REVIEWS

The Mortality Workshop is a beautifully paced, multi-leveled look at death and all of its ramifications. Martha creates a welcoming and safe environment that opens the door to much wisdom and grace.

I couldn't recommend it more.

~ M.D.

The most important thing I learned in Martha’s Mortality Workshop is that "justice" is fundamentally about proximity to/distance from death. That fear of death is at the root of every form of domination. That fascism can only function where there is a repression + fear of death + dying.

I would recommend this workshop for anyone who wants to develop a relationship with their own mortality, to do this with others, learning from each other's experiences. 

The thing that surprised me most about this series is how fast it went + how deeply connected I felt to the cohort. When people gather around the heart of the matter, there is so much shared vulnerability. 

Martha has done the deep study but has also had the unfathomable experience of facing down her mortality in a very non-abstract way! I've never encountered anyone who has thought more or more deeply about the many facets of death, dying + mortality than Martha. This made for an expansive + potent experience.

While it may seem scary, there's actually so much joy in beginning to come into relationship with this fundamental fact of our existence with others!

~ S. C.

The material I have access to in your dream group and mysticism study group is precious and helps me without a doubt with creative projects. And I love the participants in each group.

~ E.G.

Vocation and Discernment Group

I attended Martha's Group Group workshop and Mortality Workshop and wholeheartedly recommend both of them. The workshops had a really positive impact on me - I learned so much and am drawing on the knowledge and skills I gained from them in both my personal life and my professional practice. In both workshops, I developed new, meaningful friendships and community networks.The workshops nourished me intellectually and emotionally. It's so worth it.

~ N.K.

I decided to participate in Martha Crawford’s “Group-Group” to develop my skills and identify a framework that I could use for virtual groups. In addition to getting the needed skills, framework, and understanding of how to conduct groups, I met bright and interesting people that shared an interest in creating community groups. While I thought I was navigating the pandemic with close friends and family okay, it became clear that I had been missing a sense of community and participation in this group made me very aware of that. After we completed “Group-Group”, we remained in touch with quarterly zoom calls, participation in other groups/workshops, and email communication to check in, provide support, and share perspectives.

~ D. C.

The principles I took from Group Group around self-regulation during meetings/conferences/writing retreats has led to a big increase in the people who actually return to the meetings I put together. And since I’m trying to create primarily cool spaces, the strategies about group initiation (invitation, norms) have almost completely reduced the friction in these groups to zero, or as near zero as can be expected in a time like this one.

~ A.A.

DREAM WORK AS Praxis - WORKSHOP

I’m taking this dream workshop. It's so good. We meet once a week by Zoom, and the participants come from all over, and we take turns week by week sharing a dream, and then all asking questions about it and offering associations about it. 

And the woman who runs it is so good. Her first career was as an actress, her second career was as a psychotherapist, and she started a third era leading groups. She has come at symbol and metaphor and meaning and purpose in all of these different ways – all these kinds of embodiments and inroads and contexts – so her ability to point to how an image is at the crossroads of all of these realms is just amazing.  

She also points out that humans have a TON bearing down on us right now, and there just aren’t enough therapists to help each person process all of it — the pandemic death and loss, the cultural repressions, the danger and loss from climate change — all of it happening at once. 

And it really helps to have someone anchor the group who is conversant in so many levels of what it means to be a being in distress? (But also a being who wants to live with a sense of purpose and connectedness.) And I observe that it helps if the person leading the group has seen some shit. 😂 I mean, dreams deal in things we haven’t been consciously dealing with and that can be so intense!! But she’s calm in the muck of it and can point to landmarks. It makes so much difference for me.

~ J. F.

Martha has designed and leads the Living with Mortality Workshop with such great care. It metes the topics out at a pace that matched my ability to comprehend, consider, and assimilate… neither too quickly nor too slowly, neither overwhelming nor disconnected. The opportunity to attend this workshop is an opportunity to be guided skillfully into turning to look towards aspects of reality that are so repressed (in our time, in dominant cultures) as to be almost invisible, yet so important as to demand our attention. It was a genuine pleasure to be able to practice, in conscious community, witnessing, thinking, feeling, questioning, not knowing, remembering, and relating. I hesitated to take this workshop, thinking it might be too hard, too sad, too depressing, but it isn’t any of those things. It’s a resounding relief, like taking a deep breath after holding it too long.

