Thoughts on grief and ritual

I’m not sure where to start this story. This story about grief and the necessity for ritual. Because where do you begin to give words to something that is so profound, unique and seemingly impossible to grasp? And yet, I feel compelled to. Because I know that in order to bring people to this work, to grief work, and to bring the transformational power it holds to those who need it, we need to share about it. Talk about it. So allow me to try.

I didn’t find ritual until over a decade after my mum had died. Up until then, I’d been navigating my grief on my own. Or I’d been trying to, anyway. For a lot of my 20s, I had no idea how to actually grieve. I was walking around with this grief thing I had no idea what to do with. Hell, I wasn’t even walking around with it - it was dragging me under. Learning to walk with it was a first big step towards where I am now and towards my relationship to grief as it is now.

It’s not that I’d never sought help. I was in and out of therapy for most of my 20s, but never for my grief. Always for all the pain that had come from my inability to carry my grief or open up to it: my eating disorder, the loss of my sense of self, feelings of isolation and detachment. I explored them all, carefully hopping from island to island without ever dipping a toe in the ocean of grief they had been formed in. In time, I turned these barren islands into flowering land, and I felt it was becoming time to learn to swim. Time to, for the first time since it entered my life, turn fully towards my grief.

Despite the amount of help I’d sought over the years, I’d never truly felt supported in my grief. I’d sat with therapists who didn’t see a reason to address it, who thought I’d done an excellent job of processing it all or who worked with protocols that simply didn’t have space for grief. It had been a decade since I lost my mum and not once had someone sat with me and my grief. When I eventually  grew tired of trying to hold it all myself, when I felt this deep longing for support, I knew exactly what I needed, and no idea where to find it. I felt strongly that what I needed wasn’t therapy. I didn’t want to sit down and talk about my grief or fix it. With or without support, I had processed most of it by then. Cried, given my losses a place, turned towards life again, released the coping mechanisms that had kept me afloat during the first years. But my grief was still with me and I’d come to understand that it would probably always be.

What I craved was a place where I could sit with it for a while and be held. Not fixed, analysed, complimented, advised or comforted. Simply witnessed, heard and held. Somewhere I wouldn’t feel so awfully alone with it. Somewhere I could let it all out, or at least let out what wanted to be heard at that time. Because despite all the work I’d done by then, I felt there was much of that had never had a voice. Because where the hell do we have space in this society to really, fully break open? To let the screams we’ve been swallowing down rip open our throats and the fabric of the world? In all my years of grief, I’d never found a space that would hold that. Not one that felt safe, where I felt I wouldn’t be rushed towards with unneeded comfort and hugs and words meant to convince me it would all be okay - all things that made me fucking claustrophobic. I didn’t need to be comforted, I was doing a good enough job of that myself. I needed to be heard. My grief needed to be heard. 

I found that in ritual. I found that in the presence of others who understand this grief thing. In these spaces there seems to be an inherent understanding that no grief is the same, not all grief is equal, yet all grief is valid. That there is no point in comparing or trying to understand the unique sorrows another carries. An understanding that there is no explaining it and at the same time, it’s so understood. That any grief is far too big to capture in words or be felt at one time. That we don’t have to dig and force our way to the bottom of it or display it in a grand, theatric show of release because grief sets its own pace and will determine its own voice. Some days, that voice is small and fragile. Other days, it carries enough force to rearrange our world. Most days, these voices exist alongside each other. Most days, we’re breaking and we’re living and we’re hoping as we despair. Grief has so many faces and we can wear them all at the same time.

“I found there was unique medicine in being with others who had turned towards their grief, to a point where I don’t think anyone who hasn’t opened up to their own grief can truly be there for someone who has.”

Grief in a growth-obsessed society

I think we often don’t realise how much grief we carry until we find a space where it is invited in. Not expected, not demanded, not dug up to be performed. Simply invited. Welcomed. Received with open arms if it wants to show up, as it wants to show up. We don’t realise how much grief we carry because so much of it goes unseen and unrecognised. Because so much of it isn’t taken seriously. Because we live in this society that values positivity above all else. The ability to move on and above and beyond and turn all hardship into glittering lessons. But that’s not what grief is. It’s not how it works, it’s not how it’s accessed. I’ve found grief wells up when we have no expectations of nor for it. When we don’t need it to do, be or bring us anything. When we simply open to it and let it move through us as it wants to - needs to.

Grief ritual, then, is not a highway to transformation. Not a tool to grow or improve or move on. It’s an immersion. A space of permission. A surrendering. It has taught me that opening the gates to grief doesn’t lead to drowning but rather the opposite - it teaches us how to stay adrift. After every ritual I have felt this lightness. I have felt a deeper opening; to myself, my grief, and to the world around me. An increased confidence that I can carry this thing that I can’t fix. That I don’t want to fix. I’ve discovered new depths and layers of my grief time and time again and have been amazed by their wisdom.

I think everybody has - and should have - a place in grief rituals. I believe we all carry grief of different kinds and magnitudes and too often rather than have our grief recognised, we are told to ‘move on’, ‘get over it’, that ‘it’s just made place for something better’ or whatnot. I wonder sometimes where we are still allowed to feel pain and sorrow without needing to end it on a positive note. Without needing to emphasise that we know it’ll be okay, that it’s just made space for new and better things or that apparently this was the lesson we chose to learn in this life. Have we become so afraid of loss and hurt that we have relabelled loss as opportunity? That release has become but a tool for moving on? Feeling but a way of letting go?

I’ve found grief rituals to be a space where we can feel for the sake of feeling, with no ulterior agenda. Where we can release because our body wants to, as much as our body wants to, not because our mind thinks it’ll get us somewhere new. Where we can see sorrow and pain for what they are instead of what they can give us. Where we can grieve without needing to wrap it up prettily and make it presentable to the world. Without agenda, without expectations of an outcome.

Grief ritual is where I found a voice for my grief and a place for my soul to be held. It’s made me long for the cultures and societies in which ritual still has a place in the regular flow of life. Where spaces like these are commonplace, understood to be necessary medicine for all. As a society we may have lost that, but as people I hope we can begin to weave these spaces into the fabric of our lives again. I know I’ll try.