Sifting Shards in the Bonehouse
Alchemy, Devastations & Shapeshifting
OCTOBER 1 & 2, 2026
Live in
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Early Bird Price through midnight
Monday, August 17th!
With
Sifting Shards in the Bonehouse
Alchemy, Devastations & Shapeshifting
Live in
Santa Fe, New mexico
OctOBER 1 & 2, 2026
Early Bird Price through midnight
Monday, August 17th!
With
Stephen Jenkinson &
Kimberly Ann Johnson
Early Bird Price through midnight
Stephen Jenkinson &
A 2-Day gathering exploring grief and caretaking from the wreckage of life.
With Stephen Jenkinson & Kimberly Ann Johnson.
Sifting Shards in the Bonehouse
Alchemy, Devastations & Shapeshifting
With
Stephen Jenkinson &Kimberly Ann Johnson
OCTOBER 1 & 2, 2026
Live in
SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO
Get Early Bird Price til 11:59PM Pacific on Monday, August 17th!
A 2-Day gathering exploring grief and caretaking from the wreckage of life.
With Stephen Jenkinson & Kimberly Ann Johnson.
"It’s different to receive a diagnosis of the brain– not the kidneys, not the heart, not the lungs."
What’s come along with this diagnosis…
An inquiry into the nature of the Self.
Where is it? Where does it live?
Is it cued to your intelligence?
How am I to be the person that this is happening to, with, and inside of?
Is there a self that survives the news?
Should there be?
Is that the point?
Is that a mark of relative okayness?
What does it set you up for, to see the operation as principally one of trying to recover a continuous thread of selfhood?
I am less and less persuaded that’s the project.
You think you know your life.
You know the gateways, the walls and windows, the trapdoors.
Maybe it’s truer to say that you know about your life what you can afford at any given time to know.
The rest will make itself known. “Ready or not”, it says. Not a threat. A vow.
There’s good news and bad, and then there’s hard news, the kind that goes out beyond the yes/no of life, that obeys the passing of time. The most faithful news there is. The kind that won’t go away.
The kind that Changes Everything.
How do you move when you are completely undone?
What do you do when Death's door opens?
who is this for?
- Birth and Death Workers
- Writers and Art Makers
- Ceremonialists
- Caregivers and Caretakers
- Holistic Health Care Providers
- Palliative and Hospice Care Workers
- Therapists
- Interfaith Ministers, Rabbis, Spiritual Leaders, Teachers, and Practitioners
- Rites of Passage Leaders
or for those interested in...
- Birth + Death
- Oral Tradition + Storytelling
- Culture Making
- The Old Ways
- Grief Practices
- Intergenerational Wisdom
- Eloquence and Ceremony
- Birth + Death
- Oral Tradition + Storytelling
- Culture Making
- The Old Ways
- Grief Practices
- Intergenerational Wisdom
- Eloquence and Ceremony
"And none of us deserving of the cruelty or the grace."
~Leonard Cohen
"Now, the unimaginable has descended upon the “Griefwalker” himself."
Well this book Trembling, Still is Stephen’s side of things, you could say.
And I have mine.
I’ve tried to listen through this whole diagnosis process, to “stay close” as he told me to do.
Because I was there for a lot of it. I am here for it.
I’ve been trying to do what anyone who truly loves someone would do. And who knows how many other people love that person would do.
Understand what was called for. How much was the right amount of suggesting and pushing?
Time to go for a walk. Drink a glass of water. Let’s go to acupuncture. Call your friend Friday.
The year prior to the diagnosis, someone asked if I was his caregiver, and we both balked. It seems I became something else.
And things are different still.
After spending months together for each of the last three years, we haven’t seen each other this year.
So it’s time to get together.
With you.
To reckon with the times we’re in.
~ Kimberly
"To know the moment that you’re in, and mobilize accordingly: that’s where grace and style and eloquence are born."
Is healing the only alternative?
Is acceptance what’s called for?
This two-day gathering is for those interested in the intersection of art, grief, ritual, co-habitation. We’re at the end of the road with the trauma lens - oftentimes a diagnosis puts your whole worldview into relief.
We invite you to gather with us...
The Details
In-Person Gathering
- Santa Fe, New Mexico
This two-day offering includes:
- 2 Morning Sessions
(Thursday & Friday, 10am – 1pm)
- 1 Afternoon/Evening Session
(Thursday, 4pm – 6pm)
- Friday Evening Concert with Nights of Grief & Mystery
(Friday, 7pm – 9:30pm)
A SPECIAL NOTE ON TIMING:
This is a ceremonial endeavor. We will also respect the present-time limits of Stephen’s condition.
These are suggested timings, but we ask that beginning on Thursday morning at 9:30, you plan to enter into this space and be willing to change directions with timing, except the concert which will definitely start at 7pm on Friday.
If traveling, we recommend you arrive in Santa Fe on Wednesday.
Accommodation & Airport Information (not included with event registration):
Click here for Accommodations & Travel information
There's wrangling to be done.
Let's find our what we've got, what we really know.
Early Bird Price Available
Until midnight Pacific time on Monday, August 17th
INVESTMENT
$695
Regular Price
$500*
Early Bird Price
(Pay in Full or 2 Payments of $250)
*Includes the Friday night concert
*Does not include Accommodations or Travel
(SPACE IS LIMITED)
This US debut and in-person event with Stephen Jenkinson marks the publication of his forthcoming book,
Trembling, Still: The Awful Clarity of a Mind in Eclipse.
