• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Work That Reconnects Network

Work That Reconnects Network

  • Events
  • Contact
  • FAQs
  • Register
  • Login
  • Show Search
  • E-mail
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
Donate
Hide Search
  • Connect
  • Resources
  • Become a Facilitator
  • Blog
  • Community Forum
This profile has not been updated since Mar 12, 2021.
You are here: Home / Users / Robin Macdonald

Robin MacdonaldHeart Land

Photo of Robin Macdonald

Robin K. Macdonald is a communal grief care facilitator, Yasodhara Yoga teacher, restorative justice worker, writer and facilitator of the Work that Reconnects. She lives on the traditional and unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg, north of the Kichesippi River
in Quebec, Canada. Robin is a lifelong learner committed to moving towards right relationship with herself, those around her, past generations and future beings.

Why I am called to facilitate the Work

I’m the co-founder of a small social enterprise that initially offered grief support training based on communal grief processes. After the co-founder who I had been working with for ten years stepped back, I put the business on hold for eighteen months. Then, I had to make a decision about whether or how to proceed. I did a land-based visioning process which clarified a new vision – to adapt the work to focus exclusively on Ecological Grief. I had already been studying Joanna Macy’s work and as soon as I received this direction, I knew that I wanted to base the Ecological Grief events I would be offering on the Work that Reconnects. Also, I had long felt conflicted based on a concept that I had to choose between caring for people in my work and caring for the greater body of Earth. Joanna’s writing liberated me from this delusion and showed me a way to integrate both.

How I see the Work serving the Great Turning

It gives people:
• Education about emotional intelligence and practice and experience in composting emotions. This allows feedback loops to open and energy to be available for healing actions, whether for self-care or for the greater body of earth.
• practice, awareness and experience at empathic regulation so that we can listen and see and feel those who need us to be in solidarity with them. If people can’t empathically regulate, they look away. When people look away, other beings get left behind.
• The events provide an opportunity to set a clear intention in relation to the choices that we as humans get to make. Participants realize they can make a difference by offering their particular gifts to contribute to a life-sustaining and just society. This increases confidence in the human imagination as a basis for hope. We all have moral imaginations. This is an opportunity to cultivate and use them to protect life on earth.
• Awareness of the stories people are receiving and telling themselves, their power of choice in relation to which narrative/s they invest in and expanding the story possibilities to include the Great Turning
• My experience of this work is that it builds motivation, solidarity and vision, renewing the courage to act with care and integrity.

• These events happen in a group or community. People are invited to come out of isolation from the big emotions that we carry around by bringing them into the group. There, they are no longer just ours to hold privately anymore. Through this process, people feel more connected to each other and the world around us. This facilitates a shift from seeing ourselves as individuals to seeing ourselves as part of a community that includes all beings.

• Inspiration and empowerment emerges from the sense of community that comes from addressing common threats.

Audiences I work with

Spiritual and faith communities, Indigenous communities, university groups and front-line workers (including anyone who continues to directly provide services during the pandemic whether to a client, a parent, a child or is serving as a social justice or environmental activist).

Background & Training

Background & training in the Work That Reconnects

  • Relating to Ourselves and Others with the Heart of the Buddha (2019, 4 days)
    Location: Arnprior, ON
    Facilitated by: Jean Esther
  • WTR Circle (2019, 1 days)
    Location: Montreal
    Facilitated by: Rebekah Hart
    A half-day workshop followed by a three-hour gathering for emerging facilitators to ask Rebekah questions and explore next steps.
  • Ongoing WTR Facilitator Development Support Group (2020, 14 days)
    Location: Online
    Facilitated by: Lydia Violet
    2 hours 2x/month from 2019 - present
  • Eastern Ontario/Western Quebec WTR Community of Practice (2020, 12 days)
    Location: Ottawa, ON and online
    Facilitated by: Robin Macdonald, Pat Kerr, Kathryn Harvey, Kelly Butler, Andrea Prazmowski, Laurie-Anne Muldoon
    2 - 3 hrs, 1/month. A place for emerging WTR facilitators to gain experience, receive feedback and for all of us to experience the spiral regularly as a maintenance practice.

