If you've ever felt overwhelmed by grief and wondered how to move through it, Episode 434 of the Grief and Happiness podcast offers something tangible. Day Schildkret shares how the Morning Altars practice emerged from his own devastating loss and has since transformed how thousands of people around the world work with grief, celebration, and change. Through simple acts of gathering natural materials and creating meaningful offerings, Day shows us that beauty and healing don't have to wait until we're ready.
In This Episode, You Will Learn:
(01:21) What it means to tend to a community and the relationships within it
(02:13) How Morning Altars work and the three core tenets of the practice
(03:50) How the practice began with Day's father's death and absolute devastation
(06:21) The power of nature connection and play from childhood into adulthood
(07:27) Why wonder and impermanence matter when you're working through grief
(09:14) How creating with your hands becomes a meditation and a way to slow down
(10:06) Being fully present with what you're making as a rare gift in today's world
(14:46) The seven-step practice: gathering, creating, offering, and letting go
(16:15) How Morning Altars work across prisons, schools, memory care, and more
Day Schildkret is an artist, author, and teacher behind the internationally recognized Morning Altars movement, which inspires people to make their lives more beautiful and meaningful through nature, creativity, and ritual. With nearly 100,000 followers on social media and sold-out trainings worldwide, Day has taught workshops and created installations at sites including Google, The 9/11 Memorial Plaza, The Andy Warhol Foundation, Esalen, and the California Academy of Sciences. He is the author of Morning Altars: A 7-Step Practice to Nourish Your Spirit through Nature, Art and Ritual and the upcoming Hello, Goodbye: 75 Rituals for Times of Loss, Celebration and Change. His work has been featured on NBC, CBS, BuzzFeed, and Vice.
In this episode, Day Schildkret shares how the Morning Altars practice began after his father's death. Seven months of overwhelming grief led him to gather natural materials and create something that shifted something inside. He challenged himself to make an altar daily for 30 days, and what started as making something pretty became deeply meaningful, each altar telling the story of his loss. Since then, he has trained over 600 practitioners working in 13 countries. Throughout the conversation, Day emphasizes that this work is about reclaiming wonder and understanding impermanence as freedom, not loss. In a world that teaches us to grasp and accomplish, the Morning Altars practice teaches us to gather, create, wonder, and let go.
Connect with Day Schildkret:
\tWebsite
\tExplore Day’s free 7 Days of Wonder course
\tGet Day’s books!
Let's Connect:
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\tThe Grief and Happiness Alliance
\tBook: Emily Thiroux Threatt - Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief
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