The Venue
Santa Fe Scottish Rite Temple
Alhambra Theater
Thursday – Friday
October 1 – 2, 2026
This gathering and concert will be held in the Alhambra Theater – the mystical centerpiece of the Santa Fe Scottish Rite Temple – a Santa Fe landmark.
Information about the venue can be found here.
An Old Man and a Mother gather for the fifth year in a row to reckon with the consequences of these times.
About Stephen Jenkinson:
Stephen Jenkinson is a culture activist and ceremony man, practitioner of the eloquence of tongue and hand. He is an author, a storyteller, a musician, sculptor, raconteur and off-grid organic farmer. He has performed and taught internationally, published seven books, and made a public life as an advocate of conscious living and dying. His most recent book, Trembling, Still: The Awful Clarity of a Mind in Eclipse (2026) was published earlier this year.
Stephen is the creator of the Orphan Wisdom School, cofounded with his wife Nathalie Roy in 2010. He apprenticed with a master storyteller as a young man and received a master’s degree in theology at Harvard University and a master’s of social work from the University of Toronto.
He is the co-founder of the Nights of Grief and Mystery with singer/ songwriter Gregory Hoskins. In 2026 they released Caldera, a studio double record, as an LP (including a vinyl limited edition) and CD.
Stephen has worked extensively with dying people and their families, formerly serving as the director of palliative care at Mount Sinai Hospital of Toronto. In 2023, Stephen received a Distinguished Alumni Honours Award from Harvard University for “helping people navigate grief, exploring the liminal space between life and death, and connecting humanity through ceremony and storytelling.”
About Kimberly Ann Johnson:
Kimberly Ann Johnson is a sexological bodyworker, Somatic Experiencing practitioner, postpartum advocate and culture worker. She studied yoga directly with the three main lineage holders of the Krishnamacharya tradition and taught yoga full time for 15 years, while running a Structural Integration practice.
When radically rearranged by childbirth, Kimberly’s life changed shape to attend to the cultural chasm of postpartum care, and as a result she trained in Somatic Experiencing and Sexological Bodywork to be able to help women heal from birth injuries, gynecological surgeries and sexual boundary violations.
She is the author of Call of the Wild, as well as the early mothering classic The Fourth Trimester, and Reckoning, co-authored with Stephen Jenkinson. Her latest book Erotic Seasons: Tuning into the Rhythms of Women’s Sexuality and Spirituality will be released Nov. 17 with St. Martin’s Press. She is the host of the Sex Birth Trauma podcast and the steward of Mothering the Bones.
"The work of being human in a crisis is a crisis."
For details about this book, visit:
Trembling, Still: The Awful Clarity of a Mind in Eclipse
“Beyond the shores of bliss, there is a time in life when the sanctity of love’s bedfellow – loss –becomes a more profound presence and when life’s bedfellow – demise – looms and won’t be silenced.
Mr. Stephen Jenkinson allows us to walk with him through receiving a neurodegenerative disorder diagnosis and along the rocky path of facing endings, challenges, friendships and surprises that he encounters internally and externally.
He is a man of both words and phenomena; I savoured every expression of experience from the depths of sadness to the peaks of triumphs, from exquisite reflections on body and mind to relationships close and casual. Gifted with letters, this dying man’s words are authentic, masterful, painterly and poetic. Demanding life from his ailing body and confronting the terror of a failing mind, he wows.”
~Dr. Diane Meschino
"A kind of memoir of monstrous encounter, a wrestling match with divinity, with lucidity, with mind."
“Turbulently brilliant; tuneful and mournful, poignant and funny, heart-rending and mind-grabbing, skillfully improvisational, eloquent and compelling.”
~ Gabor Maté, MD, author of The Myth of Normal
Questions?
This is designed as a two day immersive experience, so there’s no option for just one day only. We want you to be present for this whole experience. The sessions and the space between sessions are part of this immersion.
Nights of Grief and Mystery and the performance of Caldera- the work made by Gregory Hoskins and Stephen Jenkinson in the wake of the diagnosis is a part of Sifting Shards. So there are no separate tickets being sold.
Yes, both Stephen and Kimberly will be signing books. You will also have a chance to purchase books at the event.
We welcome questions in written form. Before sessions and between sessions, we read through them. They inform the movements we make and the directions we go. Sometimes we have a mic that you can come to for questions. We’ll see how this gathering takes shape. We do greatly value your participation.
Listening to the podcasts that Stephen and Kimberly have recorded. Engaging Reckoning on audio or the book itself. Read or listen to Trembling, Still.
As the event draws nearer, listening to deeper questions circling you.
Lodging & meals are not included. Tuition includes 3 teaching sessions and a Friday night concert.
Your ticket is non-refundable.
Have another question?
Should you have any additional questions, our support team are ready to assist.
Click here to send an email.
We will speak about grief, dying, and the great love of life.
Early Bird Price Available
Until midnight Pacific time on Monday, August 17th
INVESTMENT
$695
Regular Price
$500*
Early Bird Price
(Pay in Full or 2 Payments of $250)
*Includes the Friday night concert.
Does not include Accommodations or Travel.
(SPACE IS LIMITED)
Special note: This schedule is based on what we imagine to be possible. But as Stephen has mentioned, the weather has changed and it’s less predictable than ever. Opting in for Sifting Shards in the Bonehouse means including the limitations that have come around. We will do our best to follow the proposed schedule, but we will ask for patience and leeway. There will be no shortage of opportunities to practice reverence and culture making in real time.
Sifting Shards in the Bonehouse
Alchemy, Devastations & Shapeshifting
Live in
Santa Fe, New mexico
OctOBER 1 & 2, 2026
Early Bird Price through midnight
Monday, August 17th!
With