work and teachings developed over these last 5 decades that help us meet these places of despair, disorientation, and overwhelm with compassionate connection, existential acuity, emotional intelligence, and an opportunity for a transformation in identity situated within an interrelated landscape. 

Climate anxiety and ecological despair are real, they are on behalf of a world desperate for our collaboration in remembering our dignity and grace. It is here that we nourish our compass for the times ahead. Lydia Violet has studied dedicatedly with root teacher Joanna Macy for the past 15 years, shaping her scholarship and facilitation expertise in this work.

Singing The Bones-

To be diasporic means to be a member of any group of people who have been dispersed outside their traditional homeland. Much of the world’s population, including most North American residents, exist within a diaspora. At the same time, there is also a phenomenon of ancestral cultural separation, rootlessness, and amnesia that many of us inherit.  With this separation can come disorientation from land, language, and tradition and assimilation into modern cultures based on capitalism and materialism.  But we do not need to resign ourselves to this assimilation. We can study the past to inform our way forward. Humans have always stored their lessons and medicines in stories and songs, and every culture has a thread in this tapestry. Lydia pioneered the Singing The Bones Course five years ago, and has supported hundreds of students in cultural research, reconnection, and revitalization.

Music As Medicine-

Music As Medicine is an offering of Macy’s Work That Reconnects in combination with facilitated, community singing.  Communities have come together to make music for millennia, keeping their spirits strong and nourished through hard times, while also celebrating the gifts of life. Together we hold a space that can heal the wounds inhibiting our ability to make music, learning both technically and emotionally how to free our voices into song. 

*These workshops are open to music-makers of all levels. Singing in a council of friends is one of the most healthful, encouraging, invigorating, and nourishing things we can do. 

In past workshops, Lydia has partnered with different artists and music groups such as Rising Appalachia and MaMuse, exploring songs passed down through generations to uplift and nourish while drawing from short-form song traditions, international folk music and improvisational experimentation.