~ N.H.

This Mortality workshop was excellent -- the leader, the content and the group of people. Highly recommend for anyone who wants to think more deeply about life and to stretch themselves to be able to be more present with one of the things that scares almost all of us the most.~ C. C.

THE GROUp-GROUP

I joined the Vocation and Discernment Group for Helping Professionals where I have been in community with other therapists providing therapy during a time of increased stress and worry. Participation in these groups have greatly reduced my feelings of isolation from a lack of community and increased my recognition of the need and value. Sometimes it is in the form of laughter and jokes and other times it is the form of sharing and problem-solving. Often, it is both. Regardless of the content, the group members support and takes care of each other in a way that I value beyond measure.

~ D.C.

I didn't realize how much I needed a new set of tools for working with my emotions until I took this workshop. In these sessions, Martha dismantles many common assumptions and misunderstandings about emotional life, and then offers up alternative ways of listening to and learning from your emotions. These new tools are far more subtle and flexible than I've seen elsewhere, and I'm especially grateful to be able to use them to navigate my own responses to these unsettled and unsettling times. I don't know a person who would not benefit from taking this workshop, and can't recommend it highly enough!

~ S. Q.

I enthusiastically recommend all of Martha’s workshops, offerings and writing. She is kind, knowledgeable, trustworthy and generous. I’m so grateful to Martha for her heartfelt dedication to supporting communities.

~ E.S.

Martha’s depth of experience and understanding, breadth of vision, and grounded accessibility are extraordinary. I’ve participated in as many of Martha’s workshops and talks as are suited for me. Each is different in substance and style, and each group of people assembled brings their own specific gifts and qualities. I recommend these all without hesitation: the Dream Workshop, the Vocation and Discernment Group, a High-Risk Peer Support Group, the Group Group, the Living with Mortality Workshop, the evening talks, and her writings. I sing praise for it all, from a life better lived for what I’ve learned.

~ N.H.

CIRCLING THE Drain: Living Intentionally With Mortality

Martha offers a little toolbox in the Riding the Roller Coaster workshop: ways to notice messages from our emotions that we’ve been habitually overlooking, and strategies for how to listen to those messages when we’re constrained by the demands of daily life, or scared of what those emotions might reveal to us or ask of us.  

~ J.S.

Through the Riding the Roller Coaster workshop: in addition to learning of different ways to understand emotions, I found it really healing to talk with others about our experiences of being made to suspect and disconnect from our feelings and how we might try another more self-accepting way

Reflecting on the Riding the Roller Coaster workshop:

I appreciated exploring alternative attitudes towards our emotional states, finding pathways around the default attitude of emotions as something to be overcome or an enemy in some way, or an irritation to be discarded, or in every way lesser than (other?) cognitive functions. We're primarily emotional beings, with the thinking bit kind of added on, rather than thinking creatures that also have some emotions There's also the sticky wicket of separating EMOTIONS from THE REST OF OUR CONSCIOUS SELVES, but such is the folly of clean categories. The overall vibe of the workshop material is to sit in that mess and learn to hear what it says to you.

I liked the "methods and strategies" night that took a bunch of things I'm familiar with from reading and personal instinct, and set them down nicely alongside ideas that were new to me.  Looking at various traditions together felt like a circle of interesting friends with very different personalities. Discussing different approaches to navigating our inner lives was clarifying, validating, in some way. There's sort of a duality to this task- of recognizing that our emotional experience IS us, integrating that unity into our outlook; AND figuring out how to mold it like stiff stubborn clay because it IS malleable and needs attention. Like creating ourselves, using whatever ridiculous materials have been given to us. 

The workshop took a wild tangle of ideas from many different places and wove them into an interesting and useful picture of how to really fucking human. It helped me see familiar ideas in new ways, including re-evaluating some currently popular wisdom, and brought me new ideas as well. 

I always just want to paint big arrows pointing at good useful things and label them "JUST TRUST ME ON THIS, IT IS GOOD."

~ J. K.