This lesson, though, comes at a high price.

Her grandson, Byron Lamar Waring, is on death row for the 2005 Raleigh stabbing death of Lauren Redman.

No one talks about it in her small town of Eutawville, S.C.

So she kept her sadness and depression bottled up.

She felt alone.

Waring first learned about healing circles while attending a conference in 2007 for those like her. The tradition has been used for centuries to resolve conflict and make important community decisions.

Healing circles have helped Waring so much that she travels to Durham every December for an event sponsored by the Capital Restorative Justice Project.

"It really helped me to grow because I really felt empty," Waring said. "Cried all the time. When I leave them, I have hope that it's going to be all right.

"It's an ongoing thing, but every day it gets better, and I'm learning to cope from it."

In Durham, the healing circles grew out of an effort by the justice project's Kacey Reynolds and Leah Wilson-Hartgrove, who in 2005 spent the summer talking to relatives of murder victims and death row inmates.

Reynolds, the community outreach and development director, spoke about the circles during the monthly Religious Coalition for a NonViolent Durham meeting on Thursday. She'd like to form two circles here: one for relatives of homicide victims and another for other community members. She's seeking volunteers to help organize the circles, which will take place every week.

Such initiatives are needed because "there's no such thing as a hospice for homicide victims," Reynolds said.

"Everybody's on an even playing field and everybody's hurt with an equal amount of dignity and respect," she said. "It represents community connectivity, something we're losing with all this technology."

The circles are composed of a small group of people with a topic for discussion and someone to guide the conversation. An object, which can be anything, is passed around the circle. Only the person holding the object can talk.

"Groups have been doing this for so many years, so I think there's something really to be said about the community aspect," Reynolds said. "People's dignity and presence are honored by being there. It's the kind of place where there's no judgment. If you need to cry, you can cry. And people won't say, 'Oh, it's going to be OK' because they're not allowed to talk.

"It's not about solving other people's problems," she added. "No one's going to tell you how you should feel. It's completely up to you."

Like Waring, healing circles have forced Effie Steele, whose daughter was murdered in 2007, to confront some of her anger, hurt and grief. She experienced her first healing circle last year during a restorative justice conference.

"At first it was like no big deal, but then when you get the object that you hold, you get all of these emotions," she said. "For me, it just floods and floods emotions.

"And hearing everybody else's story and knowing that you can only talk when you have the object yourself, it was quite different," she added. "When you hear someone else's story, you want to say, 'Yeah it happened to me.' It gives the person free range to let their feelings out and express themselves."