third book of prayers by Earth Medicine Educator, Pixie Lighthorse. Prayer is a means of connecting to our elevated natures during times of transition. It is during hardship that we can look both deep within and to the cosmic outskirts for guidance and wisdom. Prayer can connect us immediately and intimately to what we feel, what is current, and where the challenges are. It allows us the secure and quiet space to be able to honor what we value. To honor is to acknowledge and celebrate. While it may feel counter-intuitive to celebrate pain, what you can celebrate is your ability to access your feelings. Your feelings function is a sense that is like a muscle, asking you to consciously exercise it. The brain is a complex, plastic organ, and it is becoming ever more apparent how it can become hyper-vigilant, triggered by trauma, confused, disorganized, and overwhelmed. To thicken the plot even more, our nervous systems are operating at warp speed, and we are not yet fully equipped with the tools being modern requires in order to navigate through the obstacles of life.Numbing out feelings due to overwhelm turns them off, and we become accustomed to moving through the world unconsciously, detached, and dissociated from them. As natural feelings of suffering and pain are acknowledged, your body will rejoice at its ability to be in the world as it is. The body is a magnificent thing. When its systems come back online, it can bring a feeling of relief as it begins again to do its job as nature intended. The task is to create space for the deeper processes to take place.We are routinely cultured to "get on with it" from an early age, instructed not to waste time lingering in negativity. When the alternative is avoidance we actually become more fragile, though we are taught to believe the opposite. Grief remains in the systems of the body, informing our lives in subtle and subversive ways in the form of fear, anxiety, and depression. The whole map of our lives changes when grief is stored away silently. It directs our decisions, impairs or inflates our willingness to take risks, and continues to have its way with us. Toxic, amputated, dishonest, denied, neglected, mutated grief causes disharmony in the body and spirit.Grief doesn't bite. It is a natural and normal way of dispersing energy through the body's systems. It is not dangerous unless it is acted out in harmful and neglectful ways. Our thoughts around what grief should look like are the most surprising thing of all. How could it possibly be harmful to be honest about how one is feeling? It is simply the confession of what it was really like then and what it feels like now. It is not the plague of darkness it is made out to be. What a relief!Prayers of Honoring Grief walks the reader around the compass of life through 28 distinctive modes of suffering to help the reader gracefully navigate the inner territory of what life is really like, rather than what it is idealized to be.The book includes:

• Suggestions for how to use the book as a personal companion for healing grief as well as ways to bring it into your classes and curriculum
• An introduction to each of the Four Directions and properties associated with grief
• 28 prayers, 7 for each of the Four Directions
• Blank pages on the left side of each prayer for note-taking, collaging, and making the book your own
• One page of journal questions for each section
• Lined pages at the end of each section for recording your thoughts, personal prayers, and notes about your own spiritual awakenings