Other relevant training

  • Before we were White: Ceremony and Ancestry Recovery for Anti-Racist Action (2018, 4 days)
    Location: Online
    Facilitated by: Eleanor Hancock and Darcy Ottey
    Together we explored how ceremonial practice and the development of a strong ancestral identity can help us challenge white supremacy as whole people.
  • Nature-Based Ritual and Ceremony (2017, 120 days)
    Location: Online & local sit spot
    Facilitated by: Corinna Stevenson
    Education and practice/facilitation of Earth-centered rituals as a vital means of re-awakening our connection to the earth and promoting deeper sources of personal and environmental healing and action.
  • Grief workshops/Grief Support Training (2012, 30 days)
    Location: Ottawa & throughout Ontario
    Facilitated by: Bereaved Families of Ontario – Ottawa Region, Alan Wolfelt, Therese Rando & others
    I worked for Bereaved Families of Ontario – Ottawa Region for 4 years before co-founding Heart Land. Throughout this time, I participated in many training and professional development opportunities related to the provision of grief support
  • Restorative Justice (2006, 400 days)
    Location: Northern Manitoba, northern Ontario & Brantford Ontario
    Facilitated by: Mediation Services (Winnipeg, MB), Northern Restorative Justice (Thompson, MB) Marilee Sherry (Brantford, Ontario)
    I am certified and have experience as a mediator and a facilitator for Community Justice Forums, Family Group Decision Making processes, justice circles and other participatory conflict resolution and decision-making processes. These processes are congruent with the most effective social work practices: widening circles of support, achieving safety, ensuring that everyone has a voice, facilitating healing and encompassing various practice models that place clients at the center of decision-making processes.
  • Yoga Development Course, Hidden Language Hatha Yoga Teacher Training and Kundalini and Dreams Teacher Training (2006, 120 days)
    Location: Yasodhara Ashram
    Facilitated by: Senior teachers
    I’m a certified Yashodhara Yoga teacher and facilitator. By integrating yogic practices with personal development techniques, the yoga at Yasodhara encompasses the teachings of the East and translates them for our Western situation. This reflective, spiritual approach to yoga integrates body, mind and speech. At the times of my trainings, Yasodhara Ashram was a registered secondary education institution with the province of British Columbia. I re-certify my teacher trainings every three years.

Other relevant skills & experiences

I’m a published writer and have facilitated writing workshops and workshops combining writing and spiritual practices. I speak English and French. I haven’t done the teaching parts of the work in French yet, but have responded to participants in French.

I support people in transition from Federal prison into community. I’m trained in the universal patterns of transitions and in supporting people through significant life transitions.
A combination of living in a region of the world with the highest suicide rates and experiencing 7 pregnancy losses in 10 years is what led me to grief work. Learning how to honour my pain and the territory of grief in group settings has helped me to show up more as myself and how I want to be in the world.

Experience facilitating WTR events & workshops

Work That Reconnects workshops I have facilitated

  • Ecological Grief (2020, 4 days)
    Location: Online
    Facilitated by: Andrea Prazmowski
  • Ecological Grief (2020, 5 days)
    Location: Online
    Facilitated by: Andrea Prazmowski
  • Ecological Grief (2020, 1 days)
    Location: South Gillies
  • Ecological Grief Retreat (2020, 1 days)
    Location: Online
    Facilitated by: Andrea Prazmowski
  • For the Love of Creation (2021, 1 days)
    Location: Online
    Facilitated by: Andrea Prazmowski

Experience facilitating other events & workshops

I offer grief support as part of my prison transition work. I’ve started facilitating one-on-one support, based on the WTR spiral, both in writing and spoken.

Primary Sidebar

User Info

WTR Facilitator since 2020
Languages served: English, French
Location: Heart Land, 81 - 1/2 rue DeLorimier, Gatineau, Quebec J8Y 3E4, Canada
Contact info
  • Contact website: griefintogrowth.com

The Work That Reconnects Network is a fiscally sponsored project of Inquiring Systems Inc., a tax-exempt 501 (c) (3) nonprofit corporation. EIN 94-2524840. All donations are tax-deductible.

Footer

Recent Posts

  • Activating Hope: An interview with Helen Sui Jun 19, 2022
  • Join in on the Action Jun 11, 2022
  • Invitation to join two Research Projects Jun 3, 2022

Recent Comments

  • John Roach on Living the Spiral: An interview with Molly Brown
  • Margo van Greta on Living the Spiral: An interview with Molly Brown
  • Empathy and Compassion in Uncertain Times - Network of Wellbeing on Three Stories of Our Time
  • Revisiting Riverton: the Longwood Loop food resiliency project - Naijal on Three Dimensions of the Great Turning
  • Revisiting Riverton: the Longwood Loop food resiliency project - utexta on Three Dimensions of the Great Turning

Subscribe to the WTR newsletter

Receive notification when new issues of the Deep Times Journal are available as well as updates on the Work That Reconnects Network.

You can unsubscribe at any time.

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
Return to top
© 2000–2022 Work That Reconnects Network, all rights reserved